Wingfield Manor

Wingfield Manor

Historic Wingfield Manor, South Wingfield, Derbyshire South Wingfield, United Kingdom. The vast and immensely impressive ruins of a palatial medieval manor house arranged round a pair of courtyards, with a huge undercrofted Great Hall and a defensible High Tower 22 metres (72 feet) tall. This monument to late medieval ‘conspicuous consumption’ was built in the 1440s for the wealthy Ralph, Lord Cromwell, Treasurer of England. Later the home of Bess of Hardwick’s husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots here in 1569, 1584 and 1585.Please note: Wingfield Manor is part of a working farm. Please respect the owner's privacy at all times. No public access except by pre-booked guided tours. To book please call 0370 333 1181.The remains of a medieval great house built in the mid-C15 for Ralph, Lord Cromwell. Its upstanding remains date to four main building phases between 1439 and 1455. In its final form, it is a double courtyard great house comprising an inner court to the north and a larger outer court to the south. The buildings of the outer court were two-storeyed and provided accommodation and offices for staff. The east and west building ranges are ruinous but the former includes an upstanding gatehouse. The passage through the gatehouse is flanked on either side by a gate lodge while immediately south of the gate is an extant aisled barn with a residential upper storey thought to have been used as a dormitory for staff. A buttressed wall forms the south side of the outer court and may originally have been part of a third building range. There are no visible remains of such a range. The house was approached by a sunken track from the north east and entered through the gateway noted above. Access to the inner court was through a second gateway.

Neil Gabriel