Today’s ruins date from the turn of the 13th Century. After consolidation by the de Roos family, the castle briefly passed to Richard III until his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Ownership reverted to the family who retained the lordship through descendants until 1688. The castle saw action just once when, in 1644, a Royalist garrison surrendered to Sir Thomas Fairfax’s Parliamentarians. Much of the castle was subsequently dismantled, with the exception of the Elizabethan residence fashioned from the original medieval buildings. Fairfax presented this to his daughter.