Somerton Castle

Antony Bek inherited Somerton from his mother, Eva de Gray, and built the castle after being granted a licence to crenellate in 1281. The ground he chose lies low, between the Lincoln Edge and the River Witham, about a mile west of Boothby Graffoe and south of Lincoln; the castle stands in Boothby Graffoe parish but sits within the Manor of Waddington, and that portion of the manor is often called the Manor of Somerton Castle in its own right. In 1309 Bek gave the castle as a gift to King Edward II.

At Edward II's accession Somerton was found to be in poor condition: lead had been stolen from the towers, and the great hall and the chapel, both on the west side of the castle, were in poor repair. In plan and layout the medieval castle appears to have most in common with later works of the 14th and early 15th centuries, Maxstoke in Warwickshire, Wingfield in Suffolk and, in particular, Cooling near Rochester in Kent: a moated enclosure with roughly rectangular curtain walls running between corner towers.

Under Edward III, John Crabbe, a military engineer, was appointed Constable of the Castle, and in the autumn of 1334 the king came to Somerton, presumably to authorise repair work. A total of £222 was spent over the next two years on rebuilding the outer drawbridge and remaking part of the moat, and the outer bailey to the south of the castle was presumably raised in the same campaign. Open-backed artillery towers had begun to appear in Europe around 1330 and would have been familiar to Crabbe, who came from Flanders; such towers carried guns on two or three floors, the open backs venting the fumes of the powder. Padley's plan shows the trapezoid outer bailey with mounds at its corners, and that forward defence was likely placed in front of the main gate to the inner bailey, giving the guns a sweep of about 270 degrees across the ground to the south. A similar layout was adopted in the 1430s for Sir John Fastolf's brick castle at Caister by Great Yarmouth, laid out with three moated rectangular baileys and open-backed towers in the forward one.

In late 1335 or early 1336 Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, was brought to Somerton after Baron Hugh de Fresne kidnapped her from her own castle at Bolingbroke, and she was raped while held there. The two married later that year without royal authority, and by order of Edward III they were held captive in separate towers of Somerton. Royal assent was granted on 20 March 1336; de Fresne died that December, and the countess returned to Bolingbroke.

After Crabbe's death in 1351 or 1352, Stephen Shawe was appointed constable, and regular repairs were carried out on the domestic buildings of the inner court. Further repairs and alterations followed in 1359 and 1360, when King John II of France was held captive in the castle, having been taken prisoner after the Battle of Poitiers.

The king's safekeeping fell to Sir Saier de Rochford, High Sheriff of Lincolnshire and ancestor of the Rochford family of Stoke Rochford, remembered as "an eminent soldier in the wars of France". He was allowed two shillings a day for guarding John while the French king was at Somerton.

By 1393 the castle was reported defective in its walls, gates, towers, bridges and ditches, and in its lead roofing, tiling, boarding, glazing and ironwork, with £100 named as the cost of putting it right. In 1408 the crown granted Somerton to Sir Ralph Rochford, High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in that year, who was to spend £112 12s. 9d. on repairs over the following three years. The work included making good the roof of the queen's hall, with its buttery and pantry, and repairing the chapel and the chamber of St Christopher.

From 1415 the castle was held from the king by the Dukes of Clarence, and that tenure ran until 1478, when George, Duke of Clarence, was executed. Through those decades Somerton was allowed to fall into disrepair, and it suffered waste, dilapidation and strip at the hands of those who held it from the crown.

Henry VII transferred the castle to the estates of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the castle and its lands were held by the De'Isney or Disney family. A Duchy of Lancaster survey of 1601 described Somerton as utterly defaced and fallen almost down to the ground, though one of the four towers was still standing almost to its full height. In 1628 the property was bought from Charles I by the Corporation of the City of London, and it then passed to the Hussey family; the print Samuel Buck produced in 1726, dedicated to Sir Henry Hussey, shows the castle in much the same state the survey had described.

Sir Henry left Somerton Castle to his aunt Jane Hatcher, who died in 1734, and it then passed to the Pochin family of Barkby in Leicestershire, who sold it to Montague Cholmeley of Easton in 1780. In 1812 Isaac Marfleet of Bassingham, who had previously been leasing the castle, bought the property and estate from Sir Montague Cholmeley, 1st Baronet. It descended through several of the family's descendants before reaching the Battersby family, who sold the castle and the surrounding farmland in the mid-1970s.

Somerton has continued in private ownership since Charles I sold it, and what remains of the castle walls is incorporated into the present farmhouse, with parts of the moat and other enclosures still surrounding the site. It has been a Grade I listed building since 23 August 1967 and is also a scheduled monument. About 2010, with the fabric of the castle buildings deteriorating, Somerton was placed on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk register and Ridge & Morris of Snape in Suffolk were commissioned to draw up restoration plans; North Kesteven District Council granted planning consents for additional work, including a new wing extending northwards behind the south front and the conversion of the 19th-century farm buildings into dwellings.