Rochester Castle

Stand at the foot of the keep and tilt your head back. The wall rises straight up, rough and grey, built from thousands of uneven lumps of stone. Up close, you can feel the cool air that gathers in its shadow, even on a warm day. Gulls call from the river behind you. And somewhere above, pigeons shift on ledges where floors once were. This is one of the tallest Norman towers in England, and it still feels enormous.

Welcome to Rochester Castle. Before we go inside, think about where you are standing. The castle sits on the bank of the River Medway, at the point where an old Roman road crossed the water. The Romans built a walled town here, and the castle was placed in one corner of those walls. Whoever held this spot held the crossing, and with it, the road between London and the Kent coast.

The first stone castle here dates from the late eleventh century, soon after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It was built by Gundulf, the Bishop of Rochester, a churchman who was also a skilled builder. Medieval bishops were often powerful landowners, and they built for kings as well as for God. Gundulf's walls enclosed the site. Some sections of early masonry still survive along the circuit around you.

The great tower in front of you came a little later. In 1127, King Henry the First gave the castle to William de Corbeil, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who built this keep. A keep is the strongest part of a castle — a tower where the lord lived, and where defenders made their last stand. Notice that this one is almost square. Or rather, it was meant to be. Look at the corners carefully, and one of them looks different.

Three corners carry square turrets. The fourth, on the south-east side, is round. That round corner is the scar of a famous siege. In 1215, the same year King John agreed to Magna Carta, the peace collapsed. Rebel barons seized Rochester Castle and held it against him. John arrived with his army and began one of the most determined sieges in English history.

Catapults battered the walls for weeks, but the stone held. So John's miners dug a tunnel under the south-east corner of the keep. They propped the tunnel with timber. Then, according to the chronicles of the time, the king ordered the fat of forty pigs to be sent to them. The fat was used to set the props on fire. When the timber burned away, the tunnel collapsed — and the corner of the tower fell with it.

Here is the surprise. Even then, the defenders did not give up. The keep is divided inside by a thick cross wall, running from top to bottom. When one half of the tower came down, the garrison retreated behind that wall and kept fighting. Only hunger finally forced them out. Later, under King Henry the Third, the broken corner was rebuilt. The builders chose a round shape, which was more modern and harder to undermine.

Now step inside. There are no floors and no roof today, so you look straight up through the full height of the tower to the sky. Along the walls you can see rows of square holes. These once held the great wooden beams that carried each floor. You can also see fireplaces hanging in mid-air, and the arches of windows that once lit rooms full of people, smoke, and noise.

Find the cross wall in the middle. It is pierced by large round arches on the upper level, which would have made the main hall feel grand and open. Look for the well shaft too. It runs up inside the wall itself, so people on several floors could draw water without going outside. During a siege, that was not a comfort. It was survival.

The castle was attacked again in 1264, during a rebellion led by Simon de Montfort against Henry the Third. This time the defenders held out, and the attackers withdrew. In 1381, during the Peasants' Revolt, rebels broke in and freed a prisoner. After that, the castle slowly lost its purpose. By later centuries, stone was being taken away for other buildings, and the tower became the empty shell you see now.

If you can, climb the spiral stairs in one of the corner turrets. The steps are narrow and worn into shallow dips by many centuries of feet. At the top, the view opens across the Medway, the bridges, and the rooftops of the old town. Just next door is Rochester Cathedral. The castle and the cathedral grew up side by side — one built for power on earth, the other for power in heaven.

This town also has a strong link to Charles Dickens. The writer spent much of his childhood nearby and later lived just outside Rochester. He returned to these streets again and again in his novels. Walk along the High Street afterwards and you will see old shopfronts and timber-framed houses that he would have known. The castle grounds around you are now a public garden, where locals sit on the grass and children run.

Before you leave, stand back from the keep once more and find that round south-east corner. It is a reminder that this tower was not built to be beautiful. It was built to survive. Listen to the river, the traffic on the bridge, the gulls overhead. People have crossed the water at this spot for nearly two thousand years. As you walk away, look back once. The tower is still watching the crossing.