Southampton Castle

Southampton Castle was raised in the late 11th century, at some point after the Norman conquest, on the site of a probable large English hall. It stood on rising ground in the north-west corner of the town, overlooking the mouth of the River Test and positioned to adjoin the quays - a timber motte and bailey with a motte 45 feet (14 metres) across, some of whose bailey walls were rebuilt in stone in the first half of the 12th century.

During the Anarchy the castle was held by William le Gros for Stephen. Henry II took it back when he came to the throne in 1153 and improved it; Southampton was then reckoned a key fortification, classed alongside the Tower of London, Windsor, Oxford, Lincoln and Winchester.

By the second half of the 12th century the castle was valued less for internal security than for coastal defence and as a base for operations on the continent. Henry II put modest further resources into it after the French invasion threat of the 1170s, and in 1187 the wooden keep was converted into a stone shell-keep. John increased spending, and additional royal accommodation, the King's House, was built outside the castle.

Southampton traded with Normandy, the Levant and Gascony, and the castle formed in part a warehouse for the king's imports under a Crown Bailiff. Royal purchases of wine were especially important, stored here and distributed to royal properties across the south of England; in the 13th century the former castle hall was turned into a subterranean vault, probably for storing it.

By 1300 Southampton was a major port and a town of around 5,000. A French attack in 1338 succeeded, burning buildings and damaging the castle. Edward III responded by improving the town defences, though little appears to have been done to the castle itself; by mid-century it stood alongside one and a quarter miles (2.0 km) of town walls kept administratively separate from it.

A successful French attack on Portsmouth in 1370 began a fresh sequence of coastal raids, and first Edward, then Richard answered with a building programme that included Southampton, where the castle was in poor condition owing in part to theft of stone and lead by the townspeople. Henry Yevele and the architect William Wynford rebuilt the keep between 1378 and 1382; a barbican and a protective mantlet wall followed between 1383 and 1388. Thomas Tredynton, appointed chaplain, was paid an unusually high £10 a year, reflecting his other skills as a military engineer. The castle received its first cannon in 1382, among the first in the country to be so equipped, the decision driven by fear of French attack. After French troops took Sandwich in 1457 the castle was put on alert again, and Nicholas Carew, one of Henry VI's more "dependable captains", was given control of it for life.

After 1518 no more money was spent on repairs, though the antiquarian John Leland could still call the new keep "the glory of the castle, both large and fair and very strong". The inner bailey was used first as a rubbish tip and then for small-scale agriculture, and by 1585 the castle was "very ruynaise and in greete decaye".

James I sold the castle to property speculators in 1618, and it passed to George Gollop, a local merchant, after which a windmill was built on the motte. It played no part in the Civil War, though some of its masonry strengthened the town walls in 1650.

Two of the castle's entrances, Southgate and Castle Eastgate, were demolished in the late 18th century. Lord Stafford put a banqueting house on the motte around the turn of the 19th century, and in 1808 John Petty, 2nd Marquess of Lansdowne, built a Gothic mansion there using stone from the old keep. Known as Landsdowne Castle, it was pulled down in either 1815 or 1818, and most of the motte was afterwards flattened.

From the late 19th century the site was heavily developed: Upper Bugle Street was driven through the old bailey, council buildings went up around it, and a block of flats was raised over the surviving part of the motte in 1962. Excavations between 1973 and 1983 covered about a tenth of the castle. The hall, Castle Vault, Castle Watergate and the garderobe tower foundations were incorporated into the town walls; they are protected as a grade II* listed building and can be seen on the Walk the Town Walls route, the vault opening for guided tours. For the city's bid to be UK City of Culture in 2025, the council announced £6.7 million of restoration and repair to monuments including the castle.