Berkeley Castle

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Berkeley Castle 2009, view from the southwest

Berkeley Castle (historically sometimes Berkeley Castle is written) is a castle in the city of Berkeley in the English county of Gloucestershire . The origins of the castle go back to the 11th century. It has been listed as a Grade I Historic Building by English Heritage .

The castle has remained in the Berkeley family since its reconstruction in the 12th century, with the exception of a period of royal ownership by the House of Tudor . King Edward II is said to have been murdered there in 1327.

construction

Donjon and inner gatehouse from the outer bailey

The first castle in Berkeley was a motte that William FitzOsbern had built in 1067, shortly after the Norman conquest of the British Isles . This remained for three generations in the first Berkeley family, whose heads were all called Roger de Berkeley . They rebuilt it in the first half of the 12th century. The last Roger de Berkeley was deprived of ownership of the castle in 1152 because he withheld his allegiance from the Plantagenet family in the conflict of anarchy . The title of Baron Berkeley was then Robert Fitzharding , a wealthy citizen of Bristol awarded and supporters of the Plantagenets. He was the founder of the Berkeley family who still own the castle today.

In the years 1153-1154 Fitzharding received the royal charter from King Henry II , which allowed him to rebuild the castle. You should have the city of Bristol, the Gloucester Road, the estuary of the Severn and the Welsh protect border. Fitzharding had the round donjon built between 1153 and 1156, presumably in place of the earlier motte. This was followed by the construction of the curtain wall , probably between 1160 and 1190, by Robert Fitzharding and his son Maurice.

Most of the rest of the castle dates back to the 14th century and was built for Thomas de Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley : Thorpe's Tower north of the donjon, the inner gatehouse in the southwest and other buildings in the inner courtyard.

The assassination of Edward II.

Covered path to the presumed cell of Edward II in the castle

The castle was robbed in 1326 by the troops of Hugh le Despenser , Edward II's favorite. Subsequently, in 1327, Edward II was deposed by his wife, Queen Isabella , and her ally, Roger Mortimer , and placed under the care of Thomas de Berkeley and his brother-in-law John Maltravers . They took Edward to Berkeley Castle and held him there for five months, from April to September. During this time, a band of Edward's supporters attacked, captured and saved the castle. He was soon caught again and imprisoned again. His guards may then move him from castle to castle to make further release more difficult, before returning him to Berkeley Castle in September. Some historians theorized that Edward's escape was ultimately successful and that someone else was later murdered in his place.

Eduard was believed to be murdered in an unknown manner on September 21, 1327 at Berkeley Castle, although popular stories of red- hot poker or strangulation persist . The cell in which he is said to have been locked up and murdered can still be seen today, together with the adjoining, 11 m deep dungeon , in which one can hear echoes of the events surrounding the murder on September 21st every year.

The declaration that was made to parliament at the time was simply that Eduard had been the victim of a fatal accident. His body was embalmed and remained in Berkeley in St. John's Chapel in the donjon for a month before Thomas de Berkeley escorted him to Gloucester Abbey (now Gloucester Cathedral ) for burial. Thomas de Berkeley was later suspected of being an accomplice in murder, but he was able to prove he was not in the castle when the murder was committed by Roger Mortimer's henchmen. In 1337 he was acquitted of all charges.

Later story

Berkeley Castle from above, engraving by Jan Kip for the antiquarian Sir Robert Atkyns: The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire, 1712

In the 14th century the great hall got a new roof and it was here that the last court jester of England, Dickie Pearce, died when he fell from the Minstrel's Gallery (balcony in the great hall). His grave is in St. Mary's cemetery next to the castle. One of two original chapels adjoins the knight's hall, in which one can find painted wooden vaulted ceilings and a passage from the Bible in Norman . In this room there is also an illustrated vellum book with canti piani , which were used in Catholic masses before the family converted to Protestantism in the 16th century .

In the English Civil War the castle was still so important for them in 1645 by Colonel Thomas Rainsborough for the Roundheads was taken. The royalist garrison surrendered after a siege in which cannons were fired within range from the adjacent church roof of Saint Mary the Virgin. As usual, the castle walls remained razed after the siege, but the Berkeley family got the castle back on condition that they would never repair the damage to the outer castle wall and keep. This requirement, established by a parliamentary law passed at the time, still applies today. According to the Pevsner Architectural Guides , the breach was only partially filled by a “modern” wall, which only reaches the height of a low garden wall and is supposed to protect people from falling 8.4 meters from the castle garden, the original moth.

Terrace, now planted with lawn as a wall garden

At the beginning of the 20th century, the 8th Earl of Berkeley had parts of the castle repaired and rebuilt. He had a loggia built in the same Gothic style as the rest of the castle. One of the changes was e.g. B. an Art Nouveau piece in a medieval bedroom.

The castle is surrounded by terraced gardens such as As the Bowling Green of Elizabeth I and a jaw consisting of a branch in the Battle of Culloden to be grown was cut in 1746 from a tree.

modern times

The castle courtyard in the 1840s

This castle is the oldest permanently inhabited castle in England after the Tower of London and Windsor Castle, and the oldest that has been permanently in the hands of the same family. Inside is an old four-poster bed, which is the longest-standing piece of furniture in the UK that has been used by the same family. The Berkeley family reside at this castle part of the year and part of the year in Spetchley Park outside Worcester , which has been owned by the family since 1606.

Most of Berkeley Castle has been open to the public since 1997 and is administered by the Berkeley Castle Charitable Trust . Only 15% of the rooms are reserved for private use. In 2006 a call for donations was made to raise the £ 5.5 million for the renovation and restoration of the Norman building.

Two ships of the Royal Navy were named after the castle, as was a locomotive of the Great Western Railway .

The castle served as a backdrop for many scenes of children's TV series The Ghost Hunter of the BBC , as well as for the first televised version of The Other Boleyn Girl .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Berkeley Castle . In: Images of England . Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 25, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.imagesofengland.org.uk
  2. ^ Nicholas Kingsley: The Country Houses of Gloucestershire, Vol. 1 1500-1660 . Phillimore, Chichester 2001, ISBN 1-86077-124-6 , pp. 51-54.
  3. ↑ a b c Jonathan Sumption: Plotting the past , The Guardian. April 5, 2003. Retrieved August 25, 2010. 
  4. ↑ a b c d e David Verey, Alan Brooks: Pevsner Architectural Guide, Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and The Forest of Dean . Yale University Press, New Haven 2002, ISBN 0-300-09733-6 , pp. 176-178.
  5. ^ LG Pine: The New Extinct Peerage 1884-1971 . Heraldry Today, London 1972, ISBN 0-900455-23-3 , pp. 25-26.
  6. ↑ David Sivier: Anglo-Saxon and Norman Bristol . Tempus, Stroud, Gloucestershire 2002, ISBN 0-7524-2533-1 , pp. 75-76.
  7. ↑ Joseph Bettey: John Rogan (eds.): Bristol Cathedral: History and Architecture . Tempus, Charleston 2000, ISBN 0-7524-1482-8 , pp. 15-19.
  8. ↑ a b c Burke: Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, Vol. 1 . Burke's Peerage, Switzerland 1999, ISBN 2-940085-02-1 , p. 254.
  9. ↑ a b c d Paul Doherty: Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II . Robinson, London 2003, ISBN 1-84119-843-9 .
  10. ↑ David Brandon: The most haunted places in Britain , The Guardian. October 31, 2009. Retrieved August 25, 2010. 
  11. ^ David Verey, Alan Brooks [1977]: Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and The Forest of Dean (The Buildings of England) , 3rd Edition, Pevsner Architectural Guides, 2002, ISBN 978-0-300-09733-7 .
  12. ^ Richard Smith: Nights of old: Four-poster is Britain's oldest bed slept in by 15 generations of same family (English) . In: Mirror News , March 6, 2013. Retrieved February 23, 2015. 
  13. ↑ Call for donations on berkeley-castle.com ( Memento from September 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ^ JJ Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy . Chatham Publishing, London 1969. Revised edition 2006. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8 .
  15. ↑ John Daniel: 4073 'Castle' class . In: The Great Western Archive . Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  16. ↑ Scope | Issue 16 | Film reviews . Scope.nottingham.ac.uk. Retrieved February 23, 2015.

Web links

Commons : Berkeley Castle  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 41 ′ 16.7 "  N , 2 ° 27 ′ 25.5"  W.