Carisbrooke Castle

Highlights

• ✦Charles I arrived at Carisbrooke Castle as a prisoner in November 1647, having fled from Parliamentary forces and sought protection on the Isle of Wight from the governor, Colonel Robert Hammond — only to discover that Hammond immediately informed Parliament of the king's presence; Charles was confined at Carisbrooke through 1647 and into 1648 while negotiations between the Crown and Parliament continued and failed; in March 1648 he attempted to escape through a window of the great chamber, reportedly having tested the bars in advance; the window was not wide enough and he became stuck; a second escape attempt in May 1648 also failed; he was transferred to Hurst Castle in December 1648 for his trial, and was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649; the Carisbrooke window story is one of the most humanising moments in Charles's captivity — the king's assessment of the window's width was simply wrong, and the failure had no dignity
• ✦The donkeys at Carisbrooke Castle are the most recognisable living feature of any English Heritage site: a team of resident donkeys has been maintained at the castle since the 16th century to power the wooden treadwheel that draws water from the well — 49 metres deep into the chalk below the castle, one of the deepest castle wells in England; a donkey walks inside the wheel (like a hamster wheel scaled for a medieval engineering context) and the rotation winds the rope that raises the bucket; demonstrations are scheduled during visiting hours; the donkeys have individual names and a following on the castle's social media; they are also historically accurate, this being the precise technology that extracted water from the castle well for four centuries
• ✦The Elizabethan artillery bastions added to Carisbrooke in 1587 are among the best-preserved late 16th-century artillery fortifications in England — designed by Federico Genebelli, an Italian military engineer in English service who had contributed to the Thames fortifications, the angled bastions project outward from the medieval curtain wall to provide overlapping fields of fire that eliminated dead ground at the wall base; this was the specific design problem that 16th-century military engineering solved by replacing medieval straight walls with angled projections; the 1587 upgrade was designed against the threat of Spanish invasion, which materialised as the Armada in 1588; the Armada famously did not land on the Isle of Wight, but the defensive works were real and survive in unusually complete condition
• ✦Princess Beatrice — Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, widely known as the queen's companion and secretary during Victoria's final decades — was appointed Governor of the Isle of Wight in 1896 following the death of her husband Prince Henry of Battenberg; she lived at Carisbrooke until her death in 1944, a period of 48 years during which she redesigned the castle gardens in a style reflecting late Victorian and Edwardian horticultural taste; the garden she created is still maintained and includes the bowling alley that Charles I used during his captivity; Beatrice's connection to the castle overlaps with her mother Queen Victoria's residence at Osborne House 4 km away, creating a family geography around two IoW sites
• ✦The Isle of Wight itself is a specific visitor context that makes Carisbrooke different from mainland English Heritage sites: reaching it requires a ferry crossing, and the island's combination of Carisbrooke, Osborne House, Victorian seaside towns, and the Needles chalk stacks makes it a destination that rewards at least a full day; the island's compact geography (40 km long, 20 km wide) means that both the main heritage sites are within easy driving distance of each other and of the ferry terminal