HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-10-31T12:15:18.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers: Britain's 8 most haunted houses
items: The siege of Basing House: how the Civil War was won
items: The Pendle witches: what happened in the infamous Lancashire witch trial?
items: Caer Cadarn and Camelot: where was King Arthur's castle?
items: How to build a medieval castle: 9 top tips
items: The history of Gwrych Castle, home of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here
items: Anne Boleyn, Beefeaters, Guy Fawkes and the princes: a brief history of the Tower of London
items: The history of Tintagel Castle and the legend of King Arthur – plus 5 places to explore in Britain
items: The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained
items: Mary, Queen of Scots: what happened to her ladies-in-waiting?

From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers: Britain's 8 most haunted houses
type: item
date: 2025-10-30T15:00:03.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British queens
subject: Castles
subject: Death
subject: Henry VIII's wives
description: From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers, Caitlin Blackwell Baines introduces us to the terrifying cast of phantoms said to dwell within the nation’s spookiest homes
encoded: 1. Stirling Castle, Scotland From elusive sea monsters to shrieking banshees, Scotland is home to a host of supernatural beings – including, of course, ghosts. One of their best-known spectral celebrities is the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, who is said to haunt a staggering 10 properties, making her, perhaps, the best-travelled ghost in the nation. Among her main haunts is Stirling Castle, her childhood home in central Scotland. Perched atop a volcanic crag, surrounded by cliffs overlooking the River Forth, Stirling Castle was constructed in the early 12th century, originally as a military stronghold, acting as a strategic line of defence during the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296–1357). However, almost from the very beginning, Stirling was also a favourite royal residence. By the time a young Mary Stuart lived there in the 1540s, it was as much a palace as it was a fortress: her father, James V, had transformed it into one of the most opulent homes in Renaissance Britain. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Stirling-Castle-Bannockburn-1-8d83973.jpg" width="1200" height="960" alt="A large brown castle stands on a tree-covered hill, against a dark grey cloudy sky" title="Stirling Castle is one of several historic buildings said to be haunted by the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots – the ill-fated monarch who was imprisoned – and executed – upon the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I (Image by SpookyScotland.net)" /> Whatever happy childhood memories Mary may have had of Stirling would be tainted by the events of 21 April 1567. It was here on this day that the embattled queen would see her infant son (the future King James VI & I) for the last time. Soon after, she was forced to abdicate, flee the country, and eventually, in 1587, she was executed for treason under the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I. Perhaps it is for this reason that the melancholy monarch returns to the castle, perpetually searching for her long-lost ch…

Ben-Jones-AN-illo-FINAL-3a2acff.jpg
width: 3000
height: 2000

The siege of Basing House: how the Civil War was won
type: item
date: 2024-09-26T10:00:21.000Z
creator: Jessie Childs
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Castles
description: When some 6,000 parliamentarians tried to prise a few hundred royalists out of Basing House in 1643, they began a brutal siege that would drag on for years and see thousands slaughtered. Jessie Childs tells the story of a desperate struggle that became a defining episode of the Civil War
encoded: On a plant-finding expedition to Kent in 1633, the apothecary Thomas Johnson looked out from the tower of Canterbury Cathedral and despaired at the inadequacy of the town’s defences. “Our people,” he lamented, “like the Spartans of old, set more store upon arms than upon walls for protection.” A decade later, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson was shoring up the defences of Basing House in Hampshire, ahead of an imminent parliamentarian attack – and presumably wishing that someone had listened to him earlier. We have always preferred the glamour of the battle to the dog-work of a siege. We hear the rumble of the cavalry charge and the first dry rattle of new-drawn steel more keenly than the sound of digging and guard duty. We imagine the king’s battle standard rescued at Edgehill and the royalist horse reduced to “stubble” by Cromwell’s troops at the battle of Marston Moor, but a half-starved garrison negotiating terms of surrender is rarely part of the picture. Yet the Civil War was not only won on Marston Moor, nor even at the battle Naseby when Charles I lost his artillery and a large part of his officer corps in June 1645. It was won three months later, at Bristol, when his nephew Prince Rupert yielded England’s second city and, with it, his command of the royalist army. It was won when further strongholds were taken and destroyed, securing parliament’s supply lines and, ultimately, giving the king nowhere to hide. Read more | 10 key battles of the Civil War From Hull, where arguably the war began in July 1642, to Harlech, where the last royalist garrison surrendered in March 1647, the first Civil War was predominantly fought around walled towns, medieval castles and fortified manor houses. Each side had areas of dominance, but this was not a regional conflict in the sense, say, of the American Civil War, with a geographically defined North and South. Once it became clear that the war between king and parliament would not be decided by one big battle, it mushroomed into…

2CF0WT7webready-d2fe6de.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

The Pendle witches: what happened in the infamous Lancashire witch trial?
type: item
date: 2024-01-12T15:06:00.000Z
creator: Charlotte Hodgman
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Castles
subject: Evergreen
subject: Halloween
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy history of witchcraft course
subject: Witches
description: In 1612, the hangings of those accused of being the Pendle Witches caused a public sensation. Dr Robert Poole and Charlotte Hodgman visit Lancaster Castle in Lancashire, where one of the most famous, and sensational, witch trials in British history took place, in 1612, and explore the history of the chilling event…
encoded: “One voice for 10 dragged this way once by superstition, ignorance. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” So begins the first verse of Carol Ann Duffy’s 2012 tribute to the so-called Pendle witches – the eight women and two men who were sent to the gallows following one of the most sensational witch trials in British history. What caused the Pendle Witch Trials? The story starts with a young woman named Alison Device, who, in the spring of 1612, was out walking near Nelson, in the borough of Pendle, when she met a pedlar who refused to sell her some pins. What happened next is somewhat confused, but the pedlar appears to have become very frightened and fell down from what we would now recognise as a stroke – numb down one side and unable to speak. The terrified pedlar was taken to a nearby pub and his son was sent for. On his arrival, he found his father a little recovered, but ranting about a black dog who had come to him while he lay paralysed. Convinced that the pedlar’s condition was due to witchcraft, the two men sent for Alison herself, clearly hoping that she could undo the harm she had caused. On her arrival, she apologised to the pedlar, admitted to bewitching him but claimed she was unable to reverse the magic, stating that her grandmother was a witch and that bad things happened around her. Local magistrate Roger Nowell was sent for, and an investigation into witchcraft began. “When Nowell started delving further, events spiralled,” says Dr Robert Poole, guild research fellow at the University of Central Lancashire, and an expert on the case. “A Puritan magistrate, Nowell had his own political and religious reasons for wanting to hunt down witches, along with religious dissenters and papists. He interviewed Alison’s mother, Elizabeth, and grandmother, Old Demdike, before casting his net wider and involving neighbours in his investigations, too. The whole trial snowballed from there. “One thing the investigations threw up was that witchcraft accusations …

HEXA-Witchcraft-WK3-Pendle-2ee807a.jpg
width: 620
height: 413

Caer Cadarn and Camelot: where was King Arthur's castle?
type: item
date: 2023-08-18T08:10:09.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Castles
description: Camelot, the legendary court and castle of King Arthur, was a peerless seat of chivalry. But did it actually exist?
encoded: Camelot first appears in Chrétien de Troyes’ late 12th-century French romance Lancelot or The Knight in the Cart. Given that this story was very much his creation, the name is likely to have been made up, presumably based on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Camblan’ or Wace’s ‘Camble’, with ‘-lot’ added to fit the rhyme (meaning ‘share’, ‘fate’). There have however been numerous attempts to identify King Arthur's Camelot. Winchester was a candidate in the later Middle Ages, then South Cadbury Hillfort in the reign of Henry VIII, based presumably on nearby names such as the river Cam. Colchester in Essex and the Roman fort at Slack near Huddersfield have also been put forward as possible Camelots, because they were called Camulodunum (literally ‘fortress of the god Camul’) in Roman Britain. Before taking any of these too seriously, we surely have to show that there is a good chance that Chrétien had drawn the name from a reliable and near-contemporary source. That seems highly unlikely. View oEmbed on the source website Nick Higham is emeritus professor in early medieval and landscape history at the University of Manchester. His books include King Arthur (Stroud, 2015) This content first appeared in the May 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine

GettyImages-1048359494-49faf13.jpg
width: 600
height: 413

How to build a medieval castle: 9 top tips
type: item
date: 2021-05-26T13:45:46.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Castles
subject: Medieval life
description: The Norman Conquest triggered a boom in castle building, but the process of creating a fortress from scratch was far from simple. So what was the best way to build a medieval castle? John Goodall reveals his guide...
encoded: Choose your site carefully It is crucial that you build your castle at a prominent site in a position of strategic importance Castles were commonly erected on naturally prominent sites, usually commanding a landscape or a communication link, such as a ford, bridge or pass. It is rare to have a medieval account of the circumstances behind the choice of a castle site but they do exist. On 30 September 1223, the 15-year-old king Henry III arrived in Montgomery with an army. The king, having campaigned successfully against the Welsh prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, was intent on creating a new castle in the area to secure the border of his realm. Carpenters in England had been charged with preparing timber for the new fortifications a month previously, but the king’s advisers determined where the castle should be sited. After surveying the area carefully they chose a spot on the very edge of a promontory above the valley of the river Severn. It was, in the words of the chronicler Roger of Wendover, a position “that seemed untakeable to everyone”. He also observed that the castle was “for the security of the region on account of the frequent attacks of the Welsh”. Top tip: Identify the places where the topography dominates transport routes: these are natural sites for castles. Bear in mind that the castle’s design will be shaped by the building’s position. A castle on a high outcrop will, for example, have dry moats. England's 8 most amazing castles Agree on a workable design A master mason who can draw plans is a must – while an engineer who knows all about weapons is useful too Experienced soldiers may have had ideas of their own about the design of their castle, in terms of the form of the buildings and their arrangement. But it’s unlikely they would have had any specialist knowledge in design or building. What was needed to realise a vision was a master mason – an experienced builder whose distinguishing skill was the ability to draw. With an understanding of practical g…

GettyImages-522058240-028102d.jpg
width: 5460
height: 3259

The history of Gwrych Castle, home of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here
type: item
date: 2020-11-17T18:14:56.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Iron Age
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Castles
subject: TV interest
description: We caught up with Dr Mark Baker, chairperson of the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust, to find out more about the new UK home of the TV series I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, from royal ties to its haunted past…
encoded: Gwrych Castle, a 19th-century country house near Abergele in North Wales, might be about to become one of the most famous historical sites of 2020, thanks to its new role as the home of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. But in the 1990s, the castle was fading fast, stripped of its wealth, crumbling and forgotten. It was in this state that the site first caught the attention of Mark Baker, when he was 11 years old. His curiosity would lead him to establish the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust – a charity dedicated to protecting the castle’s heritage and history – all the more remarkable considering Baker was still just 12 years old. “I used to pass it every day to and from school, and I would look up at the castle from my parents’ car,” explains Baker. “I witnessed it slowly disappearing into the hillside, into a mass of overgrowth. I began to notice there was light coming through parts of the building that hadn’t done so before; the roof had been stolen, windows smashed and anything of value taken away.” When Baker ventured up to the site, he found “a scene of devastation”. The place had been ransacked by asset strippers, who took everything from its artwork to its fireplaces. “I could see remnants of what had been there in terms of its former glory,” Baker says. “There were still vestiges of the past, and it caught my imagination to try and rescue it.” From magnificent ruins to imposing forts: 10 must-visit British castles Undaunted and helped by what Baker calls “the naivete of youth”, he started to research the castle at the libraries at school and in the town of Abergele. “I came across so many discrepancies in the castle’s narrative that no one really knew who owned it, or how old it was.” Curiosity in full gear, Baker wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles about the castle, ultimately meeting them to discuss what actions could be taken. “The Prince of Wales was most supportive and made an off-the-cuff comment that I should write a book a…

GettyImages-1266279645-44f0b76.jpg
width: 1024
height: 683

Anne Boleyn, Beefeaters, Guy Fawkes and the princes: a brief history of the Tower of London
type: item
date: 2020-10-06T08:50:15.000Z
creator: Tracy Borman
subject: General History
subject: General Modern
subject: Georgian
subject: Medieval
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Tudor
subject: Victorian
subject: Castles
description: One of the most iconic historic sites in the world, the Tower of London was not just the backdrop but the lead actor in some of the most momentous events in British history. Exploring its long and fascinating history reveals a cast of characters from the well-known (such as Anne Boleyn and the princes in the Tower) to the more unexpected (spies, jewel thieves and polar bears). Here, author and historian Tracy Borman investigates
encoded: The Tower of London was founded by William the Conqueror after his famous victory at Hastings in 1066. Using part of the huge defensive Roman wall, known as London Wall, William’s men began building a mighty fortress to subdue the inhabitants of London. A wooden castle was erected at first, but in around 1075–79 work began on the gigantic keep, or ‘great tower’ (later called the White Tower), which formed the heart of what from the 12th century became known as the Tower of London. Although it was built as a fortress and royal residence, it wasn’t long before the tower took on a number of other – more surprising – roles. In 1204, for example, King John established a royal menagerie there. Upon losing Normandy that year he had been given the bizarre consolation prize of three crate-loads of wild beasts. Having nowhere else suitable to keep them, he settled for the tower. John’s son, Henry III, embraced this aspect of the tower’s role with enthusiasm, and it was during his reign that the royal menagerie was fully established. Most exotic of all Henry III’s animals was the ‘pale bear’ (probably a polar bear) – a gift from the King of Norway in 1252. Three years later, the bear was joined by a beast so strange that even the renowned chronicler Matthew Paris was at a loss for words. He could only say that it “eats and drinks with a trunk”. England had welcomed the first elephant in England since the invasion of Claudius. It was also during the 13th century that the tower embraced another function that might not be expected of a fortress. Determined to keep the production of coins under closer control, Edward I moved the mint here in 1279. His choice was inspired by the need for security: after all, the mint’s workers literally held the wealth of the kingdom in their hands. So successful was the operation that it would remain at the tower until the late 18th century. At around the same time that the mint was established, the tower also became home to the records of governm…

GettyImages-520189738-b20ea44.jpg
width: 2121
height: 1414

The history of Tintagel Castle and the legend of King Arthur – plus 5 places to explore in Britain
type: item
date: 2020-07-22T09:03:20.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Castles
subject: Where history happened
description: Miles Russell and Spencer Mizen visit Tintagel Castle in Cornwall to explore its links with one of the world's great mythological figures...
encoded: King Arthur. Heroic British warlord who led the fight against marauding Anglo-Saxons, or a figment of a writer’s fertile imagination? It’s a question that’s been puzzling poets, chroniclers, historians and film-makers for more than 1,000 years. And nowhere does this question have more resonance than on a small, windswept, rain-battered headland projecting into the sea off north Cornwall: Tintagel. Numerous sites across north-west Europe – from Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset to the Forest of Paimpont in Brittany – have trumpeted their connections to King Arthur. Yet surely none are as intimately linked to the legendary warlord as Tintagel. King Arthur: 6 things you need to know about the warrior king and his legend That this is the case is almost exclusively down to the endeavours of one man: a Welsh cleric going by the name of Geoffrey of Monmouth. In the 1130s, Geoffrey set about writing a history of the kings who had ruled the Britons over the preceding 2,000 years. The resulting Historia Regum Britanniae is among the greatest pieces of medieval history writing – though not an entirely reliable one. It tells us, for example, that Britain was founded by the Trojans, and introduces us to King Lear. Yet, most significant of all, says Miles Russell, senior lecturer in prehistoric and Roman archaeology at Bournemouth University, is what it tells us about Arthur. “In his Historia Regum Britanniae Geoffrey gathered together a series of legends from western Britain to come up with a single narrative of the past,” says Miles. “So, in the case of Arthur, he related a tale that had been passed down by word of mouth through the generations. “In this story, Uther Pendragon is besotted with Igraine, beautiful wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. Uther is determined to have Igraine for himself and so, with the help of the wizard Merlin, assumes the image of Gorlois and tricks his way into Gorlois’ castle at Tintagel. And it is here, Geoffrey tells us, that Arthur is conceived.” The…

GettyImages-74027832-81f0b7e.jpg
width: 4062
height: 2642

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague explained
type: item
date: 2020-05-23T02:30:00.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Castles
description: The Defenestration of Prague in 1618 saw three Catholic officials thrown from a top-floor window of Prague (Hradčany) Castle by an angry mob of Bohemian Protestant activists. The imperial emissaries escaped uninjured, but the events of 23 May 1618 proved to be the catalyst for the bloodiest war in European history, the Thirty Years' War. Author Derek Wilson investigates...
encoded: Prague Castle (Hradčany in the national language) is massive – reputedly the largest castle complex in the world. It is impressive particularly when lit up at night and viewed from the Old Town on the other side of the Vltava. It must have been even more dominating four centuries ago, when there were fewer buildings between it and the river. What happened there on that fateful spring day – 23 May 1618 – had a long back story and appalling, long-term results. It would herald the beginning of a Bohemian revolt against the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II, which in turn helped spark the Thirty Years' War. The background At the root of the trouble lay the powerful forces of religion and nationalism. The Holy Roman Empire was in the early 17th century a conglomeration of principalities, dukedoms and city states under the authority of an emperor. Though the imperial title was conferred by a body of electors, representing the major constituents of the empire, it had, in fact, been held by the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty since the 15th century and was widely regarded as hereditary [Rudolf IV of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I in 1273 and Frederick V was the first Habsburg crowned Holy Roman emperor – as Frederick III – in 1452]. But that did not mean that the emperors were dictators: important policies were decided by members of the imperial parliament, or “diet”, and individual states jealously guarded their semi-independence. One thing that bound them all together was their allegiance to the Roman Catholic church – until the Reformation, that is. The Reformation – a breakaway from Catholic Christendom – was begun in Bohemia by the theologian, martyr and national hero Jan Hus, in the 15th century. A hundred years later Martin Luther, in Saxony, started a much more wide-ranging religious movement. Other teachers throughout Europe followed with their own versions of Protestantism and, by 1618, the Empire had become not only a political patchwork, but al…

Prague-2-a37d3d3.jpg
width: 1024
height: 513

Mary, Queen of Scots: what happened to her ladies-in-waiting?
type: item
date: 2019-08-14T09:00:06.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Stuart
subject: Tudor
subject: British queens
subject: Castles
subject: Poetry
subject: Tudor kings and queens
description: They witnessed first-hand the most eventful periods in Mary Stuart's life, accompanying her everywhere and enjoying the lavish court entertainments so important to 16th-century monarchy. But what happened to the four girls appointed to be companions and, later, ladies-in-waiting, to the Queen of Scots?
encoded: Melita Thomas, editor of Tudor Times, investigates the fate of Mary's ladies... “Yest're'en the Queen had fower Marys The nicht she'll hae but three There was Mary Seton and Mary Beaton, And Mary Carmichael and me” So runs the old ballad, remembering the four friends and companions of a fifth Mary – Mary Stuart, the romantic and ill-fated Queen of Scots. The queen’s fate is well known – she was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587 for her complicity in a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I. But who were her four Marys, and what became of them? Mary Stuart was Mary, Queen of Scots in her cradle. Her early years were spent in an atmosphere of unease as her mother, Marie de Guise, sought to protect her from the predatory Scottish nobles who fought for the regency and for control of the little queen. The nobility was divided between those who supported the traditional French and Catholic alliance that Marie represented, and those who looked to a newly Protestant England to support the burgeoning Scottish Reformation. Who betrayed Mary, Queen Of Scots? Despite this tension, Marie de Guise sought to give her daughter a happy childhood, and appointed four girls to be her companions and, later, ladies-in-waiting. What all the girls had in common, as well as their Christian name, was noble birth and similarity in age to the queen. There was also – whether deliberately or not – a pun in the choice of girls called Mary, as ‘marie’ was the Scots word for a maid, derived from the Icelandic ‘maer’. The ballad above is slightly wrong on the names – they were Seton, Beaton, Fleming and Livingston. Fleming’s mother, Janet, Lady Fleming was the illegitimate half-sister of Mary’s father, James V, and Livingston was the daughter of the queen’s guardian, Alexander, 5th Lord Livingston of Callendar. Beaton’s grandfather was first cousin to Cardinal David Beaton, one of the men vying for the role of regent, while Seton was the daughter of George, 4th Lord Seton, and she and Bea…

Ladies-waiting-2-329203a.jpg
width: 800
height: 530