The History of Alnwick Castle and the Percy Family
One family has held Alnwick since 1309, and they are still in the building. That single fact explains the closed winter, the rooms you cannot enter, and why the place feels unlike any castle run by a trust.
Before the Percys: a border fortress
The Normans built here in the eleventh century, on the crossing of the River Aln, and the castle was already a military problem for Scotland within a generation. King Malcolm III of Scotland was killed attempting to take it in 1093. By 1138 the earliest written record of Alnwick describes it as a heavily fortified castle — not a manor with walls, a fortress.
William the Lion besieged it twice, in 1172 and again in 1174, and was captured during the second attempt. Two Scottish kings, one killed outside the walls and one taken prisoner beneath them, inside eighty years. That is the reputation Alnwick started with.
1309: the Percys buy a barony
Henry de Percy became the 1st Lord Percy of Alnwick after acquiring the castle and its barony in 1309. The family has held it ever since — seven centuries and counting, through the Wars of the Roses, the Union of the Crowns and two world wars, which is why the castle’s own material says “over 700 years” rather than picking a round number.
In 1475 the 4th Earl of Northumberland completed the Barbican, the gatehouse that is still the first thing you walk through and still the most recognisable thing about the castle from outside.
Harry Hotspur
Sir Henry Percy — Harry Hotspur, son of the 1st Earl of Northumberland — was born at Alnwick Castle in 1364 or 1366. The nickname came from lightning-quick strikes against the Scots, and he was killed in battle fighting King Henry IV. Shakespeare made him permanent.
He is also the reason a children’s attraction inside the castle is called Dragon’s Quest and features a character of that name: the family still uses its own history as the material. What that looks like on the ground is on the things to do page.
1750s: Gothic, Adam and Capability Brown
By the middle of the eighteenth century the castle had been neglected for generations. Elizabeth Percy and her husband Hugh, who took her family name, returned and restored it in the Gothic style, employing Robert Adam and the Northumberland-born Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. The couple were made 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland in 1766.
Brown’s hand is why the approach looks the way it does. The Pastures running down to the Aln, and the view of the castle from the Lion Bridge that almost every photograph is taken from, are a landscape design rather than an accident of terrain.
1854–1865: the Italian interiors
The Gothic work did not last either. The 4th Duke employed the architect Anthony Salvin between 1854 and 1865, and Salvin created the Prudhoe Tower and the Great Kitchen. Inside, the Italian designers Luigi Canina and Giovanni Montiroli oversaw the State Rooms.
That is the answer to the question most visitors ask in the first thirty seconds indoors: why does the inside of a Northumbrian border fortress look like a Roman palazzo? Because two Italians were hired to make it one, a hundred and seventy years ago, and the family never changed it back. The rooms and what hangs in them are described on the things to do page.
The sequence, in order
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 11th century | The Normans build on the crossing of the River Aln |
| 1093 | Malcolm III of Scotland is killed attempting to take the castle |
| 1138 | The earliest written record calls it a heavily fortified castle |
| 1172 and 1174 | William the Lion besieges it, and is captured on the second attempt |
| 1309 | Henry de Percy acquires the castle and barony; 1st Lord Percy of Alnwick |
| 1364 or 1366 | Harry Hotspur is born at Alnwick |
| 1475 | The 4th Earl of Northumberland completes the Barbican |
| 1750s | Elizabeth and Hugh Percy restore it in Gothic style; Robert Adam and Capability Brown |
| 1766 | The couple are made 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland |
| 1854–1865 | Anthony Salvin builds the Prudhoe Tower and Great Kitchen; Canina and Montiroli do the State Rooms |
| 1995 | Ralph Percy inherits the dukedom and, with the Duchess, opens the castle up as a visitor attraction |
| 2001–2002 | Alnwick stands in for Hogwarts in the first two Harry Potter films |
Dates as published by Alnwick Castle, 26 August 2026.
The last line of that table is the one that changed the castle’s visitor numbers. Standing in as Hogwarts for two films at the turn of the millennium brought an audience that had never heard of the Percys, and the family have leaned into it: broomstick lessons now run on the courtyard where the flying scene was shot.
Still a home
Ralph Percy, the present Duke of Northumberland, inherited after the death of his elder brother in 1995, and he and the Duchess have developed the castle into what visitors see today. Everything practical about a visit here follows from that: the season that ends in October, the rooms that are closed, the State Rooms that shut an hour before the grounds because they are rooms in a house rather than galleries in a museum. The practical consequences are set out on the visiting page.
It is a genuinely unusual arrangement, and it is worth knowing before you arrive expecting a museum. A trust would open all year and light everything. A family cannot, and does not.
See where seven centuries actually happened
The Barbican of 1475, the Salvin kitchen, the rooms two Italians designed and the courtyard Hotspur’s name is still attached to — every listed way in, compared.