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Corby Castle

tower house in Cumbria, England, UK

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ5169810
Source-derived summary

Corby Castle is a Grade I listed building and ancestral home of a cadet branch of the prominent Howard family situated on the southern edge of the village of Great Corby in northern Cumbria, England.

History

It was originally built in the 13th century, as a red sandstone tower house by the Salkeld Family, who also owned the nearby Salkeld Hall of similar age. It was sold in 1611 to Lord William Howard (1563–1640), the third son of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who added a two-storied L-shaped house onto the peel tower. Henry Howard (1757–1842) inherited the estate from Sir Francis Howard, Lord William Howard's second son. The present façade was built for Henry by Peter Nicholson between April 1812 and September 1817.

In 1981 the castle was used as a location for the filming of a five-part BBC dramatisation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Robert Martin and Ian Yeates started a glassworks in the grounds of Corby Castle in 1986.

Corby Castle was sold by Sir John Howard-Lawson Bt. and Lady Howard-Lawson in 1994 to Edward Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond, a businessman and Ulster Unionist Party life peer. The principal contents of the castle were sold in 1994 through Phillips of Scotland.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Corby Castle” is tower house in Cumbria, England, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Corby, Castle and tower, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1611, 1563, 1640, 1757—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Corby, Castle and tower is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “tower house in Cumbria, England, UK” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5169810. Authority coordinates are 54.880, -2.826. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1611, 1563, 1640 and 1757.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Corby Castle”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Corby Castle primary sources, Corby Castle archive and Corby research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Corby Castle”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Corby Castle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.