The newer part of Appleby Castle (Digest, June 25) was designed by the Rev Thomas Machell, Rector of Kirkby Thore nearby, who came from Crackenthorpe Hall in the parish of Appleby St Michael (Bongate).

A man of many interests and the common touch he died in 1698 aged 51, before he could publish his history of Westmorland, which is now in Cumbria Archive Centre at Carlisle.

In the 1980s I prepared an edition of part of it, but illness prevented me from further work on it. My edition is there with his, in manuscript. He was an amateur architect too.

Jeremy Godwin

Penrith