Danby Castle

A fourteenth-century castle on the moors, and once the marital home of a Queen of England.

Stockbridge acquired Danby Castle Barn in 2021 and holds it within The Gilchrist Collection, in the Esk Valley of the North York Moors National Park.

Provenance

Danby Castle was constructed in the fourteenth century by the Latimer family, powerful medieval nobles, on a quadrangular plan with corner towers. By descent it passed to the Neville family. In the sixteenth century John Neville made Danby Castle his marital home with Catherine Parr, who would later become the sixth wife of Henry VIII.

It passed thereafter to the Danvers family, from whom came the Earl of Danby, and then to the Dawnay family. Three of the four towers remain, two as ruins and the south-east tower incorporated into the farmhouse. A manorial courthouse survives in the south range.

The Grounds

The castle ruins stand as an outdoor ceremony space within seven-hundred-year-old medieval walls, with the North York Moors extending from the boundary and the Esk Valley below.

Within

The former sixteenth-century court room serves as an indoor ceremony space, with the adjacent Jury Room, the Principal Barn and the newly developed Daleview Barn, whose full-height arched windows look over the Esk Valley.

Stockbridge holds Danby Castle for the long term, a building of medieval standing maintained and stewarded rather than realised.