Village Focus: Ripley, the village with its own castle, a privately owned estate and 700 years of a family tree

It is home to Ripley Show, which is more than 170 years-old and was the brainchild of a “genially eccentric” member of the family which has owned the village for some seven centuries, the locally famous Ripley Ice-Cream and a great deal of history.

Ripley Castle describes itself as “political, military, religious and social turbulence” and even more intriguingly, “of plague and persecution, of renaissance, enlightenment and industrial revolution”.

Quite a statement for a small village that on a passing glance would appear to be sleepy when not beset by tourists and visitors.

In March 2017, the village was named number 17 out of the 20 Best Villages in Britain to live in. There were only two in the north of England but Ripley was also described as a “satellite village” of Harrogate with families moving here from London in order to commute and split their time between the countryside and the big city.

It could be said that the village is considered rather unchanged as the decades have gone by and that it still has the village staples of a historic church, a traditional pub, a butcher, cricket club and a local shop.

The stone houses are grand, charming, neat and all in keeping with the Ripley Castle Estate’s choosing. The pub, The Boar’s Head, a converted coaching inn is so named with with Royal connections and decked in ivy and colourful flowers. The local primary school is “much smaller” than an average school and the church, built in the 14th century, is not even the oldest of religious movements in Ripley.

Ripley Castle and the Estate is privately owned. There are less than 300 people living here and there is just one house for sale here. They are sought after. This particular one was built during the Victorian period and has only been available to buy on the open market once before since then.

If you want it now – it will set you back £1.5m.

Ripley has 55 Grade II Listed buildings and two that are Grade I Listed.

So what makes Ripley so desirable and one of Yorkshire’s most unique villages?

It is one of a handful of privately owned villages in the whole of the country and it all goes back at least 700 years. Ripley Castle, has been the home of the Ingilby family for 700 years. The present owner is Sir Thomas Ingilby, 6th Baronet – the 28th generation.

The family history is complicated and hard to follow but goes something like this…

Sir Thomas Ingleby (1290–1352) married the heiress Edeline Thwenge in 1308/9 and acquired the Ripley Castle estate with its medieval manor house as her dowry. His oldest son, also called Thomas (1310–1369), saved the king from being gored by a wild boar whilst on a hunting expedition (you’d imagine this is where the pub name derives) and was knighted in return with the boar's head symbol as his crest.

His descendant Sir John Ingleby (1434–1499) inherited the estate at the age of five before becoming a monk at Mount Grace Priory, near Northallerton. His grandson, Sir William Ingleby (1518–1578), was High Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1564–65 and added the tower to the castle buildings.

He had two sons who were Catholics on the run from the authorities. It would turn out that Francis, a priest, was caught, sentenced and hanged, drawn and quartered in York in 1586 while David escaped to die on the Continent.

A later Sir William Ingleby (1546–1618) was involved in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and allowed the plotters to stay at Ripley whilst they procured horses. Ingleby was arrested and charged with treason, but acquitted.

In 1772 the baronetcy became extinct but was revived in 1781 for an illegitimate son, John (1758–1815), who undertook a major rebuild of the castle but got into debt and fled the country.

When Sir William Amcotts-Ingilby was at the helm, he demolished and rebuilt the village in a French style known as

Various other changes in leadership led to Ripley Castle and the Estate now being owned by the 6th Baronet, Sir Thomas Ingilby, and his wife, Emma, Lady Ingilby but it is opened to the public at certain times of year.

There is talk that the history of the church in the village goes back to a pagan site or that of a sacred spring but more concrete suggestions of a church are around AD675 with the Synod of Nidd and possibly a wooden church like others in Medieval times were.

However, the ‘new’ church was built around 1390 on a plot of land bordering the Market Square known as 'Chantry Garth'. It has one of two crosses in the country that remain from the Middle Ages and when it was a destination for pilgrimages.

Times at the church and the castle are now much more stable.

It was 2009 that the Ingilby family celebrated 700 years at Ripley Castle.

The castle says that the letters, deeds and documents that often get lost, damaged or thrown away have survived, and give a unique record of the family’s history, births, marriages and deaths, trials and tribulations over the last seven centuries.

Despite plagues, civil wars, attempts at regicide, religious and political conspiracies, broken marriages, inept heirs and economic hardship the family are still in control and the estate continues to be.

It has danced between “romance...and...recklessness” and the last chapter in its history, Ripley Castle Estate adds, has not and will not yet be written.

It says: “There is no final chapter because we are still here, still enjoying the adventure.”