Snape Castle

A manor house is recorded on the site as the work of Ralph FitzRanulph of Middleham. His daughter, the Lady of Middleham, married Robert Neville, son of Robert de Neville, and the building stayed with the Nevilles until the 16th century. Snape Castle itself, at the western edge of the village three miles south of Bedale, was built at some point in the early 15th century — between 1425 and 1430 — when George Neville inherited the land and buildings from his father Ralph, Earl of Westmorland.

It has been described variously as a manor house and as a hall, but some thought was given to defence: the surrounding land, marshy and prone to flooding, was kept as it was. The original castle was planned around a courtyard of 140 feet north to south by 180 feet west to east. During the 15th century both Cecily Neville and Queen Anne lived here — Richard III's mother and his wife.

In January 1537 a mob stormed the castle and took Katherine Parr and the two children hostage. Its members belonged to the Pilgrimage of Grace and were worried that Parr's then husband, John Neville, third Baron Latimer, would betray them to Henry VIII. Neville, who was trying to mediate between the King and the northern countrymen, hastened back to Snape and was able to persuade the mob to leave and release his family. In Henry VIII's time the cleric and antiquary John Leland described the manor as "a goodly castel in a valley longing to the Lorde Latimer, and ii or iii parkes welle woddid abowt it".

In 1577 Sir Thomas Cecil inherited the Manor of Snape through his wife Dorothy Neville, whom he had married in 1564, and set about rebuilding the castle that same year. He did not use it after 1578, when he inherited the Burghley estate near Stamford from his father. Cecil's renovation gave Snape its towers, but they were for effect rather than defence, which has led to the building being called a "sham castle". An Elizabethan chimney in the west wall carries the date 1587, taken as the point at which his work was finished.

On the eastern side of the castle stands the chapel dedicated to St Mary, once the private chapel of the household — Parr is said to have married Latimer in it — and since used for public worship. In the late 17th century its 15th-century roof was taken down so that a plaster one could be installed, which the Italian painter Antonio Verrio decorated with the angels being expelled from heaven, a work called Wonder and War in Heaven. Damp had ruined the painting by 1725, and use of the chapel as a store deteriorated it further. The chapel keeps its Perpendicular windows, was renovated between 1837 and 1887, and holds a memorial to the men of Snape who died in the First World War.

The estate was sold in 1798 to William Milbank of nearby Thorpe Perrow. Still partly inhabited, the castle retains the Perpendicular windows built by Cecil. It is now a private residence, registered with Historic England as a Grade I listed structure, a designation held since May 1952.