Swinton Park
Swinton Park, the seat of the Danby family and (from 1882) of the Cunliffe-Lister family (the Earls of Swinton) is an English country house in Swinton near Masham, North Yorkshire, England. It is set in 200 acres (0.81 km2) of parkland, lakes and gardens. Currently operating as a 32-bedroom hotel, it is surrounded by the family estate in which guests have access to rivers, reservoirs, moorland, dales, and beautiful countryside bordering the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The house is a Grade II* listed building.
The castle is still owned by the Cunliffe-Lister family but the seat of the Earl of Swinton is now at Dykes Hill House, also located in near Masham.
The construction at Swinton Park was commenced in 1695 by Sir Abstrupus Danby. His successors built the stable block and gatehouse and, during the 1760s, planted the parkland and created the chain of five lakes.
William Danby almost entirely rebuilt the house, at first by John Carr, architect of York, in 1764–67. Danby altered and extended the house, giving it the Gothic aspect it retains, in two building campaigns, to designs of the Yorkshire mason-architect John Foss of Richmond ((1745–1827)., who became a close personal friend. In the first, of 1791–96, the north range was added. A design for the Drawing Room, at least, was contributed by James Wyatt. In a second building campaign, of 1813–14, again under the direction of Foss, the south wing was built. The house included a handsome library.
Danby was not finished: further Gothic alterations were effected by Robert Lugar: turrets and battlements were added, so that the building took on the appearance of a castle; the richly furnished museum of minerals, which has since become a family chapel, was built, and at the same time a tower Describing a tour which he made in 1829, the poet Robert Southey remarked, "The most interesting person whom I saw during this expedition was Mr. Danby of Swinton Park, a man of very large fortune, and now very old." During the early 19th century the building was substantially altered, and two storey west and north wings were added. Danby died in 1833, but his widow continued to live at the house with her second husband, naval officer Octavius Vernon Harcourt (High Sheriff for 1849) until her own death in 1879. She devised her Yorkshire estates to George, fifth son of Sir Robert Affleck, Bt.
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