This amusing example of trompe l'œil refers to the English Civil War 1642-49, which saw Parliamentary forces under the unjustly maligned Oliver Cromwell taking on the Royalist armies of Charles I, who finally lost his head after the cessation of hostilities.
Knaresborough was taken by the Roundheads, as the Parliamentarians were known, in 1646 and the castle destroyed in 1648, most of the stone being used to build town centre houses.
