Knaresborough, England: the castle, the viaduct and the River Nidd

Knaresborough is a small market town built on a cliff above the River Nidd, three miles from Harrogate. From the castle at the top you look straight down the gorge to a stone railway viaduct, with rowing boats tied up on the river below. This guide to Knaresborough, England, covers what to see, the people connected to the town, and how to spend a morning there. I went in October 2026, by bus and train, on the way to York. Knaresborough and York together came to about 20,000 steps, my longest scouting day. (So much walking!)

Why bus and train? Half-term. I hadn’t booked something for that day, it sold out over the school holidays, and I changed plans. (Lesson learned. It’s why we book everything ahead for you.)

Things to do in Knaresborough, England

What	Where	Allow	Cost
Castle grounds and the viaduct view	Top of the town	30 minutes	Free (public park)
Knaresborough Castle and museum	In the castle grounds	45 minutes	Paid, seasonal
Waterside walk	Along the River Nidd below the castle	30–60 minutes	Free
Rowing boats	Waterside	30 minutes	Paid, seasonal
Blind Jack’s statue	Market Place	5 minutes	Free
Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag	Cut into the cliff by the river	15 minutes	Check opening
Mother Shipton’s Cave and Petrifying Well	Across the river	1½–2 hours	Paid, seasonal

The castle museum and the river boats are seasonal, so check before you go if you’re visiting outside summer. If you only have an hour, do the castle grounds for the view and then walk down to the river. That’s the postcard, and it’s free.

Knaresborough Castle

There was a castle on this cliff by about 1100, and the town grew up around it as traders came to serve the garrison. Its history is long and full of famous names:

• 1170: Hugh de Morville, the constable of Knaresborough, was one of the four knights who murdered Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The knights hid at the castle afterwards.
• Early 1300s: Edward II gave the castle to his favorite, Piers Gaveston.
• 1372: John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, acquired it, and it has belonged to the Duchy of Lancaster ever since.
• 1399: the deposed Richard II spent a night here on his way to Pontefract Castle, where he died.
• 1644–1648: after the Battle of Marston Moor, Parliament’s forces besieged and took the castle. Parliament ordered it destroyed in 1646, and it was pulled down in 1648. Local people took the stone to build houses in the town.

What survives is mainly the ruined King’s Tower and the walls, set in a park. The grounds are free and open as a public park. The castle and its museum are run by North Yorkshire Council.

The Knaresborough viaduct

The railway viaduct over the Nidd is the picture on every Knaresborough postcard. Its story starts with a failure. On 11 March 1848 the nearly finished first viaduct collapsed into the river. No one was killed, though the lime in the rubble poisoned the fish. The railway used a temporary station outside town while a new viaduct was built. The replacement, designed by the railway engineer Thomas Grainger, opened in 1851. It still carries trains on the Harrogate–York line and is Grade II* listed.

For the classic view, stand at the edge of the castle grounds and look down the gorge. For the view from below, take the steps down to the Waterside. Do both if your knees allow; they’re very different pictures.

Blind Jack of Knaresborough

John Metcalf was born in Knaresborough on 15 August 1717 and lost his sight to smallpox at the age of six. He became known as Blind Jack and went on to be one of the first professional road builders of the Industrial Revolution, laying roads across Yorkshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire. Some of his routes are now parts of the A59 and A61. (Yes, really. A blind road builder.) He died in 1810.

In February 2009 a life-size bronze of him, seated on a bench with a surveyor’s measuring wheel, was unveiled in the Market Place. It’s by the sculptor Barbara Asquith, and it sits outside the pub named after him.

Mother Shipton’s Cave and the Petrifying Well

Across the river from the town is Mother Shipton’s Cave, which has charged visitors for entry since 1630. That makes it England’s oldest attraction to charge admission. Its draw is the Petrifying Well, where mineral-rich water drips over objects hung beneath it and slowly coats them in stone. Mother Shipton herself is a figure of local legend, a prophetess.

Celia Fiennes saw the well in 1697 and took a souvenir:

I took Moss myself from thence which is all Crisp’d and perfect Stone; all the Grass Straws or any thing that the water falls upon it does Convert to hardness like Stone.

— Celia Fiennes, Through England on a Side Saddle (Project Gutenberg)

It’s a separate, privately run attraction with its own tickets and season, and it takes one and a half to two hours. Our trip doesn’t go in: with a morning in town, you can’t do everything, and we’d rather spend it on the castle, the river and the streets.

Other Knaresborough sights

• The Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag, a tiny shrine cut into the cliff in 1408, said to have been made by a mason whose son survived a rockfall.
• The House in the Rock and St Robert’s Cave, two more of the town’s cliffside landmarks. Robert was a hermit who lived in a cave by the river and died in 1218.
• The chequerboard houses. Several buildings in town are painted in black-and-white squares, a fashion that dates from the early 1800s. The best known is the Old Manor House, where Cromwell is said to have stayed during the siege of the castle.
• England’s oldest chemist’s shop opened in Knaresborough in 1720.
• The Knaresborough Bed Race, first held in 1966 and run on the second Saturday of June. (Exactly what it sounds like.)

Knaresborough and the spa

Knaresborough is the older town; Harrogate grew up later on its springs. When Daniel Defoe visited the Knaresborough and Harrogate wells in the 1720s, he wrote:

We were surprised to find a great deal of good company here drinking the waters, and indeed, more than we found afterwards at Scarborough; though this seems to be a most desolate out-of-the-world place

— Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Letter VIII (Internet Archive)

For the spa town’s own story, the Turkish Baths and Bettys, see our guide to Harrogate.

Knaresborough market day

A market has been held in Knaresborough since at least 1206, and Edward II granted it a royal charter in 1310. It still runs every Wednesday in the Market Place.

Getting to Knaresborough

Knaresborough station is on the line between Harrogate and York, so you can arrive by train from either, and the trains cross the viaduct, which is worth doing once. Buses run from Harrogate. That’s how I did it: bus and train to Knaresborough in the morning, then on to York. The town is steep. The castle and Market Place are at the top, the river is at the bottom, and steps and lanes link them. Wear shoes with grip.

Knaresborough on our trip

On our October 2027 Yorkshire trip, we spend Tuesday 5 October from about 10:15 to 12:15 in Knaresborough on foot: the castle grounds and the viaduct view, down the steps to the Waterside for the riverside walk, and coffee in town. We skip Mother Shipton’s Cave. The market is on Wednesday, so we miss it. From here we go on to Harrogate. Later in the week we visit Fountains Abbey twice, and spend a day in York.