Oxford Castle

According to the Abingdon Chronicle, the castle was built between 1071 and 1073 by the Norman baron Robert D'Oyly the elder, who had arrived in England with William the Conqueror and been granted extensive lands in Oxfordshire. Oxford had been stormed during the invasion and badly damaged, and William directed D'Oyly to raise a castle to dominate the town. D'Oyly placed it to the west, using a stream off the Thames — now Castle Mill Stream — for natural protection and diverting it to form a moat. The initial castle was probably a large motte and bailey, echoing the one D'Oyly had already built at Wallingford, with a motte some 60 feet high built up from layers of gravel and faced with clay.

Its great moment came during the Anarchy. Robert D'Oyly the younger declared for Empress Matilda, and in 1141 she based her campaign at the castle. King Stephen took the town in the autumn of 1142 and besieged her here for three months, raising two siege mounds — Jew's Mount and Mount Pelham — and waiting for her supplies to fail. In December Matilda escaped; the popular version has her lowered down the walls in white, camouflaged against the snow, though the chronicler William of Malmesbury suggests she simply left by one of the gates. She reached Abingdon safely and the castle surrendered the next day. Robert had died in the final weeks of the siege.

From the 1350s the castle had little military use and was left to decay, becoming instead the administrative centre for the county, a jail and a criminal court. Henry IV sat in judgment here on 13 January 1400 over rebels of the Epiphany Rising. Assizes continued 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 all died, among them Sir Robert D'Oyley, a relative of the castle's founder. Assizes were never held here again.

The site works on two levels today. As a visitor attraction it gives you access to the medieval survivals — the motte, St George's Tower and the chapel crypt, presumed to belong to the chapel D'Oyly and Roger d'Ivry endowed in 1074, which was moved and rebuilt from its original materials in 1794 and now sits in a new position within the castle. All are Grade I listed and part of a Scheduled Monument. The former prison site was redeveloped as a hotel as well as an attraction, so you can stay the night here if you like the idea.

Organised public ghost hunts are also run at the venue, which is the obvious option if the after-dark side of the place is what draws you. Come in daylight first if you can, though — the relationship between the Saxon tower, the Norman motte and the Georgian and Victorian prison blocks only really makes sense when you can see how tightly they are stacked together.