Dacre Castle

From the preface: It is perhaps rather odd that, in the afternoon of our lives, we should move from a comfortable house to an ancient castle. But, having left the Civil Service, my wife and I began to feel that London and Surrey were becoming crowded; we looked at Cornwall and just short of Wick but for one reason or another we decided against them. Then we saw in Country Life that Dacre Castle was on a short lease and we thought it would be worth while to look at it. When we saw it we realised that we had to look at both the good and the difficult; plenty of rooms inside and gardens outside, but high storeys, cold and damp and needing many radiators, and the necessity to toil up to the top to make sure everything was well; in short almost everything was adverse. But we decided eventually to take the castle and here we are still living in it after 17 years. In that time I did my best to find out as much as I could about the Dacres and the castle up to the date when they ceased to own it; it seemed in the end worth putting it on the record. There could be another story about the Hasells of Dalemain, who have owned the Castle and its land since the Dacres departed and it is due to them that the castle is still living.

Eric Stretton, Dacre Castle 1994