Ham Castle

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Mound of Ham Castle 2005

Ham Castle (also ' Home Castle' or Homme Castle ) is a ruined castle at the foot of a wooded escarpment near the River Teme , about 1 mile east of the village of Clifton-upon-Teme in the English county of Worcestershire .

It was a medieval moth . A hoard of medieval gold and silver was found on this site in the 17th century. Today only the mound remains .

archeology

The excavation field, in which the earthworks cover the remains of the medieval castle, lies on the slope from north to south. The mound is oval and oriented northwest-southeast. It is about 56 meters long and at its widest point about 40 meters wide. Its core is possibly a ledge. A 1 meter high platform surrounds the mound. Because of the considerable slope of the excavation field, the height of the mound varies from side to side in relation to its immediate surroundings. On the north side, the summit of the mound is about 2 meters above the surrounding outer bailey , while on the south side it is between 4.2 meters and 5.2 meters. The top of the mound is level, covered with grass and weeds, and without any visible foundations. At the time of the survey (1974 and 1986) there were fires on the north and south-west sides of the summit of the mound and stones were visible in this section.

The outer bailey on the southwest side lies on a steep embankment (and is therefore probably not very extensive). The forecastle in the northeast increases sharply, while the shallower the northwest, but the plowing of the terrain has over the years visible traces of the outer curtain wall destroyed and any structures in the forecastle. Traces of a double ditch fed by a spring and the River Teme are visible and may have extended around the castle.

history

The Ham Castle Farm northeast of the village, near the River Teme, is located on the site of the old Castle Ham must be the once been an important fortress in its strategic location.

Little is known historically about the castle, which was first mentioned in a document in 1207. It apparently belonged to the feudal people of the manor of Ham, but seems to have been revoked from one of them by the king for an unknown reason and given to Thomas de Galweya together with the many other lands of the feudal man from King John Unland . Thomas de Galweya was ordered in 1207 to surrender the castle to William de Cauntelow , who should consider it the king.

No other source about the castle was found. It was apparently inherited along with the manor, but in 1275 and about 100 years later the place of residence in Ham is listed as a large estate. A fortress of some kind seems to have survived.

The rest of the property's history may relate to the land that Ham Castle Farm now stands on and the surrounding area. Some of these buildings are listed as historical buildings of the second degree. The site is about 200 meters from today's earthworks at the site of the medieval castle.

The house partially burned down in 1605 and was then badly damaged in the English Civil War . It is said to have been besieged and badly damaged by parliamentary troops; the cannonballs were kept there for a long time. A cannonball excavated on the bank across from Ham Castle was in the possession of the Vicar of Clifton in 1924.

The diary of Mistress Joyce Jeffreys , who sought refuge there from parliamentary forces, contains many entries about fees payable for burying and digging up large suitcases, depending on how the enemy moved. This appears to have led, on one occasion, to William Jeffreys , the then owner of Ham Castle, discovering a box of "gold and silver and other types of metals" buried after an earlier alarm and long forgotten. The vault in which the box was found was located in the middle of "an old fort that was built in the manner of a crescent moon".

From the same diary it can be seen that General Gilbert Gerrard , Governor of Worcester , came to Ham Castle on July 12, 1645 and leaves the next day.

Habington describes Ham Castle as "now in ruins". The 17th century house that was built in place of the castle burned to the ground in 1887. The years 1677 and 1680 with the Jeffreys coat of arms on the funnel heads of the rainwater pipes on the large, semi-wooden mansion of Ham Castle, which was then destroyed in the fire, show that the reconstruction had been commissioned by Henry Jeffreys in those years . Although much of the old house had been extended and rebuilt before it finally disappeared, it showed traces of its old size in its massive staircase, the oak bookshelves in the old library under the roof and its wonderful garden terraces. On March 1, 1680, Henry Jeffreys paid 15 shillings hearth tax for 15 stoves in his house at Ham Castle. The ruins of Ham Castle were mentioned in a lease from 1759 and the castle is also mentioned in the manorial transport papers from 1805 and 1810.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Homme Castle, Clifton upon Teme . Gatehouse Gazetteer. Retrieved April 28, 2016.
  2. ↑ Different measurements provided different height differences at the mound compared to the outer bailey, even if someone estimated the height at 3 meters above the high platform.
  3. ↑ a b Ham Castle . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage 2003. Retrieved April 28, 2016.
  4. ↑ a b c d Worcestershire and Worcester City HER . Heritage Gateway. Retrieved April 28, 2016.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p W. H. Page, JW Willis-Bund: The Victoria history of the county of Worcester . 1924.
  6. ↑ Terraces, Retaining Walls and Steps to West, South and East of Ham Castle Farmhouse . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved April 28, 2016.
  7. ↑ In 1605 William Jeffreys received a letter confirming the manorial rule of Clifton, presumably because his documents had been destroyed in the fire at Ham Castle.

Literature and web links

Coordinates: 52 ° 15 ′ 18.9 ″  N , 2 ° 23 ′ 24 ″  W.