Hazlewood Castle, Tadcaster
Hazlewood Castle is a country residence, now a hotel, in North Yorkshire, England. It is one of the oldest fortified houses to survive in the whole of Yorkshire. The castle was built towards the end of the 13th century and was transformed into a mansion in the mid 18th century.
The first records of the house are to be found in the Domesday Book of 1086, described as being owned and occupied by Sir Mauger the Vavasour (a vavasour was a type of feudal liegeman). Hazlewood was then inhabited by descendants of the Vavasours for over 900 years.
Sir William Vavasour was High Sheriff of Yorkshire for 1548 and 1563 and MP for Yorkshire in 1553. His son John Vavasour was host to Mary, Queen of Scots on the night of 27 January 1569, when she passed through Wetherby en-route between Bolton Castle and Tutbury Castle.
Under the 6th Baronet the house was substantially modernised. On the death of the unmarried 7th Baronet in 1826 the baronetcy was extinguished and the estate passed to Edward Stourton, a relative. In 1828 he took the name Vavasour and was made the 1st Baronet Vavasour of the second creation. In 1908 the Vavasour family sold Hazlewood and bought a sheep farm and land in the Awatere Valley, New Zealand and in the 1970s established the valley's first winery, Vavasour Winery.
After 1908 the site changed hands many times over the following years. It was first owned by a solicitor named Simpson, whose family occupied it until 1953, although it also served as a maternity hospital during the Second World War (and afterwards until 1953). For a few years it then belonged to the Fawcett family until it was sold in 1958 to Donald Hart, who sold it on as a retreat for the Carmelite Friars from 1971 until 1996. At the time of the sale to the Carmelite Order, the building was listed and is now a grade I listed building.
In 1997, after restoration, the house reopened as Hazlewood Castle Hotel-Restaurant-Café and has since continued to be a successful wedding venue and hotel.