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County Durham
THE HILTON FAMILY
The most prominent secular tenants within the Sunderland area were the Hiltons, who held the castle
and lordship of Hylton. One of the ancient baronial families of the palatinate of Durham,1 the family
traced its pedigree back to Romanus de Hilton who held the estates in 1166.2 Alexander de Hilton, lord
of Hylton in 1172, was a witness to the borough charter of Wearmouth, granted by Bishop du Puiset in
c.1180. He was still head of the family in 1196 when he made a payment of £4 for the feudal due
known as scutage.3 A later Alexander granted the church of St Peter’s in Monkwearmouth the annual
sum of three marks, issuing from the revenues of the mill of Hylton, to support a chaplain to celebrate
mass at the altar of St Laurence in the church. He was amongst the noblemen who, in 1241, travelled
to the Holy Land to fight in the Crusades. 4 A later head of the family, Robert de Hilton, pursued a
military career and was summoned to Parliament as a baron in 1295-6. He was appointed keeper of the
peace (custos pacis) in Durham by Bishop Richard Kellaw in 1311. His son, Alexander, also
summoned to Parliament, as a baron, from 1332 to 1336, was the last of the Hilton’s to do so, although
succeeding heads of the family retained the honorific title ‘baron’.5 Alexander’s grandson, William,
succeeded to the lordship on the death of his father, Robert in 1376. The family apparently assented to
the imprisonment of Richard II and supported the accession of Henry IV in 1399.6
William, lord of Hylton from 1376, is the most likely builder of Hylton Castle. His inquisition post
mortem, dated 1435, provides details of the manorial complex at that time. It included a hall and four
chambers, together with a chapel, two barns, a kitchen and a ‘house constructed of stone called the
Gatehouse’.7
The new gatehouse seems to have become the principal building on the site. An inventory made in
1559 after the death of Sir Thomas Hylton lists a number of rooms, including the great chamber, the
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green and middle chambers, a ‘new’ chamber, a gallery, a hall with chamber over it, a parlour, a
kitchen, larder and buttery and a tower.8
In 1435 a considerable estate was attached to the castle. Its lands included an orchard, 140 acres of
demesne arable land and 26 acres of meadow, together with 26 tofts and crofts, 20 husbandlands
(bondlands) of 20 a. each, a messuage and 20 acres of land known as Chamberland, several other
landholdings totalling some 600 acres, and a further 188 acres of moorland. 9 Evidence of medieval
farming on the Hylton estate is still visible in the landscape of Hylton Dene as ridge and furrow
earthwork remains to the south-west of the gatehouse.
In the 15th century the relationship between the Hiltons and the neighbouring monks who held the
mother church of St Peter’s became increasingly strained. Disputes occurred over the payment of dues
and offerings owed by the family to the parish church at Monkwearmouth and over rights to the corn
tithes of Hylton, assigned to the Wearmouth monks in the early part of the century. Matters came to a
head in 1435, after the death of William, lord Hylton and the succession to the estate of his son,
Robert, an unruly individual who had been involved in a Sunderland murder of 1411. The new lord of
Hylton sought, constantly, to ride roughshod over the prior’s parochial rights, even refusing to allow
his dead wife to be buried in the parish church of Monkwearmouth. In 1439, following an assault upon
the master of Wearmouth and his fellow monk by Hilton’s son and servants, the matter was brought
before the bishop and the dispute died down. However, it flared up again in the late 1450s over a
quarrel involving Robert Staynton, the chaplain of Hylton from 1450-61. During the course of the
dispute Staynton took his case, firstly, before the church courts in Durham and subsequently to the
papal curia in Rome.10
The Hilton family remained at the forefront of the Durham nobility throughout the 15th and 16th
centuries. In 1536 Sir Thomas Hilton played a prominent role as one of the rebel leaders in the protest
against Henry VIII’s religious changes known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, whilst in 1569 his nephew,
Sir William, was an equally prominent supporter of the Crown, in the rebellion of the catholic-minded
northern earls of Northumberland and Westmorland against Elizabeth I. Sir William thereafter
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continued to play a prominent role in the region’s administration. In 1578, he was appointed to a
commission inquiring into piracy in Northumberland and went on to serve as sheriff of the Bishopric
in the 1580s. Later, in 1596, he served on a commission of inquiry into the state of the lands and
castles of Durham.11
In 1583, Sir William had settled the manor and castle of Hylton on his son and heir, Thomas, and
daughter-in-law, Anne, the daughter of Sir George Bowes of Streatlam, head of another prominent
Durham family. Thomas, however, died in 1598, predeceasing his father by two years, and in 1600,
Sir William was succeeded his 13 year old grandson, Henry Hilton.12 Hylton Castle remained in the
hands of the family until the mid-18th century when, by private Act of Parliament the estate was sold
to pay off the debts of John Hilton (d.1746) who had transformed the old castle into the centre piece of
a nine bay country house. The final phase of building at Hylton occurred in 1863 when William
Briggs, a Sunderland merchant restored the castle to its original form and replaced the windows in a
Gothic style. The medieval core of St Katherine’s chapel also remains but this, too, has undergone
extensive reconstruction.13
1
G.T.Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham (New York, 1900), 64
R. Surtees, History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (1816-40), II, 30.
3
Durham Chapter Muniments (hereafter DCM), Misc. Ch. 6223c ; Surtees, History and Antiquities, II, 30.
Lapsley, County Palatine, 64-5.
4
DCM, Cart. Vetus, f. 42v;. Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj. Rolls Ser., iv, 89.
5
Lapsley, County Palatine, 65, 178.
6
45th Deputy Keeper’s Report, 211, 213; Rot. Parl. III, 427.
7
45th Deputy Keeper’s Report, 221.
8
J.Raine, Wills and Inventories Part 1, Surtees Society 2 (1835)
9 th
45 Deputy Keeper’s Report, 213, 22.
10
R.B. Dobson, Durham Priory (1973), 195-6; Raine (ed.), Inventories and Account Rolls of… Jarrow and
Monkwearmouth, 240-4; Piper, Durham Monks, 4; DCM, Priory Reg. Parv. III, f.93v, f.98, 98-99, f.101-102,
f.104v-105, Priory Reg., IV, f.124v-127, 128-129v; f.147,148-148v.
11
M Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: a study of the rebel armies of October 1536 (Manchester ,1996), 150, 157,
158, 160-1, 175, 206, 379, 392, 397; A. Clifford (ed.), The State Papers and letters of Sir Ralph Sadler,
(Edinburgh, 1809), ii, 176; Cal. S.P. Dom. 1566-79, p. 226, 541; ibid. 1595-7, 217; Durham University Library,
Archives and Special Collections (hereafter DULASC), CCB B/43/1, CCB B/43/2.
12
Durham County Record Office, D/St/D6/2/5, D/St/D6/2/6; Surtees, History and Antiquities, II, 31.
13
DULASC, Particulars and valuations of the property of John Hylton, esq., deceased, in various parts of
County Durham, taken in 1750 (1750).
2
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