List of castles in England

Castles that have vanished or whose remains are barely visible are not listed, except for some important or well-known buildings and sites.

In other respects it is difficult to identify clear and consistent boundaries between two sets of buildings, comprising those that indisputably belong in a list of castles and those that do not.

[7] Castles continued to be built in England for several hundred years, reaching a peak of military sophistication in the late 13th century.

[10] In the far north of England, where conditions remained unsettled, fortified buildings continued to be built as late as the 16th century, not only by the rich and powerful but by any with adequate means, as defence not against great armies, but against the notorious Border Reivers.

Typically, a castle was the residence of a feudal lord, providing the owner with a secure base from which to control his lands,[12] and also a symbol of wealth and power.

Earlier fortified structures, such as the Saxon burh or the Iron Age hillfort, provided public or communal defences,[13] as did medieval town or city walls.

By the 16th century the role of fortifications had changed once more with the development of artillery capable of breaching even thick stone walls.

In the reign of Henry VIII, fears of invasion[14] led to the building of a series of new fortresses along the south coast of England,[15] known as the Device Forts or Henrician Castles.

These were designed to use and to defend against artillery, and since they were not private residences, but national fortifications, they do not possess what architectural historians have come to see as the defining characteristics of a castle.

[16] Nonetheless, they are visibly castle-like, being compact, with battlemented walls, squat turrets and sometimes a keep; and they were the last generation of fortresses in England to be known as castles, long before architectural historians began to argue that they should not be.

[17] One of them, Pendennis Castle, was one of the last Royalist strongholds to fall to the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War—starvation forcing surrender after a siege of five months.

Once fortifications had become altogether redundant, it became increasingly rare in England for new buildings to be described as castles, in contrast to France, where country houses continued to be known as châteaux.

Once no longer needed as fortresses, castles – if they were not abandoned – were, over the centuries, adapted and modernised to make them more suitable for continued use as residences:[20] large windows were inserted in defensive walls, as at Lumley; outer walls were demolished or lowered to open up views from within, as at Raby; new residential ranges were built to improve and extend accommodation, as at Windsor.

Some castles were restored after falling into ruin, like Bamburgh;[21] others, like Belvoir, were demolished and rebuilt, retaining little or none of the original structure.

Some of the pele towers of Northern England are included, but the more modest fortified buildings known as bastles are not, though the distinction between them is not always altogether clear.

However carefully the criteria for including a building or site on this list are set out, borderline cases are inevitable.