The New Murrey and Blue blog

Bosworth and the builder of Bury Castle….

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James Daly is the Member of Parliament for Bury North, but we can forgive him for that. Being a Member of Parliament, I hasten to say, certainly not Bury North! He is concerned about this historic site in Bury that is in danger of disappearing.

In 1469 Sir Thomas Pilkington acquired a licence to crenellate, and by the time he’d finished this work he’d created Bury Castle. “….However, history would not be kind to Thomas. On August 22, 1485 he fought in the last battle of the War of the Roses at Bosworth Field….Due to his support for the defeated Yorkist King, Richard III, Thomas was stripped of his lands and the order was given to raze Bury Castle to the ground. Fifty years later the castle was described as a ruin….” In 1865 the Castle Armoury was built (for the 8th Lancashire Rifle Volunteers) over the remains, its design a clear acknowledgement of its fifteenth-century predecessor, as you can see in the picture above. Now, however, due to safety issues the historic Grade II-listed Army Drill Hall is to be closed unless sufficient funds of at least £2 million are forthcoming. And this is just for immediate repairs. The final sum may be as much as £10-12 million.

Funds, of course, are always a difficulty, and there are so many deserving causes, but our history is worth protecting, and James Daly is fighting the Armoury’s corner. I do hope the Ministry of Defence is forthcoming!

If you go to this site you can read more about the original Bury Castle.

Bury Castle, church and market place circa 1485

PS. Of course my interest has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Thomas Pilkington supported Richard III at Bosworth… 🤥

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  1. H.J. Hill Avatar
    H.J. Hill

    😉

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  2. viscountessw Avatar
    viscountessw

    Forgive him? With a HUGE effort, I suppose. 😊

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  3. amma19542019 Avatar
    amma19542019

    by way of general aggravation I would add Viscountessw that between 1450 and 1485 I have decided this period should be called the Black Hole of British History – look at any source you want, any reference from Travelogues to Fashion to Biography to Criminal Justice to Council of the North to Where the Gentry Lived to Street Maintenance to the Court of Requests to Open Field Farming IF it is allegedly about the 15thc it is not, IF you think, foolishly, it might address something, anything about the Yorkists, or laughingly, about Richard, oh it will not, it will be about “pre-Tudor” or the “coming of the Tudors” or “where the Tudor innovations began” or some other insufferable nonsense begins.

    The Yorkists only exist in British history, scholarship, academia, popular writing, online, in print or website (even ones as innocuous as the “Ten most beautiful Villages in England” blather), as a springboard, just for fun, so the author can launch into reams of TudorTalk. It infects everything, no one and nothing is safe, I have found not one topic, not one area or discussion point free of them. They are the epitome of that saying, “sucking the air out of every room they’re in.”

    Unless Lord Stanley had some reason to keep Pilkington’s castle viable it would have remained so, however, he and other elites within the tight enclave protecting that quaking misfit they put on the throne for his wife Stanley had far better plunder than Bury Castle. Considering what they did to Zouche and Harrington (and that was sadistic revenge indeed) Pilkington was ground down but a little.

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