Bishop Middleham Castle

Bishop Middleham Castle was erected at the end of an inland promontory overlooking a dry valley and a maze of watercourses draining into the River Skerne. Today the site is used for agriculture and there is no access to the remains, which are principally a complex series of earthworks indicative of a series of buildings along the steep eastern side of the promontory, some of which have visible masonry extending well above the turf.

The manor of Middleham was a property of the Bishops of Durham, and was held by Osbert, the nephew of Bishop Flambard in the mid 12th century. In 1146 Osbert granted the manor to the Prior and Convent at Durham, and from this point onwards the bishops were occasional residents, until the latter 14th century when it was leased out. Early tenants were the bishops bailiffs, but eventually it was leased as a manor of importance, with important nobles like the Eure family being listed among them. This did not prevent the bishops coming to hunt in the park at times. In 1649 the manor was sold and presumably by this time the buildings were largely in disrepair. The later history of the site is unknown, the last standing structures being demolished in 1823. It was the subject of a DigVentures excavation in 2021, but I have not been able to work out how to use their website to see what they found! The photograph is a reconstruction of the site from the Bishop Middleham local community website.

DigVentures blog about site