Tea at Trianon: Bellister Castle

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 16, 2026

Bellister Castle

Property for Sale

From Country Life:

There is nothing more romantic than the idea of living in a castle.
But if you talk to someone who actually does live in a castle — as we did when we spoke to Cosmo Linzee Gordon a while ago — you'll find that as well as being dramatic and wonderful, it's can also be cold, damp, ruinously expensive, and a constant stream of problems to solve. Not for nothing did we headline that particular Country Life Podcast as 'Epic beauty, sweeping grandeur and water pouring through the ceiling.'
Just occasionally, though, a castle comes up for sale which shows that it doesn't always have to be this way. Bellister Castle, set beside a sweep of the River Tyne on the edge of the Northumberland village of Haltwhistle, is just such a castle — and it's for sale through Knight Frank at £2.5 million. From afar, Bellister is the very image of the medieval castle: a towering, castellated and imposing presence that looks over this green and rolling landscape, almost exactly half-way along Hadrian's Wall. And more than that, Hadrian's Wall is actually a part of the castle in a very literal way: the early portions are believed to have been built using stone that was, er, 'borrowed' from the wall itself. (Read more.)

Property for Sale