England · Partial ruin
Beverston Castle
Beverston Castle is a medieval stone fortress in Beverston, Gloucestershire, founded in the early 13th century and remodelled in the 14th century. The site today is a mix of occupied post-medieval domestic ranges, extensive gardens that incorporate a vestigial moat, and the surviving medieval ruins of curtain walls, towers and a gatehouse.
First raised
1225
Its prime
1350
Today
Partial ruin
As it stood in 1350
What Beverston Castle looked like in its prime.
A compact pentagonal stone fortress of dressed bluish Cotswold limestone, with a massive three-storey west range flanked by square corner towers, two surviving round towers from the 13th-century curtain, and a two-storey twin-towered gatehouse (one D-shaped tower extant) set beside a vestigial moat and garden terraces. The gatehouse arch sits below a sizeable first-floor chamber; rooflines include the later southern domestic house with Cotswold stone roofs; curtain walls rise with crenellated tops and arrow slits.
Its story
The story of Beverston Castle.
The Anarchy and Maurice de Gaunt's Manor, 1140–1291
The site was fought over during the Anarchy: an important battle between the armies of King Stephen and Empress Matilda was fought at Beverston around 1140. The feudal barony itself was founded by Robert Fitzharding (c. 1095–1170), the Anglo-Saxon nobleman who rebuilt Berkeley Castle and founded the Berkeley family that still holds it. Fitzharding granted the subsidiary barony of Beverston to his third son Robert, who adopted the surname "de Gaunt"; Robert's son Maurice de Gaunt built a fortified manor house here in 1225 without a royal licence, and on 29 July 1229 King Henry III signed a document permitting the castle to stand and remain for ever.
Maurice died without issue in 1230, and the barony passed to Robert de Gournay, son of his half-sister Eve de Gaunt; by 1235 Robert held Beverston, Elberton and King's Weston as a tenant-in-chief of the crown for the service of one knight's fee. The Gournay male line ended with John de Gournay's death in 1291, leaving a daughter, Elizabeth, as heiress.
The Berkeley Rebuilding and the Wool Trade, 1330–1360
Beverston passed back to the senior Berkeley line: Thomas de Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley (1293–1361), "Thomas the Rich," granted it, with extensive other estates, to his fourth son Sir John Berkeley (1352–1428), founder of the Beverston branch of the family. Thomas remodelled the castle, adding a small quadrangular stronghold in 1330 and carrying the work through a second phase in 1348–1349; the surviving twin-towered gatehouse, with its D-shaped tower and portcullis arch, belongs to this Berkeley rebuilding, dated by one account to 1330 and by another to the 1350s–60s.
The Cotswold wool trade left its own mark on the castle: a later account recorded that 5,000 sheep were shorn in its courtyard in 1336, thought at the time to have been a record for the district.
Roundhead Attack and the Slighting of Beverston, 1644–1691
The Hicks family, who bought Beverston at the end of the 16th century, built the southern domestic range in the early 17th century. During the Civil War, Roundhead forces attacked the castle in 1644, but the greatest destruction came from a parliamentary order to slight its defensive works; the western and southern ranges and the gatehouse, with one of its original D-shaped towers, survived. In 1691 a major fire damaged the house then standing on the site, and the building erected afterwards has been continuously occupied since.
The Holford, Strutt and Rook Successions, 1842–2019
The Hicks family sold Beverston Castle to R. S. Holford of Westonbirt in 1842. The Hon. Arthur and Mrs Strutt bought it in 1939 and sold it in 1959 to Jane Rook and her husband Laurence, who added land from Park Farm in 1992. Much of the castle has been uninhabitable since the 17th century: the two ruined round towers of Maurice de Gaunt's pentagonal castle, the 14th-century gatehouse and the massive west range stand amid gardens built around a vestigial moat.
The main castle, including its gazebo and bridge, was Grade I listed in September 1954, and the free-standing gatehouse gained its own Grade I listing in March 1987; the quadrangular castle was first listed as a Scheduled Monument on 9 October 1981. Following Jane Rook's death, the estate was placed on the market in 2019. The castle ruin itself is not open to visitors, though its gardens, which incorporate part of the medieval moat, have occasionally opened to the public under the National Gardens Scheme.
Step inside
9 places to explore in 1350.
The record describes 9 distinct spots at Beverston Castle, including 3 interiors: gatehouse passage and first-floor chamber (interior), vaulted undercroft and solar (interior), great hall in the southern domestic range (interior). Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Recreate Beverston Castle with AI to explore it.
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Clans who held Beverston Castle.
The families that held Beverston Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
de Gaunt
Granted to Robert Fitzharding's son Robert, who took the name de Gaunt; his son Maurice de Gaunt built the fortified manor in 1225.
Berkeley
Returned to the senior Berkeley line; granted by Thomas the Rich, 3rd Baron Berkeley, to Sir John Berkeley (1352–1428), founder of the Beverston line.
Hicks
The Hicks family built and occupied the southern domestic range in the early 17th century.
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