Crayke Castle

Crayke Castle is an early 15th-century tower house, with later 18th and 19th-century alterations and additions, built for the Bishops of Durham. A kitchen range was added later, documented between 1441 and 1450, and a separate “New Tower” was probably constructed in the second half of the 15th century. The castle stands on the site of an earlier Norman castle and was dismantled in 1647; in the 18th century, the main range was used as a farmhouse.

The main range is a rectangular block, measuring 70 feet 9 inches by 28 feet 4 inches. It is four storeys high, with each floor set back slightly, and features bands marking the floor levels and battlements. Tall, narrow, chamfered, square-headed windows are a prominent feature. An 18th-century alteration provides the current entrance on the south side, replacing the original entrance, which was accessed via an external staircase range on the north-east side, leading to the principal room on the first floor. The blocked doorways have 2-centred arches with hollow chamfers. A 19th-century range is attached to the north-east. The interior is now subdivided, but retains moulded cross-beamed ceilings, fireplaces on the ground and first floors, and an 18th-century staircase with a curtail and turned newel, featuring two turned or twisted balusters per tread.

The kitchen range has a partly rebuilt west wall with a corbelled-out, embattled, round turret for a spiral staircase in the north-west corner. A chamfered doorway includes a key block. Inside, the undercroft is tunnel-vaulted with 13 heavy, unmoulded transverse arches or ribs, now subdivided. The New Tower is a now ruinous, detached building. Originally an L-shaped, three-storey block, only the barrel-vaulted undercrofts, stairs to the first floor, and the walls of the porch remain. Behind the kitchen are the remains of foundations of a building described as "The Old Hall" in 1441.