The village of Studley was an Anglo-Saxon settlement mentioned in the Doomsday book survey (1086), where The Old Castle was
built on a site near the present St Mary's church by Peter De Studley. Thought to have been a 17th century building it was
ruinous when Francis Lyttleton-Holyoake purchased the adjoining land in 1833 and built the present Castle, at a cost of £120,000. At the time he enclosed some common land where, upon a villager uttered the curse that, 'whoever owned Studley Castle'
should die, without owning one acre of land. Unfortunately the new owner did in fact die in penury and so did the subsequent owner from 1863, Thomas Walker, who had also been made bankrupt in 1890.The land changed hands several times until 1903 when it became a ladies agricultural college owned by The Countess of Warwick, where it later became known as Studley College.
During the First World War the Castle was a horticultural college where 3 year diploma courses were introduced in 1924 and ran until 1947 for poultry and dairy work, bee keeping, fruit preservation and carpentry. Plans were made to extend student accommodation as there was a full complement of 60 students and on the 22nd May 1936 the Earl of Plymouth laid the foundation stone for the South Wing. This comprised of 5 science laboratories on the ground floor, (now made up of 3 conference rooms) and 3 higher floors of single study bedrooms, 50 in all, (now a number of large conference rooms). The cost of this build was £20,000.
Two years later on the 30th June 1938, HRH The Duchess of Gloucester opened the South Wing. Unfortunately, Lady Warwick
was prevented from attending by illness and died later that year. The South Wing bedrooms were first occupied in September 1937 and by the summer term of 1939 all rooms were filled. Some restoration of the stone work of the main building was carried out in 1961/1962 and it’s use was more widely extended to include seminars and outside courses. In 1969 the college was closed due to lack of funds for the expansion program.
The Castle was then purchased by Leyland and subsequently owned by The Phoenix Four of MG Rover for its training and
conference purposes. During the week it housed the corporate business for Rover and of a weekend became a very popular wedding venue. With the demise of Rover Group, Studley Castle was then sold in 2004 to self made millionaire, Mr Firoz Kassam, who owns a number of hotel and conference venues in the UK. Still owned by Mr Kassam the Castle later joined Best Western in 2008 to raise it’s profile not only as a conference venue but a 3 star hotel too of which, has proved to be very successful. With the doors open to the public the Castle is fast becoming a popular location for either conferences, weddings or just a quite weekend away.