Dacre Castle

Dacre Castle stands beside a small stream in a quiet valley four miles south-west of Penrith in Cumbria. Built in the mid-14th century from local sandstone, it is a moated tower house with four turrets rising from a central block. The walls are 8.5 feet thick and the crenellated roof reaches 66 feet. Margaret Multon ordered the castle to protect her family against Scottish raids during a time of frequent invasion. The Dacre family held the castle for three centuries before it passed to the Crown and later to the Lennard and Hassell families. By the 19th century it served as a farmhouse until the 1960s, when Anthony and Bunty Kinsman restored it with help from the Ministry of Works. Princess Sharada Shah of Nepal visited in 1967 during an official tour of Britain. Today the castle remains a private home, protected as a Grade I listed building. Inside, the ground floor has two vaulted chambers while the first floor holds a grand hall with an ornate lavabo. The second floor, known as the Room of the Three Kings, once contained a priest hole hidden behind a fireplace. The three-sided moat encloses an east courtyard measuring 73 by 55 metres, and the whole structure resembles nearby Harewood and Langley Castles.