Castle Gatehouse, Entrance Gateway, Side Walls, Linking Walls and Front Wall is a Grade I listed building in the County Durham local planning authority area, England. First listed on 6 May 1952. A C16 Gatehouse. 5 related planning applications.
Castle Gatehouse, Entrance Gateway, Side Walls, Linking Walls and Front Wall
- WRENN ID
- watchful-gravel-pearl
- Grade
- I
- Local Planning Authority
- County Durham
- Constituency
- City of Durham MP: Mary Kelly Foy (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 6 May 1952
- Type
- Gatehouse
- Address
- Castle Gatehouse, Entrance Gateway, Side Walls, Linking Walls and Front Wall, Palace Green, City of Durham, DH1 3RL
- OS grid reference
- NZ 273 423
- Coordinates
- 54.77521, -1.57636
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Castle Gatehouse, along with its entrance gateway, side walls, linking walls, and front wall, is a significant medieval structure that has undergone alterations in the 16th century for Bishop Tunstall and around 1790 in the style of architect Wyatt for Bishop Barrington. The gateway likely dates from around 1790, while the walls are probably from the 18th and early 19th centuries. The building is constructed of coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings, featuring an ashlar gateway and flanking walls.
The gatehouse stands three storeys tall and consists of three bays. It has a moulded round arch made up of four orders, supported by shafts with scalloped or chevron-moulded capitals. This arch is flanked by battlemented projections that contain two-centred-arched windows with intersecting glazing bars beneath dripmoulds. Above the arch, there is a similar window and a rose window, all set under a battlemented parapet. The corner turrets are also battlemented and feature blind cross slits above blind quatrefoils. The rib-vaulted arch includes a lion-carved boss.
The entrance gateway features two octagonal piers with a frieze and battlemented coping, topped with wrought iron scrolls that support square gas lamps. Short sections of wall on either side of the gateway have blind cross slits.
The front wall facing Palace Green is a high wall with roll-moulded coping that extends along the front to the Green. A slightly lower section with sloped coping continues in front of University College Master's House to Owengate.
The linking walls between the gateway and gatehouse, the gatehouse and the castle's north and west ranges, and the gatehouse and keep are all battlemented. These walls contain Tudor-arched doors, blind cross slits, and wide buttresses. A fountain is set into the courtyard side of the wall linking the gatehouse with the north range, featuring a moulded semicircular projection on a pedestal beneath a renewed Tudor arch.
Local climate
Castle Gatehouse, Entrance Gateway, Side Walls, Linking Walls and Front Wall receives an average of 790 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 58% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 96% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 41 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 79% of listed buildings. Of these, 24 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 5 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings