Yattendon Castle

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Yattendon Castle is the ruin of a fortified manor house in the parish of Yattendon in Harde Faircross in the West Berkshire district in the English county of Berkshire .

history

A fortified mansion originally stood on the grounds of Yattendon Castle. Sir Richard Merbrook lived in this house at the beginning of the 15th century . His daughter Alice married Sir John Norreys († September 1, 1466) of Ockwells Manor House , a Knight of the Shire of Berkshire and Keeper of the Wardrobe of King Henry VI. Subsequently, the castle remained in the property of the Norreys family for more than 200 years .

Sir John Norreys bought many adjoining lands and on January 20, 1448 received royal permission to fortify his mansion (English "License to Crenellate") and to include about 240 hectares of land. The son of John and Alice Norreys, Sir William Norreys (1433-1507) later inherited the castle. He was part of the army that the future King Henry VII brought over from Brittany in 1485 and also took part in the Battle of Bosworth .

William Norreys' eldest son, Sir Edward Norreys († 1487), presumably also resided at the castle during his father's time. Edward Norreys had two sons: Sir John Norreys (1481–1564), who inherited the castle but died without a legitimate heir, and Sir Henry Norreys , who was beheaded in 1536 for an alleged affair with Queen Anne Boleyn . The castle then fell to Edward's grandson, Henry Norreys, 1st Baron Norreys (1525-1601), the son of the aforementioned Sir Henry Norreys. Henry Norreys was a lifelong friend of Queen Elizabeth I and the father of six sons, including John Norreys , a noted English soldier.

The castle was largely destroyed by the parliamentarians in the English Civil War. In 1785 a new mansion was built in its place. Today you can only see traces of the moat of the old castle .

Royal visitors

  • Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon visited Yattendon Castle in 1520. It is said that the queen's lady-in-waiting , Anne Boleyn, with whom the king was already in love at the time, dropped her handkerchief during a dance. Sir Henry Norreys is said to have picked it up. This incident, dubbed "Queen Anne's Dance", served as evidence of the affair between Anne Boleyn and Henry Norreys' trial.
  • Elizabeth I was staying at Yattendon Castle on her way to her Woodstock imprisonment .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l David Nash Ford: Yattendon Castle . In: Royal Berkshire History . Nash Ford Publishing. 2001. Retrieved January 16, 2017.
  2. ^ A b David Nash Ford: Sir William Norreys (1433-1507) . In: Royal Berkshire History . Nash Ford Publishing. 2005. Retrieved January 16, 2017.
  3. ^ David Nash Ford: Sir John Norreys (d. 1564) . In: Royal Berkshire History . Nash Ford Publishing. 2005. Retrieved January 16, 2017.

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 3.4 "  N , 1 ° 12 ′ 21.2"  W.