En un regard
Le château en bref
Whorlton Castle stands on the north-western edge of the North York Moors, above the village of Swainby, in the civil parish of Whorlton (North Yorkshire). It is a site of Norman origin: a flat-topped, roughly square motte measuring about 60 m by 50 m, partly surrounded by a ditch 20 m wide and 5 m deep, with a bailey to the south and east. At the time of Domesday, Whorlton belonged to the manor of Hutton Rudby, held by Robert, Count of Mortain; in the 13th century the stronghold appears in documents under the names "Potto" and "Hwernelton".
From the 12th to the 16th century the de Meynell family controlled the estate, creating a hunting park and, at the end of the Middle Ages, pleasure gardens and ponds fed by a water-management system. In the 14th century a stone tower house was raised on the motte; its late 14th-century gatehouse, three storeys high in sandstone with a central vaulted passage, is today the most striking survival. It was altered in the 16th century and a dwelling was added to it in the late 16th or early 17th century. The castle was already described as ruinous in 1343, yet it remained a manorial centre.
The scheduled area also includes the partly ruined Holy Cross church, the remains of a deserted village on Howe Hill, the park pale and ridge-and-furrow fields. The ruins, on private land, are a rare example of a Norman motte that stayed in use throughout the Middle Ages in northern England.
