Torksey Castle

Torksey Castle is an Elizabethan manor house beside the River Trent in Lincolnshire. It stands on the east bank near the village of Torksey, twelve miles northwest of Lincoln. The house was built in about 1560 by Sir Robert Jermyn of the Suffolk family. It is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled ancient monument. The remains are private and can only be seen from the main road or a footpath on the opposite bank. The house was slighted in 1645 during the English Civil War when Royalist soldiers burned it. Little of the structure survived after the attack. The Jermyn family kept the estate but did not restore the hall. Flooding from the Trent and scavenging for building materials finished what the fire had spared. In 1961 the river board buried part of the ruins while raising the river bank. The west front and part of the rear wall still stand. English Heritage stabilised the remains in 1991. The surviving stone and brick show a Renaissance layout with crow-stepped gables and angular towers. The lower floor was plain limestone for domestic work, while the upper brick storey was built as the main reception floor. A watercolour painted in 1835 by Peter De Wint shows the castle before further decay set in.