Stagecoach North West Guided Tour of Lancaster Castle -
October 2010
As part of the Celebration of Learning in
October - lead ULR Ken Gillespie along with his fellow ULRs came up
with a very novel idea of how to encourage learning in their
area.
Despite torrential rain, over forty people
from both the Stagecoach employees and the community turned out for
a guided tour of Lancaster Castle.
Once in the castle the tour began at 8pm with
the guide explaining that we can only visit certain parts of it due
to the fact it is still a working prison. There were also two
courtrooms, one civil and one ? which are in daily use although the
civil one is not used as much as it used to be.
The civil court was the first room we visited
with the guide explaining the history of both the room and the
plaques that fill the surrounding walls. He was full of
interesting facts including the Birmingham Six trail was held in
that courtroom along with how and why the people who had the
plaques have to have individual coats of arms on each
one.
It was wonderful to see a number of children
along with their parents and when asked for any questions they were
keen to discover as much as possible. One asked about the
huge keys in a glass cabinet to be told that the castle was and
still is headed by the King or Queen of the UK. The keys had
been presented to various monarchs throughout the centuries when
they had visited. It was also interesting to note that Queen
Elizabeth 2nd was the Duke of Lancaster, not the Duchess
as some would imagine.
The tour then moved on through a number of
rooms before ending up in the old cells in the basement. A
number of volunteers including myself went into one the cells which
had modern lighting for the tour. Once we were all in the
lights were switched off and a large grill which would have allowed
natural light in was the only light source. It gave a real feel of
how oppressive life in the cells would be.
