Ripley Castle

Summary

A Grade I listed medieval castle and estate in the village of Ripley, North Yorkshire, three miles north of Harrogate, held by the Ingilby family for approximately 700 years; comprising a tower house of around 1555 built by Sir William Ingilby, an entrance gatehouse, and later Georgian extensions, set within a designed landscape with walled gardens and deer park; used as a filming location for The Flaxton Boys (Yorkshire Television, 1969–1973), Escape from the Dark (Disney, 1976), Gunpowder (BBC, 2017), and Anne Boleyn (Channel 5, 2021).

About this location

Ripley Castle stands in the village of Ripley in North Yorkshire, approximately three miles north of Harrogate in the Yorkshire Dales fringe. The Ingilby family have held the estate since around 1320, when Thomas Ingilby is recorded as lord of the manor, making it one of the longest continuously family-held estates in England. The core of the present castle is a tower house built around 1555 by Sir William Ingilby, constructed in the local magnesian limestone that gives the building its characteristic pale golden colour. A gatehouse of similar date survives and retains its original portcullis groove. Later additions in the Georgian period extended the domestic accommodation, creating the present irregular range that surrounds a courtyard.

The estate village of Ripley was substantially rebuilt in the 1820s by Sir William Amcotts Ingilby, who demolished the original village and constructed the present estate village in an Alsatian style, reportedly influenced by a village he had seen in France, complete with a Hôtel de Ville that serves as the village hall. The village retains this unified planned character and has been used as a film and television location in its own right.

The walled gardens at Ripley Castle date from the early 19th century and include a kitchen garden, herbaceous borders, and a tropical plant house. The estate includes a deer park with a herd of fallow deer, a lake formed from a dammed stream, and woodland walks. The Ingilby family opened the castle and gardens to visitors from the 1980s onwards as part of a commercial programme that has included filming.

The Flaxton Boys, a Yorkshire Television children’s drama series broadcast from 1969 to 1973, used Ripley Castle as the principal location for the fictional Flaxton Hall, around which the series’ episodes centred; the long run of the series meant the castle appeared across multiple series. Escape from the Dark (Walt Disney Productions, 1976, directed by Charles Jarrott, starring Alastair Sim as Lord Harrogate, Peter Barkworth, and Maurice Colbourne, released in the United States as The Littlest Horse Thieves) filmed at Ripley Castle, which served as the residence of the mine-owning Lord Harrogate. Gunpowder (BBC Two/HBO, 2017, written by Ronan Bennett and Kit Harington, directed by J. Blakeson, starring Kit Harington as Robert Catesby, Peter Mullan as Robert Cecil, and Liv Tyler as Anne Vaux) used Ripley Castle among its principal filming locations for the period drama depicting the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Anne Boleyn (Channel 5/Fable Pictures, 2021, written by Eve Hedderwick Turner, directed by Lynsey Miller, starring Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn and Mark Stanley as Henry VIII) filmed at Ripley Castle for sequences depicting the Tudor court.