Bristol Castle was a Normancastle established in the late 11th century on the north bank of the River Avon in Bristol. Remains can be seen today in Castle Park near the Broadmead Shopping Centre, including the sally port.
Built during the reign of William the Conqueror, and later owned by Robert FitzHamon, it became an important royal castle and was the scene of several imprisonments and executions. The castle was modified and further fortified between the 12th and 13th centuries under Robert of Gloucester and King Henry III. By the 16th century it was mostly neglected; it was torn down in 1656 under orders from Oliver Cromwell.
Site
Location of Bristol Castle shown on an 1882 map of the city. Keep marked in yellow, curtain walls in red
The castle was built on a strategic site on the eastern side of the walled town, between the River Avon on the south and the River Frome on the north, joined by a canal to form the castle moat on the east side, with a weir on the north to compensate for differing water levels in the two rivers. As the town of Bristol was itself built in the angle of the junction of those two rivers, the construction of the castle moat meant that the town and castle became completely surrounded by water and thus highly defensible.[1]
Remains of Bristol Castle in 2011, with crenelated public convenience and Newgate Street beyond, looking north-west
History
The first castle built at Bristol was a timber motte and bailey, presumably erected on the command of William the Conqueror, who retained the manor of Bristol within the royal demesne. One of William's closest allies, Geoffrey de Montbray, Bishop of Coutances, appears to have had control of the castle in William's name. The Domesday Book of 1086 records that he received part of the king's income from the borough. The castle is first mentioned in surviving records in 1088, when Geoffrey used it as a base in his rebellion against King William II.[2]
After William II triumphed, the English lands of the rebels were redistributed to his loyal followers. Among the recipients was Robert FitzHamon, who having thus gained a large swathe of Gloucestershire, including Bristol Castle, founded the feudal barony of Gloucester. His eldest daughter and heiress Mabel FitzHamon married Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester, illegitimate son of King Henry I. On the death of her father in 1107, Mabel brought to her husband the feudal barony of Gloucester: thus he is generally known as "Robert of Gloucester".[3]
Plan of Bristol Castle"Water Gate" to Bristol Castle, guarded by five towersSite of the "Water Gate" entrance to the moat viewed from River Avon (now "Floating Harbour", the river having been diverted to the south). The moat connected to the River Frome which flowed to the immediate north of the Castle, since diverted
This great fortress was to play a key role in the civil wars that followed the death of Henry I of England. Henry's only legitimate son William drowned in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120, so Henry eventually declared his one legitimate daughter Matilda his heir. However her cousin, Stephen of Blois, usurped the throne on Henry's death in 1135. Matilda's half-brother Robert of Gloucester became her trusted right-hand man– the commander of her troops. Rebels rallied to his castle at Bristol.[5]
Stephen reconnoitred Bristol in 1138 but decided that the town was impregnable. As his chronicler reported: "On one side of it, where it is considered more exposed to siege and more accessible, a castle rising on a vast mound, strengthened by wall and battlements, towers and divers engines, prevents an enemy's approach."[6] After Stephen was captured in 1141, he was imprisoned in Bristol Castle until Robert of Gloucester was also captured and an exchange of prisoners was made.[7]
Bristol Castle was Robert of Gloucester's principal seat in England. He added greatly to its exterior fortifications and rebuilt the interior.[8]
The castle and title of Earl of Gloucester passed to Robert's son, William. When Henry the Young King and his brother– princes Richard and Geoffrey– rebelled against King HenryII in 1173 Earl William supported their cause. The rebellion was put down the following year, and William was punished by having Bristol Castle confiscated and taken under royal control. Bristol became one of the most important royal castles in the country. Henry III, educated there in his youth, spent lavishly on it, adding a barbican before the main west gate, a gate tower, and magnificent great hall. From 1224, Eleanor of Brittany was strictly confined to the castle under relatively comfortable conditions, with accommodation in the keep, almost to her death in 1241, except for sometime between 1225 and 1227 when she was presumably locked in her tower or room.[9]
The first detailed description of the castle was written in 1480.[11] By the time the antiquaryJohn Leland visited c.1540, Bristol castle was showing signs of neglect. It had "two courts, and in the north-west part of the outer court there is a large keep with a dungeon, said to have been built of stone brought by the red Earl of Gloucester from Caen in Normandy. In the other court is an attractive church and many domestic quarters, with a great gate on the south side, a stone bridge and three ramparts on the left bank leading to the mouth of the Frome. Many towers still stand in both the courts, but they are all on the point of collapse".[12] By the sixteenth century the castle had fallen into disuse, but the City authorities had no control over royal property and the precincts became a refuge for lawbreakers.
The castle was demolished in 1656, according to Millerd's map of Bristol. However one octagonal tower survived until it was torn down in 1927. It was sketched by Samuel Loxton in 1907.[14] There are some remains of the banqueting hall incorporated in a building which still exists above ground today, known as the Castle Vaults. In 1938 the Castle Vaults was used as a tobacconist's shop.[15]
The castle moat was covered over in 1847 but still exists and is mainly navigable by boat, flowing under Castle Park and into the Floating Harbour. The western section is a dry ditch and a sally port into the moat survives near St Peter's Church.[16]
A 16-metre (52ft) long postern tunnel runs underneath the south west part of the castle.[17]
Today
The area was redeveloped for commerce, and later largely destroyed in the Bristol Blitz. It was subsequently redeveloped as a public open space, Castle Park.[18]
↑ Gesta Stephani ed. and trans. K.R. Potter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 37–8, 43–4.
↑ William of Malmesbury, The Historia Novella, trans. K. R. Potter (London: T. Nelson, 1955), p.50.
↑ Orderic Vitalis (1856). Forester, Thomas (ed.). The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy. IV. Translated by Forester, Thomas. London: Henry G. Bohn. Page 200.
↑ Hasegawa, Junichi (1992). "6 Replanning the city centre: Bristol 1940-45". Replanning the blitzed city centre. Open University Press. ISBN0-335-15633-9.
Stephen, often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 22 December 1135 to his death in 1154. He was Count of Boulogne jure uxoris from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144. His reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, whose son, Henry II, succeeded Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England.
Empress Matilda, also known as Empress Maud, was one of the claimants to the English throne during the civil war known as the Anarchy. The daughter and heir of Henry I, king of England and ruler of Normandy, she went to Germany as a child when she was married to the future Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. She travelled with the emperor to Italy in 1116, was controversially crowned empress in St Peter's Basilica, and acted as the imperial regent in Italy. Matilda and Henry V had no children, and when he died in 1125, the imperial crown was claimed by his rival Lothair of Supplinburg.
The Anarchy was a civil war in England and Normandy between 1138 and 1153, which resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order. The conflict was a war of succession precipitated by the accidental death of William Adelin who had drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120. Henry sought to be succeeded by his daughter, known as Empress Matilda, but was only partially successful in convincing the nobility to support her. On Henry's death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne, with the help of Stephen's brother Henry of Blois, who was the bishop of Winchester. Stephen's early reign saw fierce fighting with disloyal English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders, and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester.
Robert FitzRoy, 1st Earl of Gloucester was an illegitimate son of King Henry I of England. He was the half-brother of the Empress Matilda, and her chief military supporter during the civil war known as the Anarchy, in which she vied with Stephen of Blois for the throne of England.
Robert Fitzhamon, or Robert FitzHamon, Seigneur de Creully in the Calvados region and Torigny in the Manche region of Normandy, was the first Norman feudal baron of Gloucester and the Norman conqueror of Glamorgan, southern Wales. He became Lord of Glamorgan in 1075.
Ranulf II, 4th Earl of Chester (1099–1153), was an Anglo-Norman baron who inherited the honour of the palatine county of Chester upon the death of his father Ranulf Meschin, 3rd Earl of Chester. He was descended from the Counts of Bessin in Normandy.
William FitzRobert, 2nd Earl of Gloucester was the son and heir of Sir Robert de Caen, 1st Earl of Gloucester, and Mabel FitzRobert of Gloucester, daughter of Robert Fitzhamon, and nephew of Empress Matilda.
Miles FitzWalter of Gloucester, 1st Earl of Hereford was a great magnate based in the west of England. He was hereditary Constable of England and Sheriff of Gloucestershire.
John Marshal, was a minor nobleman of Anglo-Norman origins who served as marshal of England and fought in the 12th-century civil war on the side of Empress Matilda. He is best remembered as the father of William Marshal.
Robert Fitzharding was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman from Bristol who was granted the feudal barony of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. He rebuilt Berkeley Castle, and founded the Berkeley family which still occupies it today. He was a wealthy Bristol merchant and a financier of the future King Henry II of England (1133-1189) in the period known as the Anarchy during which Henry's mother, the Empress Matilda (1102-1167), mounted repeated military challenges to King Stephen. Fitzharding founded St. Augustine's Abbey, which after the Reformation became Bristol Cathedral. Many members of the Berkeley family were buried within it, and some of their effigies survive there. As J. Horace Round asserted he was one of the very few Anglo-Saxon noblemen who managed to retain their noble status in Norman England and successfully integrate with the Norman nobility, if not the only one.
In the Rout of Winchester the army of imprisoned King Stephen of England, led by his wife, Queen Matilda of Boulogne, Stephen's brother Bishop Henry of Blois, and William of Ypres, faced the army of Stephen's cousin Empress Matilda, whose forces were commanded by her half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester. After Empress Matilda's army besieged a castle on the edge of Winchester, Queen Matilda's army arrived and blockaded the Angevin army within the city. Cut off from supplies, the Angevin army gave up the siege, then was crushed as it began to retreat. Robert of Gloucester was captured and was subsequently exchanged for Stephen, who was returned to the throne of England. However, the civil war known as The Anarchy dragged on with neither side gaining an advantage.
Events from the 1140s in England.
Events from the 1130s in England.
William de Chesney was an Anglo-Norman magnate during the reign of King Stephen of England and King Henry II of England. Chesney was part of a large family; one of his brothers became Bishop of Lincoln and another Abbot of Evesham Abbey. Stephen may have named him Sheriff of Oxfordshire. Besides his administrative offices, Chesney controlled a number of royal castles and served Stephen during some of the king's English military campaigns. Chesney's heir was his niece, Matilda, who married Henry fitzGerold.
Mabel FitzRobert, Countess of Gloucester was an Anglo-Norman noblewoman, and a wealthy heiress who brought the lordship of Gloucester, among other prestigious honours to her husband, Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester upon their marriage. He was the illegitimate son of King Henry I of England.
Sibyl de Neufmarché, Countess of Hereford, suo jure Lady of Brecknock, was a Cambro-Norman noblewoman, heiress to one of the most substantial fiefs in the Welsh Marches. The great-granddaughter of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, king of Wales, Sibyl was also connected to the nobility of England and Normandy. Sibyl inherited the titles and lands of her father, Bernard de Neufmarché, Lord of Brecon, after her mother, Nest ferch Osbern, had declared her brother Mahel to have been illegitimate. Most of these estates passed to Sibyl's husband, Miles de Gloucester, 1st Earl of Hereford, as her dowry. Their marriage had been arranged personally by King Henry I of England in the spring of 1121. Sibyl, with her extensive lands, was central to the King's plans of consolidating Anglo-Norman power in south-east Wales by the merging of her estates with those of Miles, his loyal subject on whom he relied to implement Crown policy.
Pain fitzJohn was an Anglo-Norman nobleman and administrator, one of King Henry I of England's "new men", who owed their positions and wealth to the king.
Geoffrey Talbot was a medieval Anglo-Norman nobleman during the civil war of King Stephen of England's reign. His landholdings around Swanscombe are considered to possibly constitute a feudal barony. Although he was at Stephen's court in early 1136, by 1138 Talbot was supporting Stephen's rival, Matilda. After escaping capture twice, Talbot was captured by partisans of Stephen but was released. In 1139 and 1140, Talbot was engaged in military operations around Hereford, which included fortifying Hereford Cathedral in an attempt to take Hereford Castle.
The siege of Oxford took place during the Anarchy—a period of civil war following the death of Henry I of England without a male heir—in 1142. Fought between his nephew, Stephen of Blois, and his daughter, the Empress Matilda, who had recently been expelled from her base in Westminster and chosen the City of Oxford as her new headquarters. Oxford by now was effectively a regional capital and important in its own right. It was a well-defended city with both rivers and walls protecting it, and was also strategically important as it was at a crossroads between the north, south-east and west of England, and also not far from London.
The feudal barony of Gloucester or Honour of Gloucester was one of the largest of the mediaeval English feudal baronies in 1166, comprising 279 knight's fees, or manors. The constituent landholdings were spread over many counties. The location of the caput at Gloucester is not certain as Gloucester Castle appears to have been a royal castle, but it is known that the baronial court was held at Bristol in Gloucestershire.
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