Bury Castle was once one of the most imposing buildings in the North-West.

Bury Castle was a medieval fortified manor house.

It was built in 1469 by Sir Thomas Pilkington, lord of the manors of Pilkington and Bury and a powerful member of Lancashire's gentry. Unfortunately for Sir Thomas, and for Bury, he was on the wrong side (the one that lost) in the Wars of the Roses and as a result the castle and all his lands were taken from him.

In the following centuries Bury Castle was dismantled, leaving only the parts below ground to show what had once been there.

Click on the picture.

Relativly little is known about Bury at the time when the castle was built, in 1469. Some years later, in 1540, one visitor to the place,John Leland, described it as a "town". By todays standards it would be considered no more than a village. At the centre lay the old market place, with the parish church on the north side. That church has been rebuilt several times in its history, and the present building dates from the 19th century.

Bury Castle lay on the west side of the old market place. The natural strength of the site is now partly obscured by later builtings, but from here the ground sloped down to the valley of the River Irwell. In 1469 the Pilkingtons had been lords of Bury for nearly a century, having inherited the manor from a family named de Bury.

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The modern archaeological excavations of the castle have shown that in 1469 there was already a manor house of the lords of Bury on this site. Little evidence has been found for the buildings of that earlier manor house, but it is known that they were surrounded by a moat .

On the 8th March 2000 the site of Bury Castle was officially opened by the Mayor of Bury, Councilor John Peter Costello

This page was last updated on 14th March 2000 by Barry Flint.