In his account of Carlisle Castle, Henry Summerson states “the earliest reference to cannon at Carlisle dates from 1380, when Richard Potter, a householder in the city, was paid £4 for making two guns from a bronze wedge”.

These were probably small and in 1384 Richard Potter made three more, two of them described as ‘great’.

The cannon appear to have been cast in bronze and strengthened by having iron bands around the barrel.

The larger guns were mounted on a wooden platform on the keep and the small one in the northern corner of the bailey.

Gunpowder was made on site and also ordered ready-made from York.

The guns fired stone balls and 120 of these had to be made by a mason in Carlisle who completed the job in five weeks.

All was ready to repel a Scottish invasion force in 1385 when the castle suffered its first artillery attack.

There is no evidence of how effective the guns were in withstanding the siege but the Scots withdrew.

There was an earlier recorded gun in the county.

It was stated in 1929 that at Dalton Castle “in the armoury on the ground floor is a curious piece of ordnance which has been ascribed to the 14th century”.

This was said to “resemble the cannons used at Crecy in 1336”.

The Carlisle Journal reported on another early gun.

This was the barrel of what was described as a ‘swivel gun’ which was lent to the Royal Archaeological Society museum at Carlisle in 1882 having been found built-up “in the String of Horses in 1870 and supposed to have been used in the various sieges of Carlisle”.

It may be the cast-iron hand gun now in the Tullie House collection dating from the 15th century.

Also in Tullie House is an early arquebus hand gun which had been preserved by being buried in Solway Moss and which was thought to be “a relic of the battle [of Solway Moss] of 1542”.

Henry Summerson states that at Solway Moss “The Scottish army had taken the field with a large train of artillery”, and in their defeat 17 cannons ended up at Carlisle.

They were useless in the city as there was no powder for the guns or soldiers who could fire them.

There had only been one gunner at the castle in 1541 and the lack of trained men had not improved by 1545.

When there was threat of another invasion from the north, the governor of the castle wrote to the Lord Protector in July 1547 “I shall lay in victuals for Carlisle and practice 100 men in the use of the hand gun [he having] sent to the clerk of ordnance at Newcastle for the hand guns”.

There were still bows and arrows in the armoury at the castle and citadel and it took a long time for new technology to catch on.