Qualla: Ashby de la Zouch Castle

Ashby de la Zouch Castle: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pahazzard, CC BY-SA 3.0. William, Lord Hastings, was beheaded on Tower Green in June 1483 without ceremony, without trial, and without enough notice to write a will. He had been Edward IV's closest friend. When Edward died that April, Hastings refused to support Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in his manoeuvre to displace the rightful boy-king Edward V. Within weeks, Richard accused him of treason during a council meeting at the Tower and had him executed the same day. The castle Hastings had been building at Ashby, with its great Hastings Tower designed to rival the royal fortresses at Tutbury and Nottingham, was barely half-finished. Tower-construction stopped. The widow Katherine got the property back. The Hastings family would hold it for nearly two centuries more, but the original ambition, the four-towered castle Hastings had imagined, would never be realised.

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Image: Pahazzard | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ashby de la Zouch Castle: From Manor to Castle

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Quine, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long before Hastings, a more modest house had stood at Ashby. The Domesday Book records a manor here in 1086, and through the 12th and 13th centuries the La Zouche family held it under the Earls of Leicester, giving the village the second half of its peculiar name. By the mid-130...

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Image: Thomas Quine | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ashby de la Zouch Castle: Mary Queen of Scots Behind Brick Walls

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Catface27 from Coventry, CC BY 2.0. The castle eventually passed to George Hastings, made Earl of Huntingdon by Henry VIII in 1529. George rebuilt parts in brick and redesigned the gardens. His grandson Henry inherited in 1560 and maintained a household of 77 servants, on the scale of a small county aristocracy. In...

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Image: Catface27 from Coventry | CC BY 2.0

Ashby de la Zouch Castle: Royal Visits and Excessive Expenditure

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Quine, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Hastings family had a talent for hosting kings. James I came three times between 1612 and 1617. Charles I visited in 1634. The Countess of Derby was welcomed in August 1607 with a specially-commissioned Masque at Ashby Castle, the kind of expensive entertainment that involved...

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Image: Thomas Quine | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ashby de la Zouch Castle: Slighted and Reborn

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Eaton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Henry Hastings, later Lord Loughborough, made Ashby Castle his base of operations for Royalist forces across the Midlands. Buildings in the town were pulled down for materiel, tunnels were dug, an "Irish fort" was built. The siege came eventually, the castle surrendered after lon...

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Image: Chris Eaton | CC BY-SA 2.0