Oxford Castle is a large, partly ruined medieval castle on the western side of central Oxford in Oxfordshire, England. Most of the original , wooden motte and bailey castle was replaced in stone in the late 12th or early 13th century and the castle played an important role in the conflict of the Anarchy. In the 14th century the military value of the castle diminished and the site became used primarily for county administration and as a prison. The surviving rectangular St George's Tower is now believed to pre-date the remainder of the castle and be a watch tower associated with the original Saxon west gate of the city.
Most of the castle was destroyed in the English Civil War and by the 18th century the remaining buildings had become Oxford's local prison. A new prison complex was built on the site from 1785 onwards and expanded in 1876; this became HM Prison Oxford.
The prison closed in 1996 and was redeveloped as a hotel and visitor attraction. The medieval remains of the castle including the motte, St George's Tower and crypt, are Grade I listed buildings and a Scheduled Monument.
D'Oyly positioned his castle to the west side of the town, using the natural protection of a stream off the River Thames on the far side of the castle, now called Castle Mill Stream, and diverting the stream to produce a moat.MacKenzie, p. 147. There has been debate as to whether there was an earlier English fortification on the site, but whilst there is archaeological evidence of earlier Anglo-Saxon habitation there is no conclusive evidence of fortification. Oxford Castle was an "urban castle", overlying a portion of the Saxon town wall, but it remains uncertain whether local buildings were demolished to make room for it. Poore et al. (2009) give a suggested street plan of the town in late Saxon times (their figure 4) showing the then town wall with its north, west, south and east gates; at the north gate is the Saxon tower now associated with the church of St Michael at the North Gate, while the west gate is occupied by the apparently Saxon tower of St. George's, which is now believed to have subsequently been incorporated into the fabric of the later Norman castle.Poore et al., 2009, p. 8.
The initial castle was probably a large motte and bailey, copying the plan of the castle that D'Oyly had already built away at Wallingford. The motte was originally about high and wide, constructed like the bailey from layers of gravel and strengthened with clay facing.MacKenzie, p. 148; Oxford Archaeology , accessed 12 September 2010. There has been debate over the sequencing of the motte and the bailey: it has been suggested that the bailey may have built first (thus utilising the pre-existing St. George's Tower as the first keep) which would make the initial castle design a ringwork rather than a motte and bailey.Hassall 1976, p. 233.
By the late 12th to early 13th century, the original palisade walls and wooden keep had been replaced in stone.Beckley and Radford, 2012, p. 37 The new curtain wall incorporated St George's Tower, which is built of coral rag stone, at the base and tapering significantly toward the top for stability.Tyack, p. 7; MacKenzie, p. 148. This was the tallest of the castle's towers, and is now believed to be a survival from late Saxon times (c. 1020) as a watch tower associated with the west gate of the Saxon city.Tyack, p. 6; Hassall 1976, p. 233. Signboard from Oxfordshire County Council on Oxford Castle Site Evidence that this tower is Saxon in origin and thus pre-dates the castle itself is presented in Poore et al. (2009),Poore et al., 2009, p. 5-6. who comment that "a single, massive stone tower does not seem to belong within the outer defences of an earth-and-timber castle", and other sources have concurred on architectural grounds, also noting that its orientation does not match that of the remainder of the castle, and that its height would have originally afforded an extensive view over the city, but which would have been superseded (and in fact, blocked) with the construction of the castle motte.Davies, p. 72. St. Georges Tower, Oxford The date of the remaining towers is uncertain although the southernmost, round tower, of which the base still remains, is dated to 1235 in various documentary sources, including Woolnoth's The Ancient Castles of England and Wales of 1825; in at least one source, it is referred to as "Henry III's Tower". Plan of Oxford Castle (provenance unknown)
Inside the walls the buildings included a chapel with a crypt attached to St George’s Tower, which may be on the site of a previous church. The chapel originally had a nave, chancel and an apse sanctuary. It was a typical early Norman design with solid pillars and arches.Tyack, p. 8. In 1074 D'Oyly and his close friend, Roger d'Ivry had endowed a chapel with a college of priests, which is presumed to be the structure in question; at an early stage it acquired a dedication to Saint George. As detailed below, the crypt of this chapel still survives, albeit in a new location within the castle, having been moved and reconstructed from its original materials in 1794.
The ten-sided stone shell keep, , constructed in the 13th century to replace an earlier wooden structure, closely resembled those of Tonbridge Castle and .MacKenzie, p. 149; Gravett and Hook, p. 43. The keep enclosed a number of buildings, leaving an inner courtyard only across.MacKenzie, p. 149. Within the keep, stairs led down to an underground wide stone chamber, with an Early English hexagonal vault and a deep well providing water in the event of a siege.Tyack, p. 8; MacKenzie, p. 149.
Finally in December, Matilda responded by escaping from the castle; the popular version of this has the Empress waiting until the Castle Mill Stream was frozen over and then dressed in white as camouflage in the snow, being lowered down the walls with three or four knights, before escaping through Stephen's lines in the night as the king's sentries tried to raise the alarm.MacKenzie, p.149; Gravett and Hook, p. 44. The chronicler William of Malmesbury, however, suggests Matilda did not descend the walls, but instead escaped from one of the gates. Matilda safely reached Abingdon-on-Thames and Oxford Castle surrendered to Stephen the next day. Robert had died in the final weeks of the siege and the castle was granted to William de Chesney for the remainder of the war.Amt, p. 48. At the end of the war the constableship of Oxford Castle was granted to Roger de Bussy before being reclaimed by Henry D'Oyly, Robert D'Oyly the younger's son, in 1154.Amt, pp. 56–7.
In the Barons' War of 1215–17 the castle was attacked again, prompting further improvements in its defences. In 1220 Falkes de Breauté, who controlled many royal castles in the middle of England, demolished the Church of St Budoc to the south-east of the castle and built a moated barbican to further defend the main gate.Hassall 1971, p. 9. The remaining wooden buildings were replaced in stone, including the new Round Tower which was built in 1235.Hassall 1976, p. 235; Tyack, p. 8. King Henry III turned part of the castle into a prison, specifically for holding troublesome University Scholarly method, and also improved the castle chapel, replacing the older barred windows with stained glass in 1243 and 1246.Davies, p. 3; Marks, p. 93. Due to the presence of Beaumont Palace to the north of Oxford, however, the castle never became a royal residence.Munby, p. 96.
On 13 January, 1400, Henry IV sat in judgment at Oxford Castle over rebels from Cirencester and other places, who had participated in the Epiphany Rising, or the Revolt of the Earls, men who supported Richard II, Henry’s cousin he murdered by starvation.Mortimer, Ian, The Fears of Henry IV, 2007, at Ch. 10. The castle became the centre for the administration of the county of Oxford, a jail, and a criminal court. Assizes were held there until 1577, when plague broke out in what became known as the "Black Assize": the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, two knights, eighty gentlemen and the entire grand jury for the session all died, including Sir Robert D'Oyley, a relative of the founder of the castle.Tyack, p. 8; Hassall 1976, p. 235; MacKenzie, p. 149; Davies, pp. 91–2. Thereafter assizes ceased to be held at the castle.
Ralph Agas's map of Oxford in 1578 shows that by then, while the curtain wall, keep and towers remained, the barbican had been demolished to make way for houses. Hassall, 1976, states that by 1600 the moat was almost entirely silted up and houses had been built all around the edge of the bailey wall,Hassall 1976, p. 235, 254. although this is contradicted by the castle's appearance in John Speed's map of Oxford, 1605. In 1611 King James I sold Oxford Castle to Francis James and Robert Younglove, who in turn sold it to Christ Church (a college of the university) in 1613. The college then leased it to a number of local families over the coming years.Davies, p. 3. By this time, Oxford Castle was in a weakened state, with a large crack running down the side of the keep. Oxford Archaeology , accessed 12 September 2010. A map of the castle prepared for Christ Church in 1615 shows the keep on its mound, St George's Tower with associated buildings and sections of the curtain wall remaining to the north and south, and the next tower to the south, plus a single remaining tower to the north-east, as well as the Castle Mill and a southern entrance to the castle complex;Poole et al., Figure 6. this map indicates that by 1615 houses and gardens had been laid out over more than half of the Castle Ditch or moat, which appears to still contain water. drawing based on Christ Church map of 1615, british-history.ac.uk.
In 1642, the First English Civil War broke out, and the Cavaliers made Oxford their capital. Parliamentary forces successfully besieged Oxford in 1646, and the city was occupied by Colonel Richard Ingoldsby.Joy, p. 29. Ingoldsby improved the fortification of the castle rather than the surrounding town, and in 1649 demolished most of the medieval stonework, replacing it with more modern earth bastion and reinforcing the keep with earth works to form a probable gun-platform.Joy, p. 29; Oxford Archaeology , accessed 12 September 2010. In 1652, in the third English Civil War, the Parliamentary garrison responded to the proximity of Charles II's forces by pulling down these defences as well and retreating to New College instead, causing great damage to the college in the process. In the event, Oxford saw no fresh fighting; early in the 18th century, however, the keep was demolished and the top of the motte landscaped into its current form.
In 1785 the castle was bought by the Oxford County Justices and rebuilding began under the London architect William Blackburn.Hassall 1976, p.235; Whiting, p. 54. The wider castle site had already begun to change by the late 18th century, with New Road being built through the bailey and the last parts of the castle moat being filled in to allow the building of the new Oxford Canal terminus.Hassall, p. 235. Building the new prison included demolishing the old chapel attached to St George's tower and repositioning part of the crypt in 1794. The work was completed under Daniel Harris in 1805.Hyack, p. 7; Whiting, p. 54. Harris gained a reasonable salary as the new governor and used convict labour from the prison to conduct early archaeological excavations at the castle with the help of the antiquarian Edward King.Munby, p. 53; Davies, p. 24.
In the 19th century the site continued to be developed, with various new buildings built including the new County Hall in 1840–41 and the Oxfordshire Militia Armoury in 1854. The prison itself was extended in 1876, growing to occupy most of the remaining space. The inmates included children, the youngest being a seven-year-old girl sentenced to seven days hard labour in 1870 for stealing a pram. Oxford Castle mugshots show 'victims of their time, BBC News, accessed 15 January 2017. In 1888 national prison reforms led to the renaming of the county prison as HM Prison Oxford.
The full extent of the original castle is somewhat obliterated today, especially with the intrusion of the newer County Hall into the eastern side, while New Road runs over the location of north-east portion of the curtain wall with its two square towers; nevertheless the position of its outer perimeter moat is approximated by portions of New Road, Castle Street and Paradise Street (refer map at right), while the remains of the original Barbican lie underneath the modern Westgate shopping centre. Since 1954 the two oldest parts of the castle have been Grade I listed buildings: the 11th-century motte with its 13th-century well-chamber, Well House Oxford Castle , National Heritage List for England, English Heritage, accessed 26 June 2013. the circa 11th-century St George's tower (listed as Norman, but now generally believed to be Saxon), the relocated crypt chapel, and the 18th-century D-wing and Debtors' Tower. St Georges Tower, St Georges Chapel Crypt and D Wing Including the Debtors Tower , National Heritage List for England, English Heritage, accessed 26 June 2013. The site is protected as a Scheduled Monument. Oxford Castle, Gatehouse, accessed 27 June 2013. As at 2018, guided tours of the surviving medieval and 18th-century portions are available to visitors via a commercial operator, Heritage Projects (Oxford Castle) Ltd, with opening hours and pricing available via their website. Oxford Castle and Prison Visitor Information
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