Launceston Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Rising on a motte above a steep-sided valley, near a crossing of the Tamar that marks the eastern boundary of Cornwall, Launceston Castle was for centuries the administrative and judicial centre of the county. Founded shortly after 1068 and held in 1086 by Robert, Count of Mortain, it was one of the two Cornish strongholds recorded in the Domesday Book. Its silhouette results from a rare superimposition: a 12th-century circular shell keep crowns the motte, and inside it stands a tall round tower added in the 13th century by Richard of Cornwall. Visitors can climb the tower and take in the town and the countryside as far as Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor. The county gaol until the 1840s, the castle long kept a grim reputation: the priest Cuthbert Mayne was held there before his execution in 1577, and George Fox, founder of the Quakers, spent eight months there in 1656 in the dungeon known as "Doomsdale". Taken by Fairfax in 1646 and turned into a pleasure garden in the 19th century, it is managed by English Heritage, which displays finds from some of the most extensive excavations ever carried out on an English castle.