Northumberland #7 - Dunstanburgh Castle from Graymare Rock

Standing alone and abandoned on a bleak headland, in between the Northumberland seaside villages of Craster and Embleton, the keep of Dunstanburgh Castle keeps watch against the massed hordes that will never come.

Built in the early part of the C14th, it was a symbol of the power of Earl Thomas of Lancaster, standing against Edward II.  Sadly, Lancaster never saw the castle completed.....he wasn't powerful enough and was executed by Edward in 1322.

Subsequently used by John of Gaunt to keep the Scots at bay, it last saw action in the Wars of The Roses in the C15th, but then fell into decay.

Large amounts of the ruins are visible on the approach from Craster in the south, but I prefer this view, looking from the north; the keep rising as a memorial to the power of men....and how that power, although fleeting in the grand scale of millennia, still shouts itself from the remnants of their accomplishments.