Who Lord Neville of Raby might have been is open to question, but it seems most likely that this meant the earl of Westmorland (d.1425) before he became earl in 1397.  If this is so, it is odd that Leland should describe this work as very new.

During the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) the castle was inhabited by keepers who neglected and despoiled the fortress.  In the time of James I (1603-25) it was stated in 1609 that the place had not been lived in for 140 years.  If this were true then the castle would have been derelict since 1469, which, of course, would make nonsense of Richard III (d.1485) and his family living there.  Indeed that very year, 1609, the castle's occupant, Henry Linley, was laid to rest in the church on 8 November.  Later an inventory of his goods within the castle was taken, which still existed in 1781.  Obviously the castle had a longer history than the surveyors of 1609 were willing to admit.

The castle saw little action in the Civil War (1642-51) although the York committee ordered it rendered uninhabitable in 1647.  Despite this, its owner, Edward Loftus, asked the council to consider his disbursements in fortifying Middleham castle.  He claimed £1,500 for this in 1652 and later another £500.   On 24 May 1655, it was reported that the rebels intended to seize Middleham castle so Captain Conyers [as was later reported this was a mistake for Captain Foster] was appointed to raise 30 men to secure it.  This he did about 10 March 1655 and has kept it since with some prisoners of war in it, but without any pay or allowances.  On 20 July it was agreed to pay the 30 men under Captain Thomas Foster, who had been raised by the order of Colonel Lilburne, 2 months' pay.  Another 2 months were ordered sent on 17 August 1655.  Despite this, on 30 November, Captain Foster wrote again begging for his arrears to be paid as he and his soldiers had not been paid since he formed his 30 men to fortify and garrison Middleham castle against plotters.  The reply was that the men would be paid and then disbanded.  On 18 January 1656, this was accounted for as £361.  After this the fortress was abandoned and later divided up into various tenements, some of which were still utilised well into the eighteenth century.  Despite this, the keep and the east side of the castle were totally ruinous by 1711 when they were painted by Francis Place (1647-1728).

Description
There are 2 castles at Middleham.  The main castle in the town and William's Hill which commands the castle from high ground to the south.  The latter is most likely an early conquest castle from the 1070s, rather than a siege castle from the Anarchy, like Aston in Herefordshire or those surrounding Corfe, Wigmore or Bamburgh.  As such William's Hill is liable to be one of the first castles in the district, like Richmond some 9 miles to the north-east and Skipton 25 miles to the south-west.

William's Hill Castle
It would seem likely that Count Alan Rufus of Richmond (d.1094) was responsible for building the first castle at Middleham, possibly during or soon after the 1069-70 Harrying of the North.  Such a fortress would have commanded the route from the entrance to Coverdale down to Skipton or across the North Yorkshire Dales to Kendal - a place which was on the edge of Norman control at Domesday. 

William's Hill castle consisted of a powerful ringwork some 150' in diameter and over 20' high from the bottom of its wet ditch.  The summit of the ringwork was defended by a rampart some 10' above the ringwork interior.  The level interior on the ringwork was thus only some 75' in diameter.  The moat to the north had a counterscarp on the downhill side.  To the east was a definite entrance to the ringwork which led, over a causeway, to the moated bailey.  This was a small, kidney shaped ward, some 200' north to south, by 120' east to west.  This too had a rampart, which had a break to the south-west, which is possibly modern and a causewayed entrance to the east.  This led into a long, rhomboid shaped outer enclosure which may once have been a town enclosure.

If the 1270s account of the barons of Middleham is correct, this fortress was probably abandoned in the 1170s when the current castle keep was commenced.  Alternatively it might be that the current castle stands upon the original castle site and William's Hill is a Stephanic siege work.  Such seige works can be seen at Aston, Brimpsfield, Corfe - The Rings, Exeter - Dane's Castle, Wallingford and just possibly Kendal - Castle Howe.

Middleham Castle Earthworks
The current castle consists of a rectangular ditched enclosure about 230' north to south and 170' east to west, lying within 1,000' north of William's Hill castle.  Entrance originally may have been centrally to the east where there are the foundations of a stone gatetower.  Surrounding the whole was a great ditch, 30' wide and 15' deep.  This has been filled in to the south and west.  To the east lay an outer ward under the current farmyard.  Centrally, within the enceinte which may mark the original lines of the inner earthwork, lay the great tower or keep.  A long fishpond 130' south of the inner enceinte has been suggested as the original castle ditch.  If correct this would make the first earthwork castle much longer at some 330' by 170' wide.

Great Tower
The large rectangular keep stands 2 storeys high, 80' wide and 105' long with walls varying from 9' to 12' thick, although the east wall with the forebuilding is a massive 18' thick.  Internally the whole was divided into 2 unequal halves with the eastern basement being slightly larger.  Both chambers were vaulted, the larger eastern chamber having a colonnade to help hold up the twin vault above.  The southern part of the east chamber would appear to have been the kitchen with a well.  The northern section also contained a well.

Large pilaster buttresses clasped the 4 corners of the keep and off centre, rectangular latrine turrets were set in the south and west walls.  That to the west in particular bears comparison with the latrine tower at Castell Carreg Cennen.  The Middleham keep stood upon a strong stepped plinth of chamfered courses, in places to the south and west surviving up to 8 courses deep.  The basements were lit by 5 loops to the west and 1 in each chamber to north and south.  These had fine rectangular windows with probably Romanesque embrasures within.  There was another loop lighting the vice in the south-east corner.

Entrance was via a long, much ruined forebuilding along the east side of the tower which contained at least 2 doorways blocked with drawbars.  At the northern end of the forebuilding there may once have been a turret considering the latrine chute exits here.  This means that the forebuilding would have been entered from the east, with a dog-leg at top and bottom of the steps.  These destroyed steps led upwards, by a guard chamber built into the keep wall, to a large Romanesque doorway in the keep which gave access to a foyer with a pantry to the south and the great hall to the north.  In the south-east corner was the stair turret leading up to the battlements and down to the basement.  The hall was lit by 4 lights to the east and one to the north.

.  A doorway through the partition wall led to the great chamber and solar.  The occupants of this had access to a latrine in the west garderobe turret.  The southern garderobe in this turret serviced an inner chamber to the south.  The large window loops were mostly Romanesque as were their embrasures.  In the fourteenth century a further floor was added as a clerestory with 3 wide segmental headed windows on either side.  Two bridges also linked the keep with the south and west ranges.  The lower portions of the latrine turrets to south and west were heavily rebuilt in modern times, as was the base of the keep plinth.

The Chapel and Early Gatehouse
Built against the southern end of the east wall of the keep is a rectangular chapel tower.  At ground floor level this formed a nearly square room with 2 lights to north and south and a passageway running between it and an early curtain wall which connected to a small rectangular latrine turret to the south and a strongly projecting rectangular gatetower to the north.  Other than the chapel tower, all these features are reduced to their foundations except for the ruins of a possibly fourteenth century doorway at the north exit of the passageway along the curtain.  In the south-west corner of the chapel tower was a circular vice in a small turret.

The ground floor loops consisted of large Romanesque lights with labels and quarter rounded embrasures within.  There were also 2 off centre pilaster buttresses on either side.  The first floor was similar, but with much larger windows.  The best preserved window to the north contains an ogee window within the Romanesque arch.  Above this level was the large chamber of the chapel on the same level as the keep entrance, but this has been mostly destroyed.

The general consensus is that this building is much later than Romanesque and the fittings have been made to blend in with the older keep.  This is certainly one valid explanation for this odd set of buildings.  Despite this, rectangular gatetowers tend to be twelfth century or earlier, although this with the odd section of walling with the south latrine turret hardly makes for an early enceinte for the castle.  Presumably palisading was set around the rest of the ditch, unless this was only dug with the building of the curtain and ranges.  The rectangular gatetower would suggest that there was some form of enceinte surrounding the keep to allow access to the forebuilding at the keep's north-east corner.  The style of the chapel building, however, does draw some comparison with King John's gloriette at Corfe castle.  It is also noticeable that the gatetower is not in alignment with either the new or the older curtain wall.  It may therefore have been an early stand alone structure and was certainly altered, the gate being made into a smaller postern, presumably when the new north-east gateway was added to the enceinte.

The Enceinte
At some point, probably after the Nevilles took over the site in 1270, an enceinte was constructed within the rectangular ditch.  This consisted of 3 irregular and different shaped towers at 3 of the corners and a small D shaped tower to the south-west.  This was entered via the old rectangular gatehouse which was retained during this phase.  This enceinte was equipped with multiple pilaster buttresses, but only the north-east tower had these too and they appear later.  The odd design of the 3 rectangular corner towers bears comparison to Bolton castle with its odd assortment of differently orientated towers.  At Middleham the first curtain wall was about 15' high, but this was subsequently heightened by about first 6' and then another 10', to make the current enceinte.  Ranges no doubt lay against the interior of the walls from the first as is evidenced by the low windows in the curtains to south and west.  In all likelihood this enceinte certainly existed by 1367 when the interior of the castle walls was mentioned and just possibly as early as the late twelfth century.

In the fifteenth century the enceinte was much altered and the inner ranges expanded and rebuilt.  This also involved the addition of large buttresses to the south and west curtains to support the extra weight of the new buildings.  The real oddity of the early walls is the remains of the small Prince's Tower, only 20' in diameter and totally at odds with the other surviving rectangular corner towers.  This tower is surprisingly small when compared to the rectangular corner towers, which are much larger at some 36' by 28'.  Such small D shaped towers are much more likely late twelfth or thirteenth century fortresses, viz Berkhamsted, Helmsley, Manorbier, Richards Castle or Skenfrith.  The small tower, with many putlog holes, was later corbelled out and heightened, its interior also being heavily rebuilt.  The original structure had simple, crude rectangular lights.  In the top storey of the heightened tower are the remains of an unusual septfoil window.

To make the castle more symmetrical a probably fifteenth century latrine tower was added half way down the west wall roughly opposite the old original rectangular gatetower to the east.  In design this rather resembles the fourteenth century garderobe tower projecting north from the enceinte at Ludlow castle.  However, the Middleham version is a triple seater, rather than the double at Ludlow.  Unfortunately the tower was heavily rebuilt with ‘Byzantine' doorways in 1907.  Like the Prince's Tower, the north-west tower was also originally a low structure, with walls about 25' high originally.  This was raised in height twice, probably in the fifteenth century as well as being expanded eastwards.

At some point, probably in the early fifteenth century, the north-east tower was rebuilt as a gatetower with an interesting ashlar gateway.  This new, more impressive entrance would have given a direct northern access to the town and, judging by the 3 chutes under the entrance, was pushed through an old latrine turret.  Within the gate passageway the vaulted roof rests on 4 springers, carved to resemble faces watching those entering or leaving the castle by this route.

This later gatetower once sported fine garrets, with hand gun loops, which were added when a third and final floor was added to the tower.  A ‘little tower' as it was described in 1538, lay outside the ditch at this point.  All this work seems contemporaneous with the final building of the current ranges.  What is notable about the remains is that across the whole ‘castle' there are no crossbow loops.  Middleham is indeed a great house, but a barely fortified one at that.

Copyright©2022 Paul Martin Remfry

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