Place Name
Named after the Castle Hotel, originally on George Street, which was leased to a wealthy vintner called John Halford. Sometime around 1760 he moved the hotel to a mansion on Hill Street and set about turning it into one of the town’s leading hotels. John Cloake writing in Richmond Past says: “Assembly Rooms were built on the northern side of its gardens, which stretched to the boathouses on the riverside. Balls, concerts and famous parties were given here, including a grand fête hosted by the Austrian ambassador to celebrate Queen Victoria’s coronation, and a special entertainment for the Commissioners of the Great Exhibition in 1851. By then it had been taken over by Joseph Ellis, owner of the Star and Garter, who rebuilt the Assembly Rooms.” By 1863 it had a stable yard but The Castle’s fortunes were beginning to wain and it was closed as a hotel by 1876. By 1880 the stables had been converted into 14 small dwellings. When the Castle Hotel was put up for sale in 1887, it included seven houses and coachhouses and stabling. It has been a public highway since 1887. In 1890 Sir Whittaker Ellis, a son of the one time proprietor of the Star and Garter and The Castle, a MP and a former Lord Mayor of London bought The Castle, which had been closed for a number of years, and presented it to the town as a site for new municipal offices. He was elected as the first Mayor of Richmond.
