Patrick Comerford
I first visited Oxford in my late teens, but I only visited Oxford Castle for first time almost 30 years later when I was visiting theological colleges in Oxford in 2007. The castle site was first opened to the public in 2002-2006, and I was visiting Wycliffe Hall and Ripon College, Cuddesdon, in 2007 when the Revd Lister Tonge, a future Dean of Monmouth who was then in chaplaincy in Oxford, took some time off to bring me to see Oxford Castle.
Oxford Castle is on the west side of central Oxford and close to the bus and train stations. I decided to have another look at the castle during a recent visit to Oxford, although it was a rainy day, and any castle climb was not going to be repaid with panoramic or merely clear views of what Matthew Arnold first called the ‘dreaming spires of Oxford.’
Nevertheless, the large, partly ruined mediaeval castle is an impressive site and building. Most of the original moated, wooden motte and bailey castle was replaced in stone in the late 12th or early 13th century.
The castle played an important role in the conflicts of the time, but most of it was destroyed in the English Civil War, and it later became a prison. When the prison closed in 1996, Oxford Castle was redeveloped as an hotel and visitor attraction.
The mediaeval remains of the castle including the motte, Saint George's Tower and crypt. The surviving rectangular Saint George’s Tower probably predates the remainder of the castle and may have been a watchtower associated with the original Saxon west gate of the city.
Oxford Castle was built by the Norman baron Robert D’Oyly (d’Oilly) the elder in 1071-1073. D’Oyly arrived in England with William the Conqueror, who granted him extensive lands in Oxfordshire.
D’Oyly built the castle to dominate the town. In time, he became the foremost landowner in Oxfordshire. He was made hereditary royal constable of Oxford Castle, although Oxford Castle is not recorded in the Domesday Book (1086). D’Oyly built his castle to the west side of the town, using the natural protection of a stream off the River Thames, now called Castle Mill Stream, and diverting the stream to form a moat.
Oxford Castle was an urban castle, overlying a portion of the Saxon town wall. The north gate of the wall is the Saxon tower now associated with the church of Saint Michael at the North Gate, while the west gate is occupied by the apparently Saxon tower of Saint George, incorporated into the fabric of the later Norman castle.
The initial castle was probably a large motte and bailey, copying the plan of the castle that D’Oyly had built 19 km away at Wallingford. The motte was originally about 18 metres (60 ft) high and 12 metres (40 ft) wide, built like the bailey from layers of gravel and strengthened with clay facing. There are suggestions that the bailey may have built first, using the pre-existing Saint George’s Tower as the first keep. This would mean that in its initial design the castle was a ringwork rather than a motte and bailey.
By the late 12th to early 13th century, the original palisade walls and wooden keep were replaced in stone. The new curtain wall incorporated Saint George’s Tower, the tallest of the castle towers, and now believed to have survived from late Saxon times.
The date of the remaining towers is uncertain, although many sources date the southernmost, round tower, of which the base still remains, to 1235. In at least one source, it is referred to as ‘Henry III’s Tower.’
The buildings inside the walls included a chapel with a crypt attached to Saint George’s Tower, which may be on the site of an earlier church. The chapel originally had a nave, chancel and an apsidal sanctuary. It had a typical early Norman design, with solid pillars and arches.
D’Oyly and his close friend, Roger d’Ivry endowed a chapel with a college of priests in 1074. At an early stage, this chapel was dedicated to Saint George. The crypt of this chapel still survives, but in a new location within the castle: it was moved and rebuilt in 1794.
The ten-sided stone shell keep (18 metres, 58 ft) was built in the 13th century to replace an earlier wooden structure. It closely resembled those of Tonbridge Castle and Arundel Castles. The keep enclosed a number of buildings, leaving an inner courtyard only 7 metres (22 ft) across. Stairs inside the keep led down to an underground stone chamber, with an Early English hexagonal vault and a deep well providing water in times of siege.
Robert D’Oyly the younger, nephew of Robert D’Oyly the elder, had inherited the castle by the time of the civil war of the ‘Anarchy’ in the 1140s. After initially supporting King Stephen, Robert declared his support for Empress Matilda, Stephen’s cousin and rival for the throne. The Empress marched to Oxford in 1141 to base her campaign at the castle. Stephen responded by marching from Bristol in Autumn 1142, attacking and seizing Oxford and besieging Matilda in the castle.
Stephen set up two siege mounds beside the castle, called Jew’s Mount and Mount Pelham. On these mounds, which have since vanished, Stephen placed siege engines, and then waited for Matilda’s supplies to run low over the next three months.
Matilda, however, made good her escape from the castle in December. The popular version says she waited until the Castle Mill Stream was frozen over and then dressed in white as camouflage in the snow. She was lowered down the walls with three or four knights, and escaped through Stephen’s lines in the night as the king’s sentries tried to raise the alarm. On the other hand, William of Malmesbury suggests she escaped from one of the gates.
Matilda safely reached Abingdon-on-Thames and Oxford Castle surrendered to Stephen the next day. After the war, Henry D’Oyly, younger son of Robert D’Oyly, reclaimed the position of constable of Oxford Castle in 1154.
The castle was attacked again in the Barons’ War (1215-1217), prompting further improvements in its defences. Falkes de Breauté, who controlled many royal castles, demolished the Church of Saint Budoc south-east of the castle in 1220 and built a moated barbican to further defend the main gate. The remaining wooden buildings were replaced in stone, including the new Round Tower which was built in 1235.
Henry III turned part of the castle into a prison to hold troublesome university clerks, and also improved the castle chapel, replacing the older barred windows with stained glass in 1243 and 1246. With Beaumont Palace nearby to the north of Oxford, however, the castle never became a royal residence.
The fortifications, particularly the castle gates and the barbican, were in poor condition by the 14th century, the castle lost much of its military value and strategic significance and fell into increasing disrepair, and the site was turned to use primarily for county administration and as a prison.
Henry IV was at Oxford Castle on 13 January 1400 for the trial of rebels who had taken part in the Epiphany Rising, or the Revolt of the Earls. They supported Richard II, Henry’s cousin who had been murdered by starvation.
The castle then became the centre for the administration of the county of Oxford, a jail, and a criminal court. The Assizes were held there until 1577, when plague broke out in what became known as the ‘Black Assize.’
‘Jail fever’ or typhus broke out during the trial of Rowland Jenks, ‘a saucy, foul-mouthed bookseller,’ and over 300 people died, including the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, two knights, 80 gentlemen, the entire grand jury for the session, and Sir Robert D’Oyley, a relative of the founder of the castle.
After that, assizes were never held at the castle.
A year later, a map of Oxford in 1578 shows the curtain wall, keep and towers remained, but the barbican had been demolished to make way for houses. The moat was almost entirely silted up by 1600, and houses had been built all around the edge of the bailey wall.
James I sold Oxford Castle to Francis James and Robert Younglove in 1611, and they in turn sold it to Christ Church in 1613. The college then leased it to a number of local families. But Oxford Castle was then in a weakened state, an a large crack ran down the side of the keep.
A map of the castle prepared for Christ Church in 1615 shows the keep on its mound, Saint George’s Tower with associated buildings and sections of the curtain wall remaining to the north and south, and the next tower to the south, plus a single remaining tower to the north-east, as well as the castle mill and a southern entrance to the castle complex. Houses and gardens had been laid out over more than half of the castle ditch or moat, which still contained water.
When the First English Civil War broke out in 1642, the Royalists made Oxford their capital. Parliamentary forces besieged Oxford in 1646, and the city was occupied by Colonel Richard Ingoldsby. He improved the fortification of the castle rather than the surrounding town, and in 1649 demolished most of the mediaeval stonework, replacing it with more modern earth bulwarks and reinforcing the keep with earthworks to form a gun-platform.
During the third English Civil War, the Parliamentary garrison pulled down these defences in 1652 and retreated to New College, causing great damage to the college in the process.
After the Civil War, Oxford Castle served primarily as the local prison. The owners, Christ Church College, leased the castle to wardens who made their profit by charging prisoners for their board and lodging. The prison also had a gallows to execute prisoners.
For most of the 18th century, the castle prison was run by the Etty and Wisdom families and was in increasing disrepair. The keep was demolished early in the 18th century, when the top of the motte was landscaped into its current form.
The prison reformer John Howard visited the castle several times in the 1770s, and criticised its size and quality, including the extent to which vermin infested the prison. Partly in response to this criticism, the county authorities decided to rebuild Oxford Prison.
The castle was bought by the Oxford County Justices in 1785 and rebuilding began under the London architect William Blackburn. The wider castle site had already begun to change by the late 18th century: New Road was built through the bailey and the last parts of the castle moat was filled for building the new Oxford Canal terminus.
As the new prison was being built, the old chapel attached to Saint George’s Tower was demolished and part of the crypt was repositioned in 1794. The work was completed under Daniel Harris in 1805. As the new governor, Harris used convict labour from the prison to conduct early archaeological excavations at the castle with the help of the antiquarian Edward King.
The site continued to be developed in the 19th century. The new buildings included the new County Hall (1840-1841), built in the style of a toy castle, and the Oxfordshire Militia Armoury (1854). The prison was extended in 1876, growing to occupy most of the remaining space.
The inmates included children, the youngest being a seven-year-old girl sentenced to seven days hard labour in 1870 for stealing a pram. Prison reforms led to renaming the county prison as HM Prison Oxford in 1888.
The prison was closed in 1996 and the site reverted to Oxfordshire County Council. The Oxford Prison buildings have since been redeveloped as a restaurant and heritage complex, with guided tours of the historic buildings and open courtyards for markets and theatrical performances.
The complex includes a hotel in the Malmaison chain, Malmaison Oxford, occupying a large part of the former prison blocks, with cells converted as guest rooms. However, the parts of the prison associated with corporal or capital punishment have been converted to offices rather than being used for guests.
The full extent of the original castle is somewhat obliterated today, especially with the intrusion of the newer County Hall into the east side, while New Road runs over the location of north-east portion of the curtain wall with its two square towers.
The remains of the original barbican lie underneath the modern Westgate shopping centre. The two oldest parts of the castle are Grade I listed buildings, and include: the 11th-century motte with its 13th-century well-chamber, Saint George’s tower, listed as Norman, but now believed to be Saxon, the relocated crypt chapel, and the 18th-century D-wing and Debtors’ Tower.
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