Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Dukes Playhouse has films and theatre, the Promenades being among the most spectacular
open-air theatres in Britain. Uphill from the large tidal weir on the Lune, the canal enters the
fully built-up part of the city.
Lancaster is the red rose city, centre for the Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses. It takes
its name from
lune
, Celtic for healthy, and
ceaster
, Old English for fort. The market square is
where Charles II was proclaimed king in 1651. In the 19th century local palaeontologist Sir
Richard Owen planned London's new Natural History Museum and invented the word 'dino-
saur' but claimed Darwin's natural selection theories did not fully explain evolution.
The Romans built a bath house in Lancaster. The 15th century Perpendicular Benedictine
Priory church of St Mary includes a Saxon wall and doorway on the site of a Roman fort and
contains 13th century carved choirstalls, which are some of the earliest and finest in England,
in addition to fine needlework and Abyssinian Coptic crosses. A Saxon church of about 600
was replaced with a 1380-1430 model, the memorial chapel of which has the colours of the
King's Own Royal (Lancashire) Regiment.
The Norman castle is now a prison, past residents including the ten Demdyke witches of
1612 and Quaker founder George Fox, its implements including a clamp last used for brand-
ing criminals in 1811 and a cat o' nine tails last used in 1915. The Turret or John of Gaunt's
Chair has a view to the Isle of Man and was used to signal the approach of the Armada. The
massive gatehouse is 15th century but most of the castle was restored in the 18th and 19th
centuries. The county court uses a 19th century room. Its two-storey keep was heightened
from its original form and there remains part of a bailey curtain with a round and two square
towers.
Less dramatic buildings include the Baroque Music Room of the 1730s with ornate plaster-
work, the Grade I Judges' Lodgings town house with Gillow furniture and a museum of
childhood. The Georgian former town hall of 1783 contains the museum of the King's Own
Royal Regiment (Lancaster). The city museum and the Cottage Museum are in an artisan's
house of about 1820. St Peter's Roman Catholic church of 1859, in Geometrical style, was
one of Paley's finest, with ten bells, notable architecture and stained glass, as well as one of
the finest organs of its type. It became a cathedral in 1924.
