At best estimate, 31 generations of the Pennington family have called Muncaster Castle home. There may have been more, but according to one youngest in the family line, "the bureaucrats didn't make it that far". The bureaucrats Ewan Frost-Pennington is talking about are those who compiled the Domesday book in 1086. His Grade I-listed castle only made it into later surveys, so prior 1208 some of its history remains shrouded in mystery.
He tells the Manchester Evening News: "They did the first Domesday book and then they were like - oh, we should actually do the peripheries. So then they finally made it to Muncaster. The previous one, I think, only made it to Bootle." He says: "[Our family has been here] for at least 800 years. I'm the 31st generation to be documented, but it's likely there were more."
Overlooking the River Esk
About a mile east of Ravenglass, in Cumbria, and two hours from Manchester, Muncaster Castle overlooks the River Esk as it winds its way from the heart of the Lake District towards the Irish Sea. It was initially excluded from the Domesday book on the basis it was not considered part of England at the time.
In the 1460s, according to family folklore, Sir John Pennington offered sanctuary to Henry VI at Muncaster following a defeat at the hands of his House of York enemies. And it is interesting today to wonder what Henry VI would have made of the band Adult DVD, who play the sixth edition of the Krankenhaus festival on the castle grounds this August bank holiday weekend. Also on the bill will be indie legends Stereolab, Charlotte Church's Pop Dungeon, and the festival's founders, the band Sea Power.
'A pure fluke'
Krankenhaus, people say, lands somewhere in the hinterland between your typical indie rock gig and a quaint village fete. There are bands, there is drinking, there is dancing. But alongside your typical festival fare, there are steam trains to be taken, bingo, dog shows, brass bands, and a private viewing of a Grade II-listed water mill.
Members of its founders, Sea Power, lead fell walks in the morning before the acts. There has been talk this year of introducing bikes for festival-goers to hire. It's notable that Krankenhaus does not have fences. If there were, it's likely they'd be to keep people in – or within a reasonable distance of the castle – rather than out.
It is a festival created in Sea Power's image. The band has a reputation for trying different things, and their gigs often involve elaborate stage decorations and a dancing bear. The band has played shows in places such as the Mersey ferry, Tan Hill Inn - Britain's highest pub - and caverns in Cornwall. Guitarist Martin Noble, who spent the early years of his life in Bury, says: "At festivals, you are cornered in by lots of heras fencing and it does feel like you're trapped. But the Muncaster grounds and gardens are so huge.. The sheer scale of the festival feels massive."
To him and his band, the venue is perfect. Bass player Neil Hamilton stumbled across Muncaster during a ramble across the Lake District shortly before the first edition of the event in 2019. "He thought that's going to be a nice place for something special… It was just a pure fluke," the band's manager David Taylor recalls. It was then they got in touch with the Frost-Pennington family, whose reaction, at least at first, was lukewarm. It took a small amount of persuasion from Ewan, the heir to the castle, to convince his parents that the place their family had called home for over 800 years was perfect for a music festival.
"I think mum and dad had this idea that festivals and rock bands were drugs and problems," Ewan says. "And that's not on-brand with a castle. [But] what we found with Krankenhaus is just like a fantastic match… It's a micro Festival. The atmosphere is incredible."
"It's not exploitative. It's not a mega-festival that brings in big contractors. A lot of it is all about supporting the local economy and us as a venue, and we do it in partnership with Sea Power rather than it being one party or the other leading on it."
A community project
Part of Ewan's job, as Muncaster's operations director is to ensure the massive estate remains attractive to a diverse, and younger, audience. And when asked what earlier generations of the Pennington family might think of Krankenhaus, he is philosophical. He tells the MEN: "The way you survive 800 years is you're constantly reinventing. Ultimately, the way our family sees it is like we're the figureheads, or the guardians, of the castle – making sure that we're alive, living, agile and able to do things and be as accessible as possible for as great-a-number of people as possible."
That desire to move forward, he says, means they're "going to have weird gigs in the drawing room". "It's all about trying to make sure that [Muncaster] isn't just stuck. Some other houses can get into this Victorian, weird, classist thing.. I always see Muncaster as a community project from the outset. It was built because a load of Scots were coming down and killing a load of people in the valley and stealing stuff. So the community came together and built this thing, our family just happened to be the figurehead."
"It continues to be that. And it really needs to pull its weight in the local area. Both through employment and offering great music. Or cool things happening that make people proud. Krankenhaus symbolises that… in more ways than any other thing that we can do. Now I think mum and dad love it as much as I do, if not more so. Dad in particular."
David adds: "Whatever Downton Abbey approach you might think of in an aristocratic family, it's just not there. They're extensively involved. I mean, Ewan's father – it's a joke – he's got his marigolds, and he's cleaning out the bins doing the recycling." Ewan adds: "I'm on the bar, dad loves the bins. Dad's obsessed with recycling."
A family gathering
The first Krankenhaus in 2019, everyone involved agrees, began as "a gamble". It was one which saw 400 people make their way up to west Cumbria, and its size has remained modest since. They also all agree this is part of its attraction. "We have a very high repeat custom," says David. "Now it's 1,500 people, it's become like a family gathering."
"You come to this magical location in the middle of nowhere on the west coast of Cumbria. It wasn't just a festival in a barn, it's the castle, it's everything that happens in the castle, the grounds, Everyone just fell in love with the place… our tentacles into the countryside are spreading out wide and far." He adds: "This is much more than a musical festival. They come every year and they see their friends. They make new friends. And 80 to 90 per cent of the people who come back every year, and they love it. Big artists fall in love with it. I don't know how many times we've heard artists saying 'this is the best festival I've ever been to'."
"We all know festivals that are 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 [capacity], where it's just overwhelming. People love the fact this isn't like that. And that's our problem. How much bigger can we get?" Here, Sea Power guitarist Martin Noble chimes in: "We need a bigger barn!"
Cosmic Bingo and Club Sea Power
The Krankenhaus journey started some 300 miles away in Brighton, where Sea Power would host semi-regular Club Sea Power evenings. There was an appetite for the unusual. The oldest folk band in Sussex performed one evening. Japanese Queen covers bands were also known to frequent the bill. "Upstairs we had a ping pong table where people played around the world," Martin remembers. "There was a brass band. Sean Keaveney came down to DJ, and he said he'd always wanted to sing the theme tune to All Creatures Great and Small with his own lyrics. So we said yeah, we'll do it. The brass band said they could play it. Sean went to do it live, and it was just way out of his range. It was all in this weird falsetto."
"We had some daft stuff in there. Always. As well as bands like the Savages, they played their first show over there. And a really early version of Public Service Broadcasting. One night the journalist Simon Price did an event called The Price is Right, where he basically just came up with items and people had to guess how much it costs." It was here the band hosted their first-ever Cosmic Bingo, an activity which has been enjoyed by, among others, former snooker world champion Steve Davis. The cosmic element, Martin explains simply, is "as your hand is in the bag or the numbers are going around there's some psychedelic music playing".
Krakenhaus clubnights followed on the south coast, and manager David describes the festival in Cumbria as the logical conclusion: "Let's get out of the city into the countryside."
A meeting of minds
If the Frost-Pennington family had been looking for a British rock band to run a micro-festival on their grounds in the middle of the Lake District, it's unlikely they could have found a better partner than Sea Power, three of whom hail from Cumbria. As manager David puts it: "It's been a great meeting of minds… They're not your traditional rock and roll band. They've always written about the countryside, about wildlife, about nature."
Martin says: "We've got older, our fans have got older, and I think over time [it's become] less about sweaty clubs, more about getting outside. It's important when people come to a location to not just be a visitor. You come in, and you go out. So we get people out, we get people out into the countryside on these big fell walks. The one on the Friday is the traditional one where we take the local steam train and then do like a four-and-a-half mile walk back over the fell to the castle. It's called the pilgrimage."
Last year, the Grade II-listed Eskale Mill told the band it was the "biggest attendance they'd ever got". "They're super happy with that," Martin adds. "We've got the Cleator Moor Brass Band that come and play the castle and also down at the train station. We've tried to get Cumberland wrestling on there, some big competitions, but we haven't succeeded, sadly." He adds: "We know it's really good. It's a real labour of love."
A dream festival
In the 2011 book Do It For Your Mum, which documents the band's rise to fame, Roy Wilkinson described Sea Power's dream festival, should the band ever run one. The venue is Cesky Raj, the oldest nature reserve in Czechia. Kate Bush would perform, there'd be a talk on Scandinavian seafaring from Julian Cope. Iggy Pop would headline, accompanied by a flypast from Team Iskry – an air-display formation consisting of gleaming red-and-white Cold War-era Polish jets. If it seems like Sea Power have the opportunity to let their imaginations run wild at Muncaster, it's because for the most part, they have - as David puts it: "I don't think they've ever said no". But today, when pressed on what more they would like to do given the opportunity to really push the boundaries at Muncaster, Martin's answer is simple. "Longer walks," he says.
Krankenhaus Festival takes place at Muncaster Castle, Ravenglass, between August 28 and 30, 2026.
