Carlton Towers

Carlton Towers
18th Duke of Norfolk outside Carlton Towers, by Allan Warren
Location	North Yorkshire, England
Area	250 acre estate
Built	1600s
Architect	Edward Welby Pugin
Architectural style(s)	Victorian Gothic
Owner	Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk
Listed Building – Grade I
Designated	17 November 1966
Reference no.	1295955

Carlton Towers is a Grade I listed Victorian gothic country house in Carlton (between Selby and Snaith), North Yorkshire, England.

The house was designed by Edward Welby Pugin and stands in a 250-acre estate. The house is the Yorkshire home of the 18th Duke of Norfolk but, since 1991, has been lived in, and run, by Lord Gerald Fitzalan-Howard and his family. Lord Gerald is a younger brother of the current Duke of Norfolk. Although the family still live in part of the house, it is now largely used for wedding receptions and similar events.

It is known that there has been a house on the site from at least the 14th century, but nothing visible remains and there is no documentary record.

In the 1600s the estate belonged to Sir Miles Stapleton who died in 1705, leaving it to his nephew Nicholas Errington of Ponteland, Northumberland, who took the name of Stapleton. Nicholas' grandson, Thomas Stapleton, succeeded in 1750 and in 1765 improved the house and estate, commissioning Thomas White to landscape the park and Thomas Atkinson of York to add the East Wing. Thomas was a keen breeder and trainer of horses and with Sir Thomas Gascoigne won the St. Leger Stakes in 1778 with Hollandaise and in his own right the following year with Tommy.

In 1795 Thomas Stapleton claimed the abeyant barony of Beaumont and in 1840 his great-nephew and successor, Miles Thomas Stapleton, was called to the peerage as the 8th Baron Beaumont. Lord Beaumont restyled the house in the fashionable gothic manner in 1842.