Durham Castle

Construction of Durham Castle began in 1072 on the orders of William the Conqueror, six years after the Norman conquest and soon after the Normans first came to the North. It took the motte-and-bailey form the Normans favoured, set on the hill above the River Wear on Durham's peninsula, and the work was supervised by Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria — until he rebelled against William and was executed in 1076. Stone for the new buildings was cut from the cliffs below the walls and moved up by winch.

The castle was the seat of the Bishop of Durham, whom the king appointed to exercise royal authority on his behalf. Bishop Walcher added to his status by purchasing the Earldom of Northumbria, beginning a line of prince-bishops that endured until the Durham (County Palatine) Act stripped the bishops of their temporal powers in 1836. They were entitled to raise an army, levy taxes and mint their own coinage — a remit wide enough to make the castle a defence against both Scottish incursions from the north and internal rebellion.

Walcher carried the building forward as a combination of bishop's palace and defensive stronghold, with inner and outer baileys and a keep. The earliest structures may have been of wood, but there is evidence of building in stone from the end of the eleventh century. In May 1080 the castle was attacked and besieged for four days by rebels from Northumbria, and Bishop Walcher was killed.

In the twelfth century Bishop Hugh de Puiset built the castle's Norman archway, and in 1177 King Henry II seized the castle after a disagreement with him. Bishop Antony Bek created the Great Hall — originally a dining hall — in the early fourteenth century, and Bishop Thomas Hatfield made major alterations in the 1300s, rebuilding the keep, enlarging the keep mount and adding a wooden minstrels' gallery to the hall. Successive bishops enlarged and then reduced the hall; today it is 14 metres high and over 30 metres long. Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall added a second chapel in the sixteenth century, modified in the seventeenth by Bishop Cosin.

The Norman Chapel is the oldest accessible part of the castle, built either in 1075 or shortly after 1080 — the exact date is unclear. Its architecture is Anglian in nature, possibly because forced Anglian labour was used to build it, and its ceiling rests on six columns with carved capitals. When the keep was expanded in the fifteenth century, the chapel's three windows were all but blocked and it fell into disuse; from 1841 it served merely as a corridor to the keep. During the Second World War it became a command and observation post for the Royal Air Force, then spent the rest of the 1940s as a bike shed. Re-consecrated in the 1950s, it is still used for weekly services by the college.

The castle remained the bishops' palace until Auckland Castle was made their residence in 1832. Bishop William Van Mildert donated it to the University of Durham, and University College occupied it from 1837, once the next bishop, Edward Maltby, had completed renovations. During the Second World War the neighbouring cathedral was targeted for a Baedeker bombing raid, but escaped when fog rolled in and blocked the pilots' view. In 1986 castle and cathedral, facing one another across Palace Green, were jointly designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site; seventeen elements of the castle — the keep, the north and west ranges, the entrance gatehouse, a bastion and twelve sections of the walls — are listed at Grade I. The castle remains a working building, home to over 100 students and open to visitors by guided tour.