Corfe Castle

Listen first. Jackdaws call from the broken towers above you, and the wind moves through the grass on the hill. Under your feet, the path is pale Purbeck stone, worn smooth by many walkers. Look up and you see walls that do not stand straight. Whole sections lean at strange angles, as if a giant pushed them and walked away. This is Corfe Castle, on its steep green mound in Dorset, a few miles south of Wareham.

The castle's position explains almost everything about it. The Purbeck Hills run east to west like a long chalk wall. Here, two small streams have cut a gap through that wall, and in the middle of the gap rises a single steep hill. Anyone who wanted to move between the heathland to the north and the coast to the south had to pass this point. Whoever held the hill controlled the road. People understood that long before the first stone tower went up.

The first famous story here is older than the castle you see. In 978, the young English king Edward was killed at Corfe. The medieval chronicles say he came to visit his stepmother and was stabbed while still on his horse. Many writers have blamed her, because her own son became king next. That accusation comes from later accounts, so treat it as an old tale rather than proven fact. Edward was later honoured as a saint, and the Church remembers him as Edward the Martyr.

After the Norman Conquest of 1066, the Normans began to build in stone. The Normans were the French-speaking rulers who took England under William the Conqueror, and they built castles to hold the land they had won. Corfe was one of the early ones. In the early twelfth century, a great square keep rose at the very top of the hill. A keep is the strongest tower of a castle, the last place to retreat. Even as a ruin, its height still controls the skyline.

The stone tells its own story. Most of the castle is built from local Purbeck limestone, quarried in the hills nearby. Look closely at a broken wall face. You can see the rough rubble core inside, and the neater dressed blocks on the outside. Builders used this method everywhere in medieval England. Here, because the walls are split open, you can see the inside of a medieval wall in a way that intact castles never show you.

In the early thirteenth century, King John spent a lot of money on Corfe. He used it as a secure base, a treasury, and a prison. Chroniclers say that a group of prisoners from France was starved to death inside its walls. The story is grim, and the exact details are hard to confirm, but it fits John's reputation. He is the same king who was forced to accept Magna Carta, the charter that limited royal power.

For centuries the castle belonged to the Crown. Then, in the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth the First sold it to one of her favourite courtiers, Sir Christopher Hatton. In the 1630s it was bought by Sir John Bankes, a lawyer who served King Charles the First. This purchase changed the castle's fate. The Bankes family would hold Corfe for almost 350 years, through its most dramatic moment and its long quiet afterwards.

That dramatic moment came with the English Civil War, the conflict of the 1640s between King Charles and Parliament. Sir John was away, serving the king. His wife, Lady Mary Bankes, stayed at Corfe with her children, her servants, and a small garrison. Parliamentary forces attacked in 1643. Local accounts say that Lady Bankes and her women helped defend the upper walls, dropping stones and hot embers on the attackers below. The siege failed, and the attackers withdrew.

The second siege was longer, running through the winter of 1645 into 1646. This time the castle did not fall to force. It fell to betrayal. An officer inside the garrison arranged for enemy soldiers to enter, pretending they were reinforcements. Once they were inside, the defence collapsed. Parliament admired Lady Bankes's courage, and she was allowed to leave. As a sign of respect, she was even allowed to keep the keys of the castle.

Now look again at those leaning towers. After the castle fell, Parliament ordered it to be slighted. That means damaged on purpose, so that no army could ever use it again. Soldiers dug under the walls and packed them with gunpowder. The blasts did not flatten everything. Instead, they tipped huge blocks sideways and split towers in half. What you see today is not slow decay. It is the result of deliberate explosions, frozen in mid-fall for nearly four centuries.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Walk down into the village and look at the cottages. Many of them are built from the same grey Purbeck stone. After the slighting, local people took fallen stone from the ruins for their own houses and walls. So part of the castle did not disappear. It simply moved down the hill. The village and the ruin are, in a real sense, made of the same building.

The Bankes family recovered their estates after the war, but they never rebuilt Corfe. They moved to a new house at Kingston Lacy, not far away. In 1982, the family estates, including the castle, were left to the National Trust, the charity that now cares for the site. And those keys that Lady Bankes kept? Visitors to Kingston Lacy can still see them there. A second surprise for many people is that writer Enid Blyton visited this area. Many readers believe Corfe helped inspire the castle in her Famous Five stories.

Before you leave, find a spot where you can see the whole valley. To the south, if you are lucky, you may hear a steam whistle. The heritage Swanage Railway runs through the village, and from the higher ground the trains look like toys passing below the walls. To the north lies the heath and the waters of Poole Harbour. Turn slowly and you can understand why so many people fought to hold this single hill.

As you walk back down, notice how the ruin changes with each step. From the gatehouse it looks broken and close. From the village street it becomes a dark outline against the sky. The jackdaws are still calling. The grass is still moving in the wind. Kings, prisoners, and one very determined woman all walked this same path. Now you have walked it too, and the stone under your feet still carries their story.