Nottingham Castle

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Gatehouse of Nottingham Castle. Medieval architecture of the bridge and the lower part of the gatehouse and renovation of the upper part of the gatehouse from Victorian times

Nottingham Castle is a ruined castle in Nottingham , the capital of the English county of Nottinghamshire . The castle was built on a natural ledge called Castle Rock with 39 meter high, steep cliffs on the south and west sides. It was an important royal fortress in the Middle Ages and the king occasionally visited it. As early as the 16th century, it gradually fell into disrepair and was largely demolished in 1649. Henry Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Newcastle , later built a mansion on the property. This was burned down by insurgents in 1831 and was preserved by the dukes as a fire ruin. It was later rebuilt as an art gallery and museum and is still preserved today. Little of the original castle remains today, but there are plenty of remains to suggest the design.

History in the Middle Ages

One is not sure whether a castle already stood here before the Norman conquest of England . If this was the case, this castle was smaller and much simpler than the one built in the Anglo-Saxon style after the invasion .

The first Norman castle was a wooden moth and was built in 1067, a year after the Battle of Hastings , on the orders of William the Conqueror . During the reign of Heinrich II , this wooden castle was replaced by a significantly more fortified stone castle. This was an imposing and complex construction that later consisted of an upper inner castle at the highest point of Castle Rock , a middle inner castle north of it, which contained the royal living quarters, and a large outer castle to the east.

For centuries, Nottingham Castle was one of the most important castles in England, for the nobility and the royal family alike . The castle was in a strategic position near a crossing over the River Trent . It was also known as a place for amusement, as it was near the royal hunting grounds at Tideswell village , the king's "pantry" in the royal woods of the Peak District , and also near the royal woods of Barnsdale and Sherwood . The castle also had its own deer park just west of the complex; the area is still called "The Park" today.

While King Richard the Lionheart was on the Third Crusade with a large number of English nobles , Nottingham Castle was occupied by supporters of Prince John , including the Sheriff of Nottingham. In the legend of Robin Hood , the final battle between the sheriff and the lawless hero takes place at Nottingham Castle.

In March 1194, a historic battle took place at Nottingham Castle, part of the returning King Richard the Lionheart's campaign to put down the rebellion of Prince John. King Richard besieged the castle using siege machinery like the ones he had used on his crusade. The decisive attack took place at the castle. Ranulf de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester , and David of Scotland, 8th Earl of Huntingdon , helped Richard. The occupation of the castle surrendered after only a few days.

Shortly before his 18th birthday, the future King Edward III. with the help of some loyal companions led by Sir William Montagu, a coup d'état (October 19, 1330) against his mother Isabelle de France and her lover, Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March , at Nottingham Castle Both acted as regents during Edward's teenage years after killing his father, Edward II , at Berkeley Castle . William Montagu and his companions were accompanied by William Eland , castellan and verser of Mortimer's Castles, who knew the location of a secret tunnel that led them to a normally locked door further up the castle. On the dark night of October 19, 1330 Montagu and his companions entered the tunnel, climbed up to the door that was opened by Edward III. or was unlocked by a trustworthy servant, killed Mortimer's bodyguards and overpowered Mortimer himself. Mortimer was bound and gagged, led out of the tunnel with Queen Mother Isabelle and arrested. Mortimer was sent to the Tower of London and hanged a month later. Isabelle de France was forced to resign and exiled to Castle Rising Castle . With these dramatic events, the reign of Edward III began.

Royal residence

Victorian reconstruction of the castle's likely appearance in the late Middle Ages

Edward III. used Nottingham Castle as a residence and held parliamentary sessions. In 1346 David II of Scotland was imprisoned here. In 1365 Eduard III. expand the castle by building a new tower on the west side of the central core castle and a new prison under the high tower. In 1376, Peter de la Mare , Speaker of the House of Commons , was imprisoned in Nottingham Castle for having "taken unjustified freedoms in the name of Alice Perrers , the king's lover".

In 1387 a state council was held at the castle. Richard II summoned the Lord Mayor of London with councilors and sheriffs to the castle in 1392 and held another state council to humiliate the Londoners. The last documented stay of Richard II at Nottingham Castle was in 1397 when he was holding another council.

From 1403 to 1437 the castle was the main residence of Queen Henry IV , Johanna . After this residence was abandoned, the maintenance of the castle was neglected. Nottingham Castle began to be used as a military fortress again until the Wars of the Roses . Edward IV proclaimed himself king in Nottingham and in 1476 ordered the construction of a new tower and royal apartments. John Leland described this in 1540 as:

"The most beautifulest part and gallant building for lodging (...) a right sumptuous piece of stone work." (Eng .: "the most beautiful (?) part and a stately residential building (...) a really magnificent piece of masonry." )

During the reign of King Henry VII , the castle remained a royal fortress. Henry VIII ordered new paintings for the castle before visiting Nottingham in August 1511. Until 1536 the king had the castle fortified and the garrison strengthened from a few dozen to a few hundred men.

In 1538 the constable, Thomas Manners, pointed out the need for entertainment. A report from 1525 noted that there was a lot of "decay and ruins on the castle in question" and

“Part of the roof of the Great Hall is falling down. Also the new building there is in dekay of timber, lead and glass. " (German: "Part of the roof of the knight's hall has collapsed. In the new building there is also decay of wood, lead and glass"

Civil war

Around 1600 the castle was given up as a royal residence. In the 16th century, artillery had made it largely useless. Shortly after the outbreak of the English Civil War , the castle was already half-ruined after a series of skirmishes in the area. At the beginning of the Civil War, in August 1642, Charles I chose Nottingham as the rallying point for his armies, but soon after his departure Castle Rock was fortified as a defensive position for the Parliamentarians . Under the orders of John Hutchinson, they repulsed a number of royalist attacks; they were the last group that could hold the castle. After the execution of Charles I in 1649, the castle was razed so that it could no longer be used as such.

Today's "Ducal Manor"

The castle from The History and Antiquities of Nottingham by James Orange, 1840
Entrance to the ducal manor (2012)

After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, today's "Ducal Manor" was built on the foundations of the previous castle from 1674 to 1679 at the behest of Henry Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Newcastle . Despite the destruction of the donjon and the fortifications of the upper core castle, some cells broken out of the rock and medieval pointed arches under the manor house along with a long corridor to the foot of the rock (called Mortimer's Hole ) have been preserved to this day. There are guided tours through this corridor that start at the castle and end at Brewhouse Yard .

The mansion's builder was Samuel Marsh of Lincoln , who also worked for the Duke on Bolsover Castle . It is said that his constructions were strongly influenced by Rubens' engravings in his book Palazzi di Genova . The ducal manor is a rare English example of mannerism .

But with the advent of the Industrial Revolution , which gave Nottingham a reputation for having the worst slums in the entire British Empire with the exception of India , the manor lost its appeal to the dukes. When the residents of these slums rebelled against the Duke of Newcastle's opposition to the Reform Act 1832 in 1831 , they burned the mansion down. The original outside stairs on the east facade of the mansion were later demolished to make way for the parades of the Robin Hood Rifles .

The manor house remained in ruins until it was restored by Thomas Chambers Hine in 1875 and opened as the Nottingham Castle Museum in 1878 by the Prince of Wales , later King Edward VII . It was the UK's first urban art gallery outside of London. The new interiors did not adhere to the old floor plan and window layout so that a picture gallery could be created based on the pattern of the great gallery in the Louvre , with light from above . The new, obtrusive, sloping roofs raised off- the-wall comments and a few years later the walls were raised and crowned by an openwork stone balustrade , which changed the proportions of the facades. Behind the balustrade was a walkway over the lead roofs, which originally allowed visitors to stroll over the roofs with views of the city and the Trent Valley.

The gatehouse of the medieval castle and a large part of the castle walls of the outer bailey were kept as the garden wall of the ducal manor house. The northernmost part of the outer bailey, however, was lost when an access road to the Park Estate was built on the site of the former deer park in the 1830s . This part of the castle was later used for the expansion of Nottingham General Hospital . Most of the walls of the outer fortifications that are still visible today are from a reconstruction from the Edwardian era.

On Christmas Day 1996, a landslide triggered by a broken water pipe caused 80 tons of earth and preserved walls to fall from the reconstructed terrace by the manor house to the foot of Castle Rock. Remnants of the original castle foundations and the rock bed came to light. After long discussions about the best conservation and restoration proposal, the terrace was rebuilt in 2005 with its traditional stone facade. It covers a concrete foundation that allows visitors to access the medieval masonry. The terrace offers a great distant view of the south of the city and was also featured in Saturday Night through Sunday Morning (1960), a groundbreaking film about the changing mindsets of adolescents in the changing industrial society of the late 1950s.

A drawing of the ducal mansion could be seen on millions of packages of rolling tobacco or cigarettes made by John Player & Sons , a Nottingham company. On most of the parcels, the words “Nottingham Castle” and “Trade Mark” framed the image of the building, which was not very fortress-like. As a result, novelist Ian Fleming, in his novella Thunderball , mentions “this extraordinary brand with a doll's house floating in chocolate cream under Nottingham Castle”, knowing full well that this image was well known to his British readers.

Nottingham Castle Museum

The ducal mansion still serves as a museum and art gallery today. It houses most of the art and decorative art collections of the City of Nottingham and its environs, as well as the Sherwood Foresters Regimental Museum .

Tickets are available today for both the Nottingham Castle Museum and the Museum of Nottingham Life at Brewhouse Yard at the foot of Castle Rock in five 17th century farms.

Notable exhibits in the collections are:

In addition, the Nottingham Castle Victoria Cross Memorial , inaugurated on May 7, 2010, lists Albert Ball and 19 other recipients of the Victoria Cross in Nottingham.

In 2005, the castle was the only place outside the United States to host the touring Waking Dreams exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite art. The exhibition attracted visitors from all over Europe and earned the Nottingham Castle Museum international recognition as an art gallery.

The long gallery

Works of art from Great Britain and continental Europe are displayed in the castle's long gallery. These include works by Nottinghamshire artists such as Thomas Barber , Richard Parkes Bonington , Henry Dawson , Paul Sandby and John Rawson Walker . 20th century works include Edward Burra , Tristram Hillier , Ivon Hitchens , Dame Laura Knight , Harold Knight , Lawrence Stephen Lowry , William Nicholson , Ben Nicholson , Winifred Nicholson , Stanley Spencer , Matthew Smith and Edward Wadsworth .

Events

A number of annual events are held at Nottingham Castle. These are e.g. B. the Nottingham Beer Festival and the Robin Hood Pageant . In 2008, a meeting was even held there to try to break the world record for most people disguised as Robin Hood .

Gallery images

  • The towers in the foreground house HM Revenue and Customs headquarters and were designed by Michael Hopkins .

  • The stairs to the ducal mansion

  • The way from the gatehouse .

  • The gatehouse of the castle with the main entrance

  • The property below the manor house

  • Castle Rock

  • Gatehouse

  • Albert Ball monument

  • Detail of the Albert Ball monument

  • View from the south

  • Plaque: King Richard the Lionheart married Robin Hood and Maid Marian

literature

  • Trevor Foulds: The Siege if Nottingham Castle in 1194 in Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottingham . Booklet XCV (1991). Pp. 20-28.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robin Hood pardoned by Sheriff of Nottingham . BBC. June 11, 2015.
  2. ^ John Gillingham: Richard I. 2000. ISBN 0300094043 . P. 269.
  3. ^ Ian Mortimer: The Perfect King. The Life of Edward III . Vintage Books, London 2008. pp. 1-3.
  4. ^ William Howie Wylie: Old and New Nottingham . 1853.
  5. ^ Sir John Summerson: Pelican History of Art: Architecture in England 1530-1830 . Harmondsworth 1953. p. 104.
  6. ^ Culture 24 . Retrieved June 11, 2015.

Coordinates: 52 ° 56 ′ 57.5 "  N , 1 ° 9 ′ 16.6"  W.