Historic Description of Taunton Castle

Taunton Castle

The history of Taunton as a fortified place starts early, for here King Ine of Wessex, in or about the year 710, “timbered him a burh,” which his consort Ethelburga, as an odd entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates, destroyed twelve years later. This was not, apparently, a gratuitous “breaking up of a happy home,” but a recapture by the royal lady, who was on the best terms with her husband, of the stronghold which had fallen into the hands of rebels, for Etheling Ealdberht was, at the moment, vexing Ine with insurrections. But Saxon burhs not castles and we need not trouble ourselves with the chronicles of Taunton till it received the regular mark of Norman occupation.

The town is found in Domesday Book as a moderate-sized borough with 64 burgesses, belonging not (as might have been expected) to the king, nor to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, but to the Bishop of Winchester. The castle owed its origin either to Bishop William Gifford, the Chancellor of Henry I (1100-27), or to his successor, Henry de Blois (1129-1171) the builder of Wolvesey Castle at Winchester. For certainly we have here a typical Norman keep of the first half of the twelfth century, not one of the loft sort, but squarely built, 50 feet long by 40 wide, in three stories, with walls some 13 feet thick. No doubt this was let into the walls of an inner ward with stone enceinte, and no doubt, also, there was an outer bailey, represented by the modern “Castle Green,” with wet ditches round it, supplied from the Potwater stream – they were only filled up in the end of the eighteenth century. But the present aspect of the castle is Edwardian rather than Norman, and shows trace everywhere of the3 work of Bishop Langton, a great builder in the time of Henry VII.

The outer ward is mostly spoilt – it has been invaded by two hotels, which have crenellated themselves, in order to be in keeping with the genuine battlements of the inner ward. But the great gate, opening into the enclosure, where they stand, is in part a genuine antique, having the arches of an “Early Decorated” gatehouse of about the time of Edward I, though the super-structure is a restoration of 1816. The almost triangular inner ward is complete, and would be a very fine example of its type, if so many of its windows were not still eighteenth century insertions in the original masonry. The Somersetshire Archaeological Society, who purchased the place in 1874, have replaced many of these eyesores with more appropriate openings, but some still survive.

The apex of the triangle, if we may use the word of a rather blunted figure, is formed by the Norman keep, and a round tower separated from the keep by a narrow entry only. The north side of the triangle is formed by the immense Great Hall, the south side contains the gate-house, with chambers in two stories on each side of it, the base (with a round tower at its south-east corner) was occupied by the minor offices. If there was another tower at the north-east angle of the base, it has vanished.

The gatehouse of the inner ward was probably of Edward’s date, but it was pulled about by Bishop Langton in 1496, when he inserted a large two-lighted Tudor window, and placed a tablet bearing his own arms, supported by angels, above it, and the royal court of Henry VII below. The Great Hall, which stands just opposite the gateway, is 120 feet by 31 feet, with walls apparently in part Norman, but much pulled about by later generations. Bishop Langton inserted Tudor windows, but all of them, save two in the north front, have been replaced by less satisfactory seventeenth or eighteenth century substitutes.

It was in this hall that Judge Jeffries in 1685 held the “Bloody Assize,” and condemned more than 200 of the misguided rebels who had followed “King Monmouth” to the gallows, and many more to servitude in the plantations, or whipping at the stocks. A later generation cut up the great chamber by a partition of the castle, had got into a bad condition, and were handed over to the tender mercies of an energetic Georgian repairer, Sir Benjamin Hammet, who put on a new roof, inserted many windows, and recast many windows, and recast many other details all round the castle. It is presumably to him that we owe the large inappropriate windows which disfigure the round towers at the angles of the ward. But apparently he must not be over-censured, for the castle was getting quite out of hand – its south-east corner had been turned into a private school-house, and the encroachments in the outer ward seemed likely to invade the inner.

Taunton Castle changed hands several times during the great Civil War of 1642-45, but only along with the town: it had no separate history, and the famous defence by Blake from July 1644, to July 1645, was that of the whole place, not merely that of the castle. It was a most creditable achievement, considering that many of the fortifications were only extemporized earthworks.

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