The estate includes a bat-filled dungeon and the purported ghost of a servant girl named Nancy

Sheriff Hutton Castle, which was built in 1382, comes complete with a hooded ghost and bat cave but it is almost totally ruined.

Just four crumbling 100ft stone turrets and the corners of the keep remain and it has no roof or walls.

However, it boasts an impressive list of former royal owners, including Richard III, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.  

The castle began as a grand manor house built by Bertram de Bulmer, the Sheriff of York, in 1140.

It then passed to the aristocratic Neville family through marriage.

In 1382, John, Lord Neville, secured a licence to build battlements to crenellate the walls, which formally made it a castle.

It was inherited by Richard Neville, also known as Warwick the Kingmaker, who was at one point the richest and perhaps most powerful man in England.

When Warwick died at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, Edward IV confiscated the castle and gave it to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who later became Richard III.

In 1484, after Richard was crowned, the castle became one of the two headquarters of his Council of the North.

During the 16th century, Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy lived at Sheriff Hutton under the care of Cardinal Wolsey.

The building then began to fall into disrepair – one report in 1618 described it as "ruinous" - but remained crown property until the death of Charles I.

It passed to the aristocratic Ingram family before it was sold for the first time to textile baron Wilfred Wagstaff in 1940.

Its present owners Dr Richard Howarth, 67, and his wife Jenny, 65, descendents of Mr Wagstaff, decided to sell it because it has become too much work.

Dr Howarth, a retired lecturer at the University of Wales, said it was a reluctant sale for him and his wife, a retired restaurant owner.

Dr Howarth, who lives in a converted Victorian barn on the site 10 miles north of York, said: "We have two sons but neither of them can take it.

"We'd like to pass it on to someone who would carry the torch, love it as we have and perhaps restore it a little."

The estate includes the couple's four-bedroom barn conversion, a two-bedroom cottage, 11 acres of land, a bat-filled dungeon beneath one of the towers and the purported ghost of a servant girl named Nancy.

Estate agent Tim Blenkin said: "This is a chance to own a remarkable part of English history."