England · Restored
Corby Castle
Corby Castle is a Grade I listed country house and former peel tower on the southern edge of Great Corby, Cumbria, long associated with the Howard family. Originating as a 13th-century red sandstone tower house, it was extended in the 17th century and given its present Georgian façade between 1812 and 1817. The estate includes formal terraces, a cascade to the River Eden, garden buildings and historic garden features.
Its prime
1817
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1817
What Corby Castle looked like in its prime.
A long, red sandstone, three-storey principal block with a symmetrical Georgian façade of regular sash windows and modest chimneys under a low-pitched slate roof, set high above the River Eden on a steep, terraced riverside bank. The house incorporates an older L-shaped tower-house massing but presents a unified early-19th-century stone front; balustraded terraces, a descending cascade and dense trees frame the slope to the river at the foot.
Its story
The story of Corby Castle.
The Salkelds' Red Sandstone Tower
Corby began in the thirteenth century as a red sandstone tower house, built on the southern edge of Great Corby in northern Cumbria by the Salkeld family, who also held the nearby Salkeld Hall of much the same age. That peel tower is the core of the site; the house that stands there now was added onto it rather than raised in its place.
Lord William Howard Buys Corby, 1611
In 1611 the Salkelds sold Corby to Lord William Howard (1563–1640), third son of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. Howard added a two-storeyed L-shaped house onto the peel tower, and the estate became the seat of a cadet branch of the Howards that held it for close to four centuries.
The line ran from Lord William's second son, Sir Francis Howard, down to Henry Howard (1757–1842), who inherited the estate from him. It was for Henry that the architect Peter Nicholson built the present façade, work that ran from April 1812 to September 1817 and gave the old tower house the country-house front it has carried since.
St Constantine's Cells and the Cascade
The grounds hold as much listed fabric as the house. A cascade descends to the River Eden; there is a dovecote, a walled kitchen garden, a set of salmon coops, the eastern gate lodge with its walls and gate piers, and a small garden temple known as The Tempietto. Cut into the estate are the caves called St Constantine's Cells, thought to have been excavated in medieval times by the monks of Wetheral Priory; Philip Howard set up a statue of the saint in 1843 to mark them. The estate itself is registered at Grade I among England's historic parks and gardens, and the house was listed Grade I in 1957.
The Howards Leave, 1994
Sir John Howard-Lawson and Lady Howard-Lawson sold Corby Castle in 1994 to Edward Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond, a businessman and Ulster Unionist Party life peer; the principal contents went the same year through Phillips of Scotland. Ballyedmond refurbished the castle throughout and used it for family and corporate entertaining until his death in a helicopter crash in 2014, after which his estate put it on the market in 2024 at £15 million. In its Howard years the house had also served other purposes: the BBC filmed part of its five-part dramatisation of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White here in 1981, and in 1986 Robert Martin and Ian Yeates set up a glassworks in the grounds.
Step inside
11 places to explore in 1817.
The record describes 11 distinct spots at Corby Castle, including 2 interiors: st constantine’s cells (medieval caves), 13th-century peel tower chamber. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Recreate Corby Castle with AI to explore it.
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Clans who held Corby Castle.
The families that held Corby Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Salkeld
Built as a red sandstone tower house by the Salkeld family in the 13th century; sold in 1611.
Ancestral home of a cadet branch of the Howards from Lord William Howard's purchase in 1611 until the sale of 1994.
Haughey
Bought in 1994 by Edward Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond, who carried out a total refurbishment.
Nearby
