An Englishman's home is his castle

Two landmark properties, Gilling Castle in North Yorkshire and a Cotswold manor farmhouse where the remains of a Norman motte and bailey can still be seen, come to market

- Penny Churchill

SUCH has been the response from interested parties to the relaunch onto the market of Grade I-listed Gilling Castle at East Gilling in the Howardian Hills AONB, 19 miles north of York, that selling agent Edward Stoyle has been more or less camping out at the former prep school to Ampleforth College for the past several weeks.

Having failed to find a buyer when last offered for sale in 2018, the historic, mainly Georgian country house is now being offered with almost 100 acres of gardens, farmland, woodland, and golf course, at a guide price of $3.75 million for the whole-a proposition that has elicited a raft of inquiries, not only from the UK but from as far afield as the Middle East, South Africa and the US. The sale is being handled by Lindsay Cuthill of Savills Country Department (020-7016 3820) and Mr. Stoyle in York (01904 617821).

COUNTRY LIFE'S Architectural Editor, John Goodall, once a pupil at Gilling, sets the scene in his introduction to the first of two articles published in the magazine in December 2020, in which he traces the intriguing history of the medieval building: 'Gilling Castle does not obviously declare either its depth of history or its exceptional interest. It stands at the point of a steep-sided ridge overlooking the Vale of Pickering, yet the main front today decisively turns its back on the view and masks the architectural complexity of the building. To the modern visitor, therefore, who approaches up a densely wooded bank from the village beneath, the impression is not of a castle commanding its surrounds-a relationship only apparent from a distance-but of a large, coherent Georgian country house enclosed by trees.'