Robert de Romille, a Norman baron, built the original earth-and-wood motte and bailey castle at Skipton in about 1090. It was later rebuilt in stone to resist Scottish attacks. In 1310 Edward II granted it to Robert Clifford, who died at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Six fortified drum towers of millstone grit stand around it. The twin-towered gatehouse is Norman, and the Conduit Court is Tudor. A shell grotto in the gatehouse is one of two surviving seventeenth-century shell grottos.
It withstood a three-year siege in the English Civil War and surrendered to Oliver Cromwell on December 21, 1645, the last Royalist stronghold in northern England to do so. Cromwell ordered the roofs removed, and Lady Anne Clifford ordered repairs.
It is Grade I listed and the starting point of Lady Anne's Way.
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