These are the seven that still look the part, turrets, keeps, and all, not the stately homes that get called castles by mistake.
Say “Yorkshire castle” to most people, and they picture Castle Howard, all dome and colonnade and eighteenth-century swagger. It is a beautiful building. It is also not a castle. It never held a garrison or took a siege. It is a country house with a castle’s name borrowed for grandeur.
The real fairytale castles Yorkshire hides are smaller, older and stranger. Some still have a family’s furniture in the hall. Some are bare stone shells open to the sky. All seven of the ones below have turrets, keeps or curtain walls you can actually stand inside, and a fact behind them that most visitors never hear.
Region: North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Coast
Best for: history, photography, a day out that does not need booking weeks ahead
Getting there: a mix of car and rail, road and station access confirmed under each entry
Time needed: two to four hours per castle, longer if you build in a village walk or a meal after
What Makes These the Real Fairytale Castles Yorkshire Has
A fairytale castle needs more than a good silhouette. It needs a keep or a curtain wall you can actually stand inside, a family or a monarch attached to it by name, and a story that checks out against a real source rather than a caption written for a wedding brochure. Every entry below passed that test. A couple of well-known names were intentionally left out.
Ripley Castle, Harrogate
Sir Thomas Ingilby married the heiress Edeline Thwenge in 1308, and the Ripley estate came with her as a dowry. The Ingilby family held it for 700 years and 28 generations after that, through a Gunpowder Plot connection so close that nine of the eleven known conspirators were relatives or associates, and through the night Trooper Jane Ingilby is said to have held Oliver Cromwell prisoner in the castle library after the Battle of Marston Moor.
That run ended in January 2025, when Sir Thomas and Lady Ingilby put the castle and its 445-acre estate on the market to retire, the first time in seven centuries it has been offered for sale. As of this year, it remained unsold, and the asking price was cut from an initial £21 million to £7.5 million. The gardens and grounds are still open daily, and the castle itself runs guided tours on a set seasonal timetable rather than daily access, a change introduced during the sale process, so check the current hours before you drive over.
Walk the lakeside path in late afternoon, and the light comes low across the water toward the ivy on the east front, the one view every photograph of Ripley reaches for.
Where to Stay: The Boar’s Head, Ripley, a coaching inn on the castle estate itself with 23 rooms and a dining room built on local produce.
Worth Knowing: The castle’s boar’s-head crest dates back to an ancestor who saved a king from a wild boar during a hunt and was knighted for it.
Bolton Castle, Wensleydale
Richard II gave Richard le Scrope licence to build Bolton Castle, and it stood complete by 1399. Its most famous resident arrived under guard on 13 July 1568: Mary, Queen of Scots, held there after fleeing Scotland, and was kept until January 1569 with a household of 51 people, including two laundresses, a surgeon, and an apothecary. She was allowed to hunt and wander the estate, and it was here that she began learning English.
The castle still belongs to a family connected to the Scropes by descent, and it stands mostly roofless now, open to the sky above rooms you can still walk through, room by room, kitchen to dungeon to battlements.
Stand on the battlements on a clear evening and Wensleydale runs out flat and green in every direction, the same view Mary had from her captivity.
Where to Stay: The Blue Lion, East Witton, a traditional Dales inn a short drive from the castle with seasonal dining and comfortable rooms.
Worth Knowing: The castle sits close to Jervaulx Abbey, one of the ruined abbeys featured in our guide to abbey walks across North Yorkshire, making for an easy pairing for a day out.
Skipton Castle
Robert de Romille, a Norman baron, built Skipton Castle in 1090 above the Eller Beck, where two Roman roads crossed on the route through the Aire Gap. Edward II handed it to Robert Clifford in 1310, and the Cliffords held it through the centuries that followed, including a three-year Civil War siege that made Skipton the last Royalist stronghold in the north of England before its surrender in December 1645.
Over 900 years old and rebuilt in stone through the thirteenth century, it is rated one of the most complete medieval castles standing in England, not a partial ruin propped up for tourists but a real, roofed, walkable fortress on the town’s own high street.
Duck through the low doorway into the inner ward, and the stone holds the day’s cold long after the street outside has warmed up.
Where to Stay: Herriots Hotel, Skipton, a Victorian townhouse hotel a five-minute walk from the castle and the market town centre.
Worth Knowing: The castle anchors one stop on our Yorkshire Dales villages route from Skipton to Keld, useful if you want to keep driving north afterwards.
Richmond Castle
Alan Rufus began building Richmond Castle in 1071, five years after the Norman Conquest, and his great-nephew Conan raised the keep in the century that followed, a tower that still stands over 100 feet high with walls up to 12 feet thick. By the early 1500s, it had fallen into disrepair and remained a ruin for 300 years before restoration brought it back.
English Heritage now rates it the best-preserved early Norman castle in England, with more surviving eleventh-century stonework than anywhere else in the country of its scale and age.
Climb the keep stairs, and the market town below opens out through the tower’s narrow window slits, the same sightlines a Norman garrison would have used to watch the Swale valley.
Where to Stay: Millgate House, Richmond, a Georgian townhouse a short walk from the castle, known for its walled garden and named one of Britain’s top ten bed and breakfasts by VisitBritain.
Worth Knowing: The keep’s staircase is the original, not a modern reconstruction, one of the few in Yorkshire you can say that about.
Middleham Castle
Richard III was thirteen when he joined the household of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, at Middleham in 1465, sent there after his father died at the Battle of Wakefield. He grew up training alongside Warwick’s own children, including Anne Neville, whom he later married. After becoming king in 1483, Richard kept returning to Middleham, including in 1484 after the death of his young son there.
The Norman keep at its core, built in the twelfth century, is among the largest in England, and the Neville family expanded the whole site into what became known as the Windsor of the North. English Heritage has managed it since 1925.
Wind funnels through the roofless keep on any given day, with the weather, the closest thing to hearing what a working castle actually sounded like.
Where to Stay: The Dante Arms, Middleham, a seventeenth-century coaching inn on the market square, renamed in 2018 after a locally trained racehorse.
Worth Knowing: Middleham is still a racehorse training town today, and strings of horses regularly cross the road below the castle walls on the way to the gallops.
Knaresborough Castle
Around 1100, William the Conqueror granted the manor to the Flemish knight Serlo de Burgh, who raised a timber motte-and-bailey castle on the limestone cliff above the River Nidd. Stone walls replaced the wooden palisade by the 1130s, and documentary records from that decade show Henry I already paying for work on the site. In 1170, Hugh de Moreville and the other knights who killed Thomas Becket fled here afterwards. King John later spent £1,290 on improvements, an enormous sum for the period.
What remains today is a ruin rather than a complete building, the keep and the outline of the walls standing above the gorge, with the town’s rooftops and the viaduct visible below.
Look down from the castle grounds at dusk, and the river gorge fills with shadow first while the castle stone above still holds the last of the light.
Where to Stay: Dower House Hotel & Spa, Knaresborough, a Best Western property a five-minute walk from the town centre with 29 individually styled rooms.
Worth Knowing: The castle grounds include a museum inside the old courthouse, one of the few in Yorkshire still in something close to its original building.
Scarborough Castle
William le Gros, Count of Aumâle, began fortifying the Scarborough headland in the 1130s, and Henry II rebuilt it properly in stone from 1159, spending roughly £650 over the following decade, another enormous outlay for the period. The site had already been in use far longer than that: excavations found Iron Age and Roman signal-station activity beneath the medieval castle, and Anglo-Scandinavian remains besides.
English Heritage manages the site today, a great square keep and long stretches of curtain wall standing on a headland with the North Sea on three sides.
Walk the headland path in a stiff onshore wind, and the keep takes the worst of it exactly the way it was built to, standing between the town and the sea.
Where to Stay: Crown Spa Hotel, Scarborough, a beachfront hotel built in 1844 overlooking South Bay, a short walk from the castle headland.
Worth Knowing: The castle headland has been fortified or settled in some form since the Iron Age, long before the Normans ever arrived.
Practical Tips
- Check opening hours before travelling; several of these castles run seasonal or day-specific timetables rather than daily access, Ripley Castle especially, where hours have already changed once this year.
- English Heritage members get free entry to Richmond, Middleham and Scarborough castles, worth checking if you plan to visit more than one.
- Wear proper footwear. Uneven stone floors and open stairwells are standard at every ruined site on this list.
- Bring cash as well as a card; several castle shops and nearby village cafes are cash-only or have unreliable card readers.
- Use the AllTrails app to find the walking routes that link some of these castles to nearby villages and abbeys.
- Photograph early or late in the day. All seven sit in open country or clifftop settings with little shade at midday.
Responsible Visiting
Stay on marked paths at every ruined site; the stonework at Knaresborough and Scarborough, in particular, is centuries old and not load-bearing in the way it looks. Do not climb on walls or into roped-off sections, even where a fence looks casual. Take your rubbish home; bins are limited or absent at several of these sites. Dogs are welcome at most on a lead, but check individual castle rules before you bring one.
Reader Q&A
Which Yorkshire castle looks the most like a fairytale castle?
Ripley Castle, for the ivy on its east front and the lake in front of it, though its current opening hours are unsettled while the estate sale continues, so check before you travel.
Are any of these castles free to visit?
No single one is free, but English Heritage members get free entry to Richmond, Middleham and Scarborough, three of the seven on this list.
Which of these castles is best for children?
Skipton Castle, because it is largely roofed and intact rather than a bare ruin, with rooms children can walk straight into rather than just view from a barrier.
Can you visit Ripley Castle right now?
Yes. The gardens are open daily, and the castle runs guided tours on a set seasonal schedule, though the estate remains for sale and hours have already changed once in 2025, so check the current timetable on the castle’s website before travelling.
Is Bolton Castle still owned by a family, or is it run by a heritage body?
It remains privately owned by a family descended from the original Scrope line, not run by English Heritage or the National Trust.
Which castle has the most complete surviving structure?
Skipton Castle, rated one of the most complete medieval castles standing anywhere in England, largely roofed rather than ruined.
Where to Stay
The Boar’s Head, Ripley. A coaching inn on the Ripley Castle estate, 23 rooms and a dining room built on local produce.
The Blue Lion, East Witton. A traditional Dales inn near Bolton Castle with seasonal dining and comfortable rooms.
Herriots Hotel, Skipton. A Victorian townhouse hotel five minutes on foot from Skipton Castle and the town centre.
Millgate House, Richmond. A Georgian bed and breakfast near Richmond Castle, known for its walled garden.
The Dante Arms, Middleham. A seventeenth-century coaching inn on the market square below Middleham Castle.
Dower House Hotel & Spa, Knaresborough. A Best Western hotel a five-minute walk from Knaresborough Castle.
Crown Spa Hotel, Scarborough. A beachfront hotel from 1844 overlooking South Bay, near Scarborough Castle.
Seven castles, seven different endings, from a family still fighting to keep 700 years of ownership to a headland that has been fortified long before anyone thought to call it Yorkshire.
