En un regard
Le château en bref
Gresham Castle is a medieval fortified manor house, now reduced to remains, located south of the village of Gresham in north Norfolk. It belongs to the group of late fortified houses of eastern England, alongside Baconsthorpe, Caister and Claxton.
In 1318 Sir Edmund Bacon obtained a licence to crenellate his residence. In 1427 the lawyer William Paston acquired the manor, but the sale was challenged by Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, backed by John Heydon of Baconsthorpe. In 1448 Moleyns's men occupied the castle; shortly afterwards a large force evicted Margaret Paston and her household, an episode recounted in the famous letters of the Paston family. John Paston later recovered the site, badly damaged and no longer habitable. A rebuilding project considered in 1471 came to nothing, and the castle was abandoned.
What survives is a rectangular platform surrounded by a still water-filled moat and overgrown with vegetation, with the footings of two western corner towers and a short stretch of curtain wall. When the moat was cleaned out in 1846, large timbers thought to belong to a drawbridge were found.