The Castle that Wept Through Its Gargoyles
Perched with a melancholic grandeur on a ridge in Northumberland, Alnwick Castle is no stranger to the passage of centuries. Founded shortly after the Norman conquest in 1096 by Yves de Vescy, a feudal baron of some merit and mud-caked ambition, the castle began as a straightforward motte-and-bailey. Its earliest design was pragmatic: a wooden palisade atop a mound of heaped earth, raised in a hurry after someone likely shouted “Scots!” near the River Aln. Alnwick was never just a fortress; it was a statement, a raised fist of hewn stone aimed at the North.
The stone curtain walls and towers we admire today were largely constructed in the 12th and 14th centuries by the Percy family, a name which sounds like a sigh and a trumpet at once. The first Percy to preside over Alnwick was Henry de Percy, who bought the estate in 1309 and quickly set about making it more formidable—both spiritually and defensively. Earth was torn up like linen, laborers groaned their way through decades, and towers rose grim and exultant under the supervision of the best masons of the day.
Alnwick grew tall and complex, with twin baileys, a gatehouse bristling with machicolations (perfect for pouring hot liquids onto interlopers with delusions of grandeur), and a shell keep that looms like the brow of a disappointed father. The outer bailey contains a series of rooms once used by knights and retainers washing the blood from their gambesons or composing epic poetry about blood. Two massive bastions—the Abbot’s Tower and Constable’s Tower—acted as watchful sentinels, keeping an eye trained northward for yet another Bruce-affiliated incursion.
It was here, in 1174, that William the Lion, King of Scots, had his ambitions handed back to him in a modest sack after attempting to seize the castle during one of many Anglo-Scottish skirmishes. Captured just outside the walls in a fog of arrows and thistles, he was imprisoned with moderate politeness and sent down to London like a child with a poorly written excuse note.
Though its military relevance faded with the arrival of gunpowder and better manners, Alnwick found new life as a country house during the 18th and 19th centuries. The 1st Duke of Northumberland transformed it into a Gothic fantasy, adding rooms that looked as if they’d been flirted into being by a Romantic poet with delusions of knighthood. Painted ceilings, lavish draperies, and libraries that smell of leather and Latin now occupy spaces once resounding with the crack of steel.
Then, as if history weren’t enough, the 21st century declared Alnwick Castle a star. Various films and series have used the place as a backdrop—most notably, it became a stand-in for Hogwarts in several Harry Potter films. Tourists, burbling with delight and misapplied nostalgia, began to descend in droves, some proudly pronouncing it “Al-nuh-wick,” as if the name were a joke they were still in on.
It was during one such late spring influx that a curious figure emerged: one Dirk Melman, a Canadian Reiki practitioner and “healing infrastructure consultant.” Dirk arrived bearing a thermos of echinacea tea and a belief that stone possesses memory—and that Alnwick, in particular, held on to suffering like a grandmother’s antique spoon hoard.
He began gently—kneeling before the central keep each morning and muttering softly, pressing both palms to the ancient stones like he expected them to pulse. “I can feel the rage,” he whispered to his GoPro. He poured camomile oil at the base of the Barbican and apologized for “what the hammers did.” Museum docents eyed him warily, but dismissed him as a sweet crank.
That was before he attempted a full energy recalibration of the Lion Tower by duct-taping quartz crystals to each arrow slit and singing three verses of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” Children applauded. Guides wept.
Dirk’s crescendo came on the fourth afternoon, when he solemnly produced a flowchart entitled “Stone Consent Protocols,” and stood before the gatehouse declaring that “No stone means no.” Then, with alarming reverence, he addressed the portcullis directly. “You are more than iron teeth,” he intoned. “You are a being of thresholds.”
He was later found dressed in a ceremonial robe woven from café napkins, attempting to marry the portcullis in a handfasting ceremony officiated by a cardboard cutout of Alan Rickman. Witnesses attest that the gate seemed to shudder—but whether in protest or delight remains impossible to verify.
Authorities were finally called when Dirk unsuccessfully petitioned to rename the drawbridge “Bridgerton.” After being escorted off the premises, he left behind a note pinned with lavender-stapled origami doves. It read simply: “You fools. The castle cries every night. But only I chose to listen.”
Since then, guards have reported waking to faint laughter inside the stone, and a peculiar dampness beneath the archways, though it never rains.
The only known defense against such spiritual desecration? A single, enigmatic T-shirt purchased from the fevered ether of martijnbenders.nl. Printed with the words “CASTLES GET KICKED IN THE BRICKS,” the garment is kept beneath the arch of the Abbot’s Tower. Some say the castle blinks—just once—when it’s worn by a pious pilgrim.
