Qualla: Sandal Castle

Sandal Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Green from Bradford, CC BY 2.0. He had a claim to the throne, an Act of Parliament naming him Protector of the Realm, and somewhere between three and eight thousand soldiers behind him. On 30 December 1460, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York rode out from the gates of Sandal Castle to take on Queen Margaret of Anjou's army. By nightfall he was dead, his teenage son Edmund was dead, and what is now a low green motte beside the River Calder in Wakefield was the setting for one of the most consequential reversals in English royal history. The Wars of the Roses would burn for another quarter century. The nursery rhyme came later.

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Image: Tim Green from Bradford | CC BY 2.0

Sandal Castle: The Warennes' Stone

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve Partridge, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sandal began as timber. William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey was granted the Sandal estates in 1107 and built a motte-and-bailey castle on a natural sandstone outcrop called the Oaks Rock above the River Calder. The motte was raised ten metres high, with a seven-metre moat dug ...

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Image: Steve Partridge | CC BY-SA 2.0

Sandal Castle: Battle of Wakefield

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Kirby, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1460 Sandal belonged to the Dukes of York. The Wars of the Roses had been running for five years. Richard, 3rd Duke of York had pressed his claim to the throne and won an Act of Accord in October 1460 recognising him as heir and Protector of the Realm. The current king, Henry ...

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Image: Mike Kirby | CC BY-SA 2.0

Sandal Castle: Richard III and the Civil War

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Kirby, CC BY-SA 2.0. Richard's youngest surviving son was Richard III. In 1483, having taken the throne in his own right, he chose Sandal as his northern base and ordered significant investment in the castle. The work was barely begun when he died at Bosworth Field in 1485, and the future of Sandal C...

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Image: Mike Kirby | CC BY-SA 2.0

Sandal Castle: Walking the Motte

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dennis Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. The ruins have been worked over many times. Local stonemasons quarried the castle for building stone through the eighteenth century. Samuel Buck drew Wakefield with the ruin in the foreground in 1719 or 1722. The Yorkshire Archaeological Society made the first formal excavation i...

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Image: Dennis Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0