Bickleigh Castle: A Norman Fortified Manor House in Devon
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Anglo-Saxon, British, English, Norman
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page15 sections
History
Bickleigh Castle is a fortified manor house in Bickleigh, Devon, United Kingdom, whose surviving complex grew from a Norman castle in the late eleventh or early twelfth century. The site stands beside the River Exe and developed through medieval, Tudor, early modern, and twentieth-century phases. Once considerably larger and protected by a moat, it was historically also known as Bickleigh Court.
Early Norman origins
The earliest fortification was a Norman motte castle, a stronghold built around a raised earthwork mound and an enclosed bailey. It was dismantled in the mid-twelfth century. A small stone chapel was built within the bailey during this period, although its sanctuary may be older than the Norman work. One interpretation places the building around AD 600, probably before the Anglo-Saxon arrival traditionally dated to about AD 660, while further evidence identifies it as a chapel around AD 800. These early dates and interpretations remain uncertain.
The Courtenay and Carew estates
During the fifteenth century, the Courtenay family built a mansion on the site and incorporated some earlier buildings. The Courtenays and the Carews occupied Bickleigh until the English Civil War, the series of armed conflicts in the 1640s between supporters of the monarchy and Parliament. The Carew family retained ownership of the estate until 1924. A later carved overmantel preserves associations with the Courtenays, the Carews, and the religious upheavals of Tudor England.
Henrietta Maria, the Catholic queen of Charles I, stayed at Bickleigh Castle in 1644 as the guest of Sir Henry Carew and Lady Dorothy Carew while travelling to Exeter. She later gave birth to Princess Henrietta Anne Stuart at Exeter. A plaque commemorating the birth is now displayed at the Princesshay Shopping Centre.
Civil War destruction
At the end of 1645, Parliamentarian troops commanded by Fairfax attacked Bickleigh after nearby Tiverton Castle had been slighted. The Parliamentarian forces had laid siege from Cadbury before turning against Bickleigh. Because the Carews supported the Royalist side and the castle served as a stronghold, Parliament ordered it slighted, meaning deliberately partly demolished or disabled so that it could no longer function effectively as a fortified base. Most of the castellated structure was destroyed, including the main manor house and inner keep.
Later rebuilding and restoration
After the Stuart Restoration, the return of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, a Devon farmhouse made of cob and thatch was added to the complex. The buildings later deteriorated and were used as a farm store and cottage before restoration began in the early twentieth century. The chapel was substantially renovated during this period. Francis Harper and Lieutenant Colonel Jasper Henson oversaw further work in the 1920s and 1930s, including restoration of the gatehouse. The north range was restored in the 1930s.
Bickleigh Castle and its associated buildings are now used principally for private events and accommodation. The gatehouse is a Grade I listed building, while the chapel and its enclosure walls and Old Court are Grade II* listed. The north range is Grade II listed, and the garden walls, gate piers, and gates also have listed status. Old Court was designated on 24 October 1951 and the gatehouse on 28 August 1987. One gatehouse turret collapsed on 30 December 2023.
Remains
Setting and surviving layout
The castle stands in a valley beside the River Exe at an elevation of about 54 metres. The surrounding land is mostly level, with hills to the southeast and higher ground reaching about 170 metres roughly one kilometre west of the site. The surviving buildings are arranged mainly around a central courtyard. Old Court occupies the southern side, the chapel stands to the east near the river, and Moat Cottage lies north of the principal group. The west range has not survived.
The castle occupies 60 acres, including five acres of landscaped grounds. An outer wall, gardens, and fishponds lie in front of the keep gatehouse. These features were landscaped during the eighteenth-century ownership of Sir Thomas Carew, and the fishponds were formed from the remains of the Norman moat. On a small hill behind the castle, among rhododendrons, are remains identified as an Anglo-Saxon motte or watchtower, although that attribution is doubtful.
Medieval courtyard buildings
Gatehouse
The gatehouse is an early twelfth-century, three-storey stone building with a single-depth plan, meaning that its rooms extend only one room deep from the principal elevation. It has an asbestos-slate roof, turrets, and a central carriage archway leading into the courtyard. The Courtenays substantially altered the building in the fifteenth century. A room at the alleged connection point of an underground passage has been bricked up. The passage is believed to have linked the gatehouse with Old Court, but its existence remains uncertain.
Chapel
The chapel stands east of the other main buildings. At its western end, the sanctuary is separated from the former nave by the remains of a wall and arch. When the nave was enlarged, this arrangement was replaced by a wooden rood screen, a partition separating the nave from the sanctuary. The present wagon roof, which has a continuous curved or polygonal profile, dates from the fifteenth century. The rood screen was lost in the nineteenth century, when the chapel was used to house cattle. The chapel is often described as the oldest complete building in Devon, although that characterization is not fully established. In 2017 it contained a recently restored Estey organ dating from 1884.
Old Court
Old Court, south of the courtyard, was built in the mid-fifteenth century as a magistrates’ court for Thomas, the sixth Earl of Devon. The building has been repeatedly revised and extended, and part of its structure may have been demolished. It may originally have been a hall house with a five-arch braced jointed-truss cruck roof, whose curved timbers supported the roof structure. After the Civil War damage, Old Court became a residence and may have been altered during that change of use.
Tudor and later ranges
North range
The north range was built during the latter half of the seventeenth century as a farmhouse and staff accommodation for Sir Henry Carew. It is a two-storey building with a thatched roof. Its most notable interior feature is a sixteenth-century overmantel, a decorated panel above a fireplace, dating from about 1550.
The overmantel’s carvings show events associated with the English Reformation, the sixteenth-century religious transformation that produced Protestant churches in England and elsewhere in Europe. They include the trial and execution at the Tower of London in January 1539 of Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter and Earl of Devon, Sir Nicholas Carew, and Henry Pole, following the alleged Exeter Conspiracy. The carving also depicts Henry VIII, a stylized view of Exeter, and Bickleigh Castle’s inner keep. Part of the decoration may relate to the Carew family’s role in suppressing the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549, an uprising against religious and administrative changes that included compulsory use of the English Book of Common Prayer.
The overmantel originally stood in the part of the castle demolished by Parliamentarian forces during the Civil War. It was stored in the vaults of Exeter Cathedral for protection until the 1930s. After a conversation involving Jasper Henson and William Cecil, Bishop of Exeter, it was returned to Henson and installed in its present position.
Moat Cottage
Moat Cottage stands north of the main group and was built in the late sixteenth century. It is a stone building with a thatched roof, forming part of the later domestic and agricultural buildings around the former castle.
Stable block
The former stable block was rebuilt in the nineteenth century on the site of an earlier building. It retains a thatched roof and a turret clock and has been converted into accommodation and reception rooms.
