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Home , Bolton Castle, Conisbrough Castle, Helmsley Castle, Knaresborough Castle, Middleham, Middleham Castle

Bolton © Si Homfray

Castles in Turner’s Let 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. Turner’s Yorkshire When the artist JMW Turner first stepped foot in Yorkshire, he was quickly drawn to the ’s magnificent castles. Castle, in the very south of the county near , 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 , Richmond, Interesting Fact... Spofforth and Harewood, as well as Conisbrough. There Conisbrough Castle © Si Homfray Yorkshire’s Lost History was a growing interest in antiquities and British history in the 18th century amongst the Whitaker’s History of wealthy, which meant a healthy market in engraved illustrations of was never completed. The antiquarian sites. publisher worried about the cost as it was to be seven volumes with 120 engravings. Then the author died in 1821. The volume was the only one published. Turner used some of his Yorkshire sketches for a series on and Wales begun in 1827.

Spofforth Castle © Si Homfray

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 in 1801. The castles at 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 Scarborough Castle, Ashmolean Museum, General History of the County University of Oxford of York.

www.yorkshire.com/turner Longman’s, the publisher, chose the places, and with such a strong historical theme, it is no Did you know? surprise to find eight castles on Turner’s itinerary. He even Where’s the Watercolour? started with a castle, spending his first day making numerous Turner’s watercolour of sketches of Castle. He from the returned to Knaresborough, south is missing. It was lost Richmond, Scarborough and when John Ruskin sold it Richmond, Yorkshire © The Trustees Spofforth where his knowledge sometime before 1878 and of the British Museum of the castles from previous has never been found. visits allowed him to quickly find the views he wanted. He also added visits to Castle Bolton, and 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.

Knaresborough Castle © Si Homfray Richmond Castle © Si Homfray

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 and Spofforth’s octagonal 14th century tower. He also looked for viewpoints that placed the castles in their Interesting Fact... landscape. At Middleham and Richmond he took to higher Cannons or Axles? ground above the castles to draw sweeping landscapes of Turner painted an iron forge fields, hills and rivers. 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 www.yorkshire.com/turner for HMS Victory. 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 Interesting Fact... majestically above the from no less © Britain on View than four different locations. Running Water Colours He turned a 1797 view from the south-west of Richmond into an Turner sheltered under unfinished atmospheric watercolour of sunrise above the castle. his umbrella to sketch When he revisited this location in 1816, he created a more energetic Ravensworth Castle. 1816 was study of light that is similar to the more abstract oil paintings one of the wettest years on which made him famous. At Pickering he sketched the castle from record. viewpoints along Pickering Beck, more or less followed later by the line of the Moors Railway. Did you know?

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

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 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 Ravensworth Castle low sunlight or hazy apparitions peering through morning mist.

www.yorkshire.com/turner When Turner left Yorkshire for the last time, he had created a series of sketches and watercolours of the county’s most impressive castles. Interesting Fact... 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 Steaming Through the Views still family homes. You can visit almost all of them to see for yourself the views that Turner sketched while discovering their rich history. Passengers on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway can see Turner’s views Visiting Turner’s Yorkshire Castles of Pickering Castle while Check the Turner Trails website for information on directions, travelling between Pickering opening hours and further details for each castle. You can click on and Newbridge. The railway the following links to go straight to the castle’s web page. line runs almost exactly along the route Turner Bolton Castle, Conisbrough, Harewood, Helmsley, Knaresborough, travelled when sketching the Middleham, Pickering, Ravensworth, Richmond, Scarborough, Skipton castle. 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.

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