Built in 1379 for Richard le Scrope, Lord Chancellor of England to Richard II, this massive fortress dominating the heart of Wensleydale is one of the country’s best-preserved castles. Oak beams raised more than six centuries ago still support many of the great halls and galleries, walls nine feet thick soar upwards to battlements from which Royalist guards eyed their Parliamentary besiegers during the Civil War. The medieval atmosphere of the Castle lingers everywhere, - in the rooms in which Mary, Queen of Scots, spent six melancholy months of imprisonment during 1568 and 1569, and in the 14th century Garde-robes (lavatories), constructed with such sophistication that they were still in use some 500 years later. It persists most powerfully in the macabre horror of the Castle dungeon, a hole carved from solid rock, in which an arm bone was found still manacled to the wall.