The modern-day visitor aspect of the castle has leaned into the idea of the prison, displaying stocks and pillories – great fun to bring the kids down and allow them to put you in the pillories! We have 18 th century writings from civil servants who assessed the prisons of the British Isles that say this was one of the worst prisons in England due to the conditions within the prison and the inhumane treatment of the prisoners it housed. Add in damp and the famous cold winds of Newcastle and it would have been a very uncomfortable room in which to be kept! They’d be left here until their trial.Īs we already mentioned, the cellar is a very cold room. Prisoners would have been brought to the cellar and chained to the walls. There are iron loops clearly displayed in the walls of the cellar, to which a chain would have been attached. During the Tudor period it was adopted as a prison. After the Middle Ages, the castle ceased to be used as a military site and fell into disrepair. When we think of lower rooms in castles, we often think of medieval dungeons. Inside the central pillar there’s a hole which would have housed a lead pipe to supply the cellar with fresh water – part of the castle’s plumbing system. That meant goods coming in along the river would be easily transferred to the castle cellar. The modern-day accessibility entrance to the castle, built on the same site as the medieval access to the cellar, lines up perfectly with the medieval quayside too. It is also situated quite close to the supply rooms of the castle. The contents of the room would be used to maintain the troops and anyone else who lived and worked within the castle.Įven today it’s quite a cold room – the thick walls keep the cool air in the room so it was great for storing and preserving food, beer and wine. Soldiers, in his mind, weren’t high status individuals.ĭuring the Middle Ages the cellar was where the food and drink would have been kept. John Collingwood Bruce theorised that the cellar was the Garrison room where the soldiers would sleep and live while they were stationed at the castle. In those days, antiquarians were the people who, before historians and archaeologists existed, would gather together items, artifacts and stories from history and write books about them. It was so called by a local antiquarian called John Collingwood Bruce. The cellar in Newcastle’s castle has also been known as the Garrison room.
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