Langley Castle

The Twelfth Century is when any record of Langley was first found, 200 years before the construction of Langley Castle. With Grey's expert experience he increased the Langley estate’s annual income by £15,000. Langley was bought and restored by a local historian, Cadwallader Bates, in 1882. Bates unexpectedly died in 1902 before the restoration of the Castle was finished. Bate's wife Josephine continued the restoration, and Langley castle was finally finished in 1914. After Josephine Bates died, in 1932 the building remained empty until it was used as a barracks in the Second World War, following which it was used as a girls' school. In the 1980s it was bought by the Robb family. In 1986,…

Langley Castle is set in a woodland estate of 10 acres (40,000 m2). It was built in the middle of the 14th century by Sir Thomas de Lucy as an H-shaped tower of four storeys. It was originally built in 1350, but after the destructive fire of 1405 it lay in ruins for 500 years until Cadwallader Bates and his wife Josephine restored it in 1914. The building is a quadrangular castle, fully solid with no courtyard. It has a main central hall and is an example of an upper floor hall house design. Each corner of the castle has a major tower that is one storey above the main building. There is an extra tower that is flush with the level of the roof. This small pele-like structure has the original…