Stafford Castle is an ancient

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

castle situated two miles west of the town of

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, England. It is located about south of Stoke-on-Trent, north of Wolverhampton, and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 71,673 at the 2021–2022 United Kingd ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...

, England. From the time of the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Norman, French people, French, Flemish people, Flemish, and Bretons, Breton troops, all led by the Du ...

and as recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 it was the seat of the powerful Anglo-Norman Stafford family (originally ''de Tosny'', later via a female line ''de Stafford''), feudal barons of Stafford, later Barons Stafford (1299) by writ, Earls of Stafford (1351) and Dukes of Buckingham (1444). The 14th-century stone

keep A keep is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in castles that were fortified residen ...

was demolished in 1643, during the

Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...

, having been held for the Royalists by Lady Isabel Stafford. The castle was remodelled in the early 19th century by the Jerningham family in the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

style, on the foundations of the medieval structure, and incorporates much of the original stonework. Today the A518 Stafford-to-Newport Road passes next to it and it is a prominent local landmark visible from the

M6 motorway The M6 motorway is the longest motorway in the United Kingdom. It is located entirely within England, running for just over from the Midlands to the border with Scotland. It begins at Junction 19 of the M1 motorway, M1 and the western end of t ...

and from the West Coast inter-city mainline.

History

A Saxon castle at Stafford

The early historian of Staffordshire

Robert Plot Robert Plot (13 December 1640 – 30 April 1696) was an English naturalist and antiquarian who was the first professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford and the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. Early life and education Born in Bor ...

cited the ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of ...

'' (104) for evidence that

Æthelflæd Æthelflæd ( – 12 June 918) ruled as Lady of the Mercians in the English Midlands from 911 until her death in 918. She was the eldest child of Alfred the Great, king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and his wife Ealhswith. Æthelflæd ...

, the Saxon warrior-princess and ruler of the Mercians, built a castle at Stafford in the year 913, along with an adjacent ''burg'' (meaning a fortified town). However, the exact site of this first castle, probably made of wood, is now unknown.

Medieval

Saxon

Shortly before the castle was built the Saxon

Eadric the Wild Eadric ''the Wild'' (or Eadric ''Silvaticus''), also known as Wild Edric, Eadric ''Cild'' (or ''Child'') and Edric ''the Forester'', was an Anglo-Saxon magnate of Shropshire and Herefordshire who led English resistance to the Norman Conquest, acti ...

had led a failed rebellion which culminated in the defeat of the Saxons at the Battle of Stafford in 1069.

Norman

A wooden castle was built on the site at some time in the 1070s by the Norman magnate Robert de Stafford (c.1039–c.1100) (''alias'' Robert de Tosny/Toeni, etc.) who arrived in England during or shortly after the

of 1066 and was awarded by King

William the Conqueror William the Conqueror (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), sometimes called William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England (as William I), reigning from 1066 until his death. A descendant of Rollo, he was D ...

131 manors in his newly conquered kingdom, predominantly in the county of Staffordshire. Thus he was able to control and extract taxes from the native Anglo-Saxon community and to prepare for the

Norman invasion of Wales The Norman invasion of Wales began shortly after the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest of England under William the Conqueror, who believed England to be his birthright. Initially (1067–1081), the invasion of Wales was not undertaken with the fer ...

in 1081. The castle was originally a timber and earth fortification, built on modified glacial deposit. The first castle was built in the usual form of a

motte and bailey A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy ...

. Ralph de Stafford, 1st Earl of Stafford, one of the King's leading commanders in the first phases of the Hundred Years' War, sealed a contract with a master mason in 1347, ordering a stone castle to be built on the castle mound. The rectangular stone keep originally had a tower in each corner, but was later adapted, with a fifth tower being added on in the middle of the north wall (actually facing west).

Early Modern

The stone castle reached its heyday during the time of Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1402–1460), who was killed at the Battle of Northampton in 1460. His grandson

Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (4 September 1455 – 2 November 1483), was an English nobleman known as the namesake of Buckingham's rebellion, a failed but significant collection of uprisings in England and parts of Wales against ...

(1455–1483) had become a ward of the Yorkists and was initially a supporter of Richard III, but later rebelled in favour of the aborted invasion of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) in 1483, and paid with his life. His son

Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (3 February 1478 – 17 May 1521) was an English nobleman. He was the son of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Katherine Woodville, Duchess of Buckingham, Katherine Woodville and nephew of E ...

(1478–1521) escaped and was later restored to his lands by a grateful King Henry VII. In 1511 the 3rd Duke built himself a further grand residence at Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire, effectively a fortified manor house. His royal blood made him a threat to Henry VIII, who had him executed in 1521, when the family's estates, including Stafford Castle and its deer parks,

escheat Escheat () is a common law doctrine that transfers the real property of a person who has died without heirs to the crown or state. It serves to ensure that property is not left in "limbo" without recognized ownership. It originally applied t ...

ed to the Crown. The king's auditors commented favourably on the deer to be had in the parks and thought the castle might be a suitable stop-off on one of the King's progresses. Stafford Castle, along with a small parcel of land, was restored to the later Staffords, but they never regained the wealth or status of earlier years. Through lack of maintenance, the keep fell into disrepair and in 1603 Edward Stafford, 3rd Baron Stafford referred in a letter to 'My rotten castle of Stafford.' During the early phases of the

in 1643 it was held by Lady Isabel Stafford (née Isabel Forster), a staunch Roman Catholic and Royalist, the widow of Edward Stafford, 4th Baron Stafford (1572–1625), who had been buried at the Castle Church, Stafford. The Parliamentarians had captured the town of Stafford on 15 May 1643, following a brief siege, but some of its garrison escaped and held Stafford Castle, in the hope of using it as a bridgehead to recapture the town. Colonel William Brereton rode up to the castle with some of his men and called upon Lady Stafford to surrender, to which she refused. In response ''"some of the poor outhouses were set on fire to try whether these would work their spirits to any relenting. All in vain, for from the castle they shot some of our men and horses which did much enrage and provoke the rest to an act of fierce revenge. Almost all the dwelling houses and outhouses were burnt to the ground."'' The siege was raised when Colonel Hastings led a relief column which arrived on 5 June. Lady Stafford was eventually persuaded to leave, a small garrison remaining to defend the castle against a renewed siege. Finally, in late June, the Royalist garrison fled, having heard that a large Parliamentarian army was approaching, complete with siege cannon capable of overwhelming the small garrison. The castle then fell into Parliamentarian control and was demolished. On 22 December, not many months after its capture, the "Parliamentarian Committee of Stafford" ordered: "the Castle shall be forthwith demolished." When the traveller and diarist, Celia Fiennes passed through the town of Stafford in 1698, she noted: "...the castle which is now ruinated and there only remains on a hill the fortified trenches that are grown over green."

Re-emergence

By the 1790s only a single low wall remained to be seen above ground, and that was at risk of falling. Some workmen employed to underpin this wall discovered the buried castle basements and foundations, which ran off from the wall. Realising the likely extent of these basements, and the possibility of treasures within, they brought their discovery to the attention of Sir William Jerningham. Jerningham immediately ordered all the foundations and basements to be uncovered, and the whole mound to be cleared of overgrowth. The castle was partly rebuilt in the Gothic Revival Style from 1813. Yet this work was soon discontinued partly through the lack of funds, and also because the Jerningham family were elevated to the peerage (one of their motives for the restoration project). Dubbed by some as a 'folly', this was never the case, as the Keep was always intended to be lived in, and was occupied well into the 20th century.

Post-war

In the immediate post-war years, the mature woodland that surrounded the Keep was felled, which may have led to the structure being exposed to high winds. By 1949 large pieces of masonry had begun to fall from the towers, which were declared unsafe. Mr. and Mrs. Stokes, the last caretakers of the castle and its grounds, vacated the building that winter. The site became a target for vandals and in 1961 Lord Stafford gave the Keep to the local authority. In 1978 professional excavations began to show the complex archaeology of the site, which had been for generations the seat of one of the most important families in the region. The excavations continued for many years, becoming one of the area's biggest employers of young people during the severe economic depression of the early 1980s. These excavations and establishment of a reconstructed medieval herb garden were documented over many years by the BBC. On the site's official public opening in 1988, a heritage trail was established with signage and interpretation, and new fencing on improved trails. In 1992 a new purpose-built museum and gift/refreshments shop opened on-site below the castle mound.

References

External links

*
Stafford Castle and Visitor Centre
- official site and visiting information at Stafford Borough Council
Stafford History's article on Stafford Castle (staffordhistory.co.uk/stafford-castle)

{{Authority control Castles in Staffordshire Buildings and structures in Stafford Tourist attractions in Staffordshire Ruins in Staffordshire Grade II listed buildings in Staffordshire Historic house museums in Staffordshire Motte-and-bailey castles