Cawood Castle

The Saxon king Æthelstan probably built the first fortification at Cawood, on the site later occupied by the castle ruins. It had become a residence of the Archbishops of York by the twelfth century, and a castle here was first recorded in 1181. It drew royal visitors, among them King John, who hunted game in nearby Bishop's Wood in the 13th century, and William de Grenfeld is credited with building the castle's west end in 1306. The palace was converted into a quadrangular castle between 1374 and 1388, and documents show it continued to be improved; its gatehouse, one of the two structures that survive today, was built by Archbishop John Kemp using stone from the Huddlestone quarry near Tadcaster, the same quarry that supplied York Minster.

When George Neville became Archbishop of York in 1465 he marked it with a feast at the castle, prepared with the help of his brother the Earl of Warwick, who is said to have wanted it larger than the King's own coronation banquet. Guests included the Duke of Gloucester, the King's brother, and the feast ran several days, becoming known as the Great Feast of Cawood for its scale: records list 104 oxen, six wild bulls, 400 swans, 1,000 capons and 104 peacocks consumed, along with 25,000 gallons of wine.

Thomas Savage made Cawood his main residence as Archbishop of York and died there in September 1507. Cardinal Wolsey arrived at Cawood as archbishop in 1530 and made himself popular by putting right years of neglect, but before he could be installed at York the Earl of Northumberland arrested him at the castle on a charge of high treason. Wolsey fell ill at Leicester on the road to London and died there; tradition held that he had thereby fulfilled Mother Shipton's prophecy that he would see the towers of York Minster but never be enthroned within them.

When civil war broke out in 1642 the castle was initially held by the Royalists. It was captured by the Parliamentarians, briefly retaken for the King by the Earl of Newcastle in 1644, and recaptured soon afterwards by Lord Fairfax, who used it as a prisoner-of-war camp. Once the war ended the castle was abandoned and largely destroyed, leaving only farm buildings and parts of the wall standing; its cellar was filled with rubble and soil.

The surviving gatehouse served as a courthouse until the 1930s, then as an officers' mess and a Home Guard building during the Second World War. It is now owned by the Landmark Trust, which has restored it as a holiday home, while the two-storey banqueting hall has been left sound and weathertight but not habitable; the castle's foundations and its cellar, excavated in the 19th century, also survive, along with stone from the ruins reused in nearby houses. The castle garth was bought by the parish council in the 1980s to keep it an open space at the heart of the village; the garth is home to a population of great crested newts, and includes a 19th-century skating pond and the remains of medieval fish-ponds; restoration work has drawn funding from the Local Heritage Initiative, launched in 2000. Cawood Castle is a Grade I listed building, designated in 1966, and a scheduled monument since 1928.