Restormel Castle

Restormel began within the fiefdom of the Norman magnate Robert, Count of Mortain, in the manor of Bodardle in the parish of Lanlivery. It was probably built after the Norman Conquest as a motte-and-bailey castle around 1100 by Baldwin Fitz Turstin, the local sheriff, whose descendants went on holding the manor as vassals of the Earls of Cornwall for nearly 200 years. Raised inside a large deer park, it overlooked the main crossing point over the River Fowey, and may have doubled as a hunting lodge as well as a fortification.

Robert de Cardinham, lord of the manor between 1192 and 1225, built up the inner curtain walls and converted the gatehouse to stone, giving the castle the circular shell-keep design it still shows — of 71 such shell-keeps known in England and Wales, Restormel is the most intact. The town of Lostwithiel grew up close by around the same time. The Cardinhams used Restormel in preference to their older castle at Old Cardinham until Andrew de Cardinham's daughter, Isolda, married Thomas de Tracey, who held it until 1264.

The castle was seized without a fight in 1264 by Simon de Montfort during the civil conflicts of Henry III's reign, then retaken in 1265 by the former High Sheriff of Cornwall, Sir Ralph Arundell. After persuasion, Isolda de Cardinham granted it in 1270 to the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall. Richard died the following year, and his son Edmund made Restormel his main administrative base, building the inner chambers and titling it his "duchy palace": a residence with piped water and luxurious quarters that also served as the seat of stannary administration overseeing the district's tin mines.

After Edmund's death in 1299 the castle reverted to the Crown, and from 1337 it was one of the 17 antiqua maneria of the Duchy of Cornwall. It was rarely used as a residence, though Edward the Black Prince stayed there in 1354 and 1365 to receive the homage of his feudal subjects. With its lord usually absent, the stewardship of the estate became much sought after and the administration was reckoned efficient. A 1337 survey found the castle already in disrepair; the Black Prince ordered extensive repairs, but decline resumed after his death in 1376.

When the antiquary John Leland saw Restormel in the 16th century it had fallen into ruin and been stripped for its stonework: "the timber rooted up, the conduit pipes taken away, the roofe made sale of, the planchings rotten, the wals fallen down, and the hewed stones of the windowes, dournes, and clavels, pluct out to serve private buildings." Henry VIII converted the surrounding parkland to ordinary countryside.

Restormel saw action only once, during the English Civil War, when a Parliamentary garrison occupied the ruins and carried out basic repairs. It was invested by a Royalist force under Sir Richard Grenville, the local gentleman who had sat as MP for Fowey before the war, and stormed on 21 August 1644 as Grenville manoeuvred to encircle Parliamentary forces; the chapel tower appears to have been converted into a gun emplacement during the war. Whether it was formally slighted afterwards is unclear, but a Parliamentary survey of 1649 recorded it utterly ruined, with only the outer walls standing, too far gone to repair and too worthless to bother demolishing.

By the 19th century the ruin had become a popular attraction: the British royal family sailed up the Fowey to visit in 1846, and the French writer Alphonse Esquiros, seeing it in 1865, described ivy-covered walls drawing visitors "for picnics and parties of pleasure." In 1925 Prince Edward, Duke of Cornwall — later King Edward VIII — entrusted the ruin to the Office of Works. A 1971 proposal to restore the castle was dropped after strong opposition, and a decade later it was designated a scheduled monument; it has never been excavated. Restormel is now in the care of English Heritage and open to the public.