En un regard
Le château en bref
Barden Tower is a ruined fortified tower house standing on a bluff above the narrow valley of the Wharfe, in North Yorkshire. Originally, Barden was one of the six lodges of the Barden hunting forest and the administrative seat of this Clifford estate.
The present building dates largely from Henry Clifford, known as the "Shepherd Lord", who, after recovering the family lands around 1484-1485, rebuilt the lodge and made it his principal residence. He also had the Priest's House built near the chapel in 1515. Around the tower lay a designed landscape comprising a chapel, deer parks, fishponds, warrens and barns; quarries in the nearby woods supplied the stone. Left to decay around 1589, the complex was repaired in 1658-1659 by Lady Anne Clifford, Dowager Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery, as recorded by the tablet above the door, which quotes Isaiah 58:12. After her death, the estate returned to the Earls of Cork and the building fell into decline from the late 18th century.
Today the tower survives as a hollow shell up to roof height, with windows, fireplaces and doorways still visible; a collapsed north-west tower is marked only by its foundations. The ruin can be visited freely on the Bolton Abbey estate, while the neighbouring Priest's House hosts a restaurant and weddings.
