Castles in Turner’s YorkshireLet the castle walls guide you... This is a Turner Trails downloadable guide. You can discover more about Turner’s Yorkshire at www.yorkshire.com/turner.

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Turner returned to Yorkshire many times after 1797, often to visit friends at Farnley Hall, near Otley.

Scarborough was one place he returned to time and again, drawn to the imposing castle built above dramatic sea cliffs. He stopped off to sketch around the North Yorkshire coast in 1801. The castles at Helmsley and Pickering also made it on to his itinerary that year.

His next major tour of the county was in 1816 when he was commissioned to draw illustrations for Whitaker’s A General History of the County of York.

Turner’s Yorkshire CastlesWhen the artist JMW Turner first stepped foot in Yorkshire, he was quickly drawn to the county’s magnificent castles. Conisbrough Castle, in the very south of the county near Doncaster, was Turner’s second port of call in Yorkshire when he began his 1797 tour of the north. He would go on to sketch at least a dozen Yorkshire castles over the next twenty or so years.

Turner’s interest in castles came from his early work as a painter of architecture. In 1797 he was twenty-two and at the beginning of his career. He toured Yorkshire looking for subjects with which to enhance his growing reputation as a painter of romantic abbeys and castles.

He visited the castles at Knaresborough, Richmond, Spofforth and Harewood, as well as Conisbrough. There was a growing interest in antiquities and British history in the 18th century amongst the wealthy, which meant a healthy market in engraved illustrations of antiquarian sites.

Yorkshire’s Lost History

Whitaker’s History of York

was never completed. The

publisher worried about the

cost as it was to be seven

volumes with 120 engravings.

Then the author died in 1821.

The Richmondshire volume

was the only one published.

Turner used some of his

Yorkshire sketches for a

series on England and Wales

begun in 1827.

Interesting Fact...

Scarborough Castle, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Conisbrough Castle © Si Homfray

Spofforth Castle © Si Homfray

Scarborough Castle

www.yorkshire.com/turner

In 1816 he was looking for the definitive view which would be made into an engraving to illustrate Whitaker’s History series. But sometimes an unusual feature caught his eye, such as Conisbrough’s geometrical 12th century keep and Spofforth’s octagonal 14th century tower.

He also looked for viewpoints that placed the castles in their landscape. At Middleham and Richmond he took to higher ground above the castles to draw sweeping landscapes of fields, hills and rivers.

Longman’s, the publisher, chose the places, and with such a strong historical theme, it is no surprise to find eight castles on Turner’s itinerary. He even started with a castle, spending his first day making numerous sketches of Skipton Castle. He returned to Knaresborough, Richmond, Scarborough and Spofforth where his knowledge of the castles from previous visits allowed him to quickly find the views he wanted. He also added visits to Castle Bolton, Middleham and Ravensworth for the first time.

Turner’s sketches display his care in accurately depicting the castles’ architectural details in close-up views of ruined walls and towers. He would walk around each castle sketching from different angles in search of the ideal viewpoints, with the intention to turn them into watercolours at a later date.

www.yorkshire.com/turner

Where’s the Watercolour?Turner’s watercolour of Richmond Castle from the south is missing. It was lost when John Ruskin sold it sometime before 1878 and has never been found.

Did you know?

Cannons or Axles?Turner painted an iron forge near Conisbrough Castle. He painted a large iron object in one corner. It may be an axle for a waterwheel or one of Nelson’s cannons destined for HMS Victory.

Interesting Fact...

Middleham Castle

Richmond Castle © Si HomfrayKnaresborough Castle © Si Homfray

Richmond, Yorkshire © The Trustees of the British Museum

But more often he found a nearby river with a few waterside buildings he could place in the foreground. He set the pattern for this approach at Conisbrough where he shows the castle keep towering above a mill on the River Don. The mill powered an iron foundry that made cannons for Royal Navy warships.

Further north, he shows Richmond castle rising majestically above the River Swale from no less than four different locations. He turned a 1797 view from the south-west of Richmond into an unfinished atmospheric watercolour of sunrise above the castle. When he revisited this location in 1816, he created a more energetic study of light that is similar to the more abstract oil paintings which made him famous. At Pickering he sketched the castle from viewpoints along Pickering Beck, more or less followed later by the line of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

Mills feature once again at Knaresborough where his sketch from the opposite side of the River Nidd gives as much prominence to newly redeveloped cotton mills as to the castle perching on the cliff above. By the time he painted a watercolour of Knaresborough in 1826, Turner moved the mills down

into the shadow of a gorge and included a herder driving cows along a track.

A view of Harewood Castle is also from the far side of a river, though here buildings are replaced with a farmer leading a heavily laden hay wagon in front of the ruined 14th century fortified house.

As at Knaresborough, Turner usually drew the castles high up and in the background of his work. This makes the castles dominant, as at Scarborough where a watercolour study made in 1801 shows the ruin as an ominous stronghold towering high up on the cliff. Looking up at the battlements is enough to induce vertigo. But Turner usually chooses not to focus on the power and strength of the fortifications. Instead the castles tend to appear as romantic ruins with tumbled walls and fallen battlements as at Knaresborough, Middleham and Ravensworth. In his watercolours, Turner sometimes transforms Yorkshire’s castles into beacons that glow in low sunlight or hazy apparitions peering through morning mist.

Pickering Castle © Britain on View

Running Water Colours

Turner sheltered under

his umbrella to sketch

Ravensworth Castle. 1816 was

one of the wettest years on

record.

Interesting Fact...

Bed for a Renegade QueenBolton Castle was one of the prisons of Mary Queen of Scots. She was held here in 1569.

Did you know?

Ravensworth Castle

Skipton Castle

www.yorkshire.com/turner

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Leyburn

Richmond

Hawes

Northallerton

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Darlington

Whitby

Scarborough

Pickering

Middlesbrough

York

Wetherby

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A612612336Rotherham

Sheffield

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Barnsley

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Ripon

Hull

Grimsby

North YorkMoors

YorkshireDales

Middleham Castle

Bolton Castle

Richmond Castle

Ravensworth Castle

Knaresborough Castle

Spofforth Castle

Skipton Castle

Pickering Castle

Helmsley Castle

Scarborough Castle

Harewood

Conisbrough Castle

A B C D E F G H I J

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Helmsley Castle

This is a Turner Trails downloadable guide. You can discover more about Turner’s Yorkshire at www.yorkshire.com/turner.

Visiting Turner’s Yorkshire CastlesCheck the Turner Trails website for information on directions, opening hours and further details for each castle. You can click on the following links to go straight to the castle’s web page.

Bolton Castle, Conisbrough, Harewood, Helmsley, Knaresborough, Middleham, Pickering, Ravensworth, Richmond, Scarborough, Skipton and Spofforth.

You can find Turner Trails benches at the following castles – Bolton Castle, Helmsley, Ravensworth, Richmond and Skipton.

There are panels giving more details of Turner’s interest in castles at or near Bolton Castle, Richmond, Scarborough (South Bay) and Skipton.

When Turner left Yorkshire for the last time, he had created a series of sketches and watercolours of the county’s most impressive castles. Most of these castles survive today in much the same condition as they were in Turner’s time. Some are romantic ruins while others are still family homes. You can visit almost all of them to see for yourself the views that Turner sketched while discovering their rich history.

Steaming Through the ViewsPassengers on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway can see Turner’s views of Pickering Castle while travelling between Pickering and Newbridge. The railway line runs almost exactly along the route Turner

travelled when sketching the castle.

Interesting Fact...