“O Naworth! monument of rudest times, When Science slept entombed, and o’er the waste, The heath-grown crag, and quivering moss, of old Stalk’d unremitted war! * * * * * If now the peasant, scar’d no more at eve By distant beacons, and compelled to house His trembling flocks, his children and his all, Beneath his craggy roof, securely sleeps; Yet all around thee is not changed; thy towers, UNMODERNISED BY TASTELESS ART, remain Still unsubdued by Time.” The Castle stands on “a pleasant eminence” at the head of the Vale of Lanercost, or St. Mary’s Holme, and not far from the beautiful and picturesque ruins of Lanercost Priory, which cover the dust of the ancient Lords of Naworth,[7] and many other gallant chieftains who formerly held sway over the wild Border. The approach to it is peculiarly striking. “The front is strengthened by a curtain wall, and a gateway embrasured, and the corners of the chief building on this side by lofty square towers.” On the north, it impends over the river Irthing, at a great height; the banks shagged with wood. “The whole house,” says Pennant, “is a true specimen of ancient inconvenience, of magnificence and littleness; the rooms numerous, accessible by sixteen staircases, with most frequent and sudden ascents and descents into the bargain; besides a long narrow gallery.” “The idea of a comfortable dwelling,” according to a more recent writer, “was, indeed, entirely excluded; the whole internal contrivance seeming only calculated to keep an enemy out, or elude his vigilance should he happen to get in; its hiding-holes are numerous; but it seems probable that many of its close recesses are even now unknown.” We have no certain information as to the period of its erection. Tradition reports it to have been built by the Dacres; but “by which of them has not been ascertained.” The earliest mention of it occurs in the reign of Edward the Third, when “Ranulphus Dacre, who had married the heiress of the Multons, obtained a license to fortify and convert his mansion here into a castle.” In the family of the Dacres it continued until the year 1569, when, by the death of the last heir-male of the family, it passed to the Howards--by the marriage of William Howard, third son of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, with the Lady Elizabeth, sister of the last Lord Dacre.[8] When visited by Camden, in 1607, it was under repair; according to Bishop Gibson, it was “again repaired and made fit for the reception of a family by the Right Hon. Charles Howard, great-grandson to the Lord William.” By its present noble owner, the Earl of Carlisle, it is, as we have intimated, preserved from farther injury at the hand of Time,--and is the occasional residence of some members of his family, who resort to it in “the sporting season.”