Burton Constable Tower (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Burton Constable.
In the historic county of Yorkshire.
Modern Authority of East Riding of Yorkshire.
1974 county of Humberside.
Medieval County of Yorkshire East Riding.

OS Map Grid Reference: TA18883678
Latitude 53.81408° Longitude -0.19611°

Burton Constable Tower has been described as a Pele Tower although is doubtful that it was such.

There are masonry footings remains.

This is a Grade 1 listed building protected by law*.

Description

Great Elizabethan country house of red brick with stone dressings, constructed circa 1570 for Sir Henry Constable. Remodelled between 1730-78 to designs by Lightoller, Carr and Atkinson. James Wyatt and William Collins remodelled the interior at this time. It comprises a central three-storey block with castelled end towers and two storey wings. The south side of the house has a courtyard layout. (PastScape)

The chief house at Burton Constable, mentioned from 1294, succeeded Halsham as the family's main residence, apparently in the late 15th century. The site may have been moated, a curving ditch running around the north and east of the house until its reduction in the mid 18th century to a fishpond, which remained in 1995. The early structural history of the house is obscure. A length of ashlar wall at the centre of the north elevation forms one side of a nearlysquare room, which was later heightened in brick to become a tower. It has a turret staircase at its south-west corner, and both tower and turret have a possibly 15th-century, brick corbel table below the parapet. The two-storeyed range which abuts the tower on the east appears to be structurally contemporary; that to the south is late 16th-century but replaces an older building from which a disused fireplace survives on the south face of the tower. Those northern and western ranges, together with a southern one, formed a three-sided, courtyard house which was probably still being built in 1578 but seems to have been substantially complete by the end of the century. (VCH)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1083444
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 80602.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 7008.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Historic Houses Association
Books
- Kent, G.H.R., 2002, 'Middle division: Burton Constable' VCH Yorkshire: East Riding Vol. 7 p. 129- online transcription
  Neave, Susan, 1991, Medieval Parks of East Yorkshire (Univeristy of Hull) p. 26
  Le Patourel, H.E. Jean, 1973, The Moated Sites of Yorkshire (The Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series 5) p. 111
Primary (Medieval documents or transcriptions of such documents - This section is far from complete and the secondary sources should be consulted for full references.)
- Maxwell Lyte, H.C. (ed), 1904, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Edward I Vol. 3 p. 114-5 No. 193 online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Dennison, E. and Richardson, S., 2010, Burton Constable Deserted Medieval Village, Burton Constable Hall, East Yorkshire: Level 3 Archaeological and Historical Survey (Unpublished EDAS Ltd archive report 2009/366 for the Burton Constable Foundation)

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

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*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

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