Wormegay Castle is a
motte and bailey earthwork, located next to the village of
Wormegay
Wormegay is a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is situated some south of King's Lynn and west of Norwich.Ordnance Survey (1999). ''OS Explorer Map 236 - King's Lynn, Downham Market & Swaffham''. .
It covers an area o ...
in the
English
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county of
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
.
Details
The castle was probably built by
Hermer de Ferrers after the
Norman Conquest
The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Con ...
, and remained in the de Ferrers family until 1166. The motte is 5 metres high and 77 metres by 62 metres wide at the base.
Wormegay Castle
', Gatehouse website, accessed 26 April 2011. The motte is surrounded on three sides by a ditch up to 15 metres wide and 2 metres deep.
[ The bailey is 150 metres by 88 metres across, and raised about 1 metre from the ground.][ The castle would have been highly visible in early medieval times, more so than in the 21st century, and would have formed a local landmark as well as controlling the local causeway across the Fens. Wormegay formed the centre, or the ''caput'', for an ]honour
Honour (British English) or honor (American English; see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, that manifests itself as a ...
of feudal properties across East Anglia. As the centre of a major estate, Wormegay provided castle-guard
Castle-guard was an arrangement under the feudal system, by which the duty of finding knights to guard royal castles was imposed on certain manors, knight's fees or baronies. The greater barons provided for the guard of their castles by exacting ...
duties to Norwich Castle
Norwich Castle is a medieval royal fortification in the city of Norwich, in the English county of Norfolk. William the Conqueror (1066–1087) ordered its construction in the aftermath of the Norman conquest of England. The castle was used as a ...
.[Liddiard, p.75.]
See also
*Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
Castles have played an important military, economic and social role in Great Britain and Ireland since their introduction following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Although a small number of castles had been built in England in the 1050 ...
*List of castles in England
This list of castles in England is not a list of every building and site that has "castle" as part of its name, nor does it list only buildings that conform to a strict definition of a castle as a medieval fortified residence. It is not a li ...
Bibliography
*Liddiard, Robert. (2000)
Landscapes of lordship: Norman castles and the countryside in medieval Norfolk, 1066-1200.
' Archaeopress. .
*Pounds, Norman John Greville. (1994)
The Medieval Castle in England and Wales: a social and political history.
' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
References
External links
{{oscoor gbx, TF659117
Castles in Norfolk