Berkhamsted Castle

After Hastings, William the Conqueror advanced from the coast, across the Thames Valley and north into Hertfordshire. Chroniclers suggest the Archbishop of York surrendered to him at Berkhamsted, and William probably ordered the castle built before turning south into London — the place commanded a key route from London into the Midlands through the Chiltern Hills. Construction was probably overseen by his half-brother Robert of Mortain, who owned the castle by the time of Domesday Book in 1086.

The design was motte-and-bailey: a motte 40 feet high, a bailey of roughly 500 by 300 feet, and a double bank and ditch, both ditches filled with water from the springs under the hill, the earthworks covering some 11 acres. A Crown deer park was laid out beside the castle, overlooked by the motte, and the old Anglo-Saxon manorial centre moved to the site.

When Robert's son rebelled against Henry I the castle was confiscated, and kings began granting it to their chancellors. Henry gave it to his chancellor Ranulf — who in 1123, riding to the castle with the king, grew so exhilarated at the view that he fell from his horse and died of his injuries. Henry II granted it to Thomas Becket on his becoming chancellor in 1155, and Becket extended the castle for his large household before his fall from favour in 1164 returned it to the Crown. By the mid-12th century it had been rebuilt in stone, probably by Becket, with a shell keep and an outer stone wall. Henry II liked Berkhamsted, used it extensively, and recognised the settlement as a town in 1156.

As civil war between King John and his barons approached, John put a trusted German mercenary named Ranulph in charge of Berkhamsted early in 1215 and reviewed its defences that April. In May 1216 the future Louis VIII of France crossed the Channel to join the rebel cause, bringing the heavy siege equipment the barons had lacked. John died in October; in December Louis besieged Berkhamsted, deploying his engines — probably trebuchets — and attacking for twenty days, hurling what the chroniclers called innumerable "damnable stones". Having put up a strong defence, the garrison was allowed to surrender and march out with their weapons and armour. When the young Henry III's forces defeated the rebels the following year, the castle returned to royal hands. A 13th-century crossbow stave dug from the inner moat in the 1930s, now in the British Museum, is thought to be a relic of the siege.

Henry III's brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, inherited Berkhamsted from his mother Isabella, and it became a permanent part of the earldom — his favourite castle, close to London. He added a three-storey tower in 1254 and restored much of the rest; the chroniclers of nearby Dunstable complained that his building works needed so many timber carts that local trade suffered. He died at the castle in 1272.

Edward III, finding the castle in need of substantial repair, invested heavily and used Berkhamsted as his main residence before his improvements at Windsor. The castle formed part of the new Duchy of Cornwall created for his son Edward, the Black Prince, and was used to hold King John II of France after his capture at Poitiers; the prince fell ill after his campaigning in France, retired to Berkhamsted and died there in 1376. Geoffrey Chaucer later oversaw renovation work there as a clerk, and Henry IV used it to detain rival claimants to the throne. After Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, died in 1495, the unfashionable castle was abandoned; by the mid-16th century John Leland found it in "much ruine", its stone going to build Berkhamsted Place and other buildings in the town.

In the 1830s the ideal engineering route for the new London and Birmingham Railway ran through the castle site. The act of 1833 that sanctioned the railway protected the castle — the first building in Britain to receive statutory protection from development — and forced the line onto the valley floor, though it still cut the outer fortifications and the gatehouse was demolished in 1834. The Office of Works took control from the Duchy of Cornwall on 24 December 1929 and cleared the ruins in 1930–31 with a workforce of men unemployed in the Great Depression. During the Second World War the castle secretly housed public statues evacuated from London against the Blitz, among them Rodin's Burghers of Calais. The ruins are now run by English Heritage on land still owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, staffed by local volunteers and free to enter.