It's not often that Queens are sent to prison. Which makes Tutbury Castle one of the few places in the world to have held a Queen captive. It was here, perched on the green slopes overlooking the winding River Dove, that Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned from 1569 onwards. She hated Tutbury, for obvious reasons: she complained of draughts and damp and general dullness. But for visitors today there's much to love among the ruins of this once-impregnable fortress.
There has been a castle at Tutbury since Norman times, but most of the surviving structure dates from the fifteenth century, when England was ruled by the Lancastrian kings. After damage caused to the castle during the Civil War, Parliament ordered it to be demolished, leaving us with the picturesque ruins we have today.
This design shows the red-brick King's Lodging to the left and, to the right, the nineteenth century folly known as Julius's Tower, perched on top of the old Norman motte. You can just about see the ruins of a stone wall snaking up the left flank of the motte, and a woman in a green and red gown entering the Lodging - maybe the ghost of Mary herself!
