Visiting Carisbrooke Castle with Abigail Adams
In the spring of 1788 Adams went to the Isle of Wight off England’s southern coast:
On tuesday we went to Newport in order to visit Carisbrook Castle. This is a very ancient Ruins. The first account of it in English History is in the year 1513. This is the castle where Charles the first was kept a prisoner and they shew you the window from whence he attempted to escape.Mormann added:
In this castle is a well of such a depth that the water is drawn from it by an ass walking in a wheel like a turn spit dog. The woman who shew it to us told us it was 300 feet deep. It is Beautifully stoned and in as good order as if finishd but yesterday. She lighted paper and threw [it] down to shew us its depth and dropping in a pin, it resounded as tho a large stone had been thrown in. We went to the Top of the citidal which commands a most extensive prospect.
Out of curiosity, I checked to see if the castle still holds tours as it did in 1788. Sure enough (’cause England is awesome like that), they still do. Their website even features many of the things Abigail mentions in her journal entry.Including the asses! (Now carefully called donkeys.)
TOMORROW: More of Abigail Adams’s experience of Newport, England.
2 comments:
Interesting, that Abigail Adams was familiar with the concept of a "turn spit dog". I wonder if she'd seen them in Boston before she went to England.
I see a bunch of references to “turnspit dogs” in English publications from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often without explanation, suggesting that people knew what they were. But were there many examples in America?
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