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Whorlton Castle is a ruined medieval castle situated near the abandoned village of Whorlton (at grid reference NZ4802) in North Yorkshire, England. It was built in the early 12th century as a Norman motte-and-bailey associated with the nearby settlement. The castle is an unusual example of a motte and bailey that remained in use throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period.〔 Built to overlook an important road on the western edge of the North York Moors, the castle fell into ruin as early as the mid-14th century. The site nonetheless continued to be inhabited until at least the early 17th century. Little now remains of the castle itself, other than the remnants of some cellars or undercrofts. The ruined shell of a 14th-century gatehouse still survives, albeit in fairly poor condition. It is a listed building and is privately owned but can be visited by the public. ==History== The castle was established in the early 12th century at the edge of Castle Bank, a ridge between the villages of Faceby and Swainby, overlooking a small valley through which the road between Thirsk and Stokesley runs. In the 13th century it was referred to variously as Hwernelton or Potto Castle (the village of Potto is part of the same parish). At the time of the ''Domesday Book'', Whorlton was recorded as belonging to Robert, Count of Mortain, the half-brother of William the Conqueror.〔 It subsequently passed to the de Meynell family, who founded the castle. It is unclear when exactly the castle was built, but in its first phase it would have consisted of a wooden fortress on a roughly square motte measuring some by . The motte was surrounded by a dry ditch up to wide by deep, with an outer bank standing up to high.〔 Most of the ditch is still extant but its southeast quadrant has been obliterated by a modern road.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=English Heritage )〕 It would have adjoined a fortified enclosure that included the village and church. The castle fell into disrepair or was dismantled during the first part of the 14th century; an account of 1343 describes it as being a ruin.〔 In the mid-14th century it passed by marriage to John, Lord Darcy of Knaith, who had close associations with the royal court. Darcy carried out substantial changes to the castle and levelled the motte to provide a base for a new keep with a fortified gatehouse built a short distance to the east.〔 It is not clear whether there was a curtain wall – there is no evidence of one on the ground – but the castle would have been extremely hard to defend without one. The lack of evidence of a curtain wall may simply be the result of centuries of stone-robbing.〔 Whorlton Castle remained in the hands of the Darcys until 1418, when the death of Philip Darcy resulted in Whorlton being inherited by his daughter Elizabeth, who was married to Sir James Strangways. The Strangways held on to the castle until a dispute between heirs in 1541 led to it becoming a possession of the Crown. King Henry VII granted the castle and estate to Matthew, Earl of Lennox, whose eldest son was Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. The Countess of Lennox wrote to Mary, Queen of Scots in the autumn of 1561, possibly from Whorlton Castle, to propose a marriage between Mary and Darnley. Although local tradition claims that the castle was where their marriage contract was signed in 1565,〔 this is erroneous; the contract was actually signed at Stirling. The castle eventually returned to the possession of the Crown〔 but fell into disrepair and by 1600 the building was described as "old and ruinous".〔 At some point in the late 16th or early 17th century, a house was built by the Lennox family adjoining the northwest end of the gatehouse and then-substantial ruins of the castle keep. The house was sketched in 1725 by Samuel Buck and is depicted as a large two-storied building with gabled dormer windows set into a steeply pitched roof. No trace of the house's structure now remains, though its roofline is still visible on the north side of the gatehouse.〔 The manor was given to Edward Bruce (later Lord Bruce of Kinloss) in 1603 and the title of Lord Bruce of Whorlton was bestowed on his younger son Thomas in 1641. Thomas's son Robert became the first Earl of Ailesbury in 1664. By the early 19th century the ruins of the castle's keep had largely disappeared, as depicted in a lithograph made at this time. In 1875 a large quantity of the castle's stonework was removed to build Swainby's village church. The Ailesbury family retained the castle and manor until the late 19th century, when they were sold to James Emerson of Easby Hall.〔 The castle is currently privately owned, having been bought by Osbert Peake, 1st Viscount Ingleby in the mid-20th century as part of a shooting estate.〔 It acquired listed status in 1928〔 and is a Grade I listed site.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://risk.english-heritage.org.uk/2010.aspx?id=154&rt=0&pn=1&st=a&ctype=all&crit=whorlton )〕 The gatehouse received structural repairs from the Ministry of Works in the 1960s but has otherwise largely been left open to the elements.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Whorlton Castle」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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