Haunted Hosts

Amberley Castle stands on a site with documented ecclesiastical history stretching back to 683, when the land was endowed to the See of Selsey by Cædwalla of Wessex. After the Norman Conquest the bishops moved to Chichester, but the estate remained in episcopal hands. The first recorded structure was a timber-framed hunting lodge built by Bishop Ralph de Luffa in 1103, with a parish church erected across from it. In 1140 Bishop Seffrid I replaced the original building with a stone hall, and around 1200 Bishop Seffrid II added an east wing. Between 1305 and 1337 a larger Great Hall was constructed and the residence became known as the Bishop of Chichester's summer palace. The defining military character came in 1377 when Bishop William Reade secured a licence to crenellate during the Hundred Years' War, prompted by fears of French coastal raids. He built curtain walls reaching approximately 40 feet in height, a twin-tower gatehouse to the south with towers rising to approximately 58 feet, corner towers, gun loops on the northern garderobe tower, a water-gate on the west wall and a Norman postern on the east. The castle remained associated with the bishops until Bishop Robert Sherborne's death in 1536, the last Bishop of Chichester to occupy it. During the English Civil War, a Royalist tenant refused to pay taxes to Parliament. In 1643 Parliament ordered Sir William Waller to attack. The assault destroyed 20 to 30 feet of the curtain walls and levelled the Great Hall. The castle surrendered in 1644. Parliament seized it from the Church and sold it through the Office of Sequestration of Estates to John Butler, a London cloth merchant, who built the Manor House from the ruins of the Great Hall. Ownership was restored to the Bishop of Chichester after the Restoration of 1660. In 1872 the castle was sold to Robert Curzon, 14th Baron Zouche, who used it as a hunting lodge. Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, purchased it in 1893 and carried out extensive renovations. The castle passed to the Emmet family in 1926, then to Hollis Baker in 1982, who reinstated the 2.5-tonne medieval portcullis. Joy and Martin Cummings converted it to a country house hotel in 1988. Andrew and Christina Brownsword now own the castle, which operates as part of the Relais & Châteaux collection.