Horsford Castle

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The lower mound of Horsford Castle

Horsford Castle is an Outbound castle in the village of Horsford , about 10 km north of Norwich in the English county of Norfolk .

Details

Before the Norman conquest of England , Horsford belonged to the Anglo-Saxon Eadric Cild , but after the conquest, William the Conqueror gave the land to Robert Malet , Lord of Eye , as a fief. Robert Malet was expelled from the country after he sided with King Henry I's enemies , and the Horsford manor was given to Walter de Caen as a fief. Walter de Caen had a moth erected on the site. The castle was built on heathland, presumably intended to represent a political manifestation of control over these grazing lands. He had a deer park laid out in the vicinity of the new castle. The mound covered a footprint of 77 × 32 meters and was about 2.3 meters high. There was a courtyard measuring 72 × 32 meters.

Walter de Caen's son Robert FitzWalter was Sheriff of Norfolk from 1115 to 1129 . When Robert FitzWalter and his wife returned from a pilgrimage to Rome , they were attacked by bandits, robbed and thrown in prison. But after a prayer to Saint Fides of Agen they were released again and Robert FitzWalter then founded a monastery in honor of the saint near the castle.

today

The castle was probably abandoned in the middle of the 15th century. Today only the low mound in a field east of the village is preserved. The castle ruins are considered a Scheduled Monument .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b T. Barrett-Lennard: Some Account of the Manor or Castle of Horsford in Norfolk Archeology . Issue 15 (1904). Pp. 269-270.
  2. ^ Robert Liddiard: The Castle Landscapes of Anglo-Norman East Anglia: A regional perspective in Christopher Harper-Bill (editor): Medieval East Anglia . Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2005. ISBN 978-1-84383-151-8 . P. 38 Retrieved June 9, 2016. ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  3. ^ A b T. Barrett-Lennard: Some Account of the Manor or Castle of Horsford in Norfolk Archeology . Issue 15 (1904). P. 270.
  4. ↑ a b Horsford Castle Hill . Gatehouse Gazetteer. Retrieved June 9, 2016.

literature

  • Plantagenet Somerset Fry: The David & Charles Book of Castles . David & Charles, Newton Abbott 1980. ISBN 0-7153-7976-3

Coordinates: 52 ° 41 ′ 38.6 "  N , 1 ° 15 ′ 43.6"  E