'The Naked Carcase': The Long, Slow Death of Sheriff Hutton Castle 1590-1890

Author(s): Shaun Timothy Richardson

Year: 2013

Summary

In 1534, the visiting John Leland saw at Sheriff Hutton castle, North Yorkshire, "no house in the North so like a princely lodgings".  Yet scarcely ninety years later, the surveyor John Norden viewed only a "naked carcase", and today, four shattered towers remain from the original structure.  Instead of considering the creation of an elite landscape and the heyday of a great late medieval residence, this paper will outline the transformation of one and the destruction of the other in the period after the late 16th century. Through the construction of a careful record of archaeological, structural, landscape and documentary evidence, it is possible to demonstrate how, even as it was falling down, this monumental building continued to influence the development of the landscape around it.

Cite this Record

'The Naked Carcase': The Long, Slow Death of Sheriff Hutton Castle 1590-1890. Shaun Timothy Richardson. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Leicester, England, U.K. 2013 ( tDAR id: 428456)

Keywords

General
decay dismantle disuse

Geographic Keywords
United Kingdom Western Europe

Temporal Keywords
1590-1890

Spatial Coverage

min long: -8.158; min lat: 49.955 ; max long: 1.749; max lat: 60.722 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 716