Berkeley Castle: A Norman Fortress and Berkeley Family Seat
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English, Norman
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page14 sections
History
Berkeley Castle is a Norman fortress in Berkeley, United Kingdom, begun around 1067 after the Norman Conquest. William FitzOsbern, the first Earl of Hereford, built the original motte-and-bailey as part of the Norman defensive organization of the region. The castle controlled the Little Avon and the Severn valley while helping protect Bristol, the route to Gloucester, the Severn estuary, and the Welsh border.
Norman foundation and rebuilding
The earlier Berkeley manor had belonged to Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, before it passed into William I’s royal estate. FitzOsbern then received Berkeley among the lands associated with the earldom of Hereford. The first Berkeley family held the castle for three generations, with each head of the family named Roger de Berkeley.
The last Roger lost the barony in 1152 after withholding allegiance from the Plantagenet cause during the Anarchy, the civil war between Stephen and Matilda over the English succession. Henry II granted the feudal barony to Robert Fitzharding, a wealthy Bristol burgess and supporter of the Plantagenets. Fitzharding and his wife, Eva, established the Berkeley family that continued to possess the castle.
In 1153 or 1154, Henry II issued Fitzharding a royal charter authorizing the castle’s rebuilding. Fitzharding constructed the stone shell keep between 1153 and 1156, followed by the curtain wall, probably built between 1160 and 1190 by Fitzharding and his son Maurice. The new fortress replaced the earlier timber defenses with substantial masonry.
Conflict and political influence
Berkeley Castle was drawn into the struggles of the Anarchy. Roger de Berkeley initially appears to have supported Stephen before changing sides. Stephen’s forces besieged the castle, captured Roger outside its walls, and used him in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the garrison to surrender. Roger later recovered his property.
Maurice Fitzharding and his descendants remained involved in national politics and warfare. Robert de Berkeley supported barons opposed to King John, and the castle became a meeting place for western barons before they travelled to Runnymede, where King John sealed Magna Carta in 1215. The charter limited royal authority and addressed the rights of the barons. John later seized Berkeley Castle, but it was restored to Robert’s brother and heir, Thomas, in 1223.
Members of the Berkeley family fought in the Second Barons’ War and in royal campaigns in continental Europe and Scotland. Thomas de Berkeley, the sixth Lord Berkeley, took part in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, a major confrontation in the First Scottish War of Independence, and was captured for ransom by the Scots.
Edward II and the fourteenth century
For much of the fourteenth century, Thomas de Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley, directed major building work at the castle. The period also brought a violent connection with Edward II. Forces led by Hugh le Despenser, Edward’s powerful royal favourite, ransacked Berkeley Castle in 1326.
In 1327, Queen Isabella and her ally Roger Mortimer deposed Edward and placed him in the joint custody of Thomas de Berkeley and John Maltravers. Edward was imprisoned at Berkeley from April to September. Supporters briefly captured the castle and rescued him, but he was recaptured and eventually returned there.
Edward was recorded as having been murdered at Berkeley Castle on 21 September 1327, although the precise circumstances remain uncertain. Some historians have proposed that he escaped successfully and that another man was killed in his place. His embalmed body lay in state for a month in the Chapel of St John before Thomas de Berkeley escorted it to Gloucester Abbey for burial. Thomas was later accused of complicity, but he was acquitted in 1337 after stating that Roger Mortimer’s agents had carried out the killing while he was away from the castle.
Late medieval, Tudor, and civil-war history
In 1384, Katharine, Lady Berkeley, founded Katharine Lady Berkeley’s School, an unusually early fully endowed school. A later dispute between Thomas Talbot, Viscount Lisle, and William Berkeley over ownership of the castle contributed to the Battle of Nibley Green.
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn visited Berkeley in August 1535, and Elizabeth I later visited and played bowls on the castle’s bowling green. Under Tudor ownership, parts of the castle were adapted for more comfortable residence as its defensive purpose declined. William de Berkeley transferred the castle to Henry VII in 1492 in exchange for an enhanced title. It remained royal property until 1553, when it returned to the Berkeley family.
During the First English Civil War, fought from 1642 to 1651 between supporters of Charles I and Parliament, a Royalist garrison defended Berkeley Castle. The castle changed hands several times before Colonel Thomas Rainsborough’s Parliamentarian force captured it in 1645 after a short siege. Artillery fired at close range from the roof of the adjacent church of Saint Mary the Virgin. The garrison surrendered, and the Berkeley family regained ownership on condition that the siege damage to the keep and outer bailey would never be repaired.
Later ownership and preservation
The castle was rearranged during the Georgian period by Randal Mowbray Berkeley, Earl of Berkeley. In the early eighteenth century, the fourth Earl planted a pine reputedly grown from a cutting taken from a tree associated with the Battle of Culloden. In the early twentieth century, the eighth Earl repaired and remodelled parts of the castle and added a new Gothic porch.
The Berkeley barony separated from the earldom in 1882. The eighth and last Earl of Berkeley bequeathed the ancestral seat to his thirteenth cousin, Captain Robert Berkeley of Spetchley Park. Ownership later passed through Robert’s grandson Charles Berkeley and his father, Major John Berkeley. Berkeley Castle is described as the third-oldest continuously occupied castle in England, after the Tower of London and Windsor Castle, and as the oldest continuously family-owned and occupied castle. It is a Grade I listed building, reflecting its exceptional architectural and historical importance. A restoration appeal began in 2006 to renovate the Norman building, and a 2022 grant supported renovation of the Education Room.
Remains
Defensive layout and medieval buildings
The earliest castle consisted of a raised earth mound, or motte, beside a small rectangular bailey enclosed by earthworks. Its timber superstructure probably included a palisade and a wooden tower. The later stone fortress retained the elevated position and developed it into a more complex defensive enclosure.
Keep and curtain wall
Robert Fitzharding’s circular shell keep, built between 1153 and 1156, stands probably on the site of the earlier motte. A shell keep is a substantial stone defensive enclosure built around the edge of an earlier mound. The curtain wall, the castle’s enclosing defensive wall, followed between about 1160 and 1190. Moats protected the east, west, and south sides, while a steep, stepped defensive earthwork descended northward toward marshland.
Fourteenth-century buildings
Most of the principal surviving buildings date from the fourteenth century, when they were built for Thomas de Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley. They include Thorpe’s Tower north of the keep, the inner gatehouse to the southwest, and other structures within the inner bailey. Together they form the principal medieval building group around the castle’s defensive core.
Interior spaces and commemorative features
Great Hall and adjoining chapel
The Great Hall received a new roof in the fourteenth century and retains a minstrels’ gallery, an elevated balcony for musicians overlooking the hall. The court jester Dickie Pearce died after falling from it, and his tomb lies in the churchyard of Saint Mary the Virgin beside the castle.
A chapel adjoining the Great Hall is now called the Morning Room. Its painted wooden vaulted ceilings survive, together with a biblical passage written in Norman French, the language used by the medieval Norman ruling elite in England. The room also contains an illustrated vellum book of plainchant used in Catholic Mass before the Berkeley family adopted Protestantism in the sixteenth century.
Chapel of St John and the dungeon
The Chapel of St John lies within the keep. Edward II’s embalmed body remained there for a month after his death before it was taken to Gloucester Abbey for burial. Beside an approximately 11-metre-deep dungeon, the cell traditionally identified as Edward’s prison and murder site remains visible.
The cell is linked to a continuing tradition that echoes of the murder can be heard each year on 21 September. The tradition belongs to the interpretation of the feature, while the recorded circumstances of Edward’s death remain uncertain.
Siege damage, gardens, and later alterations
The castle walls retain the breach created during the 1645 siege. Damage to the keep and outer bailey was not fully repaired after the Parliamentarian capture. A later low garden wall partly fills the breach and protects against a fall of about 8.4 metres, or 28 feet, from the Keep Garden.
Terraced gardens surround the castle, including the bowling green associated with Elizabeth I. The grounds also contain the pine reputedly grown from a cutting linked with the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
Early twentieth-century work brought repairs, remodelling, and a new Gothic porch. One medieval bedroom also received an Art Nouveau feature. Within the castle is an antique four-poster bed regarded as the longest continuously used piece of furniture in Great Britain by the same family.
