Chapter Eleven

11


Hartley Castle History 101:


Baron Montague to Barren Harland

Apparently Hartley Castle has a colourful history, although it also might not. Depending on who you talked to, it was either built by Baron Montague in the late 14th century or Baron Hartley in the early 15th century. Neither was in fact the case: peasants built it with either Baron Montague or Baron Hartley popping by to check on progress. Whatever the reality, everyone is agreed that Baron Hartley got his lily whites on the thing early enough to claim naming rights without anyone noticing.

Interestingly, a plaque on the West Front of the castle ruins declares that Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII, lived at Hartley Castle from 1540 to 1543 while married to the third Baron Latimer, John Neville. Strangely a similar plaque on the South Front of Danby Castle twenty miles across the Moors claims she lived there at precisely the same time. Locals are divided: those in Cragmoor swear Catherine lived at Hartley Castle, those in Danby insist she resided at Danby Castle. It seems the only person who really knows is Catherine Parr herself, but, at the time of writing she had been dead for five hundred years and in no state to comment.

Nevertheless, it seems safe to assume that Hartley Castle had at some time or other in its long, illustrious history been occupied by rich gin swilling, fox hunting nobs, a good many of them Hartleys. Five generations of them so it seems, the last of them reluctantly passing the castle over into new non-Hartley hands when they all died of the plague.

How the castle fell to ruin again depends on who you talk to. The more romantic speak of cannons and rampaging Scots; the more pragmatic of dodgy concrete and errant lorries. As for the farmhouse, that was definitely added sometime between the 15th and 21st centuries by builders. Cragmoor locals say the house is three hundred years old. They also say that stones from the demolished north-east tower were used to build the house, and that the South Range was left as is, adjoined to the house by an original castle door.

All of this, some of this or none of this may be true. Hartley Castle historians were however agreed on two things: one – the house was haunted by a three legged lamb; two – early in the twenty-first century, Hartley Castle House welcomed its latest, least illustrious and least English resident – an unemployed advertising copywriter from New Zealand.