Bungay Castle is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

in the town of

Bungay Bungay () is a market town, civil parish and electoral ward in the English county of Suffolk.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . It lies in the Waveney Valley, west of Beccles on the edge of The Broads, and at the neck of a meand ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

.Historic England, Bungay Castle
list entry no. 1034404 (listed 9 May 1949). Retrieved 12 May 2022.

History

The site was originally a

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

castle built by Roger Bigod in about 1100 to take advantage of the natural protection provided by a curve in the

River Waveney The River Waveney is a river which forms the boundary between Suffolk and Norfolk, England, for much of its length within The Broads. The "ey" part of the name means "river" thus the name is tautological. Course The source of the River Wavene ...

.Adrian Pettifer,
English Castles: a Guide by Counties
' (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2002). . Roger's son

Hugh Hugh may refer to: *Hugh (given name) Noblemen and clergy French * Hugh the Great (died 956), Duke of the Franks * Hugh Magnus of France (1007–1025), co-King of France under his father, Robert II * Hugh, Duke of Alsace (died 895), modern-day ...

was a prominent player in the civil war period known as

the Anarchy 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, the only legiti ...

(1138–1154), and his loyalty was called into question during the early years of the reign of Henry II. Henry confiscated Bungay but in 1164 he returned it to Bigod, who built a large square Norman

keep A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in c ...

on the site in 1165. It is not recorded how much it cost to build the keep, but the archaeologist Hugh Braun, who led the excavations at the castle in the 1930s, estimated that it would have cost around £1,400 (). Bigod was on the losing side in the

revolt of 1173–1174 The Revolt of 1173–1174 was a rebellion against King Henry II of England by three of his sons, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their rebel supporters. The revolt ended in failure after eighteen months; Henry's rebellious family members had ...

, and Bungay was besieged, mined and ultimately

slighted Slighting is the deliberate damage of high-status buildings to reduce their value as military, administrative or social structures. This destruction of property sometimes extended to the contents of buildings and the surrounding landscape. It is ...

by royal forces. According to the historian

Sidney Painter Sidney Painter (September 23, 1902 – January 12, 1960) was an American medievalist and historian. He was a fellow of the Mediaeval Academy and professor of history and chairman of the department of history at Johns Hopkins University. Painter ...

, it was one of at least 21 castles demolished on Henry II's instructions. The site was subsequently restored yet again to the

Bigod family The Bigod family was a medieval Norman family, the second Earls of Norfolk, the first being Ralph de Guader. Succession * Roger Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk, father of the true 1st Earl *Hugh Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk (1095–1177), second s ...

and was further developed in 1294 by

Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk Roger Bigod (c. 1245 – bf. 6 December 1306) was 5th Earl of Norfolk. Origins He was the son of Hugh Bigod (1211–1266), Justiciar, and succeeded his father's elder brother Roger Bigod, 4th Earl of Norfolk (1209–1270) as 5th Earl of ...

, who probably built the massive gate towers on the site. He fell out with

Edward I Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassal o ...

and after his death the castle reverted to

the Crown The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...

, falling into disrepair and ruin. In 1483 it was re-acquired by the

Dukes of Norfolk Duke of Norfolk is a title in the peerage of England. The seat of the Duke of Norfolk is Arundel Castle in Sussex, although the title refers to the county of Norfolk. The current duke is Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk. The dukes ...

, who retained ownership until the 20th century, except for a short period in the late 18th century. In 1766 the site was sold to Robert Mickleborough, who quarried the keep and curtain walls for road-building materials. Later, in the early 1790s, it was purchased by Daniel Bonhôte, a local solicitor, but was sold back to the Dukes of Norfolk in about 1800. Other than the removal in 1841 of dwellings that had been built on the site, little or no repairs were undertaken for several centuries.

Restoration and preservation

The castle's curtain walls and the twin towers of the

gatehouse A gatehouse is a type of fortified gateway, an entry control point building, enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a town, religious house, castle, manor house, or other fortification building of importance. Gatehouses are typically the mos ...

remain today, as well as a fragment of the

. Restoration work under the supervision of Hugh Braun began in 1934, following excavations by the amateur archaeologist Leonard Cane. In 1987 the castle was given to the town of

by the 17th Duke of Norfolk and is now owned by the Bungay Castle Trust. It was scheduled in 1915, one of the first sites to be protected under the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act of 1913, and was subsequently listed as a Grade I monument in 1949.

The castle in fiction

Bungay Castle was the setting for the eponymous novel by

Elizabeth Bonhôte Elizabeth Bonhôte, née Mapes (baptised 11 April 1744 – 11 June 1818) was an English novelist, essayist and poet. Her most successful work was ''Bungay Castle'', a Gothic romance written after her husband had bought the ruins of the real Bung ...

, ''

Bungay Castle Bungay Castle is a Grade I listed building in the town of Bungay, Suffolk.Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

romance published in 1796, a few years after her husband Daniel had acquired the site.''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present Day'', eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990).

References

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External links

Visit Bungay: Bungay Castle

Visit East of England: Bungay Castle
Bungay Waveney District Ruins in Suffolk Castles in Suffolk Grade I listed buildings in Suffolk Tourist attractions in Suffolk Bigod family