Page 68 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

Appendix C

Oakham Castle

by C A R Radford

Editors’ note: John Barber makes a number of references in his memoir to this article by C A Ralegh Radford. It was
published in the journal of the Royal Archaeological Institute just before he started his excavations at Oakham Castle.
The text and images are from: Radford, C A R, Oakham Castle, Archaeological Journal, CXII (1956), 181-4, and are
reproduced by kind permission of the Royal Archaeological Institute.

INTRODUCTION

Oakham belonged to Edith, the widowed queen of Edward the Confessor, till her death in 1075, when it reverted to
the Crown. It was granted by Henry I to Henry de Newburgh or his son Roger, who succeeded his father as Earl of
Warwick in 1123. William, a younger brother of Robert de Ferrers (created Earl of Derby 1138, died 1139), was
already holding Oakham as sub-tenant. In 1131 it had passed to his son, Henry de Ferrers, who died before 1137.
Henry’s son, Walkelin, succeeded as a minor and held Oakham till his death in 1201. Oakham was forfeited to the
Crown in 1204. None of the grantees in the early 13th century held the property for long. In 1252 the Castle was
granted to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, the king’s brother, on the occasion of his marriage to Sanchia of Provence.
From Richard it descended to his son Edmund and Edmund’s widow Maud.
The earliest castle at Oakham had a motte at the south-east corner of a sub-circular bailey. The motte has largely
been cut away, but part of the mound and the hollow of the ditch towards the bailey remain. The bailey is enclosed
with a substantial earth bank and ditch, the latter widened on the north side to form fish ponds. Beyond these ponds is
an outer court, also enclosed with a bank and ditch and formerly used as a garden. The motte and bailey are typical of
early Norman castles and probably date from shortly after 1075, when the Crown resumed possession. The straight
eastern side of the bailey and the plan of the northern enclosure show that the latter is the earlier and that it formed
part of a rectangular fortification, which certainly included the church and probably extended south as far as the cross
street at the end of the markets. This can only have been a late Saxon burh. The castle bailey was later strengthened
with a stone curtain, now entirely ruined. The gate with a four-centred arch and two chamfered orders, dates from the
time of Earl Richard, but the simple layout of the curtain without flanking towers, suggests an earlier period; it is
probably the work of Walkelin de Ferrers. The 13th century gateway was restored with a characteristic pediment early
in the I7th century.
The Great Hall, one of the finest Norman domestic buildings in the country, was built by Walkelin de Ferrers. The
copious use of dog-tooth and other transitional detail and the style of the capitals and carvings indicate a date in the
last quarter of the I2th century. It formed the centre of a group of buildings, of which slight traces remain in the
inequalities of the ground at either end. The original polychrome masonry, with courses of freestone ashlar separating
wider bands of ironstone rubble, can best be seen at the west end of the north aisle. The hall, long used as a court
room, is aisled in four bays. The entrance, now in the centre of the south side, was originally at the east end of this
wall. It led into a passage some 9ft. wide running across the east end of the building. The position of this passage, and
of the wooden screens towards the hall, is marked by a stone projection of the north wall. Two doors in the nave led
east to the service quarters. In the north aisle is a third door which gave access to an external stair leading to the
gallery above the screens. This gallery seems later to have been enclosed; it was provided with a late 16th century
window of six lights, inserted below the original two-light window in the gable.
The arcades of the hall have massive circular columns of stone with moulded bases and acanthus foliage on the
capitals. The arches are of two orders, decorated towards the nave; they spring from richly ornamented corbels in the
end walls. The side walls of the nave now rise barely 1ft. above the top of the aisle roofs. But the substantial character
of the arcades implies that they were originally designed to rise as a clear storey with a range of windows lighting the
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nave.
This is borne out by the present roof, which has the tie-beam cutting the apex of the east window. This is a
reconstruction of the early 17th century, when the outer surface of the nave walls was refaced above the aisle roofs
with a single course of ashlar. The original roof probably had tie-beams, each supported by a semicircular arch

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A barn construction with a continuous roof over nave and aisles needs only posts with comparatively slight braces supporting the tie-beams and
longitudinal timbers, eg. the Tithe Barn at Harmondsworth (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: Middlesex, p 61). The timber-posted hall
of the 12th century in Leicester Castle has been restored in this way, but the present tie-beam cuts across the decorated 12th century windows in the
south wall, showing that it was originally at a higher level. In this case the reconstruction is probably based on 14th-century work, as there is
considerable evidence of the roof having been reformed at that date.

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