The History

The land where Amberley Castle stands was gifted to Bishop Wilfrid in 683 AD by Caedwalla, King of Wessex and the castle’s current buildings owe their origins to a timber-framed hunting lodge built in 1103 by Bishop Luffa. The following 400 years saw this lodge transformed into a fortified manor house complete with crenelations, battlements and a portcullis under the supervision of a number of resident bishops.

In the wake of the English reformation, the castle was leased to a series of tenants and during the Civil War it became a royalist strong hold. Oliver Cromwell sent General Waller to destroy the defences in 1643 and 20 to 30 feet was lost from the Curtain Walls and the Great Hall was destroyed, creating a ruin. After the Civil War, Amberley Castle was seized from the Church by Parliament and sold by the Office of Sequestration of Estates to Mr John Butler, a cloth merchant from London who built the Manor House out of the ruins which had been the Great Hall.