Bolsover Castle

The first castle at Bolsover was raised by the Peverel family in the 12th century and passed to the Crown in 1155 on the death of William Peverel the Younger — a holding the Ferrers family, Earls of Derby, never stopped claiming. When Henry II's sons — Henry the Young King, Geoffrey Duke of Brittany and the future Richard the Lionheart — led a baronial revolt against their father, the king spent £116 on building at Bolsover and Peveril, and the garrison was increased to a force led by 20 knights, shared with Peveril and Nottingham for the duration of the rising.

William de Ferrers, 4th Earl of Derby, paid King John 2,000 marks for the lordship of the Peak, but the Crown kept Bolsover and Peveril. On 1 June 1216, with rebellion spreading across the country, John ordered Brian de Lisle to defend Bolsover if it could be held and to slight it if it could not. That same year John granted both castles to Ferrers to secure his support — but de Lisle refused to hand them over, and John, though both men were his supporters, gave Ferrers leave to take them by force. Bolsover fell to Ferrers' men after a siege in 1217.

The castle returned to Crown control in 1223, when £33 went on repairing the damage the Earl of Derby had done in capturing it. Over the next twenty years four towers were added, the keep and stretches of curtain wall repaired, and a kitchen and barn built, at a cost of £181. From 1290 the castle and manor were granted to a series of local farmers, under whose custodianship it slid into disrepair.

Edward VI granted Bolsover to Francis Talbot, 5th Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1553. His son George, the 6th Earl, was keeper of Mary, Queen of Scots at Chatsworth, and in 1574 two Scottish servants in the Bolsover stable, Alexander Hamilton and John Stewart, fell under suspicion of secretly carrying letters to the captive queen.

After the 6th Earl's death in 1590, his son Gilbert sold the ruins to his step-brother and brother-in-law Sir Charles Cavendish, who wanted a new castle on the old site. Working with the builder and designer Robert Smythson, Cavendish began the 'Little Castle' on the medieval earthworks in 1612 — a house designed for elegant living rather than defence. It was unfinished when both men died, in 1614 and 1617; the surviving building accounts are unusual for the period in recording female labour. Cavendish's sons William and Charles carried the work on under the influence of Inigo Jones's Italian-inspired architecture, completing the tower around 1621. On 30 July 1634 Ben Jonson's masque Love's Welcome at Bolsover was performed there during a royal visit.

The Civil Wars of 1642 to 1651 interrupted construction. Bolsover was taken by the Parliamentarians, who slighted it, and the castle fell into a ruinous state. William Cavendish — created Marquess of Newcastle in 1643 and Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1665 — added a new hall and staterooms to the Terrace Range, and by his death in 1676 the castle had been restored to good order.

The castle passed through Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, into the Bentinck family, becoming one of the seats of the Earls and Dukes of Portland. After 1883 it stood uninhabited, and in 1945 William Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duke of Portland, gave it to the nation. The Ministry of Works stabilised the buildings and began opening parts of them to the public; Bolsover is now in the care of English Heritage, protected as a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.