The year is 978: It is thought that in this year King Edward the Martyr was murdered by his stepmother, Elfrida, at the site of the Old Hall. She plied him with wine and then had him stabbed in the back. And so started the history of Corfe Castle.
The year is 1086: A few years after the Battle of Hastings William the Conqueror swapped a church in Gillingham for the land and the building works of Corfe Castle were begun. It offered a commanding view in all directions, natural defence due to the steep slopes, was fed by a spring and offered flat ground at the top for additional buildings.
The year is 1106 King Henry I had just fought a battle with his older brother, Robert of Normandy and won. He shut Robert in the keep. Royals, nobles, knights and gentry were held as prisoner here and were treated well despite their incarceration. It was common that they would be sold back to their families for a ransom. This is why most men of this ilk were rarely killed on the field of battle; They were worth more alive, in ransom.
The year is 1138: During the reign of King Stephen his cousin, Empress Matilda raised an army against him hoping to wrest the throne of England from him and for herself. One of her staunch supporters, Baldwin de Redvers was besieged here at Corfe Castle by King Stephen. He was short of food and under constant attack by the besieging army.
The year is 1199-1214: King John imprisoned his French Niece, Princess Eleanor of Brittany, here. She survived her incarceration although 22 of her knights did not. They were locked in the dungeon below the Butavant Tower and slowly starved to death in the dark, dank lower depths of the castle.
The year is 1220-1294: Life at Corfe Castle settled into somewhat of a routine. King Henry III and King Edward I made many improvements to the castle and its defences including the South West Gatehouse. Many stone masons and craftsmen worked on the castle and as one walks around the ruin now remnants of their intricate work still exists. The nearby village thrived and grew.
The year is 1572: The last Royal owner of Corfe Castle, Queen Elizabeth I, sold the castle to one of her favourite courtiers, Sir Christopher Hatton. The price? A bargain at only 4,762 pounds. (A fortune back in 1572!)
The year is 1635: Corfe Castle was sold once more, this time to the Lord Chief Justice Sir John Bankes. A little later, during the Civil War between the Parliamentary Forces and King Charles I's, Royalists Sir John Bankes stayed fiercely loyal to the Crown and held Corfe Castle despite all of Dorset being held by the Parliamentary forces at the time.
The year is 1643-1646: Brave Dame Mary Bankes commands Corfe Castle and manages to hold off two sieges during the Civil War. As is often the way treachery from within the castle walls was the reason it fell. Lady Bankes was permitted to leave the castle safely and in recognition of her bravery was given the keys to the castle by the victors. Strange sense of chivalry right?
*The year is 1646-1663: The Castle was partially destroyed (demolished) by order of the Parliament and looting ensued. Many of the poor locals raided it for stone blocks to build houses destroyed during the Civil War. Lady Banke's son, Ralph Bankes tried to recover what he could and later built a new mansion at Kingston Lacy near Winborne. It's there one can view the family's portraits and view the keys to the castle his mother, Lady Bank's was handed.
The year is 1982: Three and a half centuries of Banke's family ownership the castle was handed to the National Trust. The gift included the countryside, coastline, farms and nature reserve at Kingston Lacy also.
The year is 2018, 26th June: Faith and Galen visit Corfe Castle and walk amongst the chaos left by over 1,000 years of turmoil. Immense chunks of castle have been torn away, tumbled down the steep earthwork fortifications and have been carted away and re-purposed as homes in the village. It has left jagged pillars of crumbling battlements and towers leaning at angles no architect or stone mason would accept.
Under the sun the castle resembled a mouth or maybe more accurately a maw wide open to the sky in a silent laugh; The jagged stonework looked like the broken and cracked teeth of one who had been through a bloody and brutal conflict. And yet the castle seemed to smile, or was it a scream of anguish, at all it had witnessed? Today we can visit the castle and walk it's battlements and ramparts imagining what life must have been like for the people who called it home: A prisoner, a soldier, the lord, or visiting king, maybe the commander of the Parliamentary army who cracked this castle or a couple of servants seeking a quite corner to steal a kiss...
It's easy to imagine the thunderous boom of rocks striking the outer walls, let lose by the besieging army's trebuchet war machines. One doesn't have to try too hard to imagine the anguish of those left to starve in the squalor and darkness of the dungeons or the satisfaction of a stonemason as he laid the last block; A life's work. It's easy to imagine it as a working castle, bustling with activity.
I found it to be a sad place to be honest though. It's spectacular of course, amazing in design and that so much was achieved in its building over the years, but yet I found it a sad place. We were there very early, the first one's in today and we had it to ourselves for a little while: Just the scarred and broken stones, the weight of a thousand years of life and death bearing heavily on once sturdy walls and the caress of the slight breeze bringing echo's of the long-dead people who once lived, worked, fought and died in and around the castle.
Thanks for reading.
Faith & Galen x