Caludon Castle

The site east of Coventry has been occupied since at least the 11th century. The building that stood there before the Norman conquest was a large house, and after the conquest it came into the hands of the Earls of Chester. In about 1232 Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, gave the house to Stephen de Segrave, Chief Justiciar of England, and it descended from Stephen to his son Gilbert and then to Gilbert's son Nicholas, who was created Baron Segrave.

Caludon was first described as a manor in 1239, and at that date it was the only permanent nobleman's residence in Coventry. In 1279 Nicholas de Segrave expanded the estate slightly northwards into Wyken by buying a carucate and a mill.

The house is thought to have been rebuilt as a castle in 1305, when Nicholas' son John de Segrave, 2nd Baron Segrave, obtained a licence from Edward I to crenellate the property and to raise a moat and a wall. Crenellation, the notching of a parapet with gaps through which archers could shoot, was by that date largely a mark of status. A chapel and several outbuildings went up at about the same time, and the moat that survives 190 metres to the south was dug in the medieval period, probably around the rebuilding of 1305.

The castle took an oval form, ringed by a defensive wall with towers and by its moat, and entered over a bridge and through a gatehouse on the east side. Living quarters lay to the north and west of the enclosure, kitchens and offices to the south and east, with farm buildings, gardens and a bowling green outside the moat. A second licence to crenellate was received in 1354 and the property was rebuilt again; the surviving fragment of wall is thought to be 14th-century work, most likely from that reconstruction.

In the second half of the 14th century Caludon was inherited by Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk. In 1398 Mowbray accused Henry of Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, of treason against Richard II. The two were to settle it in a duel at Gosford Green, on the ground between Caludon Castle and Coventry, but Richard II banished them both before it could be fought. Once Henry had taken the throne he stripped Mowbray of the dukedom, and Mowbray died in exile shortly afterwards. The castle fell into disrepair from about the time of his banishment. Mowbray was succeeded by his son John de Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, who was restored to the dukedom.

Caludon stayed with the Mowbrays until 1481 and the death of Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk, the child bride of Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York. Anne's estate was split between John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, and William de Berkeley, 1st Marquess of Berkeley, and it was Berkeley who took Caludon.

The castle lay derelict from shortly after Mowbray's banishment until about 1580, when Henry Berkeley, 7th Baron Berkeley, rebuilt it in the style of a mansion. Many outbuildings were recorded as still standing at the conversion, among them a porter's lodge and a brewing house, and a large banqueting hall was added later by Elizabeth, née Stanhope, wife of George Berkeley, 8th Baron Berkeley. George Berkeley held the house until 1632, when he sold it to Thomas Morgan of Weston-sub-Wetherley; it passed from Morgan to Sir John Preston, who married Morgan's daughter and co-heir Jane.

The house was badly damaged in 1662, when Charles II took his revenge on Coventry for the strongly Parliamentarian sympathies the city had shown in the Civil War. It was left in ruins.

The Prestons' son Sir Thomas Preston inherited the estate, and on his death in 1709 it went to his daughter Anne and her husband Hugh Clifford, 2nd Baron Clifford of Chudleigh. The Cliffords kept Caludon until 1815, and in 1800 they used the ruins of the castle as material for a large farmhouse on the site. In 1815 the estate was divided and much of it sold; it passed through a succession of private owners until after the First World War, when the Coventry Corporation bought most of the land and developed it into suburban housing.

One large fragment of grey sandstone wall is all that has stood above ground on the site since at least the early 18th century, and red sandstone at both of its ends points to further windows now gone, so the wall was once at least twice as long. The estate that remains is now Caludon Castle Park, owned and run by Coventry City Council. The wall has been a scheduled monument since 1925 and a Grade I listed building since 1955, and the moated site to the south is scheduled in its own right.

A survey of the site in 2008 found the foundations of a rectangular building 33 by 13 metres, oriented north-north-west and thought to be the remains of a large hall, with magnetic anomalies to the north of it representing a complex of living buildings styled as a manor house, and evidence of a footpath running round the interior of the site. Larger anomalies in the eastern part of the site may be buried rubble from the demolition of the farmhouse, or the remains of in-filled cellars believed to have been built there. The evidence suggests more than one phase of construction, though the methods used could not prove it conclusively.