Wisbech Castle

The castle at Wisbech was a stone motte-and-bailey built to fortify the town on the orders of William I in 1072, probably replacing an earlier timber and turf complex; its layout was probably oval, on the line still marked by the Circus, and the Domesday Book of 1086 makes no mention of a castle here. It was rebuilt in stone in 1087. King John stayed on 12 October 1216, travelling from Lynn to Lincolnshire; his baggage train is reported to have got into difficulties crossing a river or estuary, losing the wagons and their contents, including the regalia. Castle and town were swept away in a storm in 1236, but the castle appears to have been rebuilt soon after, a keeper or constable named in 1246.

In 1315 the King's Lynn merchant Richard Lambert sued William le Blowere and others for conspiring to imprison him, having been "thrown in the depth of the gaol of Wysebech among thieves, where by toads and other venomous vermin he was so inhumanely gnawed that his life was despaired of". In 1350 the bishop's constable and his men were "besieged" by John de Stonore, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and on 23 July 1381 Thomas Arundel, Bishop of Ely, wrote from the castle directing the excommunication of those involved in the Cambridge insurrection.

By the 15th century repairs were becoming too much for the ageing structure, and a new building was started in 1478 under John Morton, Bishop of Ely. Raised in 1478-83 of brick with dressings of Ketton stone, the Bishop's Palace was extended and completed by his successor John Alcock, who died in the castle in 1500.

Wisbech served as a prison in part for its remoteness, three days' walk from London under escort. Protestants were held here under Mary, William Wolsey and Robert Piggott among them, removed and later burnt at the stake. In 1580 the bishop was enjoined to put the castle "in order and strength" to receive prisoners, and the first arrived that October. Robert Catesby and Francis Tresham, later principal conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, are reported to have been held here in 1588.

In the last years of the 16th century 33 Catholics were prisoners at Wisbech, almost all of them priests, among them the Jesuits Christopher Holywood and William Weston. Their quarrel became known as the "Wisbech Stirs": eighteen of the 33 wished to adopt a regular communal life apart from the rest, the separation was carried out in February 1595 and ended in a general reconciliation that November. Eight Jesuits escaped custody, three in 1614 and five in 1615, and the use of the castle for recusant prisoners ceased in 1627.

After Oliver Cromwell was appointed governor of the Isle of Ely he refortified castle and town, with outposts at the Horseshoe Sluice and Leverington and the soldiers under Colonel John Palgrave and Captain William Dodson. In 1643 the castle was used to secure the river Nene frontier and to block any attempt by the Newark garrison to relieve the besieged Royalists of King's Lynn. It was armed with "Great Guns" from Ely.

Secretary of State John Thurloe bought the castle estate, demolished the bishop's palace and built a mansion in its place, which William Dugdale called "that fair new house in Wisbech, which stands where the old Castle was". At the Restoration his Wisbech house and estates were repossessed by the Bishop of Ely. Imprisonment for religious belief went on: John Inds, taken with other Friends from a peaceable meeting on 16 February 1663, was held in Wisbech gaol for three years.

The Wisbech Saint Peter's Castle Act 1793 empowered the Bishop of Ely to sell, and Joseph Medworth was the highest bidder for all six lots at the Rainbow coffee house in Cornhill on 13 November 1793, at £2,305. In 1811 Medworth offered Thurloe's mansion to the corporation for £2,000 for Wisbech Grammar School; the offer was not taken up, and he demolished it and used the material to build the villa now known as The Castle.

It sold again in March 1864 for £1,300 to William Peckover FSA. Florence Fendick transferred ownership to Isle of Ely County Council in March 1969, and later to Cambridgeshire County Council; the vaults were Grade II listed in 1969 and the Regency villa Grade II* on 31 October 1983. The vaults are still sometimes called the prisoners' cells or Norman dungeons, but archaeology does not ascribe them, a possible well aside, to periods that early. In February 2018 Wisbech Town Council took a 30-year lease with a £150,000 loan for repairs and took over running the site.