Summary

A 14th-century medieval castle in County Durham, seat of Lord Barnard, set in a 200-acre deer park with a lake, used as a filming location for Elizabeth (1998) and Billions (Showtime, 2023).

About this location

Raby Castle stands in County Durham, approximately one mile north of the village of Staindrop and six miles northeast of Barnard Castle. The castle was built from around the 1360s for John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby, a powerful northern magnate of the Plantagenet period. The design is roughly octagonal, with nine towers of varying sizes arranged around a central courtyard. The principal towers include the Neville Gateway, the Clifford Tower (at five storeys the tallest), the Joan Tower, the Kitchen Tower, and the Mount Raskelf Tower. Within the courtyard is a great hall and a vaulted passage large enough — according to local tradition — for a coach and horses to drive through.

The castle played a role in the Rising of the North (1569), when the Neville earls of Westmorland assembled their forces in the great hall before their failed Catholic rebellion against Elizabeth I. After the rebellion, Raby was forfeited to the Crown and eventually passed through several hands before being purchased by Sir Henry Vane the Elder in 1626. The Vane family, later ennobled as Lords Barnard, have held Raby since. The castle was substantially remodelled in the 1780s by the architect John Carr, who transformed several of the medieval rooms into comfortable Georgian apartments while preserving the medieval shell, and further work was carried out in the early 19th century. The 200-acre deer park contains a lake — Raby Lake — and herds of deer that have been at the castle since the medieval period.

Elizabeth (1998, director Shekhar Kapur, starring Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I) used Raby Castle as a royal setting, with the castle’s medieval exterior doubling for various English royal houses. Raby Lake was used as a stand-in for the Thames during the filming of a night-time party scene. Billions (Showtime/Paramount+, Season 7, 2023, directed by various, starring Damian Lewis) used Raby Castle as the ancestral home of Bobby Axelrod, appearing in Episode 2 “Original Sin”.