Court House Museum

The Court House Museum is an early 14th-century courthouse, now serving as a museum and gardeners' store. It is located within Knaresborough Castle Yard, on the south side. The building has undergone significant alterations in the late 16th century and the 18th century, with further restoration work in 1830 and the 20th century. It is constructed of coursed squared magnesian limestone, with brick additions, and has a stone slate roof.

The building is two storeys high, comprising five bays, with a single-storey, two-bay addition to the rear. The front features a round-arched boarded door with a hoodmould on the right side, and a small boarded opening to the left. A plain-framed board door, flanked by barred side-sliding sash windows with glazing bars, sits between bays 3 and 4. A mid-20th-century external staircase rises to a 20th-century board door in a chamfered basket-arch surround. The first-floor windows consist of a three-light window to bays 1 and 4, and five-light windows to bays 2, 3, and 5; all are double-chamfered with recessed mullions and stepped hoodmoulds. The building has a kneeler and ashlar coping on the left side, and a hipped roof on the right. Gritstone stacks are present at the left end, along the ridge between bays 4 and 5, and at the rear of the ridge in the centre.

The rear wall is largely constructed of small red bricks in random bond. On the ground floor, bay 3 contains a large fireplace of 14th-century type, which has been covered and whose details were not observed during a recent inspection. Bay 4 features a length of stone walling that projects at an angle into the room. The first floor is supported by longitudinal beams supported by posts, two of which have straight braces. There is much reused timber throughout. Bay 1 on the first floor contains restored 17th-century cupboards and a door, with rooms divided in the mid-20th century. Bay 3 retains benches and panelling from a late 16th-century courtroom as part of the museum display.

The earliest parts of the building were originally part of a range of rooms positioned between the inner and outer bailey of the castle. It is believed to have been the "House of Records" mentioned in a survey of 1561, though it appears to have been largely rebuilt between approximately 1590 and 1610, with an upper storey serving as the courthouse for the Honour of Knaresborough. The roof was raised, the left gable wall was rebuilt, and the right (southern) bay was likely rebuilt during the period 1786-1830, when the single-storey, two-bay addition was constructed at the rear. The prison block added to the north end is contemporary with this phase of work. The building’s history is detailed further in a publication by M Mann in approximately 1970, available as a leaflet at the Museum.