Norwich Castle: A Norman Royal Fortification and County Gaol
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, Norman
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page18 sections
History
Norwich Castle is a medieval royal fortification in the United Kingdom, founded by the Normans on William the Conqueror’s orders after the Norman Conquest. Its origins probably belong to his campaign to subjugate East Anglia in early 1067, and its foundation is generally placed between 1066 and 1075. The castle began as a motte-and-bailey complex, combining a raised earthwork mound with an enclosed courtyard, and became a central instrument of royal control in the region.
Norman foundation and the Revolt of the Earls
The castle was first recorded in 1075, when it became the focus of the Revolt of the Earls, a rebellion by leading Norman nobles against William the Conqueror. Ralph de Gael, Earl of Norfolk, joined the rising, while his wife Emma commanded the garrison at Norwich. After a three-month siege, Emma obtained safe passage for herself and the garrison. The rebellion was then suppressed, and the castle remained within the royal system.
Norwich Castle appeared in the Domesday Survey of 1086, the comprehensive land and property survey commissioned by William I. Building it within the existing settlement may have required the destruction of between 17 and 113 houses. Excavations in the late 1970s showed that the bailey had been built over a Saxon cemetery, linking the new Norman stronghold to an earlier phase of occupation.
Royal stronghold and contested fortress
Until Henry II commissioned Orford Castle in the mid-twelfth century, Norwich was the only major royal castle in East Anglia. The surrounding district, known as the Castle Fee, was placed under the castle’s direct jurisdiction, probably to strengthen royal defence. Repairs entered in the Pipe Rolls, the records of royal financial administration, took place in 1156–1158 and 1204–1205. Thomas de Burgh became castellan, or castle governor, in 1215.
The castle was again drawn into rebellion during the conflict of 1173–1174, when opponents of Henry II challenged royal authority. Hugh Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk, captured Norwich Castle after landing 318 Flemish soldiers in England in May 1174 and advancing with another 500 men. He held fourteen prisoners for ransom. Once peace was restored later that year, the fortress returned to royal control.
Norwich Castle also formed part of the history of the Jewish communities of East Anglia. During the violence against Jews in Lent 1190, which reached Norwich on 6 February, Jews who reached the castle found refuge there. Those who could not reach safety were massacred.
Prison and county gaol
Parts of Norwich Castle were used as a prison from an early period, and a gaol was operating by 1220. State prisoners were confined there in 1264 and 1274. An Act of Parliament in 1340 placed prisons in royal castles under the control of sheriffs. Norwich Castle consequently became the public county gaol of Norfolk, although the king retained ownership and appointed its constable.
The prison’s later history included executions. A gallows stood on the bridge behind the entrance lodges, while other executions took place privately within the gaol. Robert Kett, leader of the rebellion known as Kett’s Rebellion, was executed at the castle on 7 December 1549 on the orders of Edward VI. A plaque installed at the museum entrance in 1949 commemorates Kett and his leadership of the revolt.
After the Anatomy Act of 1832, executed prisoners were buried within the castle precincts or at St Michael-at-Thorn. Charles Daines, known as the “Hempnall Poisoner,” was the last executed felon buried at St Michael-at-Thorn, in April 1837. The sixteen felons executed afterward were buried in an open area of the castle complex, where a stone records their initials and execution dates. James Blomfield Rush, convicted of murdering Isaac Jermy and his son at Stanfield Hall, was held in the gaol and executed at the castle on 21 April 1849 before thousands of spectators. George Harmer was the last person executed at the gaol, on 13 December 1866, and the last public execution took place there in 1867.
Prison reform and nineteenth-century rebuilding
By the eighteenth century, the castle’s stone had blackened, its battlements had decayed, and the ditch was being used for rubbish disposal. The prison reformer John Howard visited six times between 1773 and 1782. He recorded up to 53 inmates and criticized the inadequate separation of women prisoners.
Sir John Soane rebuilt the prison between 1789 and 1793. His work removed the keep’s interior walls and created cells for male felons. A new building beside the keep’s east side housed debtors and women prisoners. Further alterations followed in 1820. An Act of Parliament dated 12 July 1806 transferred the castle, shirehall, and surrounding grounds from more than seven centuries of royal ownership to the Magistrates of Norfolk, establishing the castle as a county gaol. The prison was extensively remodelled, with the work completed by 1827 or 1828.
Museum and heritage site
Norwich Castle ceased to function as a gaol in 1887, when its prisoners were transferred on 2 August to the newly opened HMP Norwich near Britannia Barracks at Mousehold Heath. The city of Norwich acquired the castle for museum use. Norwich Museum moved into the buildings in 1894, and the museum opened in 1895 after conversion work by Edward Boardman.
In 1915 the site became a scheduled monument, a historic or archaeological site protected under British heritage law because of its national importance. The castle buildings, including the keep, attached Gothic-style gatehouse, and former prison wings, received Grade I listed-building status in 1954, the highest category of protection for particularly important buildings. The site is managed by the Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service and forms part of the Norwich 12 heritage sites.
Norwich Castle now functions as the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Its collections cover regional archaeology, art, decorative arts, and natural history, with material relating to Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Iceni, and ancient Egyptian history. The keep’s interior was reconstructed over five years to represent its appearance in the early twelfth century and fully reopened in August 2025.
Remains
Norwich Castle preserves the central keep of a Norman motte-and-bailey complex. Around 1100, the motte was heightened and the surrounding ditch deepened. The surviving keep stands on the southwestern part of the mound, while later prison buildings extended across the castle hill and reorganized the site around the medieval core.
The Norman keep
Stone keep and entrance
The stone keep was built between 1094 and 1121. It is a hall-keep, a tower whose main residential and ceremonial space centres on a large hall, and measures approximately 29 metres by 27 metres and about 21 metres in height. Caen stone forms the outer construction around a flint core. The exterior is decorated with blind arcading, ornamental arches applied to a wall without open passageways behind them.
The original keep had two internal floors, with its entrance on the eastern side at first-floor level. An external stone stairway led to the entrance, which was protected by a forebuilding, an external defensive and entrance structure attached to a keep. This structure was later known as Bigod Tower. The forebuilding was demolished in 1825, and the original Norman bridge over the inner ditch was also replaced around that time.
Alteration and restoration
The keep’s interior was substantially altered during its prison use, and its medieval spaces were reinterpreted in later restoration. Proposed reconstructions include a kitchen, chapel, two-storey great hall, and sixteen latrines, although the precise arrangement remains debated. The keep’s exterior stonework was repaired several times, most recently between 1835 and 1839 under Anthony Salvin, with James Watson as mason. Bath stone was used in this work, which recovered the building while following its original ornamentation.
The prison complex
Cells and governor’s house
Soane’s prison works introduced cells for male felons inside the keep. The later prison complex retained a U-shaped structure within the keep, demolished Soane’s adjoining building, and extended prisoner accommodation across the mound. The prison wings radiated from a central octagonal governor’s house. This contained apartments for the gaoler’s family, a prison chapel, and a committee room, arranged with views over the three wings and their yards. The wings contained 240 cells, with a further 36 cells in the keep.
Water supply and prison labour
A mill house with a treadwheel stood beside the entrance and pumped water for the castle. A treadwheel was a large human-powered wheel used to perform work. Prisoners worked at weaving matting and at making sacks, prison clothing, and shoes, tying the physical organization of the gaol to its systems of labour and maintenance.
Shirehall and court route
A new Shirehall designed by William Wilkins in the Tudor style was built at the northeastern foot of the castle hill in Market Avenue. Prisoners were taken from the castle cells down spiral stairs and through a foot tunnel to the Crown Court in the shirehall. The arrangement connected confinement within the castle to the judicial functions of the county.
Execution sites
The bridge behind the entrance lodges carried a gallows, and a later gallows was used on the north side of the keep. The museum entrance plaque commemorating Robert Kett provides a surviving reminder of the castle’s role in the punishment of convicted rebels and criminals.
Museum collections
Archaeology and decorative arts
The museum’s decorative-arts galleries contain costumes, textiles, jewellery, glass, ceramics, silverware, and a large display of ceramic teapots. Other collections include Anglo-Saxon and Viking objects, material associated with Boudica and the Iceni, ancient Egyptian objects, and natural-history specimens. The museum also holds Margaret Fountaine’s large butterfly collection, although it is not permanently displayed, and an early twentieth-century piece of needlework made by Lorina Bulwer while she was confined in a workhouse.
Paintings and named works
The art galleries contain works dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, including English watercolours, Dutch landscapes, modern British paintings, and a substantial collection by Peter Tillemans. Temporary galleries present exhibitions of modern art, history, and culture. Named works held or exhibited by the museum include Babes in the Wood, made around 1842 by John Bell; part of the Snettisham Hoard; The Artist’s Studio, made around 1716 by Peter Tillemans; The Stag Hunt, made around 1675 by Abraham Hondius; and Portrait of Robert Walpole by Jean-Baptiste van Loo.
