The great entrance hall of Lowther Castle, photographed before the first world war. Take a virtual step inside the front door to see inside now.
A castle awakes. Work is beginning at Lowther Castle and Gardens near Penrith, Cumbria, to create a major new visitor attraction in the Lake District National Park. The ruined castle and abandoned gardens - one of England's greatest yet unseen 17th century gardens - will open to the public for the first time. After 20 years of efforts to find a future for the site, in 2009 the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) approved development plans. It will invest £7 million and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) £2 million, with additional funding from the Lowther Estate Trust, which has leased Lowther Castle and Gardens for a peppercorn rent to a new independent charity, the Lowther Castle and Gardens Trust (LC>).
The ruined castle and gardens at Lowther stand on a limestone escarpment at the Northern edge of the Lake District National Park, three miles from the M6, junction 40. The 130 acre, Grade II* listed site contains the remnants of at least three significant buildings and much of its 17th century gardens remains intact.
Work will start on site in 2010. Read more about the progress and plans.
A new team is being formed to take forward the work, the next appointment being the Commercial Director.
Read interviews about the plans with architect Geoff Rich and about a first impression of the gardens with landscape designer Dominic Cole.
'Don't go to Lowther if you are looking for herbaceous borders or flowery rose gardens - there aren't any. Lowther is a truly lost garden, of which only traces remain in the ghostly remnants of follies and temples, flights of grand stone steps that now lead to and from nowhere, and stone-built features transformed into peculiar creatures through the accretion of years of moss. At its heart, the magnificent ruined castle must surely be one of the finest wrecks in Britain.' (Matthew Wilson, presenter of Channel 4's The Landscape Man, and former Trustee of the Lowther Castle and Gardens Trust, in My Favourite Gardens, Guardian, 13 May 2010)
