Who Broke Helmsley Castle? A Ruin, a Lost Roman City and the Verb That Lies
Time takes the blame for every ruin. At Helmsley, somebody gave the order.
Last week we stood on the East Cliff at Whitby. This week we go inland, to a market town on the southern edge of the North York Moors, where the River Rye comes down out of the hills, and to a castle that was broken on purpose.
There are two poems here. The first is more than four hundred years old and is spoken by a city that has vanished. The second is my own, about Helmsley Castle, from North Yorkshire In Verse — Moor To Shore In Poetry. Between them sits a question every writer of place should put to their drafts: when the poem blames Time, who actually did it?
A City With No Memory: Edmund Spenser's The Ruines of Time
Edmund Spenser was born in London around 1552. He is best known for The Faerie Queene, a vast, unfinished poem of knights and allegory. He spent most of his working life in Ireland in the service of the Crown, died in 1599, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to Chaucer.
In 1591 he published The Ruines of Time, a poem of nearly seven hundred lines, written partly in mourning for Sir Philip Sidney, the poet and soldier who died of his wounds in 1586. Below are six of its stanzas.
Watch the speaker. Spenser is walking by the Thames when he meets a woman weeping on the bank. She is Verlame, the Roman town of Verulamium beside present-day St Albans, and she has lost everything: her walls, and her memory. Nothing remains to tell a passing traveller she was ever there.
Then the argument at the end. Kings build pyramids and bronze pillars so they will be remembered. Spenser thinks they are wasting their money. Look for what he believes does last.
Some of these words are four hundred years old. You needn't catch every one. Read for the pictures.
From The Ruines of Time by Edmund Spenser (1591)
It chaunced me one day beside the shore Of silver streaming Thamesis to bee, Nigh where the goodly Verlame stood of yore, Of which there now remaines no memorie, Nor anie little moniment to see, By which the travailer, that fares that way, This once was she, may warned be to say.
There on the other side, I did behold A Woman sitting sorrowfullie wailing, Rending her yellow locks, like wyrie gold, About her shoulders careleslie downe trailing, And streames of teares from her faire eyes forth railing. In her right hand a broken rod she held, Which towards heaven she seemd on high to weld.
I was that Citie, which the garland wore Of Britaines pride, delivered unto me By Romane Victors, which it wonne of yore; Though nought at all but ruines now I bee, And lye in mine owne ashes, as ye see: Verlame I was; what bootes it that I was, Sith now I am but weedes and wastfull gras?
Where my high steeples whilom usde to stand, On which the lordly Faulcon wont to towre, There now is but an heap of lyme and sand, For the Shriche-owle to build her balefull bowre: And where the Nightingale wont forth to powre Her restles plaints, to comfort wakefull Lovers, There now haunt yelling Mewes and whining Plovers.
For deeds doe die, how ever noblie donne, And thoughts of men do as themselves decay, But wise wordes taught in numbers for to runne, Recorded by the Muses, live for ay; Ne may with storming showers be washt away, Ne bitter breathing windes with harmfull blast, Nor age, nor envie shall them ever wast.
In vaine doo earthly Princes then, in vaine Seeke with Pyramides, to heaven aspired; Or huge Colosses, built with costlie paine; Or brasen Pillours, never to be fired, Or Shrines, made of the mettall most desired; To make their memories for ever live: For how can mortall immortalitie give.
What Boots It That I Was?
Verlame asks one question, and it is the question every ruin asks. What bootes it that I was? What good is it that I was, now I am nothing but weeds and grass?
Where her steeples stood, and the falcon soared from them, there is now an heap of lyme and sand, with a screech owl nesting in it. That is a brutal line. Lime and sand are the two things you mix to make mortar. The building has gone back to its ingredients.
The loss Spenser cares about most is the memory. In the first stanza there is nothing left for a traveller to point at and say, this once was she.
Deeds die. Pyramids fail. For how can mortall immortalitie give? Only verse survives, recorded by the Muses, beyond the reach of wind and rain.
It is a poet making the case for poetry. The poem is dedicated to Sidney's sister, Mary, Countess of Pembroke. So this is also a poet telling a grieving sister that her brother isn't in the ground. He is in the poems.
In his title, Spenser puts Time in charge of the damage. So do I, in the poem that follows. Let us see whether Time deserves it.
Helmsley: A Castle on the Wrong Side of History
Helmsley Castle stands a short walk from the market square, ringed by two great ditches. Walter Espec was granted Helmsley around 1120 and built the first castle here in timber. From 1186 Robert de Ros began rebuilding it in stone, with a new curtain wall and great towers to east and west, and his family kept adding to it for generations. Edward III stayed here in 1334. In Tudor times Edward Manners, Earl of Rutland, turned part of it into a comfortable mansion.
Then came the Civil War. In the autumn of 1644 Sir Jordan Crosland held Helmsley for the King, and Sir Thomas Fairfax came to take it for Parliament. During the siege Fairfax was shot in the shoulder and carried back to York. The garrison held out for about three months and surrendered in November.
And then the castle was broken. By gunpowder. The east tower was blown apart, and what you see today is half a tower, still standing at full height, with its other half gone.
Helmsley Castle by Alden Carrow
A keep once proud in Norman might, Now softened by the falling light— Its towers lean where ivy clings, And silence hums through fractured rings
The arches yield to wind and moss, Time's gentle hand declares their loss— Yet every gap and broken line, Speaks still of battles, bold design
The moat is dry, the bastion worn, Yet echoes rise at early morn— When mist unfurls across the green, And ghosts rehearse what once had been
From Tudor halls to Civil strife, It bore the scars of England's life— Yet holds today a gentler grace, A refuge wrapped in rural place
So let the stone in twilight rest, A memory etched across the west— Of conquest, peace, and changing fates, Beyond its gates, and through its slates.
Who Broke It?
Read the second stanza again. The arches yield to wind and moss, / Time's gentle hand declares their loss.
I like those lines. They are easy to say. They are also not quite true.
To be fair to the poem, it half knows this. Two stanzas later it says the castle bore the scars of England's life. Something made them.
Time didn't break Helmsley. People did. The garrison marched out in November 1644 with colours flying and drums beating, and was escorted to Scarborough. The surrender terms said the castle was to be demolished and never garrisoned again by either side. Its ruin was agreed on paper, then carried out with powder. Time arrived afterwards, to tidy up.
In 1650 Helmsley was granted to Fairfax himself, the man who had been shot outside its walls. Seven years later his daughter Mary married George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, whose family had held Helmsley before the war, and that marriage is how Buckingham got it back. He died in 1687 just up the road at Kirkbymoorside. In 1695 the estate was sold to a London banker, Charles Duncombe. His heir built a grand new house nearby, Duncombe Park, and left the old castle standing as a picturesque ruin.
So count the hands. Two commanders who agreed to its demolition. A general who blew up the tower and was then given the place. A duke who got it back by marrying the general's daughter. A banker's family who kept the wreck because it looked good in the landscape.
Not one of them is Time.
Once you start looking, you find it all over Yorkshire. Walter Espec, who built Helmsley's first castle, also gave the land for Rievaulx Abbey in 1132. Rievaulx was shut on Henry VIII's orders in 1538 and sold to Thomas Manners, Earl of Rutland, whose grandson built that Tudor mansion at Helmsley.
Spenser's Verlame is the same. Her Roman town was burned by Boudica's army in AD 60 or 61. Centuries later, builders carted her Roman bricks up the hill to build St Albans Abbey. Verulamium was burned, and then recycled.
Seven years after he wrote The Ruines of Time, Spenser's own house in Ireland, Kilcolman Castle, was burned during the Nine Years' War. He escaped to London and died there the following January. Whatever he wrote in his title, he knew that ruins have hands.
Three Habits for Writing About Ruins
If you write about places, put this question to every draft: when your poem blames Time, who actually caused the ruin?
1. Check the verb. Ruin poems are full of soft verbs that do their work without anyone doing it. Stones yield. Walls crumble. Before you keep one, ask whether it is true. Sometimes it is. Malham Cove was shaped by ice and water, and when the weather deserves the credit, name the weather: the frost, the rain, the North Sea. Often, though, the true subject of the sentence is a person.
2. Notice what a name does to the feeling. Time's gentle hand is consoling. Nobody is to blame, and nothing could have been done. Fairfax's gunpowder is a different poem. It has a date, a decision, and somebody who might have decided otherwise. Helmsley's story is far too tangled for heroes and villains, but naming the hand turns a mood into a story.
3. Remember that keeping is a choice too. Ruins don't survive by default. Somebody has to decide not to clear the rubble, not to quarry the stone, not to build over the site. At Helmsley that was a family who liked the look of the ruin. Even Verlame, who told Spenser there was nothing left to see, was excavated in the 1930s, and you can walk beside stretches of her Roman wall today. Keeping belongs in the poem as much as breaking does.
Try This
Take a poem about a place, one of yours or one you love by somebody else. Underline every verb that does its work without anybody doing it: crumbles, fades, yields. In the margin, write who did it, if you can find out.
You don't have to change a word. But you will know, and I suspect the next poem you write will be different.
What Lasts
Spenser's great claim is that verse lasts when stone doesn't. I don't think anything lasts on its own. The Ruines of Time is still here because people kept printing it, reading it, and reading it aloud. Every ruin, and every poem, is still standing because somebody decided it should be.
My poem gave the credit to Time. If I wrote it today, I think I would give it to the people.
Read Helmsley Castle in North Yorkshire In Verse - Moor To Shore In Poetry
Helmsley Castle is one of the poems in North Yorkshire In Verse — Moor To Shore In Poetry, part of the British Counties In Verse series: a collection that walks the county from the high moors to the coast.
It is available now online from Amazon, Blackwell's, Books A Million, Foyles, Hugendubel, Powell's, Thalia and Waterstones.
There is no publisher's marketing budget behind this series. It travels by readers. If you would like to help it travel further, three small things help:
Make a note of it. If you give books at Christmas, a county collection is a fine present for anyone who walks the moors or grew up beneath them.
Leave a review. A few honest lines on Amazon, or wherever you bought it, help the book find its next reader more than anything I can do.
Tell one person. A walker, a reader, someone who still remembers their first sight of Helmsley's broken tower.
Suggest a poem, win a signed copy. Is there a poem you would like to hear on Alden Carrow's Poetry Podcast? A classic, something modern, or a favourite you have carried with you for years? Email me at aldencarrow78@gmail.com. Every suggestion goes into the draw for a signed copy of North Yorkshire In Verse, sent to you by hand. The next guest poem will come from one of you.
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The reading is the thing. It always was.
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