Many can identify with the immense relief that accompanies downsizing later in life.
After years of slogging at the coal face and raising children, an empty nest can mean the chance to move to a smaller place with lower bills and experience the heady rush of freedom.
Sir Thomas Ingilby certainly knows the feeling: he recalls the moment of handing over the keys to his Yorkshire home as akin to ‘a giant weight being lifted off my shoulders’.
‘It was extraordinary,’ the 69-year-old muses. ‘I’ve never felt anything like it. It really was like a physical sensation.’
Then again, the weight in question was an unusually hefty one, given it came in the form of Ripley Castle, a vast and ancient estate that has been in Sir Thomas’s family for 700 years and 28 generations and which he inherited at the tender age of 18.
That weight was not just the upkeep of the castle itself but preservation of a family legacy that dates back to the mid-1300s. From Catholic martyrs and Gunpowder Plotters to the redoubtable ‘Trooper Jane’, a female Ingilby ancestor who held Oliver Cromwell at gunpoint overnight in the castle library during the Civil War, the wealth of history here is immense.
Yet this year, if all goes to plan, a non-Ingilby (with £21million to spare) will take residence within these ancient walls for the first time.
‘It’s been half a century of responsibility and now we are ready for an irresponsible retirement’ says the affable Sir Thomas.
Sir Thomas and Lady Emma Ingilby are selling their family home Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, which has been in the family for more than 700 years
The family legacy dates back to the mid-1300s, and includes characters such as Catholic martyrs and Gunpowder Plotters
‘It’s been great fun living here, but it comes with huge challenges, and that’s one of the reasons we’re selling, because we had a list of things to do to preserve it and we’ve done it. We are leaving it in amazing condition.’
‘It’s been a wonderful family home,’ adds Emma, 65, his rather glamorous wife of 40 years. ‘But it’s time for another family to enjoy it.’
The Ingilbys actually moved out two years ago – downsizing for them meant a five-bedroom Georgian house nearby – in order to allow their eldest son, software engineer Jamie, 39, some time to enjoy what would have been his birthright.
Along with his wife and two young daughters, Jamie, the current key holder, is ensconced in the castle’s 11-bedroom private apartment until a sale is completed.
It will, Sir Thomas admits, be a ‘bittersweet’ moment for Jamie and his four siblings – cabinet maker Joslan, 38, Eleanor, 36, who works in finance, tax adviser Jack, 35, and 30-year-old Richard, who works in marketing in Vancouver.
Nonetheless, he insists they are also relieved to be relinquished from the burden of maintaining a Grade 1 listed castle and its 445 acres of parkland.
‘Obviously, growing up, they saw the responsibility we had,’ says Sir Thomas. ‘We had a meeting before the decision was signed and sealed and they actually told us, ‘Thank you’, because they’d watched us over the years, and we’d released them as well as ourselves.’
It has been a long time coming.
The family line here dates back to the 1300s, when Sir Thomas’s forebear, also a Thomas, married Edeline Thwenge and acquired the castle as part of her dowry.
The second in line – yes, another Thomas – was knighted when a wild boar charged at Edward III in 1357 while he was hunting and he intervened, saving the king’s life. ‘He was also granted use of a boar’s head as the family crest,’ says the current Sir Thomas.
Ever since, the Ingilby history has been intertwined with the ruling royals, for better or worse.
Take Francis Ingilby, a devout Roman Catholic who became the focus of a manhunt after being ordained as a Catholic priest in France during the reign of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I.
The Tower Room boasts an intricate plaster ceiling and wood panelling
The Knight’s Room houses artefacts from the castle’s rich history, such as armour and weapons
‘He was captured just outside York in 1586, and after a short trial was hanged, drawn and quartered on what is now York racecourse. He was just 36,’ Sir Thomas says.
Just under 400 years later, in 1979, Francis was beatified by John Paul at the Vatican. ‘So we nearly have a saint in the family,’ says Sir Thomas. Full sainthood requires two miracles, not one.
Twenty-one years later, William Ingilby – who only two years earlier had entertained a visiting James VI of Scotland en route to England to be crowned James I – was involved in the Gunpowder Plot against his former guest.
‘He allowed the plotters to stay at Ripley Castle while they gathered horses, but while he was later charged with treason he managed to wriggle his way out it. I think he probably bribed the witnesses, as they changed their story halfway through the trial,’ says Sir Thomas.
During the Civil War, the Ingilbys were on the side of King Charles against Oliver Cromwell. When the royalists lost the battle of nearby Marston Moor, the then baronet William Ingleby escaped the battlefield and returned to
Ripley Castle, hiding in a priesthole while his sister Jane, nicknamed Trooper Jane for her derring-do, held Oliver Cromwell at gunpoint by the library fireplace overnight to prevent him searching for her brother.
‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ says Sir Thomas. ‘We specialise in strong women in this family. Emma wouldn’t have let him go either.’
‘Certainly not,’ adds his wife.
Of course, no decent castle is complete without a ghost, and over the years a female figure dressed in 19th-century clothing has been seen, believed to be the spirit of Sir Thomas’s great-great-great grandmother Alicia, who died from heartbreak after losing her two children to meningitis.
‘Emma has felt her presence and a couple of people have seen her at the top of the staircase heading towards what would have been the children’s bedrooms. She’s very friendly,’ Sir Thomas says.
Family portraits adorn the walls of the main staircase spotlighted by stained glass arched windows
The wood-panelled Library, centred around a stone fireplace, looks on to the parkland
Today, a portrait of Lady Alicia adorns the grand stairs, while those of her two young children Mary and Henry are in the drawing room. ‘We are hoping we can rent them to any buyers, as we would like to keep her here if possible,’ says Sir Thomas.
To this rich history, of course, must now be added the decades under his tenure, which started in 1974 following the sudden death of his father Joslan at the age of 66.
Sir Thomas was just six weeks into Army training when he got the call that he was the new heir.
At first, his relative youth was a strength. ‘You feel immortal and you’re not really aware of the genuine responsibility,’ he says. ‘It probably hit me about four years later, the enormity of it. And of course there’s no training for it. You just have to get on with it.’
By then he had met Emma, the daughter of a former nurse and Army officer.
She once joked that she captured her husband’s attention with her party trick of being able to crack two walnuts in the front of her dungarees without using her hands, but had no idea who the charming boy she had been introduced to as plain old ‘Tom’ was until she visited the family seat a few weeks later.
The couple married in 1984 and took residence in a castle that needed a great deal of TLC (Emma recalls steel girders having to be put in their bedroom as the floor was so unsafe).
‘Two generations really had done very little, so we just took a room at a time,’ she recalls. ‘And it was a bit frightening, because the scales are just so big. Any mistake you make in a big room is a big mistake. If you get it wrong, it is very expensive.’
Early on, the couple realised they would need to be more outward-looking, opening the castle daily rather than Sundays only. Weddings and corporate banquets swiftly followed. ‘We were washing up by hand after dinners for 500 people – every fork, knife spoon and plate. We were up till 5am on many occasions.’
Lady Emma claims her biggest allies are a stapler and a glue gun, and has climbed ladders while heavily pregnant armed with both, repairing everything from chandeliers to ceiling plaster.
‘Everyone else does health and safety, but I just get on with it,’ she says airily. ‘Because you’ve got to remember that even though it’s been open to the public, it’s still our home, and would you let someone in your home if it’s not looking great? Of course not.’
Sir Thomas remembers his wife serving lunch to a shooting party hours after giving birth to Joslan.
‘She greeted the guests on arrival while having contractions, then when we came back in for lunch, she was serving out the food. I said: ‘Hang on, there’s something different about you.’
‘And she said, ‘Yes, I’ve just had the baby.’
The couple continued to diversify into retail and office space, as well as renovating the stables and carriage room into a full-time wedding and function suite.
There have been all kinds of antics along the way: Lady Emma recalls how letting a bath overrun one day resulted in the demise of a stunning Venetian chandelier on the floor below.
‘The whole carpet was strewn with bits of glass. I had to go to Sir Thomas and say: ‘Oops, I might have just broken a chandelier,’ she laughs.
‘We had a dinner booked in and had to find an emergency chandelier as we didn’t think paying guests would take kindly to a single electric bulb.’
Their events, too, have provided a wealth of stories.
Sir Thomas recalls a recent Sikh wedding during which a grand white stallion carrying the bridegroom (it’s traditional for the groom to arrive on a horse) scented a mare in season and bolted for the fields – his charge clinging on for dear life.
‘The horse was eventually stopped by a quick-thinking rambler grabbing its reins,’ Sir Thomas recalls.
Another time, a well-refreshed guest dived into the lake in search of the mermaid he had been persuaded was resident there by a member of staff, losing his Rolex watch in the process. ‘I would have loved to see what he put on his insurance claim,’ says Sir Thomas.
It was during Covid that the couple had their Eureka moment – for the first time in years they had had their home to themselves.
‘Of course, there are evenings when we do sit down and it gets to you, because you put so much of your heart into focusing on the finish line,’ Sir Thomas says. ‘But we have still got some time, and our health and we want to go and do some of the things we want to do’.
That includes travelling and writing, including a history of those extraordinary ancestors.
The big question, of course, is who will buy the Ingilbys’ extraordinary home?
The estate, which also includes a hotel, a village store as well as multiple acres of land, is available as a whole or in lots.
‘It’s only been on the market for a week, but there are several viewings booked in, which is nice,’ says Sir Thomas. ‘We have no idea who they are though.’
In any case, their attention is currently occupied by having two weddings to plan, that of their youngest son Richard and daughter Eleanor, both of whom are marrying in May.
‘It feels rather lovely, as the family history here started with a marriage and now it will end with one,’ says Sir Thomas.
