Village of The Week: How a hamlet in North Yorkshire with royal connections became abandoned and forgotten

Because for one small corner of North Yorkshire, they haven’t really changed for a good few hundred years.

Before that though, things were really quite hectic at Whorlton.

So with that, we have to go back to The Domesday Book, which suggests there was activity in Whorlton prior to the mass survey of England that was carried out in 1086.

The village of Whorlton, or however the area was formed at the time, is recorded in the Domesday Book as belonging to Robert, Count of Mortain, a major landowner after the Norman conquest and the maternal half-brother of William the Conqueror. It later passed to Robert de Meynell, who founded Whorlton Castle.

This is where we start to get to the bottom of the little, and at first glance, unexplained of what we see today.

The castle was established in the early 12th century at the edge of Castle Bank, a ridge between the villages of Faceby and Swainby, overlooking a small valley through which the road between Thirsk and Stokesley runs in the North York Moors.

It is unclear when exactly the castle was built, but in its first phase, it would have consisted of a wooden fortress, perhaps (200 ft) by (160 ft). The mound was surrounded by a dry ditch up to (66 ft) wide by (16 ft) deep.

Some of that is still there now.

The castle fell into disrepair or was dismantled during the first part of the 14th century and an account of 1343 describes it as being a ruin then.

In the mid-14th century, it passed by marriage to John Darcy, Lord Darcy of Knayth, who had close associations with the royal court. Darcy carried out substantial changes to the castle and levelled the motte to provide a base for a new keep with a fortified gatehouse.

The castle stayed within the Darcy family until 1418, when the death of Philip Darcy, 6th Baron Darcy de Knayth, resulted in Whorlton being inherited by his daughter, Elizabeth Darcy, who was married to Sir James Strangeways. The Strangeways held on to the castle, until a dispute between heirs in 1541 led to it becoming a possession of the Crown.

One of the most famous monarchs in British history, King Edward VIII awarded Whorlton Castleto Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, whose eldest son was Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, wrote to Mary, Queen of Scots, in the autumn of 1561, possibly from Whorlton Castle, to propose a marriage between Mary and her son Darnley. The marriage proved to be disastrous.

For the next 200 or so years, Whorlton Castle passed through the Bruce family of Scotland and around 1875, a large quantity of the castle's stonework was removed to build Swainby's village church.

The castle is currently privately owned.

It was bought by Osbert Peake, 1st Viscount Ingleby, who was a British Conservative Party politician, a Minister of National Insurance and then Minister of Pensions and National Insurance from 1951 to 1955.

The castle was included as part of the purchase of a shooting estate. It acquired listed status in 1928 and is a Grade I listed site.

Peake died in 1966 and the castle remains have been left open to the elements ever since but were classed as ruinous long before then.

The mid-14th century gatehouse is the main surviving relic - but has no roof or floor. Two large arched entrances are present on either side of the gatehouse and above them is a row of three carved shields. They present the arms of Darcy (centre) flanked by Meynell (right) and Gray (left), the latter reflecting the marriage of Philip Darcy to Elizabeth Gray in the late 14th century. Above the shields is a further single shield that shows the arms of Darcy and Meynell impaled, reflecting the original marriage that united the families and brought the castle into the hands of the Darcys.

On what would have been the inside of the castle, remains of fireplaces are still visible on the ground and first floors and a staircase can still be followed up to the remnants of the first floor, but the floor has long gone.

Outside the gatehouse, the roofline of a now-vanished building can still be seen and at the Keep, fragments of vaulted cellars or undercrofts can be made out.

As well as being victim to the elements, the remains of Whorlton Castle have been victim to vandalism.

There was talk of restoration possibly into a house or holiday home but any plans and studies fell through due to the collapse into administration of the Vivat Trust, which had proposed the conversion.

The old church of the Holy Cross which stood just outside of the castle of Whorlton is also in ruins with only the tower and chancel still intact. The last service was held there in 1875.

A new church was built in 1877 in the hamlet of Swainby which would have helped that on its way.

Swainby in actually quite interspersed with Whorlton. It became a parish after the abandonment, possibly of Whorlton and another theory is that this was due to the Black Death (or some other disease) leaving the inhabitants of the castle low in number in 1428.

The parish of Whorlton now consists of Whorlton, Faceby and Potto, and includes also the hamlets of Swainby and Goulton. The total area is about 8,200 acres and most of that is pasture or woodland.

The ward's population was 1,820 at the 2011 census.

Swainby has a few farms, a couple of pubs and a campsite, Faceby is a hamlet with a mix of newer home and traditional conversions, Potto was recently named by The Times as one of 2023’s most sought-after postcodes.

Whorlton - due to vandalism, access to the site of remains has been restricted.