Stainborough Castle

STAINBOROUGH WENTWORTH CASTLE SE30SW 1/50 Stainborough Castle 18.3.68 - II* Gothick folly. 1728-30 for Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford. Coursed, dressed sandstone, ashlar dressings. Roughly-circular curtain wall with 4 square guard towers and with large gatehouse on east side with archway originally beneath 4 circular turrets of which 2 remain. Remaining gatehouse towers have offset buttresses and round-headed openings beneath deep band, round-headed lights on each floor above. Wall linking towers has tall, rusticated, round-arched doorway with concave reveals, impost band and keystone; 2nd floor band. Inner tower incomplete above 4th storey; link wall and outer tower are embattled. Guard towers: projecting sills to round-headed, ground-floor lights, quatrefoils beneath embattled parapets. Much of curtain wall reconstructed and with embattlements. Important as the 2nd Gothick castle in England after Lord Bathurst's "King Alfred's Hall" in Oakley Wood, Cirencester. Built on hill fort site and formed climax of the 1st Earl's garden layout. The towers were supposedly named after his 4 children; Anne, Harriet, Lucy and William. The building was already in disrepair by 1755 when John Platt of Rotherham was engaged to rebuild part of the gatehouse. Again undergoing reconstruction at time of resurvey.

J. E. Humphrey, 'A Prospect of Stainborough', unpub. thesis, Sheffield, 1982, pp334-5 also appendix 27.

Listing NGR: SE3158003047