LYTHE, North Riding

Mulgrave Old Castle                                       NZ 839 117

Mulgrave Old Castle was a 13th century stone enclosed fortress. The tower house was converted into a keep in 1300 and in the 16th century mullion windows were added.

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In his Red Book of 1793 for Mulgrave Castle  Humphry Repton wrote;

​ ''There is also an ash in the bottom that at present hides the promontory on which once stood a castle, but which is unfortunately now disgraced by a keepers house, built with the fragments of that castle, and covered with a roof of gaudy scarlet tiles. As all the materials of this once proud Castle are laying near the spot, it would be very easy to collect the scattered stones which formed the buttresses, the battlements, and the machiolations, and to rebuild at least one tower, leaving it as a fragment of Baronial importance, This is all that I should deem advisable in the restoration of Old Mulgrave Castle; for if the whole building could be recovered, it would cease to be subordinate to the present mansion, and of course destroy that unity of composition which good taste requires in Landscape Gardening. 

Tunnel                                                                        NZ 841 117

The carriageway to Mulgrave Old Castle was designed by Humphry Repton to dramatise the approach by going through the darkness of a tunnel into light.