# Belsay Castle

medieval castle ruins in Northumberland, England, UK

Belsay, United Kingdom

Fortification. 1439 CE

## Story

• The Middleton family is recorded at Belsay from 1270, and the great tower was raised later as a border stronghold and a mark of rank.
• Its building date is given as about 1370, as the late fourteenth century, as 1391 to 1396, and as 1439 to 1460, while two roof beams were felled between 1439 and 1464.
• A house of 1614 turned the castle into a gentleman’s residence, and in 1817 the family moved to a new Greek Revival hall, leaving the tower as a picturesque ruin.
• Sir Arthur Middleton, 7th Baronet, restored the medieval tower, and in 1980 the hall, castle and gardens passed into state guardianship.
• Excavation found a medieval corn dryer older than the documented castle, and renovations found soldiers’ papers beneath the hall floors.

## Visiting

The site is open from Wednesday to Sunday, from 10am to 4pm, and last entry is at 3.30pm. A ticket booked online until midnight the day before the visit is sold at a discount, and a ticket bought on the day, online or on arrival, is full price. Tickets are valid all day within the opening hours. Tickets are free for members who bring a membership card, and a membership may be taken during the visit.
Dogs are allowed to enter the grounds only on a short lead. Dogs are not allowed in the hall or the castle, and assistance dogs are allowed to enter. Smoking, vaping, barbecues and naked flames are not allowed. Pushchairs are allowed to enter.

## History

Belsay Castle is a medieval tower house at Belsay, near Morpeth, in Northumberland, also written Beleshou and Belshowe. The Middleton family is first recorded there in 1270, when Sir Richard de Middleton, Lord Chancellor to Henry III, held the estate. A high-status house received Edward I, the visit being placed both in 1278 and in 1298, before the great tower was raised.

The tower is dated about 1370, to the late fourteenth century, to the years 1391 to 1396, and to a build between 1439 and 1460. Two roof timbers were felled between 1439 and 1464, and they are read either as evidence that the tower is later than 1370 or as beams reused from elsewhere. In 1317 John Middleton joined his cousin Gilbert de Middleton in rebellion, after which the estate was forfeited. The return is placed by marriage in 1391, and also in the reign of Edward III, who died in 1377.

After the union of the crowns in 1603, Thomas Middleton II added a house in 1614, and a baronetcy followed on 24 October 1662. A western wing is placed in the 1670s, in 1711, and in the early eighteenth century. Sir Charles Monck, 6th Baronet, inherited in 1795 and moved from the castle into a Greek Revival hall on Christmas Day 1817. The change of surname to Monck is dated to 1796, to 1798, and to 11 February 1799.

Sir Arthur Middleton, 7th Baronet, succeeded in 1867, restored the tower, and took the old surname back in 1876. Soldiers occupied the hall from September 1939, and papers and small belongings were later found under the floors. The buildings and gardens passed into state guardianship in 1980, while the family kept the wider estate. Digging has shown occupation from the twelfth or early thirteenth century, including a corn dryer older than the documented castle.

## Photographs

- [Belsay Castle — Brian Norman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Belsay_Castle.jpg)
- [17th century Manor House at Belsay Castle Belsay Castle is a dramatic 14th century fortified building dating from more troublesome times in the Borders — Oliver Dixon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/17th_century_Manor_House_at_Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1172172.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle Belsay Castle is a dramatic 14th century fortified building dating from more troublesome times in the Borders Belsay_Castle. When peace descended — Oliver Dixon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1172104.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle In the grounds of Belsay Hall. — JThomas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1254172.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle - architectural details Columnar entrance in the Jacobean extension to Belsay Castle which was abandoned in 1817. — Andy F](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Belsay_Castle_-_architectural_details_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1384638.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle - battlements — Mike Quinn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Belsay_Castle_-_battlements_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1479534.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle — Mike Quinn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1479397.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle — John Preston Neale](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Neale%281818%29_p3.192_-_Belsay_Castle%2C_Northumberland.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle — Hadrianus1959](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Belsay_Castle_%28tower_house%29.jpg)
- [Belsay Castle — michael ely](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1924144.jpg)

## Sources

- [History of Belsay](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens/history/) — English Heritage
- [Visit Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens/) — English Heritage
- [Prices and opening times for Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens/prices-and-opening-times/) — English Heritage
- [Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens facilities](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens/plan-your-visit/facilities/) — English Heritage
- [Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens things to do](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens/things-to-do/) — English Heritage
- [Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens teachers’ kit](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/siteassets/home/learn/teaching-resources/teachers-kits/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens-teachers-kit_ks1-ks3.pdf) — English Heritage
- [Belsay Hall](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1001042) — Historic England
- [Belsay tower house and attached unfortified wing, deserted medieval village, possible moated site, promontory fort and watch post](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1015517) — Historic England
- [Belsay Castle](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1042837) — Historic England
- [Belsay Castle, Belsay, Near Morpeth, Northumberland: tree-ring and radiocarbon analysis of oak timbers](https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/7936/BelsayCastleBelsayNearMorpethNorthumberlandTree-RingandRadiocarbonAnalysisofOakTimbers) — Historic England
- [Belsay Castle](https://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/2408.html) — Gatehouse Gazetteer
- [Belsay Hall, Northumberland: archaeological investigations analysis report](https://doi.org/10.5284/1135542) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Stable building at Belsay Castle, Belsay, Northumberland: archaeological recording](https://doi.org/10.5284/1117801) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Belsay Hall drainage and Coach House, Belsay, Northumberland: archaeological watching brief](https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/data-catalogue/resource/72d3a5f77be7893086a358b800238e1d6c039522b0a886895137664be0d2e309) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Belsay Hall renovation reveals hidden wartime history](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c624npmy4peo) — BBC News
- [Belsay Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belsay_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Sir Charles Monck, 6th Baronet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Charles_Monck,_6th_Baronet) — Wikipedia
- [Sir Arthur Middleton, 7th Baronet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Middleton,_7th_Baronet) — Wikipedia
- [Middleton baronets of Belsay Castle (1662)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middleton_baronets_of_Belsay_Castle_(1662)) — Wikipedia
- [Middleton baronets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middleton_baronets) — Wikipedia
- [Gilbert Middleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Middleton) — Wikipedia
- [Richard Middleton (Lord Chancellor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Middleton_(Lord_Chancellor)) — Wikipedia
- [Henry III of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_III_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [Edward I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I) — Wikipedia
- [Edward II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II) — Wikipedia
- [Edward III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_III) — Wikipedia
- [James VI and I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I) — Wikipedia
- [English Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War) — Wikipedia
- [Medieval architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_architecture) — Wikipedia
- [Peel tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_tower) — Wikipedia
- [John Dobson (architect)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dobson_(architect)) — Wikipedia
- [Battle of Bosworth Field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field) — Wikipedia
- [First Battle of St Albans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_St_Albans) — Wikipedia
- [Brinkburn Priory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinkburn_Priory) — Wikipedia
- [Finchale Priory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finchale_Priory) — Wikipedia
- [County Durham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Durham) — Wikipedia
- [Scheduled monument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_monument) — Wikipedia
- [Belsay Castle.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [17th century Manor House at Belsay Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1172172.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:17th_century_Manor_House_at_Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1172172.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Belsay Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1172104.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1172104.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Belsay Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1254172.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1254172.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Belsay Castle - architectural details - geograph.org.uk - 1384638.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle_-_architectural_details_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1384638.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Belsay Castle - battlements - geograph.org.uk - 1479534.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle_-_battlements_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1479534.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Belsay Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1479397.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1479397.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Neale(1818) p3.192 - Belsay Castle, Northumberland.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neale(1818)_p3.192_-_Belsay_Castle,_Northumberland.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Belsay Castle (tower house).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle_(tower_house).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Belsay Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1924144.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belsay_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1924144.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Belsay Castle stands at Belsay, near Morpeth, in Northumberland, about 22 kilometres north-west of Newcastle upon Tyne. Older writings call the place Beleshou and Belshowe. What stands there now is three related parts: a medieval tower with a later house against its west side, a Greek Revival mansion a short distance away, and the gardens that join the two buildings. Much of that garden was made in the quarries cut for the stone of the new house. The tower is a Scheduled Monument and a Grade I listed building, a grade also written Grade 1. The gardens are given both as 30 acres and as around 40 acres, and they are listed at Grade I. Map readings for the complex include NZ 08483 78550, NZ 08476 78568, NZ 08441 78604 and NZ 08487 7855, with a published point at latitude 55.10127 and longitude 1.86853 west.

The castle is in Northumberland, not in County Durham. County Durham is the ceremonial county on Northumberland’s southern side, with an area of 2,676 square kilometres, or 1,033 square miles, and an estimated population of 894,025 in 2024. The city of Durham was founded in 995 by monks seeking a place safe from Viking raids in which to house the relics of Cuthbert. The cathedral, rebuilt after the Norman Conquest, and Durham Castle together are a World Heritage Site. By the later Middle Ages the bishops governed the county as a palatine liberty and as a buffer between England and Scotland. In the nineteenth century the coalfield filled with pits, and in 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened as the first public railway to use steam locomotives. Sir Arthur Middleton, 7th Baronet, later sat in Parliament for the City of Durham. His house and tower remained in Northumberland.

The ground around the tower is older than the stone walls now visible. Watching briefs and an analysis of the digging, issued in 2023 and 2024, followed ground reduction, foundation trenches and utility trenches around the coach house and a new car park, and six trenches north of the castle. The machines used a toothless ditching bucket. No direct evidence of activity before the Norman Conquest was recorded. Spelt wheat and other plants more typical of pre-medieval farming suggest that later prehistoric and Roman activity lay nearby, and that leftover material had been mixed into later layers. Radiocarbon dates and the objects place occupation at Belsay from the twelfth century or the early thirteenth. That activity is concentrated around the Paddock. Two further features near the castle, one of them a corn dryer, sit only loosely with that focus, and both are earlier than the documented establishment of the castle. The dryer was cut by the foundation trench of the coach house, and the west wall of the stable was subsiding into the dryer’s pit. The grain in the dryer was rich in oats, both common oat and bristle oat, with sparse flax and seaweed in the earlier fills. Charcoal shows coppiced fuel wood. Pieces of hazel or willow are read as a wattle structure inside the dryer, and dung was burned there as well. Coal appears as a domestic fuel from the fourteenth century or earlier, with gorse and heather as possible kindling. Later medieval samples contain more bread wheat, rye and peas, in keeping with arable farming elsewhere in northern England. The stable range has four broad phases: a post-medieval boundary wall, a possible seventeenth-century structure adapted as an eighteenth-century stable, and use as cottages and a workshop in the early twentieth century. A large stone wall along the east side of the castle enclosure may be part of a medieval curtain. Medieval and later surfaces and drains survive in the paddock, together with pottery, ceramic building material, metalwork, glass and animal bone. Early post-medieval work near the castle was mainly the making of a walled garden to the north-west, shown in illustrations by the 1720s. Parts of its western wall and internal paths were recorded. In the early nineteenth century that garden was removed and the ground returned to woodland, at the time the village was moved.

The Middleton family is first recorded at Belsay in 1270, when the estate belonged to Sir Richard de Middleton, Lord Chancellor to Henry III. He is called the only member of the family in seven centuries to become prominent in national life. A separate account of the chancellor names him Richard Middleton, also Richard of Middleton or Richard de Middleton, and does not mention Belsay. He was appointed Lord Chancellor on 29 July 1269 and was out of office before he died on 7 August 1272. His successor, Walter de Merton, is first mentioned in the office on 29 November 1272. On 5 January 1270 he was given the living of Hemingbrough, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, by the chapter of Durham Cathedral. He occurs as Archdeacon of Northumberland on 23 September 1271 and again in 1272. He had a son, Gilbert, dead by 1291, and a grandson, also Gilbert, executed for treason in 1318. Henry III, also called Henry of Winchester, was king from 1216 until his death on 16 November 1272. He came to the throne at the age of nine, during the First Barons’ War. His forces, led by William Marshal, defeated the rebel barons at Lincoln and at Sandwich in 1217. He promised to keep the Great Charter of 1225. After Hubert de Burgh, he ruled in person. Costly attempts to recover family lands in France, the notoriety of his Poitevin half-brothers, and the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 led into the Second Barons’ War. Simon de Montfort defeated and captured him at Lewes in 1264. His eldest son, Edward, escaped and defeated Montfort at Evesham in 1265. Richard’s chancellorship belongs to the last years of that long reign, and the Belsay estate is attested in his hands in 1270, two years before both men died.

There was already a high-status house at Belsay when Edward I visited while hunting in the area in 1298. Another account says the earlier manor received Edward I in 1278, and that the site of that house has never been confirmed. Edward I, also called Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was king from 1272 to 1307. Before his accession he had been a hostage after Lewes and the victor of Evesham. He went on the Ninth Crusade, returned to be crowned in 1274, conquered Wales in the war of 1282 to 1283, and claimed a feudal superiority in the Scottish succession dispute. The wars with Scotland and with France, after Philip IV seized Gascony, were still open when he died. The tower that now dominates Belsay was not the house he entered. It is described as a later addition to an existing manorial complex, both a statement of family pride and a response to unrest on the border between England and Scotland.

In 1317 John, grandson and heir of Sir Richard, joined a local rebellion led by a cousin, Gilbert de Middleton. One account says both men were captured and executed in London for treason, that the estate was forfeited and granted to a succession of owners, and that it returned to the Middletons by marriage in 1391. The life of Gilbert Middleton, who died in 1318, makes him a son of Gilbert of Middleton and a grandson of the chancellor. His father was dead by 1291, while Gilbert was still a minor, and the boy was the ward of the royal squire William Felton. He came of age in 1300 and took part in the English invasion of Scotland. By 1313 he was a household knight in the garrison at Berwick. In 1315 he was posted to Alnwick. Early in 1317 he was still in royal pay, drawing wages for himself and his retinue. On 1 September 1317 he attacked a party that included Louis de Beaumont, bishop-elect of Durham, Louis’s brother Henry de Beaumont, and two cardinals, Gaucelin de Jean and Luca Fieschi. He imprisoned the Beaumonts in Mitford Castle and let the cardinals go. Fellow household knights joined him: John de Lilburne, Walter Selby and Goscelin d’Eyville. Louis de Beaumont was freed on 17 October. The rebels extorted 500 marks from the bishopric of Durham for an alleged transgression against Gilbert. In December, William Felton, the son of Gilbert’s former guardian, took Mitford and captured Gilbert by a ruse. The motives are left uncertain. He may have acted with the Scots, who were still at war with England, and Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, may have known of the plan. Gilbert was sent by sea to London, tried before the king for treason on 26 January 1318, and hanged, drawn and quartered. The severity is tied to his rank as a household knight and to the status of the victims, cardinals on a diplomatic mission. A further account places the confiscation in the fourteenth century after Gilbert and John Middleton held two cardinals to ransom in 1314. That year is neither the attack of 1 September 1317 nor the execution of 26 January 1318, and it has the cardinals imprisoned rather than released. Edward II was king from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. He had been beaten by Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314. Famine followed. Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, had led the barons who seized and executed Piers Gaveston in 1312. Gilbert’s rising belongs in that unsettled part of the reign. No account read for this place describes an assault on a tower at Belsay in 1317.

The return of the land is also told in two ways. The history of the Middleton Baronets says the estates, including Belsay, were forfeited to the Crown and restored by marriage in the reign of Edward III. Edward III was king from January 1327 until his death on 21 June 1377. He was crowned at fourteen after his father was deposed, overthrew Roger Mortimer in 1330, and began the Hundred Years’ War in 1337. He was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II. A restoration placed in 1391 falls after Edward III’s death. From the 1391 date, the estate is said to have stayed with the family, who still own the wider land, as distinct from the castle, the hall and the gardens now in public care.

The great tower is dated in several ways that do not agree. It is placed about 1370. It is placed in the late fourteenth century, probably added to an older manorial complex. It is called early to middle fourteenth century, and the date of erection is also left unknown. It is said to have been built by John Middleton between 1391 and 1396, probably not as a free-standing house but as the strong part of a larger domestic group. A scheduling account builds it between 1439 and 1460, during troubled border war, either free-standing or, more likely, at the east end of an earlier range later replaced by the manor house. Mentions of a tower of Belshowe in the late fourteenth century, and a first reference to the castle in 1415, sit beside that later building span. Two oak tiebeams in the tower roof were felled between 1439 and 1464. The roof now standing is thought to be a re-roofing of 1896 to 1897. If the walls are of about 1370, those beams cannot be leftovers of the first roof. Either the tower is later than had been thought and the beams are primary, or they were saved from some other building. An account of 1907 by Arthur Middleton says that three of the original cambered oak beams were reused in the new roof. Twenty-one cores were taken from the stables and coach house, from the ceiling of the annexe, and from the roof and lintels of the tower. Three samples had too few rings to measure. Of the rest, two oak timbers matched, at a value of t = 6.4, and formed a sequence of 102 rings. Comparison with dated sequences gave two tentative years for the last ring: 1428 against chronologies from the north-east and the north-west, and 1590 against more southerly sequences. A radiocarbon measurement on a single ring, split and dated in two laboratories, agreed with 1428 and ruled out 1590. The heartwood-sapwood boundary of the two beams averages 1424, and the estimated felling is 1439 to 1464. The other samples remained undated. The work was done between 2017 and 2020.

The tower is a rectangular building of three storeys, of squared sandstone with ashlar detail, under a lead roof, on a chamfered plinth. The storeys step in at the first floor. Short wings project at the south-west and north-west corners and contain the stair, smaller rooms and garderobes. Four rounded corner turrets rise above a battlemented, machicolated parapet on close-set corbels cut in three steps. One turret is higher than the others and is flanked by square projections. The height to the highest point is given as 21.5 metres. The site is a weak one for defence: higher ground stands to the west, and the land falls gently to the east and the north. The ground floor is a pointed tunnel vault, lit only by narrow slits, with a large fireplace under a segmental arch. A well is also recorded in that room. The room is read as a kitchen. The hall above it is placed on the first floor in the listed building account and on the second floor in the scheduling account. It has a fireplace and large windows to south and north. The upper room is another large chamber with a fireplace, read as high-status lodging and possibly as a small chapel. The stair carries an umbrella vault of eight chamfered ribs. On the south front the ground floor has a slit; the first floor has a large two-light window with a transom and cinquefoil heads, and a smaller two-light window with trefoil heads; the second floor has a two-light window with cinquefoil heads. The north side has a nineteenth-century doorway, similar upper windows, and a garderobe chute. On the west, now inside the attached house, a recessed centre holds a pointed doorway with a chamfered surround, a blocked Tudor-arched doorway on the first floor, and a pointed doorway on the second floor largely covered by a nineteenth-century stack.

The pointed doorways belong to Medieval architecture, the designing and raising of buildings through the Middle Ages, from pre-Romanesque and Romanesque masses with round arches to the Gothic of the late twelfth century onward, whose mark is the pointed arch. Cinquefoil and trefoil heads light the upper windows of this tower. The house of 1614, with its Tuscan columns, and the Greek hall of the early nineteenth century, are not part of that medieval architecture. Border towers of this kind are called pele towers, a word also spelled peel. They were built along the English and Scottish marches, mainly from the middle of the fourteenth century to about 1600. In the general account they are free-standing, made first for defence and also for status, and sometimes used as watchtowers from which a signal fire could be lit. The same word can mean the enclosure, or barmkin, into which cattle were driven when raiders came, the theft of stock being a usual aim of a border raid. Most of those walls have gone, and some towers may never have had them. Belsay is called one of the best-surviving examples of the type, and it is also called a tower house. One account says it was probably not free-standing at all, but the defensive core of a larger house. The general type and the reading of this particular building therefore do not match.

Plaster in the great chamber, also called the hall, preserves domestic painting of more than one period. Sir Arthur Middleton drew what survived. The earlier scheme is placed in the late fourteenth century, soon after the tower was built, and also simply in the fourteenth century. It is thin intertwining vine scroll, with pale pink grapes and flowers, or red vine scroll on a bright white ground. It is now clear mainly around the windows, though it once ran across the room. A later scheme is placed towards the end of the fifteenth century. One account divides it into three tiers. The lowest is a cube pattern in brown, grey and white. Above that, heraldic shields hang from lopped trees, and on the east wall, facing the entrance, a hairy wild man holds a larger shield. The wild man is a figure of medieval story and the heraldic supporter of the Middleton arms. Trees and wild man stand on a green field scattered with clusters of red and white flowers. The upper tier, on the south wall, shows a naval scene of carracks, three-masted ships used both for trade and for war, perhaps a reference to Sir John Middleton VII as commander of two fleets against the French in the 1480s. Another account divides the later painting into two tiers only: an upper naval scene with two ships and various figures, and a lower tier of shields hanging from lopped trees against a dark landscape covered with white flowers. Conservation in 1996 uncovered a wild man supporting the quartered shield of the Middleton and Strivelyn families on the east wall. The baronetage calls Sir John Middleton a fervent Yorkist who fought at the battles of St Albans in 1455 and of Bosworth in 1485. The first battle of St Albans was fought on 22 May 1455 in the streets of the town, about 22 miles north of London, and it is the traditional start of the Wars of the Roses. Richard, Duke of York, with the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, defeated a royal army under Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who was killed. Henry VI was captured. Bosworth, or Bosworth Field, was fought on 22 August 1485 near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. It was the last major battle of those wars. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, won, became the first Tudor king, and later married Elizabeth of York. Richard III, the last king of the house of York, was killed, the last English monarch to die in battle. Nothing places either fight at Belsay, and nothing states in so many words that the Yorkist Sir John and Sir John Middleton VII, the fleet commander, were the same man. Both statements stand.

North of the tower, a two-storey range called the annexe, or the north wing, shows medieval masonry, especially in the east wall, with a blocked two-light window and several small blocked windows of the sixteenth century. The west side has five eighteenth-century bays, now boarded up. The range is thought to have been altered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, probably including the insertion of softwood floors. It may once have stood free, and a small building joined it to the tower in the nineteenth century. The gables and the roof were replaced in the nineteenth century, while the rest is thought to be of a similar date to the tower. The stables and coach house stand about 100 metres to the north-west and are separately listed at Grade II. The southern end served as stables and the northern end as the coach house. Historic timbers survive there as lintels, floor beams and supports to a hearth.

A linear hollow about 45 metres north-east of the tower is 31 metres long, 9.5 metres wide and 0.4 metres deep, and it can be followed another 10 metres north into a walled garden. Because it was once much deeper, it has been read as an infilled moat of the manor that stood here before the tower, the house associated with Edward I, whose site is otherwise unknown. A field survey in April 2009 reads the long rectangular pond east of the castle in another way. It does not turn back at either end, and it may be a seventeenth-century ornamental canal rather than a fragment of moat. The same survey finds the formal garden south of the 1614 house as a levelled compartment, its edges surviving as earthworks later smoothed, with a terrace on the east that may bound another compartment. A hollow way, overlain by broad ridge and furrow, seems to have been about to cross the south front before it disappears where the garden earthworks end. That is taken as a hint that part of the medieval settlement was removed when the formal garden was made.

The deserted village is part of the same protected ground. Most of it lay south-west of the tower and was taken away in the nineteenth century, when the stone under it was quarried for the hall. East of the tower a rectangular enclosure 16 metres long survives, defined by a bank 0.2 metres high, with faint square and rectangular yards to the south-west and low scarps and ridge and furrow to the north. Maps of 1769 and 1784 show no houses in that area, so this part of the village was probably abandoned before the earlier map, and the settlement may have shifted south-west during the Middle Ages. Documents give the fourteenth-century village 30 enclosures, the village of 1666 some 36 houses, and the eighteenth-century village only 18. West and south-west of the tower, parallel lynchets about 0.5 metres high mark closes that average 70 metres long and 30 metres wide. They were later shortened and divided, and ridge and furrow lies over them. That change in the fields has been suggested to be no later than the middle of the seventeenth century. About 500 metres west, on a spur called Bantam Hill, a prehistoric promontory fort measures at most 72 metres from east to west by 88 metres. Two inner ramparts defend only the east side. The west end is a steep natural slope. The inner rampart survives as a scarp 3.5 metres high. An entrance at the southern angle is a raised causeway 7 metres wide. An outer ditch is a metre deep at either end of the defensive arc, and a counterscarp bank reaches 0.7 metres. About 30 metres further out, a double rampart with a ditch between has an entrance on the south-west, in line with the inner entrance. Those ramparts stand about 0.3 metres high and the ditch is about 0.6 metres deep. The two lines are thought to have been built together. At the highest point a stony mound 0.4 metres high and 6 metres across is read as a watch post of the Belsay Sector, one of a chain of watchtowers raised in 1552 after the Anglo-Scottish fighting of the 1540s. By 1757 the same earthworks were called a Roman camp. Bantam Folly, a decorated farm, had been built facing them, with a cold bath in the valley. Lady Anne Middleton is reputed to have planted Bantam Hill as a wild garden, with snowdrops. Bantam Wood and Crag Plantation were among the clumps set out to frame distant views.

The union of the crowns in 1603 quietened the border, and landowners rebuilt for comfort rather than defence. James VI and I was king of Scotland from 24 July 1567, and king of England and Ireland from 24 March 1603 until his death on 27 March 1625. The two kingdoms remained separate states under one king. He was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, raised a Protestant, and he married Anne of Denmark in 1589. In England he faced the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and repeated trouble with Parliament, and he failed to draw England and Scotland into a single parliament. At Belsay a mansion range was added on the west side of the tower. A plaque over the porch gives the year 1614 and names the builder as Thomas Middleton II, a staunch Presbyterian who supported Parliament during the English Civil War. The building account names Thomas and Dorothy Middleton, and says the range may have replaced an earlier manor house. It is called one of the earliest undefended houses in the county. The porch is of two storeys. A round-headed doorway, filled with many mullions, stands between paired Tuscan columns. The Middleton coat of arms sits above the door in a moulded frame, and an inscription sits above the arms. A five-light window with mullion and transom lights the first floor. Some of the wall to the right of the porch seems to be of the original build. Other external work is of the middle of the nineteenth century, in a similar style. The scheduling account says the house was remodelled in 1862. The English Civil War, also called the Great Rebellion, was fought between 1642 and 1651, inside the wider wars of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1639 to 1653. The first war was over the balance between Parliament and Charles I. It ended in June 1646 with the king in custody. Charles I was executed in January 1649. The fighting closed with a Parliamentarian victory at Worcester on 3 September 1651, and the monarchy was restored in 1660. Nothing describes a siege, a garrison or a slighting at Belsay in those years. Thomas’s support for Parliament, and his Presbyterianism, are the whole of the local statement. Near the end of his life he moved to Dromonby in Yorkshire and left Belsay to his son Charles. The house was not the family’s principal residence again until the 1670s.

The Middleton baronetcy of Belsay Castle, in the Baronetage of England, was created on 24 October 1662 for William Middleton of Belsay Castle. An index of Middleton Baronets counts six creations: Ruthin in 1622, Leighton Hall in 1642, Belsay Castle in 1662, Hackney in 1681, a naval creation of 1781 later tied to the earls of Gainsborough, and Crowfield in 1804. One of the six was still extant in 2023. The Belsay title is not that survivor. It ended at the death of the tenth baronet in 1999. The holders were Sir William Middleton, the first, about 1625 to 1690; Sir John Middleton, the second, 1678 to 1717; Sir William Middleton, the third, about 1700 to 1757, member of Parliament for Northumberland from 1722 until he died; Sir John Lambert Middleton, the fourth, 1705 to 1768; Sir William Middleton, the fifth, 1738 to 1795, member for Northumberland from 1774 until he died; Sir Charles Miles Lambert Middleton, the sixth, 1779 to 1867, Monck from 11 February 1799, member for Northumberland from 1812 to 1820; Sir Arthur Edward Monck, the seventh, 1838 to 1933, Middleton again from 12 February 1876, member for Durham from 1874 to 1880; Sir Charles Arthur Middleton, the eighth, given as 1873 to 1942 and also as born in 1874; Sir Stephen Hugh Middleton, the ninth, 1909 to 1993; and Sir Lawrence Monck Middleton, the tenth, 1912 to 1999. The family and estate papers are held in the Northumberland Record Office. The line is traced in that account from Richard Middleton, chancellor to Henry III, through Sir Gilbert Middleton’s rebellion against Edward II, his capture and execution, the forfeiture, and the restoration by marriage under Edward III, and on to a Sir John Middleton who fought for York at St Albans and at Bosworth.

In the 1670s Sir William Middleton, by then a baronet, returned with his second wife, Elizabeth, found the house badly decayed, restored it, and added a western wing that balanced the medieval tower in the view. A west wing is also dated to 1711, and ruined fragments of a west wing are dated to the early eighteenth century, with walled gardens laid out in front. The first baronet, William, was dead by 1690. The second, John, lived until 1717. The wing dates and the lives of those men do not fix a single builder. An engraving of 1728 by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck shows a formal walled garden before the castle, evergreen shrubs clipped into cones and balls, and statues of a wild man and a wild woman, the family’s heraldic pair. Another notice of the same year speaks of grass plots adorned with topiary. Earthworks south of the castle and the manor still trace the strong central axis of those enclosed gardens. A sundial of 1711 was later moved away from the site. Sir William Middleton, the third baronet, succeeded in 1717 and died in 1757. He was a renowned breeder of racehorses and adapted outbuildings in the castle yard as a stable block. He also made a landscape park over the area the park still covers, with woods and single trees set to frame long views. He died leaving large debts, and the stud horses and the contents of the mansion were sold. The third, the fifth and the sixth baronets all sat for the county.

The nephew who repaired the family fortune was William, the fifth baronet, who married Jane Monck, heiress of a London merchant. He was a captain in the Royal Horse Guards. About 1790 he turned the public road that had run along the boundary of the earliest deer park, from Burnside northwards to Sheepfold on the Morpeth road, and so enlarged the enclosed ground. The new line entered the park at Bankfoot and ran due east to meet the road from Ponteland to Jedburgh, instead of leading directly past the castle and the manor. Belsay Lough, made as a reflecting sheet of water in the eighteenth-century manner, was drained in 1805. William died in 1795. His third son, Charles, inherited Belsay at the age of sixteen, together with estates in Essex and in Lincolnshire.

Sir Charles Monck, 6th Baronet, was born Charles Miles Lambert Middleton on 7 April 1779 and died on 20 July 1867. He became the sixth baronet in 1795, on his father’s death. The change of surname is dated in three ways. One account says that in the following year, 1796, he took the name Monck, a condition of inheriting the Lincolnshire estate of his maternal grandfather, Lawrence Monck, the name also spelled Laurence, of Caenby Hall at Caenby. Another ties the new name to that grandfather’s death in 1798. The baronetcy list says that on 11 February 1799, by royal sign-manual and according to the grandfather’s will, he assumed Monck in place of Middleton. He was educated at Rugby and by private tutors at Caenby. He was a diligent manager and was given control of his own affairs while still under age. He was High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1801. He sat for Northumberland from 1812 to 1820, described both as an independent and as a Whig, and he served for many years as a magistrate. Contemporaries found him bright and rather eccentric, with wide interests in gardening, botany, architecture, travel and horse racing. He refused to have his portrait painted, and late in life he took an interest in photography. A photograph of 1865 shows him at the age of 86.

In 1804 he married his cousin Louisa Cooke of Doncaster, also named Louisa Lucia Cook, daughter of Sir George Cooke, the seventh baronet. She died in 1824. They had two sons and four daughters. They spent a two-year honeymoon that he chose because of a passion for Greek formed at Rugby. They travelled through Germany, Austria and northern Italy and reached Athens in May 1805. That summer, while he visited ancient sites, sketched them and took measurements, Louisa gave birth in Athens to their elder son, Charles Atticus, who lived from 1805 to 1856. In 1835 Charles Atticus married Laura Ridley, the second daughter of Sir Matthew White Ridley, third baronet of Blagdon Hall. Their son was Arthur. A younger son was named William Monck. A daughter, Julia, married Sir Edward Blackett, the sixth baronet, as his first wife. A daughter, Louisa Maria, died in 1821. Charles married for a second time in 1831, Mary Elizabeth Bennett. In Greece he met William Gell, the antiquary and topographer, who lived from 1777 to 1836, and whose studies of classical buildings influenced the later remaking of the estate. The honeymoon diaries, kept from 1804 to 1806, note new classical buildings in Germany, including the Brandenburg Gate, and they record Greek landscape and native plants as carefully as measured walls, including a sketch of a statue of Nemesis at Porto Rafti in Attica, written in the journal as Port Raphte. Travels in the 1830s included the quarries at Syracuse in Sicily. A journal of 1825 and 1826 records an excursion through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, with visits to Chatsworth, to Wentworth Woodhouse and to several nurseries.

The hall he then built is called a masterpiece of the Greek Revival and one of the earliest uses of that manner in an English house. One account finds the construction remarkable because neither he nor his close acquaintances had any architectural training. He drew on the sites he had seen and on books of Greek architecture in his own library. Another account says the house was completed in 1817 with the assistance of the architect John Dobson. John Dobson was born on 9 December 1787 and died on 8 January 1865. He was the most noted architect in northern England in his lifetime, designer of more than fifty churches and a hundred private houses, best known for Newcastle railway station and for his work with Richard Grainger on the neoclassical centre of that city. Other buildings attached to his name include Nunnykirk Hall, Meldon Park, Mitford Hall, Lilburn Tower, the church of St John the Baptist at Otterburn, and Beaufront Castle. His own life, told apart from the hall, does not mention Belsay. Work on the house began in the summer of 1807, a year after the couple returned. The design is of uncompromising austerity. The building is of dressed sandstone blocks and is exactly 100 feet, or 30 metres, square. Like a Greek temple it stands on a crepidoma, a stepped plinth. Two massive Doric columns of an inset portico are copied from the Theseion, an ancient temple in Athens. Behind the plain outside, the rooms are arranged around a central Pillar Hall of two storeys, a plan taken from the Roman villa because no suitable Greek precedent could be found. The brass balustrade of the first-floor gallery was designed by his sister Isabella. Unplastered stone walls and a coffered ceiling in the entrance give the feeling of entering an ancient temple. The main reception rooms are decorated in a Greek scheme. A frieze in the library, above the bookcases, uses measurements he had taken from the Erechtheion on the Acropolis, a temple name also written Erechttheion in the same history. The work was finished towards the end of 1817. On Christmas Day he and his family moved the short distance from the castle into the new hall.

The large gardens are largely his as well. What he inherited in 1795 already had informal planting, a serpentine drive and a lake. He was drawn to the Picturesque, which preferred landscapes less conventionally beautiful and more wildly natural, and he is also said to have followed the principles and the techniques of Humphry Repton. North and east of the hall the ground was too gentle for drama, so he extended the eighteenth-century park and broke the view with clumps of trees. Southward, the house looked over a valley to a rocky hillside. He planted that slope as the Crag Wood Walk, mixing exotic conifers, Scots pine and native hardwoods, and he dammed the valley into a new lake with a small cascade. Immediately by the house he made a broad terrace walk with parallel borders of brightly coloured annuals. To the west, the quarry from which the hall stone had been cut became a garden of ravines, pinnacles and sheer rock faces, a contrast to the strict square of the house and a link between house and castle. The quarries at Syracuse, seen on the later journey, are taken to have inspired the development and the planting. A sheltered microclimate lets tender plants grow beyond their usual northern limit. A giant rhubarb in the quarry is nicknamed dinosaurs’ food. The layout is said to have stayed largely as he set it out in the early nineteenth century. After the move he demolished parts of the castle complex so that it would read as a picturesque eye-catcher and as a smaller residence for the estate steward. Parts of the castle were taken down so that it would look like a romantic ruin, the formal garden was removed, and stretches of the courtyard wall were replaced by a ha-ha, a sunk boundary, so that the medieval stone seemed to rise straight from grazed park. Lodges in the Greek manner echoed the hall. The village was shifted north, outside the park, and rebuilt in a matching classical style. The shaft of the medieval village cross was set up again near the castle. He experimented with stone cairns to protect parkland trees, a method later taken up elsewhere in the county, as at Kirkharle.

Charles died in 1867, aged 88, and his grandson succeeded him, Charles Atticus having died in 1856. Sir Arthur Middleton, 7th Baronet, was born Arthur Edward Monck on 12 January 1838 and died on 1 April 1933. His mother, Laura, was a daughter of Sir Matthew White Ridley. He attended Rugby, matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1856, received his bachelor’s degree in 1860, and was admitted to the Inner Temple on 5 April of that year. He succeeded to the baronetcy on 20 July 1867, the day his grandfather died. On 12 February 1876 he and his brothers changed their name from Monck back to Middleton. After the general election of 1874 for the City of Durham was voided on petition, he and Farrer Herschell were brought in as Liberal candidates. He was elected at the by-election and retired from the House of Commons at the general election of 1880. He was High Sheriff of Northumberland for 1884. On 8 November 1871 he married Lady Constance Harriet Amherst, daughter of William Amherst, second Earl Amherst. He outlived his eldest son, Gilbert, who was born in 1873, and was succeeded by his son Charles. He was the author of An Account of Belsay Castle in the County of Northumberland, published in 1910, and of Sir Gilbert de Middleton and the Part he took in the Rebellion of the North in 1317, published in 1918. A shorter paper on the castle appeared in 1905.

He respected the spirit of his grandfather’s changes and added his own across the estate. One account says a west wing was largely demolished in 1872, when the remainder of the house was considerably altered. He rebuilt the attached manor house of 1614 to give more rooms for staff. He employed the architect Charles John Ferguson, also named Charles Ferguson, to re-roof the pele tower and restore it to a medieval form, a project that matches his deep interest in the family past. The roof now in place is separately read as the re-roofing of 1896 to 1897, in which, by his own account of 1907, three original cambered oak beams were reused. The scheduling date of 1862 for a remodelling of the 1614 house falls before he inherited, while his grandfather was still alive. At the hall he changed less. Early in the twentieth century he remodelled the reception rooms to either side of the library, made new kitchens in the place of the housekeeper’s room, added a suite of servants’ rooms on the mezzanine, and improved the plumbing and the drainage. His mark on the gardens was larger, though he kept the picturesque aim. He planted masses of red, purple and white rhododendrons in the valley below the terraces. He added a winter garden with lawns for croquet and tennis, a yew garden, and a magnolia terrace. He extended the quarry garden and diversified the planting with more colourful and exotic species. He is also described as adding naturalised perennials in the manner advocated by William Robinson, and Himalayan rhododendrons collected by William Hooker and Frank Kingdon Ward. The quarry, in that telling, changed from a stark canyon into a sheltered garden of tender trees, shrubs, climbers and ferns. A photograph of about 1900 shows him among that planting. The formal gardens of the place have since been restored to their appearance in the 1920s and the 1930s, while his exotic plants in the quarry have grown into a mature picturesque mass. A later campaign by the garden designer Dan Pearson put in more than 80,000 new plants. A two-year conservation project has recently restored the hall.

Through the early twentieth century the family went on entertaining, supported by a large staff, though money was less plentiful than it had been. In the Second World War the army occupied the hall. The gardens were not maintained, but the kitchen garden was used for provisions. Furniture was stored in the attic, and soldiers occupied the bedrooms and the servants’ quarters. Later, when the house was a divisional headquarters, huts were set up in the service yard and in the grounds for more troops. Several thousand soldiers lived there. The first regiment moved in during September 1939, and letters show that men were there throughout the war. Some of those who trained at Belsay were sent to France in the early years of the war and were evacuated at Dunkirk. There is not a full record of which units were housed in the building. When floorboards were lifted during renovations costed at 9 million pounds, also described as a multi-million-pound project under the name Belsay Awakes, the spaces beneath held telegrams, cigarette packets and notes. A bus ticket and a telegram were among the pieces. A brush for cleaning boots turned up in a part of the hall not previously known to have been in use, and an envelope carried a scrawled note. Graffiti was found, and holes in a wall where a dartboard had been fixed, with the scores written beside them. Those finds were made public in August 2024.

After the war the family returned for a while and opened the castle and the gardens to visitors, to bring in some income. In 1962 Sir Stephen Middleton, the ninth baronet, whose full name is given as Sir Stephen Hugh Middleton, decided to move to Swanstead, a smaller and more manageable house on the estate. Many contents of the mansion were sold at auction, and dry rot began to infest the empty rooms. In 1980 the hall, the castle and the gardens were taken into the guardianship of the state. The same transfer is also placed at about 1980. A long programme of repairs followed. Wood and plaster were stripped out of many rooms in the hall and in the castle annexe because of the damp. Under the terms of the guardianship the hall is shown without furnishings, as an empty shell, so that the craft of its construction can be seen. Panels now guide a visitor through the bare rooms and explain how the family used them. Inside the castle a film tells the story in the voice of the wild man, the figure taken from the family crest. The wider estate remains in the family’s ownership. The tenth baronet, Sir Lawrence Monck Middleton, died in 1999, and the title became extinct at his death.

The tower was a strong place and a claim of rank on a violent border. It became a gentleman’s house when the crowns were joined, a picturesque ruin and a steward’s lodging when a Greek mansion replaced it as the family home, and a public monument when the state took the buildings and the gardens in 1980. The disagreement over the year of the walls, over the builder of the west wing, over the year the surname changed, and over whether the hollow east of the castle is a moat or a canal, is still carried by the masonry, the roof timbers and the earthworks. The laboratory dates belong to two beams, not to every stone. The corn dryer and the twelfth-century or early thirteenth-century occupation are older than any of those building dates. The papers under the floorboards belong to the soldiers of 1939 and after, not to the Middle Ages.

Two religious houses of the north lie near enough in a tour of the region to be mistaken for part of this estate, and neither is Belsay. Brinkburn Priory was begun in the twelfth century on a bend of the River Coquet, about four miles, or six kilometres, east of Rothbury, and so still in Northumberland. The church survived the dissolution of the monasteries because it was also a parish church. At some point before 1700 the roof collapsed and regular services were given up. In the 1750s Thomas Sharp, archdeacon of Northumberland, tried to bring about repairs. There was considerable support, but the work was called off after a dispute between the owner, William Fenwick, and the vicar of Felton. In the nineteenth century the Cadogan family, owners of Brinkburn, revived the plan. Work began in 1858. The roof was completed within a year, the stained glass was in place by 1864, and the church was not furnished until 1868. During the reconstruction the tombstone of Prior William, bishop of Durham, who died in 1484, was found, together with the original altar stone marked with five crosses. The church is Grade I and is a sympathetic nineteenth-century restoration of the medieval building. Little else of the monastery survives. A manor house just south of the church uses part of the vaulted undercroft of the monks’ dining hall and presents a nineteenth-century face. It is listed at Grade II*. Brinkburn Mill, once inside the precinct, was rebuilt in the nineteenth century and refurbished in 1990. The church itself has a nave and a north aisle of six bays, a crossing with a low tower, transepts of two bays with vaulted chapels to the east, and an aisleless chancel of three bays. Finchale Priory, sometimes called Finchale Abbey, is a Benedictine house of the thirteenth century beside the River Wear, four miles from Durham, and it too is Grade I. Godric was born about 1070. After years as a merchant, a sailor and a pilgrim, he settled as a hermit. About 1112, while he was doorkeeper at the hospital church of St Giles in Durham, Bishop Ranulf Flambard granted him a place at Finchale. He lived there an austere life for about fifty years and died on 21 May 1170. For almost a decade before that death he was confined to bed and cared for by monks of Durham. He was buried against the north wall of his church, where a cross in the grass marks the place. His life was first written by Reginald of Durham. From 1196 the hermitage was a dependency of Durham Cathedral, endowed by Bishop Hugh Pudsey and his son Henry for a prior and eight monks. The church stayed in various stages of building for more than a century. In the 1360s and 1370s the nave and the chancel were narrowed by the removal of the aisles. The house served as a rest for monks from Durham: four of them would come for three weeks at a time to join the four in residence. It was dissolved with the lesser monasteries in 1536. Fifty-two priors are listed, and accounts survive for much of the span from 1303 to 1535. None of the burials, the restorations or the dissolutions at Brinkburn or at Finchale is a find from the tower, the hall or the quarry at Belsay.

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