Peveril Castle

William Peveril was a follower of William the Conqueror, first recorded in England in 1068 when the king, then subduing the Midlands and the north, granted him the new castle at Nottingham. An unsubstantiated legend makes him William's illegitimate son. Some time between the Conquest and the Domesday Survey of 1086 he founded a castle on a limestone outcrop above the west end of the Hope Valley — one of 48 castles mentioned in Domesday and the only one in Derbyshire, recorded as standing at Pechesers, translated as both "Peak's Tail" and "Peak's Arse". Unusually for an early Norman castle, Peveril seems to have been designed from the outset to be built in stone.

The valley was a natural line of communication with valuable mineral resources, particularly lead. In 1100 the new king, Henry I, granted Peveril "his demesne in the Peak", making the Peak an independent lordship with the castle as its administrative centre, collecting taxes while the town of Castleton grew below as the lordship's economic heart.

William Peveril the Younger inherited in 1114, but backed the losing side in the Anarchy between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda, and his fortunes suffered after his capture at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141. In 1153 he was suspected of attempting to poison Ranulf de Gernon, Earl of Chester, and the future Henry II accused him of "plundering and treachery", threatening to confiscate his estates. Two years later Henry, now king, followed through — and with the Earl of Chester dead, kept the property for himself. Peveril became the administrative centre of the Forest of High Peak.

Henry II visited three times: in 1157, when he hosted King Malcolm IV of Scotland, who paid homage after ceding Cumberland and Westmorland; then in 1158 and 1164. When the king's own sons rose against him in the Revolt of 1173–1174, he spent £116 on Peveril and Bolsover and enlarged the garrison from a porter and two watchmen to a force led by twenty knights shared with Bolsover and Nottingham. After the revolt, the Pipe Rolls record £184 spent between 1175 and 1177 building the keep — a small one, but stone was costly in an age when the king's whole annual income has been estimated at around £10,000.

The Earls of Derby claimed the Peveril estates through marriage, and in 1199 William de Ferrers, the fourth earl, paid King John 2,000 marks for the lordship of the Peak — though the Crown kept the castles. In 1216, facing country-wide rebellion, John finally gave Ferrers Peveril and Bolsover to secure his support. The castellan, Brian de Lisle, refused to hand them over, and although both men were John's supporters, the king authorised the earl to evict him by force. Bolsover fell to Ferrers' men after a siege in 1217, but there is no indication Peveril was assaulted; de Lisle likely negotiated his surrender. It was the closest the castle ever came to battle. The Crown recovered the lordship in 1223.

The 13th century brought building rather than fighting — £60 in 1250–52, £40 in 1272–75, £151 in 1288–90 — and by 1300 the castle had reached its final form. It changed hands once more under duress: at the outbreak of the Second Barons' War in 1264, Robert de Ferrers, the sixth earl, occupied it, and Simon de Montfort pressured Henry III into granting it to him, but the Crown recovered it after de Montfort's death in 1265. Thereafter its income supported queens and favourites, from Isabella of France to Piers Gaveston.

The lordship eventually passed to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the richest nobleman in England. Peveril was one castle too many: in 1374 he ordered its lead stripped for re-use at Pontefract Castle, the start of a long decline. From Gaunt's time to the present day the castle has belonged to the Duchy of Lancaster. A Duchy survey of 1561 found it decayed and it was abandoned, though it hosted local courts until 1600; by 1609 it was "very ruinous and serveth for no use", and at one point housed animals.

The railways made the area a tourist attraction in the 19th century, and Sir Walter Scott described it in his 1823 novel Peveril of the Peak. In 1932 the Duchy gave custody to the Office of Works while retaining ownership; English Heritage cares for it today, within a national park since 1951, protected as a scheduled monument and a Grade I listed building.