North Lodge

In the spring of 2010, local historian Alan Cook kindly made a scale model and plan of the Castle's former Northern Gate-house Lodge, based upon a single visit that he made around 1965-66. The scale of the model is 1:100 and is made from memory, OS Plans and the land registry plan. This building was demolished in 1967 and - as far as we are aware - no photographs of it exist.

Alan states from his visit (nearly 45 years ago) that "I can not scale the internal rooms accurately, but I am sure there were 2 bedrooms, of slightly different size. There was a kitchen/come pantry with stairs down to a cellar (no tunnel evident) and the toilet was outside - but may have been accessible by a bedroom. There had been a lift pump for water from a well, and I think there was soft water tap from a tank outside.... The main lodge dimensions were 21 ft North to South and 30 ft West to East approximately".

The last resident was a Mrs Jessie Pearson, and the building itself was a stylish Baroque/Palladian bungalow with a rounded portico veranda. 283 Weddington Road now stands on the site of this building, and the integral garage of this house has a reinforced concrete floor to cope with the old cellar and water pump site. Apparently this is because rules did not allow a habitable room on the ground floor because of the old cellar.