Wingfield Castle

Sir John de Wingfield, who died in about 1361, was chief administrator to Edward the Black Prince and the last male of his line. His daughter and heiress Catherine married Michael de la Pole, who was seated at Wingfield; the records show him applying for a royal licence to crenellate his manor house there in 1384, and in 1385 he was created Earl of Suffolk.

The need for the old sort of castle had already passed by then, and kings were not pleased to see such strongholds built, so what went up at Wingfield was a cross between a fortress and a standard moated manor house — an almost square enclosure of roughly an acre and a half.

Catherine's grandson William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, married Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer, in 1430 and lived at Wingfield; after William's death Alice moved to another of his properties, Wallingford Castle.

The castle served several times as a prison for Charles, Duke of Orléans, father of the future Louis XII, taken by the English at Agincourt in 1415. His family offered money for his release and were refused: Henry V forbade it, because Charles stood in the line of succession to the French throne and was judged too important to be given his liberty. He was not freed until 1440.

Michael de la Pole's descendant Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, was forced to surrender his dukedom in 1493. Henry VIII resurrected it in 1514 for his favourite Charles Brandon, himself of the Wingfield line as great-grandson of Sir Robert Wingfield of Letheringham, who died in 1454. Brandon used the castle on his tours around the county and lived there with his third wife, Mary Tudor, when they were not at their main residence of Westhorpe Hall.

Wingfield passed out of the family's hands in 1533, after Mary's death. Brandon then married Katherine Willoughby, and Henry VIII, who wanted his Duke of Suffolk based outside East Anglia because of the tension with his near neighbour the Duke of Norfolk, suggested he settle in Lincolnshire where the new duchess held property. Brandon went, giving up several Suffolk properties including the old family residence.

The castle passed to Sir Henry Jerningham in 1544. He demolished its western part and built a newer manor house at right angles to the main south wall — the one piece of the original castle still standing — and the Tudor brick merlons along the top of that wall were added at the same time.

Jerningham later ran into financial difficulty, and the castle fell into disrepair with much of its fabric appropriated; even the deer were poached from its park. The Catelyn family of Norwich bought the ruins in 1624 and held them through the Civil War. Sir Nevill Catlin died at Wingfield in 1702, and his widow Mary carried the manor to her second husband, Sir Charles Turner of Warham, who died in 1738. A Lord Berners sold the castle to the Adair family in 1886. The whole wall was apparently intact at the beginning of the 20th century, but the north and east walls had been demolished by 1945.

Lady Darrell, a descendant of Lord Berners, sold Wingfield in 1981, and it changed hands three times more before the decade was out: to Gerald Fairhurst two years later, who refurbished it before selling to a London businessman in 1987, and in 1989 to the barrister Michael Lyndon-Stanford. Elton John and Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols were among the musicians who came to view it during those sales. Dodie Smith had already borrowed the place in another form — Wingfield was the inspiration for Godsend Castle, home of the Mortmain family, in her 1949 novel I Capture the Castle.