Pontefract

Location of the castle

This castle was constructed during the Middle Ages. It is located in West Yorkshire, Uk, inside the city of the same name. The castle is well-known for being the final resting place of King Richard II. Pontefract was erected in the 1070s for Irish earl Ilbe de Lassi on lands given to him by King William I. The castle was originally built of wood, like many other castles in England, but it was progressively transformed into stone. Henry, I took the castle from a descendant of Ilbe in the early 12th century, but the Lassi clan remained at Pontefract until the middle of the 14th.

Family history - what you should know?

The main tower was erected here during their ownership of the castle. The fortress was given to the Meaning a large in 1311. Thomas Plantagenet was killed in the fortress in 1322, and after he was acknowledged as a martyr, his burial on the monastery castle's property was designated as a shrine.

A year later, Henry Goth, Edward III's son, made Pontefract his personal abode. It was he who reconstructed and significantly improved the castle.

Lord Thomas Darcy donated the fortress to the Catholics' Benevolent Pilgrimage in 1536.

Like every good medieval fortress, Pontefract Castle has a secret. This mystery is linked to the great English monarch Richard II. This monarch died in one of the castle towers around 1400, and the circumstances of his death remain unclear. This was done on purpose in order to protest King Henry VII's religious policies.

The fortress was looted in 1644 when it was a royalist sanctuary.

Darcy was accused of treason and hanged some months later. At Pontefract Castle, there were intrigues and love tales. Catherine Howard, the English king's wife, was accused of treason and treason in 1541, and she cheated on the king at the Pontefract castle with its owner Thomas Culpeper. Many times, parliamentarians besieged and encircled the fortress, and even Oliver Cromwell, a former general in the parliamentary army, stated that Pontefract had a highly solid garrison.

The castle remains are available to the public and draw hundreds of tourists each year.

The castle was so old during the New Civil War in Britain that the inhabitants almost totally demolished it - the villagers said that the castle invites difficulties and disasters to their region. Only the castle's historic vaults, where ammunition was formerly kept, exist today.