Middleton Tower

Middleton Towers stands in Norfolk, east of King’s Lynn, near the village of Middleton. It is a private country house enclosed by a water-filled moat on a rectangular island. The gatehouse dates from about 1455 and the later house was built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The gatehouse is built of brick with stone details and has three storeys, embattled parapets and corner turrets. The first floor features a central oriel window and bears the coat of arms of Anthony Woodville. The moat measures roughly 74 metres by 40 metres. The site has strong ties to the de Scales family, who held the manor from the 12th century. Thomas Scales, 7th Baron Scales, built the gatehouse, and his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Anthony Woodville continued work on the house. Woodville was executed in 1483, and the manor later passed to John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk. In the 19th century Sir Lewis Whincop Jarvis restored the gatehouse and built an adjacent house. John Taylor Ramsden added a west wing in 1905. Visitors find the gatehouse with its stone dressings and polygonal turrets standing at the centre of the moated island. To the west are the later buildings of the house, while to the east lie earthworks including two rectangular fishponds and traces of a medieval dovecote platform. Other features east of the moat suggest remains of medieval manor buildings. The setting combines the medieval gatehouse with later country-house architecture in a quiet Norfolk landscape.