En un regard
Le château en bref
Sturminster Castle, or Sturminster Newton Castle, occupies a triangular spur of Corallian limestone overlooking the River Stour, opposite Sturminster Newton. Despite its name, the site is not a castle in the military sense: it consists of the ruins of a medieval manor house set within an Iron Age fortification. Ordnance Survey maps long mislabelled it as a motte-and-bailey castle.
The earliest work is a prehistoric promontory fort of about 1.6 ha, cut off by a crescent-shaped bank some 12 m wide and a ditch 15 to 18 m wide and 5 to 6 m deep. The manor of Newton belonged to Glastonbury Abbey, which acquired it in 968 according to the Dorset record (in 1016 under Edmund Ironside according to other sources), and held it until the Dissolution in 1539. The monks adapted the spur as a manorial residence; Abbot Walter de Monyton (1342-1375) is recorded as having rebuilt the house. After the Reformation the estate passed to laymen; the house remained occupied until 1834 and was a ruin by the late 19th century.
What survives are the walls of a three-storey 14th-century service range, fragile and ivy-covered, a walled yard, a circular mound and banks marking vanished buildings. The medieval approach, a hollow way cut into the spur, is still in use. Privately owned and worked as part of Castle Farm, the site is a Scheduled Monument and Grade II* listed.
