Chillingham Castle
NU061257  7 km, 4 1/2 miles, east of Wooler

'Chevelyngham', the original name of this manor on the River Till, was part of the Alnwick barony until about 1170 when it was settled as a dowry on Thomas de Muschamp, Baron of Wooler, when Maud de Vescy married him. For many years, both before and after this transfer, the tenants of Chevelyngham were the Huntercomb family. Prosperous farmers, they built a fine stone manor-house early in the thirteenth century.

William Huntercomb climbed into the aristocracy by marrying Isobel Muschamp, one of three sisters who became joint inheritors of the barony when Robert, their father, died in 1250. William did rather better than he had dared hope, for the other two girls died young and he and Isobel were left in sole charge; no longer tenants, they were now the owners of Chevelyngham, with heritable rights.

Elevation meant also that the Huntercombs were on royalty's visiting list. King Henry 111 stayed with them in 1255 while returning from a holiday with his daughter, Scottish King Alexander III's queen, and in 1298 King Edward 1 called en route for less pleasant business at Falkirk.

Walterus replaced his father in 1271. He had no children so the next inheritor was a nephew, Nicholas de Neubaud in about 1300. This fellow managed to exhaust the coffers and was soon being hounded by creditors. He changed his name to Huntercomb, but that failed to mask the scent and soon he was borrowing money. The inevitable outcome was the sale of most of Wooler barony in 1326 to Sir John de Lilburn, and Chevelyngham, estate and manor-house - went to Sir Thomas de Heron in 1328. Sir Thomas moved in from Castle Heaton, which he sold to Thomas Grey.

In 1344 King Edward III granted Sir Thomas a licence to crenellate his new home, to strengthen it "with walls of stone and lime" and to convert it "into a castle or fortress". Thus encouraged, Sir Thomas knocked down most of the manor-house and built his Chillingham Castle on its site. Small parts of the old walling were incorporated in the base of the new edifice, notably in the south-west tower.
      The castle was of the quadrilateral, or courtyard, type, basically similar to the castles at Ford and Etal, both of which pre-dated it by a few years. It had a strong square tower at each corner, all with vaulted ground floor rooms and with a dungeon in the north-east tower. Curtain walls connected the towers, all quite plain except the south wall which was broken by a well protected entrance. Leaning against the inside facing of the walls were the castle's essential buildings - the great hall on the east, guard room on the  south and accommodation for retainers and horses on the west. There was nothing against the north wall. It seems probable, but not certain, that at this stage all the buildings were made of timber. Apparently as an afterthought, in 1348 when the work was practically completed, Sir Thomas remembered the vicar of Chillingham and added suitable quarters for him above the entrance.
         Castle building seems to have been contagious in this area at this time: first Ford, then Etal, then Chillingham and now a fourth appeared at Castle Heaton, the Greys' family home.  Northumbrian Borderers were making life as difficult as possible for Scottish raiders, yet they failed to eradicate the menace.  In 1353 it was reported that only four of the twenty-two farms on the Chillingham estate were tenable, all the others having been wasted.
            Castles are not frequently subject to swapping, but in 1398 the Greys and Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, did just that. The Greys exchanged their relatively new place at Castle Heaton for the grim frontier castle at Wark-on-Tweed and the Nevilles took Castle Heaton. At the time, neighbours must have thought the Greys quite mad, but perhaps they were gifted with remarkable foresight, for within twelve months the Nevilles had decided they did not like Castle Heaton and had moved out. The Greys repossessed, and thus entered the fifteenth century holding not one but two castles. Very soon they were to add a third.

                      At this very crucial time there is a tantalising forty year gap in Chillingham's recorded history. It is known that Alan de Heron held Chillingham in 1415, but apart from that there is a total blackout in the records from 1400 to 1440, a period during which the Hetons lost their castle and faded out of the picture while the Greys came into sharp focus. It is a mystery why and precisely when Sir Ralph Grey (elder brother of Sir John of Horton) found himself installed in Chillingham Castle, where he died in 1443.
         The Greys were a very powerful and wealthy family now. They owned Wark Castle (although the Crown borrowed it occasionally) and did not let it go until 1920. They held Castle Heaton from the Durham bishops until 1559 then owned it for a further forty or fifty years. Now they owned Chillingham and retained possession until 1982. In addition, the family developed an insatiable appetite for estates in and around Glendale - Coupland, Akeld, Hethpool, Kilham, Pressen, Nesbit and Fenton, Pawston and Westwood, to name a few.

Chillingham Castle got a face-lift lust before 1513, when the buildings ranged around its courtyard were replaced by larger structures in stone, providing accommodation for up to a hundred horsemen. Perhaps this is why only one attack on the castle is recorded. It happened in 1536 and came not from the Scots but from Northumbrian rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace. They besieged the place for a short time and the walls sustained a little cannon-fire damage which was replaced before 1541.

Major changes were made to the castle during Queen Elizabeth's reign, the most significant being the demolition of the blank north wall and the building in its place a palatial entrance reached by a cascade of steps and with a fashionable long gallery above it. Other innovations were a terrace on the south side of the courtyard and, leading from it, a much larger great hall in the south range.

King James 1 of England and VI of Scotland came to see this 'gentleman's mansion' in 1617, and in 1623 Sir William Grey, the owner, was elevated to the peerage as Lord Grey of Wark, supposedly in recognition of his efforts to pacify the post-Union Border. Such sovereign honour did not deter the new lord from supporting Parliament during the Civil War, 1642 to 1651, however. This treachery appears to have done no harm to the family's advancement, for when King William 111 was bestowing honours in 1695, Lord Grey's son, who had inherited in 1674, was created the Earl of Tankerville and Viscount Glendale. The earldom had originally been given to John Grey of Horton in 1419 and had been allowed to lapse in 1449. Since then the Horton and Chillingham branches of the Grey family had merged, so it was quite proper for the title to be resurrected. It went back into hibernation when the earl died in 1701, for he had no sons, but was revived a second time for the earl's son~ in-law thirteen years later. The lucky man was Charles Bennet, Lord Ossulston, and he obtained special permission in 1714 to don the earldom.

Much was done to the castle during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for you cannot stop a good earl from improving his status symbol. In 1753 a portico was built in the courtyard with an arcade below and grand stone stairs leading to a balcony which gave access to a new great hall in the modified south range. Many statues were included, including a selection of William Caxton's 'Nine Worthies'. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Charlemagne are there. The ground floor of the south range was converted into cellars and the outside south face was banked up with soil in order to bring the lawn right up to the hall.

In 1803 the east range was rebuilt to include a suite of state rooms. At the same time some new buildings, including a kitchen and servants' quarters, were built outside the quadrilateral on the east side. A quarter of a century later Sir Jeffrey Wyatville, fresh from his work at Windson Castle. commissioned to lay out the gardens and decorate the great hall. Finally in 1873, another building was added to the kitchen block.

The earl's family lived in this palatial residence until 1932, when death duties and maintenance expenses forced the eighth earl and his wife. Lady Violet Tankerville, to vacate the castle and move into a village house. They sold most of the castle's furniture and fittings but sentiment prevented their selling the building, which was left to decay. The decision finally to sell was made by the tenth earl, who lived in America, in 1982, by which time the place was virtually a ruin.

The buyer could not have been more suitable. Sir Humphrey Wakefield is an art dealer with lots of experience in restoring old buildings, and enough money to indulge in this hobby. As a bonus, his wife us a direct descendant of the Chillingham Greys. The decision to restore the castle to its former glory was acted upon immediately but will take many years to complete. Bv June 1986 part of the castle had been restored and the gardens had been tidied, so the public was invited to view the transformation. As work proceeds. more and more rooms are being opened.