The hotel was constructed in three stages, the old section on Avon Terrace in 1853, extended in 1862, and the corner Federation Filigree addition, built by May Craig in 1905/1912.

[2] The original part of the current building which is called the Castle Hotel (right hand side on Avon Terrace) was constructed in 1853 for Samuel Craig using ticket-of-leave men from the York Convict Hiring Depot.

Samuel Craig announced the opening of the old section of the Castle Hotel on 1 November 1854, promising “the largest and choicest selection of wines, spirits, etc ever brought over the hill”.

Commodious stockyards and enclosures.”[9] Praise was given to Samuel Craig in a newspaper of the day in September 1856:“Mr Craig has deserved well for the way in which his rooms, and especially the bedrooms, are arranged for light, air, and cleanliness; and although the other hotel-keepers are not chargeable with any want of the latter, they do not keep pace with the times; there is a visible want of progress about them in comparison with the Castle Hotel.

[13] This extended and older part of the hotel was described in 1966 as "an almost perfectly preserved coaching inn complex complete with kitchen, meat house, laundry, bathrooms, forge, stables, and fodder house clustered round a broad, generous courtyard at the back".

[h] [24] On 12 November 1885, a fire broke out in the yard of the Castle Hotel, burning a haystack, a dray, some timber and about 10 tons of sandalwood, all worth over £250.

[28] On 11 November 1892, quoting the Eastern Districts Chronicle:[29] a man named Peter Donnolley, employed as ostler at the Castle Hotel, had made application to Mr. Frank Craig, the landlord, for drink to be supplied to him.

Not satisfied with this Donnolley made repeated requests to be served, and refusing to leave the bar to attend to his duties Mr. Craig endeavoured to quietly eject him.

This evidently enraged Donnolley who with an open pen-knife attacked Mr. Craig, and succeeded in stabbing him in the stomach the full length of the blade, following up with an oath congratulating himself upon having achieved his end.

[41] The bar of the Castle Hotel was the scene of a murder on 17 April 1953 when market gardeners from two feuding Albanian families attacked each other and one was fatally stabbed.