Astley Castle

Astley Castle is a country house with fortified origins, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries with significant additions in the 15th, mid-16th, and early 17th centuries, and remodelled around 1820. It is constructed of regular coursed and ashlar sandstone with some timber framing and brick to the rear. The building features a moulded cornice and embattled parapet throughout. The front range is roofless, while the rear range retains an early 19th-century low-pitched slate roof. A large embattled stone central stack dominates, with 16th to 17th-century and 19th-century brick ridge, valley, and lateral stacks.

The building is arranged on a double-depth plan with two storeys and a six-window range. The fifth bay contains a porch that was restored or added in the early 19th century, featuring a moulded doorway and embattled parapet. The left return side displays a Tudor-arched window. A chamfered shallow Tudor-arched doorway with a plank door is present inside. The chamfered stone mullioned windows are mostly 19th-century work. A four-light window sits in a reduced 16th to 17th-century opening above the porch. The first and second bays have four-light windows to the ground floor. The first floor contains a 16th to 17th-century mullioned and transomed window, and a straight-headed four-light window with Curvilinear tracery. Three early 19th-century French windows feature moulded four-centred arches and fanlights with blind Gothick tracery. Two large three-light Gothick windows above have four-centred arches and single hood moulds with block stops. A straight joint separates the fifth and sixth bays. The sixth bay has three-light recessed mullioned windows.

The left return side is a two-bay range with two large buttresses. The first bay contains a four-light wood mullioned and transomed window, with a 19th-century mullioned window above. The second bay has fragments of a four-light window to the first floor, with the wall above having fallen away. The right return side is mostly rendered and has three gables. The right range is of 19th-century brick.

The irregular rear elevation comprises a large two-bay right range with embattled parapet. The ground floor is concealed by a curtain wall. The central external stone stack has an upper part and star shaft of thin bricks, with a square top of 19th-century brick. A similar shaft stands to the right. Three-light double-chamfered mullioned and transomed windows are present; the tall left window has two transoms. A shallow projection to the left has a chamfered four-centred lancet. A blocked Tudor-arched opening is located below and to the right of the right window. A lower irregular two-window range to the left incorporates timber framing with brick infill to the first floor. Two doors are present; a 19th-century brick one-window addition features a dentil cornice, with mullioned windows and casements.

The interior was not inspected; the building is derelict and little more than a shell. Behind the apparently early 19th-century French windows in the centre of the east range are three 15th-century arched windows, their tracery heads surviving internally. This may have been the floored hall at the centre of the building, with ground and first-floor fireplaces. To the west of the hall is a 15th-century tower vice running to the third storey or roof level. The two bays to the north have on their second and attic floors timber-framed penthouses which may have formed a long gallery. The two bays to the south form a 17th-century solar wing. Medieval service rooms and a curtain wall are reported at the south-west.

A licence to crenellate at Astley was obtained in 1266. Elizabeth Woodville lived at Astley Castle before her marriage to Edward IV. It was also the home of Sir Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, and Lady Jane Grey.