Flamborough Castle, also known as the Danish Tower, is a Grade II listed Medieval manor house in Flamborough, East Riding of Yorkshire of which partial ruins survive.
History The first fortified manor house that existed on the site was built around 1090 by the Constable family, and it is mentioned between 1180 and 1193 when a constabularius existed on the site.
The surviving Farnborough Castle structure was built on the site of an oratory constructed in 1319. Construction began on 12 February 1352Maxwell Lyte, H.C. (ed), 1907, Calendar of Patent Rolls Edward III (1350-54) Vol. 9 p. 75 by Marmaduke Constable ( – 1378) after he obtained a licence to crenellate from King Edward III on 24 May 1351.Hugill, R. (1970) Castles and Peles of the English Border. The main tower of the Castle was the Danish Tower, and the building was in use by the Constable family until it was abandoned when Sir Robert Constable was executed on 6 July 1537, causing his family to forfeit Flamborough Castle among thirty-four other manors to the King.'Constable of Flamborough', in J. Foster (comp.), Pedigrees of the County Families of Yorkshire, 3 volumes (W. Wilfred Head for the author, London 1874), II (recte III): North and East Riding, unnumbered sheet in alphabetical sequence (Internet Archive). It was in ruins by until some repairs were carried out in 1543 but the building was largely demolished by when the kitchen was removed.Purdy, J. D. (1974) ‘Flamborough’. In Allison, K J (ed) A History of the County of York East Riding (=VCH) vol 2, 151-164McDonagh, B. (2007) Manor Houses, Churches and Settlements: Historical Geographies of the Yorkshire Wolds before 1600. (University of Nottingham PhD thesis, available online at http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11632/1/439852.pdf)
Although the Constable family were able to regain their Flamborough estate from Queen Elizabeth I in 1582, they did not live there as it was in a state of ruin. They sold the Castle in 1636 and the Strickland family purchased it in 1656. The ruins of Flamborough Castle were then in use as a cattle barn by 1798, and were used as a cattle barn until at least 1892. Stones from the castle were stolen over time to construct later buildings in Flamborough with evidence of lime kilns being built on the site in the form of surviving earthworks.
The north wall collapsed no later than 1925,Brearley, F. (1971). A History of Flamborough, p. 183 and the vaulted chamber collapsed before 1971.
Excavation The earthworks surrounding the castle were first excavated by J. R. Earnshaw in ,Earnshaw, J. R. (1965). ‘Flamborough, E.R’. In Ramm, H G 1965 ‘Yorkshire Archaeological Register 1964’. Yorkshire Archaeological Journal vol 41, 315-337 and Flamborough Castle was excavated again and also partially repaired between 2017 and 2018.
Description In 1537, John Leyland visited Flamborough Castle. He mentioned that the building included a tower, a hall, a 'great parlour', a 'lord's parlour', a chapel, a court house, a mill house, and a great barn.
Today, alongside the surrounding earthworks, three walls of the Danish Tower survive and they only stand to tall.
See also Listed buildings in Flamborough
References