After his victory at the Battle of Marston Moor against the forces of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell came upon Ripley Castle—a Royalist stronghold--and decided to stay the night. “Trooper Jane” Ingilby, who had ridden into battle in full armor against Cromwell, was forced to open her doors to the enemy--but she confined him to this library at pistol point. Betsa Marsh photo

Eleventh-century Skipton Castle was built by one of the Norman conquerors to control the local Saxons, but also saw action in the War of the Roses and the English Civil War. Betsa Marsh photo

Lady Anne Clifford planted a yew tree in the Tudor Conduit Court of her restored Skipton Castle in 1659. Betsa Marsh photo

Skipton Castle owner Sebastian Fattorini lends a hand throughout the castle, even ladling soup for visitors in the castle’s Clifford Tea Rooms. Betsa Marsh photo

Guide Jack Beck steps inside one of the vast fireplaces of Skipton Castle. Betsa Marsh photo

Newby Hall blooms with Europe’s longest herbaceous border. Betsa Marsh photo

Harewood House is the home of Lord Harewood, first cousin to today’s Queen Elizabeth II. The queen has visited the 1771 mansion, as did Princess Victoria and Grandduke Nicholas before they took their thrones. Betsa Marsh photo

A sphinx oversees the vast landscape of Harewood House. Betsa Marsh photo

Thomas Chippendale’s great State Bed at Harewood House, once dismantled and forgotten, has been restored. The bed cost 250 pounds to make in the 1770s, and 250,000 pounds to restore. Betsa Marsh photo

Sheep, such as this fellow wandering the lanes of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, are constant companions for travelers in the Yorkshire countryside. Betsa Marsh photo

Harrogate has been an elegant spa town for centuries, and its sulfur springs still bubble up out of the ground. Ten-year-old school chums Evie Houlgate, left, and Natasha Richardson play in the stream that flows outside the city’s Pump Room Museum. Betsa Marsh photo

Harrogate’s sulfurous spring water may be all right for some, but most Yorkshire drinkers prefer a different curative beverage, a pint of the local brew. Betsa Marsh photo

A lowering sky hangs over Castle Howard, home to the Howard family for 300 years and star of the new remake of “Brideshead Revisited,” Betsa Marsh photo

Castle Howard offers long vistas both inside and out. Betsa Marsh photo

Castle Howard shop: Clerk Heather Shaw poses with “Aloysius” teddy bears in the Castle House shop, an allusion to the castle’s association with the 1981 TV mini-series, “Brideshead Revisited.” The book’s character, Sebastian Flyte, ironically carries a teddy bear with him to Oxford University—and its pubs. Betsa Marsh photo

Tour Yorkshire and Your Home Is a Castle

By Betsa Marsh

Armorial crests, ancestral portraits and a Great Hall to show them off in. Even if we’re not to the manner born, we can all be kings and queens for a day in the noble houses of Yorkshire.

Travelers who venture two hours by fast train out of London to this northeast quadrant of England discover elegant spa towns and wild vales and moors. England’s largest county is a favorite of hikers, golfers and lovers of the grand country estate.

“This area has the greatest built heritage in Britain, more real gems than any area,” contends Sir Thomas Ingilby, deputy chairman of the Yorkshire Tourist Board. He helped develop the county’s Great Houses, Castles and Gardens marketing consortium.

“Everyone knows the chateaux of the Loire, but there are only 17 of them. We have 48, built over a 1,000-year time span.”

Ingilby is the 26th generation of his family to call Ripley Castle home—his is one of England’s 10-oldest families still in the same residence. In 2008, the Ingilbys mark their 700th year in the stout-walled fortress—“we’re almost local,” he jokes.

Sir Thomas has spent more than 30 years restoring Ripley Castle. At first, he was forced to sell half the estate to pay death duties, then took on a multi-million pound loan to restore the dilapidated buildings.

The castle is very much a family venture. Ingilby’s wife Lady Emma, heavily pregnant, once famously greeted a group of clay pigeon-shooting guests one morning, and returned to serve them tea that afternoon—having delivered their baby in the interval.

The Ingilbys’ youngest child, 12-year-old son Richard, leads the rousing castle tours for children.

Family legends reach back the full 26 generations, especially to the 16th and 17th centuries when, Sir Thomas writes in the castle guide book, the Ingilbys had an “uncanny ability to spot the losing side many years before trouble ever started, and then back it with all their might.”

His ancestors, given four days’ notice, hurriedly hired a plasterer to gussy up the Tower Room ceiling before King James I arrived in 1603, a gesture that went royally unrewarded.

Forty-one years later, royalist “Trooper Jane” Ingilby, who rode into battle in full armor, was forced to open her doors to the enemy, Oliver Cromwell, for an overnight stay. But she confined him to the library at pistol point.

In a nook of the Knight’s Chamber, a personal bit of family history springs open at just the right touch. In an era when training for the Catholic priesthood was high treason, Francis Ingilby went to France, took holy orders and dared to preach in secret across northern England.

The family carved a hole into the thick wall to hide him, safe behind a wooden panel. Although he was later arrested in York, hung, drawn and quartered, neither the family nor the house gave him up. His priest’s bolthole was only discovered when the room was being treated for beetle and dry rot—in 1964.

It’s the quirks of family and the twists of history that make a Yorkshire castle tour so much fun.

Sebastian Fattorini’s family has owned Skipton Castle for 50 years. The previous owner, he deadpans, “had it since 1310.”

Fattorini, a jeweler by training and family trade, was “press-ganged,” he claims, by that family into taking on the challenge of the castle 10 years ago. While he longs to make jewelry, the demands of one of England’s oldest medieval castles keep him too busy for more than “soldering an old lock.”

Skipton Castle, with its forbidding gatehouse and formidable round towers, was clearly built for battle—first against the native Saxons, when its Norman French owner built it in 1090, and later during the 15th-century War of the Roses.

A century later in the Civil War, Skipton was one of the last Royalist castles to fall to Cromwell after a three-year siege. As soon as Lady Anne Clifford repaired her beloved home in 1659, she planted a commemorative yew tree in the courtyard. The tree flourishes today, “a baby,” Fattorini said, in a country with 1,000-year-old yews.  

The melding of great house and grand garden into a pleasing whole became an English ideal in the 17th and 18th centuries. Newby Hall has been home to the Compton family for nearly 250 years. It’s a refined example, full of neoclassical Roman armor and Greek vases worked in the plaster to Robert Adam’s designs and furniture built for the house by Thomas Chippendale.

Outside, the gardening crew sees to Europe’s longest herbaceous border, a towering mosaic of heritage roses, golden achillea, orange helenium and purple salvia.

Prince Charles and Camilla “come here quite a lot,” guide Eric Nunns confides, but it’s another royal connection that catches the eye. Three vast pages of calligraphy line the staircase, illuminated with hand-colored letters and affixed with a royal seal. It took King Charles II’s scribes yards of vellum to say the monarch owed the Comptoms half a million pounds. “A debt,” Nunns says, “that was never paid.”

The royal link may be strongest at Harewood House, home to Lord Harewood, first cousin to today’s Queen Elizabeth II. The queen has visited the 1771 mansion, as did Princess Victoria and Grandduke Nicholas before they assumed the thrones of England and Russia respectively.

Lord Harewood’s family gave Thomas Chippendale, cabinetmaker supreme, one of his biggest commissions—for 10,000 pounds in the 1770s. He spent years building bureaus, making beds, even carving wooden pelmets to look like fabric above the windows in The Gallery.

“It is a grand house, but I feel it does have a human scale,” says David Viscount Lascelles, Lord Harewood’s eldest son. “You can actually imagine sitting by the fire, doing your needlework or talking after dinner.

“It does have the magnificent views for the owners and guests to enjoy. Country houses were built to impress--that’s why they had the best architects, designers and landscape designers of the time.”

This Globespin was updated 2009 and all information was accurate at that time.