HAVERAH PARK is a liberty and township, formerly extra-parochial and once a royal chase, in the Eastern division of the Riding, union, manor and liberty of Knaresborough, lower division of Claro wapentake, Claro petty sessional division, and Otley county court district; it is situate miles west from Harrogate and 4 ½ south-west from Ripley, and is the property of Sir Henry Day Ingilby, bart. of Ripley Park, and consists of a few scattered farms.

John of Gaunt’s Castle.-Close to the most southwesterly farm-house and near the boundary of the park, are the remains of the ancient castle called John of Gaunt’s. The date of its erection is uncertain, but rumour ascribes it to the reign of Edward I.: nothing more than a corner the tower and some few feet of the walls is now standing, from the thickness of which it is clear that it could never have been a place of any military importance: the foundations are square in plan, with a surrounding moat, and the stones employed in the building have had very little attention bestowed on them, being mostly undressed, being apparently gathered from the surface of the locality. Many of the walls erected on the farm on which the castle stands appear to be built of stone obtained from the ruins. To the north of these remains is a small stream in the valley that has atone time been dammed, so as to form a protection on that side, but is now undergoing considerable alterations in the formation of a reservoir for the supply of water to Harrogate and neighbourhood, which is being built on a spot called Beaver Dyke. On the south of the park, near Haverah Park Lodge, is a reservoir, constructed in 1875 by the Harrogate Waterworks Company, covering over six acres of land. About a mile to the south-west is a series of tumuli called Pippin’s Castle, supposed to have been a burying place for the inhabitants of John of Gaunt’s Castle. Sir Henry Day Ingilby is lord of the manor. The soil is clayey; subsoil, rock. The chief crops are oats, with some land in pasture. The area is 2,245 acres; gross estimated rental, £1,547; rateable value, £1,426; population in 1871, 84.