Sale of Ripley Castle
Richard R
E X T R A C T
Yours for £21m: the castle that has been in the same family for 28 generations
Sir Thomas and Lady Ingilby are bidding farewell to 14th-century Ripley Castle, which has housed their family for 700 years and wartime Barnardo’s evacuees
It has survived religious persecution, Oliver Cromwell and even an occupation by Barnardo’s evacuees in the Second World War, but now, after 700 years of continuous family ownership, Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire is up for sale for the first time, for more than £21 million — which would make it the county’s most expensive property sale.
The owners, Sir Thomas and Lady Ingilby, who have already downsized to a five-bedroom Georgian house a stone’s throw from the castle’s crenellated 14th-century gatehouse, said retirement and consideration for their adult children influenced their decision.
… After marrying in 1984 the Ingilbys became country house pioneers, establishing a successful business to keep the grade I castle and estate afloat…
… “I’m 65 and Thomas is 70 this year — he’s had [the castle] since he was 18,” Emma says. “We’ve been very committed, we’ve worked very hard. We want to enjoy our retirement. We want to be more spontaneous. You can’t be spontaneous when you’re tied two years in advance.”
…[Sir Thomas would like to] “do historical research [about his ancestors] properly. There’s a lot more to find.”..
… He’s very keen on “Trooper Jane”, an Ingilby ancestor who held Oliver Cromwell at gunpoint overnight in the library in the three-storey Tudor tower, after the Battle of Marston Moor near York in 1644…
… The decision to sell was made at a family meeting. “Our five children all work, incredibly hard, we’ve brought them up with a work ethic,” Emma says. “They’ve all got lives to live. Do you say to one of them, ‘You know, right, you’ve got to drop everything else and do this?’ Because you can’t combine anything else with this, it is full on.”
Thomas, the 28th generation of Ingilby to live at Ripley Castle, inherited it after the sudden death of his father in 1974, when Thomas was 18. “Bricks and mortar are less important than family,” he says…
… He and his wife, who comes from a York family of Quakers, have four sons and a daughter. Jamie, 39, is a software engineer in fintech; Joslan, 38, is employed on the estate; Eleanor, 36, is in wealth management; Jack, 35, is a tax adviser (both live in London); and Richard, 30, works in marketing in Vancouver, Canada…
… Jamie [the heir apparent], his wife and two young daughters, currently reside in the castle’s 11-bedroom private apartment… Children love Ripley Castle, Emma says — from the wartime Barnardo’s evacuees billeted here to her own four grandchildren, aged from one to eight.
The article confirms Sir Thomas & Lady Ingilby have four grandchildren, although DPB online has yet to record the birth of the fourth grandchild Ralph David Y. b 6 April 2023, son of Joslan Ingilby by his 2018 m to Elizabeth ALDER:
https://groups.google.com/g/peerage-news/c/Wgoxf6rVz7E/m/pllSLTr2AQAJ
