Ashby de la Zouch Castle

Ashby de la Zouch Castle is a ruined fortification in the town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, England. The castle was built by William, Lord Hastings, a favourite of Edward IV, after 1473, accompanied by the creation of a 3,000-acre (1,200 ha) park. Constructed on the site of an older manor house, two large towers and various smaller buildings had been constructed by 1483, when Hastings was executed by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The Hastings family used the castle as their seat for several generations, improving the gardens and hosting royal visitors. During the English Civil War of the 1640s, Henry, a younger son in the Hastings family, became a Royalist commander in the Midlands. He based himself at the castle until he was forced to surrender it after a long siege. A fresh rebellion occurred in 1648, leading Parliament to slight the castle in order to prevent it being used militarily: the two towers were badly damaged with gunpowder and undermining. Parts of the remaining castle were turned into a new house and continued to be used by members of the Hastings family for many years, although they moved their main residence to Donington Hall. The castle became famous after it featured in Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe in 1819, and its owner, Francis Rawdon, opened the ruins to visitors. Restoration work was carried out over the course of the next century, but by 1932 the Rawdon family could no longer afford to maintain the castle. It passed into the guardianship of the Ministry of Works, who carried out extensive repairs and opened the castle gardens. In the 21st century, the castle is managed by English Heritage as a tourist attraction, receiving 15,164 visitors in 2015. The historian John Goodall considers the site to be an "outstanding example of a late medieval castle", with its grounds forming "one of the best-preserved and most important" examples of an early Tudor garden.

A manor had existed at Ashby-de-la-Zouch from at least 1086, when the location was known as Ascebi. The lands were acquired by Robert de Beaumont, the Count of Meulan and later Earl of Leicester, in 1100. He established the Belmeis family there as his tenants and, after the Belmeis family line died out in 1160, the earls of Leicester reassigned the estate to the La Zouche family, from whom the manor took its later name. At some point during this period, a manor house was constructed on the same site as the later castle, with a hall and a solar. A settlement grew up alongside the house and, by 1334, the town was probably the sixth-largest in the county. By the mid-1300s, the manor house reportedly included a hall, a chamber, a long house containing service facilities, and was surrounded by a dovecote, orchard and a rabbit warren, accompanied by a 60-acre (24 ha) deer park. The hall and solar were rebuilt by the le Zouches during the second half of the 14th century, but the building remained what the historian Norman Pounds has called a "rather modest manor house". The le Zouch line died out in 1399, leaving the inheritance of the family estates uncertain. The manor probably passed to Sir Hugh Burnell, which was married to one of the co-heiresses. He arranged its sale to Joan Beauchamp, Baroness Bergavenny, who from around 1420 increasingly lived there in preference to her previous residence at Harvington in Worcestershire. Joan's daughter married James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, and through this connection must have passed into possession of James Butler, the Earl of Ormond and Wiltshire. The Wars of the Roses broke out in England during 1455 between the rival supporters of the Lancastrian and Yorkist factions. James, a Lancastrian, was captured at the Battle of Towton by the Yorkist leader Edward IV in 1461 and executed; the Crown seized his es

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