Oxford Castle is a large, partly ruined medieval castle on the western side of central Oxford in Oxfordshire, England. Most of the original moated, 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 known as the Anarchy. In the 14th century the military value of the castle diminished and the site came to be 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 to have been 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.
History Construction
According to the Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis (Abingdon Chronicle),Referenced in Harfield, p. 388. Oxford Castle was built by the Norman baron Robert D'Oyly the elder from 1071 to 1073.Joy, p. 28. D'Oyly had arrived in England with William I the Conqueror in the Norman Conquest of England, and William granted him extensive lands in Oxfordshire. Oxford had been stormed in the invasion with considerable damage, and William directed D'Oyly to build a castle to dominate the town.MacKenzie, 147; Tyack, p. 5. In due course D'Oyly became the foremost landowner in Oxfordshire and was confirmed with a hereditary royal constableship for Oxford Castle.Amt, pp. 47–8. Oxford Castle is not among the 48 recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, but not every castle in existence at the time was recorded in the survey.Harfield, pp. 384, 388–9. D'Oyly (d'Oilly)'s Oxford holdings are, however, mentioned in the Domesday Book as "Meadow 30 acres. 1 mill, value 10 shillings.Open Domesday, Place: Oxford: entry 13 The mill mentioned is presumably the Castle Mill, formerly adjacent to the still surviving St. George's Tower, rebuilt in 1781 before eventually being demolished in 1930.Oxford Archaeological Unit Ltd 2011, p. 2.
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 apsidal 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 and Arundel Castles.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.
Role in the Anarchy and Barons War
Robert D'Oyly the younger, Robert D'Oyly the elder's nephew, had inherited the castle by the time of the civil war of the Anarchy in the 1140s. After initially supporting King Stephen, Robert declared his support for Empress Matilda, Stephen's cousin and rival for the throne, and in 1141 the Empress marched to Oxford to base her campaign at the castle.MacKenzie, p. 149; Amt, p. 48. Stephen responded by marching from Bristol in the Autumn of 1142, attacking and seizing the town of Oxford and besieging Matilda in the castle. Stephen set up two siege mounds beside the castle, called Jew's Mount and Mount Pelham, on which he placed siege engines, largely for show, and proceeded to wait for Matilda's supplies to run low over the next three months. Stephen would have had difficulty in supplying his men through the winter period, and this decision shows the apparent strength of Oxford Castle at the time.Gravett and Hook, p. 44.
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 clerks, 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.
14th–17th centuries
By 1327 the fortification, particularly the castle gates and the barbican, was in poor condition and £800 was estimated to be required for repairs.Crossley and Elrington, p. 297. From the 1350s onwards the castle had little military use and was increasingly allowed to fall into disrepair.
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 whom the latter had 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.