Bolton Castle

Bolton Castle was built between 1378 and 1399 by Richard, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton — the contract with the mason John Lewyn was made in September 1378 and the licence to build granted in July 1379, at a reputed cost of 18,000 marks. A quadrangular castle in Wensleydale, it gave the nearby village of Castle Bolton its name. The 16th-century writer John Leland described an astronomical clock in the courtyard and tunnels that carried smoke away from the hearth in the hall, and Sir Francis Knollys judged it to have the highest walls of any house he had seen.

In 1536 John, 8th Baron Scrope backed the Pilgrimage of Grace, the rebellion against Henry VIII's religious reforms, and gave sanctuary in the castle to Adam Sedbar, Abbot of Jervaulx. Scrope had to flee to Skipton pursued by the king's men; Sedbar was caught and executed, and in retribution the king ordered Bolton Castle torched, causing extensive damage. Within a few years some of the damage had been repaired and Scrope had regained his seat in Parliament.

After her defeat at the Battle of Langside in 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots fled to England, where her presence threatened the Protestant Elizabeth I. First held at Carlisle Castle under the watch of Henry, 9th Baron Scrope, she was moved to Bolton in July 1568 when Carlisle proved unsuitable. Her principal keeper there, Sir Francis Knollys, appraised the castle as 'very strong, very fayre, and very stately after the olde manner of building... the highest walled house I have seen, and has but one entrance thereinto.'

Mary was given Scrope's own apartments in the south-west tower, but of her retinue of 51 only 30 of her men and six ladies-in-waiting could stay in the castle, the rest lodging nearby. The house was not fitted for a queen: tapestries, rugs and furniture were borrowed from local houses and from Barnard Castle, and Elizabeth herself loaned pewter vessels and a copper kettle. Mary hung an old cloth of estate from Scotland above her chair in the great chamber, making it like a throne room. Her keepers let her wander the surrounding lands and hunt; she passed her days having her hair dressed by her friend Mary Seton, while Knollys — whom she nicknamed 'Schoolmaster' — taught her English, a language she had never used before. She even met with local Catholics, for which Knollys and Scrope were severely reprimanded. Local tradition holds she once escaped towards Leyburn, losing her shawl on the way — the story behind the name of The Shawl, the cliff edge running west out of the town. In January 1569 she was taken from Bolton to Tutbury in Staffordshire, where she would spend much of the eighteen years before her execution in 1587.

The castle was damaged in the English Civil War and slighted afterwards, though much of it survived. When Emanuel Scrope, 1st Earl of Sunderland, died in 1630 without legitimate children, Bolton passed to Mary, the eldest of his three illegitimate daughters, who married Charles Powlett, 6th Marquess of Winchester and 1st Duke of Bolton. The castle has never been sold: their descendant Thomas Peter Algar Orde-Powlett, 9th Baron Bolton, inherited it on his father's death in June 2023. Part ruin, part restored, it is protected as a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.