Tutbury Castle

Tutbury Castle is a largely ruined medieval castle at Tutbury, Staffordshire, England, in the ownership of the Duchy of Lancaster and hence currently of King Charles III. It is a scheduled monument and a Grade I listed building. People who have stayed in the castle include Eleanor of Aquitaine and Mary, Queen of Scots, who was a prisoner there.

Tutbury Castle became the headquarters of Henry de Ferrers and was the centre of the wapentake of Appletree, which included Duffield Frith. With his wife Bertha, he endowed Tutbury Priory with two manors in about 1080. It would seem that Tutbury at that time was a dependency of the Norman abbey of St Pierre‑sur‑Dives.

William de Ferrers, 3rd Earl of Derby joined a rebellion against Henry II in 1173–74 and Tutbury Castle was one of at least twenty castles belonging to the rebels that were slighted.

The castle was "nearly destroyed" by Prince Edward in 1264 after the rebellion of Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby. In 1269, after a further rebellion the lands were given to Edmund Crouchback and have remained part of the Duchy of Lancaster.

By the 1300s the castle was largely repaired, though as a residential castle rather than a military strong-point.

"Thomas, the second Earl of Lancaster [c. 1278–1322], not only repaired the ravages it had sustained while in the hands of the Earl of Derby, but gave to it a grandeur and magnificence which it had not previously possessed. He made it his principal residence, and, from the more than princely style in which he lived, became a benefactor to the surrounding country, giving a stimulus to the industry of his tenantry, and finding a market for all their productions; his housekeeping in one year (1313) amounting to the amazing sum of 22,000l of our present [1836] money, and this too at a time when provisions of all kinds were remarkably cheap."

Some time before 1370 the castle was even more substantially rebuilt again by John of Gaunt. From 1372 until her death in 1394, the castle was the permanent residence of Constance, the wife of John of Gaunt. Her court lavishly patronised music and the arts, and was said to have "somewhat similar to a modern Windsor" in its ambition.

Text adapted from “Tutbury Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Tutbury Castle ranks #3,297 of 8,764 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #220 of the 356 mapped in England. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 3,770 times in the last 60 days, more than 81% of the atlas. 7 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Stoke-on-Trent, 37 km away. See how England compares in the castle statistics.

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