Ayton Tower House. It is not a castle after all.

 Ayton castle is in fact a tower house. Not a castle after all. Ayton tower house is a very romantic ruin just by Scarborough in Yorkshire.

 I went on a guided tour on Saturday as part of a heritage open day. The ladies and their husbands who are decedents of the last owners flew in from America today.  They are staying in a very romantic spot too. They are staying in a quite remote farm cottage. It is raining as ever in Yorkshire.
It is very atmospheric and surrounded by cows. Cows mean cow pats. Which is very good practice for their visit to Ayton Tower House.

I started my tour at this noticeboard in the pouring rain. Our guide was waiting and greated us and ticked us all off his list of invites.
I sheltered under the willow trees with my hood up. others had umbrellas and proper all weather gear for walking.

 The guys here are wearing "flash" for a reason. It all became clear lat First we walked to this water mill house and our guide explained how water was supplied to the old tower house and fish ponds. Basically it has a water wheel..

 Then off down the lanes to  the ruin I had come to  see. This was my first glimpse of it after all the antisipation and reaserch into the Mauleverer family. They were the last people to live in the tower house. Edmund Mauleverer died in 1679 and his wife and daughter emigrated to America.

 On the tour we first followed the rainy path up the hill above the ruin so that our guide could point out some bumps and inclines and explain what it is thought was there in the 17th century. To me it just looked like a field with cows long grass and cow pats. once it all had been pointed out for me I got the picture of how fabulous this tower must have been.

 The tower had an outer wall and gates back and front.the differences in greens in the grass show the patterns of where these defence walls were, and A terraced garden fish ponds and dove cote. All of these were food sources and this is why the water supply was so important.

We climbed the hill to the side of the ruin and stood at the top. the places where the main gates and outer walls can still be seen from the top of the hill and where the terraced gardens were is quite clear.
Finally we came down the hill...very carefully putting my feet down as I wished very much to avoid the cow pats......we stood at the entrance to the tower...and then I got to go inside.

First to the under croft. I was inside the tower!

This is the under croft and would have been the kitchens, complete with fire place for cooking and store space.

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The remains of a store cupboard.....

then into the pantry/ dairy/ buttery or whatever you want to call it.
from here we all were helped to climb very steep stone stairs to the next level....

the stone steps were very deep. i left my hand bag at the bottom. my balance is never good, so going up very steep stairs going around in a spiral was a real challenge. it had to be done! and it was. I had to kind of drag myself up by holding on to the steps and crawling.....

Once at the top...the views were stunning and I found out why the guys were wearing flash. it was there job to stop us falling off the ruins!!!!!

and now....something strange.



just as i turned to go back down the scary stair case i saw something in the grass.

just by this door way......

then back to the stairs....

a girl was holding a torch for us and she pointed out the scratching s on the wall to me.......