This gatehouse, with the domestic wing to one side of it, is all that remains of Cawood Castle, once a stronghold of the Archbishops of York. It stands in the flat land south of York in the small town of Cawood, where there is a bridge over the Ouse. By the fifteenth century, when Archbishop Kempe built our richly decorated gatehouse with two well-proportioned rooms one over the other, it had become less of a castle and more of a palace; his Cardinal’s hat, of which he was proud, appears on several of the finely carved stone shields over the archway. Here too Cardinal Wolsey was arrested, at odds with his King and his plans to marry Anne Boleyn.

After the Civil War, Cawood was partially dismantled. In the eighteenth century the gatehouse was used as a courtroom and a respectable Georgian staircase was built to supplement the medieval spiral stair. Later divisions of ownership and use made this a difficult rescue operation, quite apart from the full-sized billiard table we found in the first floor room with its handsome bay windows, manfully supporting during our long negotiations a huge pile of debris from the collapsed floor above.

In the end our neighbour allowed us to truncate his house a little, and we bought and demolished the farm buildings – so that our visitors can now experience and occupy a late medieval room of the finest quality; and in it, if they like, read some history on the spot where it was made.

View our history sheet for this Landmark.

Sleeps: 2+2