Sherborne Old Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

On a knoll overlooking the Yeo valley, east of Sherborne, the ruins of the old castle bear witness to the ambition of one of the most powerful men in Norman England. Roger, Bishop of Salisbury and chancellor to Henry I, had a fortified palace raised here in the early 12th century in which residence almost takes precedence over defence: an octagonal ditched enclosure surrounds a courtyard lined with ranges, in the manner of a cloister. Visitors still enter through the four-storey south-west gatehouse, before discovering the remains of the keep, the residential wings with their round-headed windows and the traces of the great hall. Excavations have uncovered a north gate and its barbican. The site owes its present state to the Civil War: held for the King, it was besieged and taken by Fairfax's army in 1645, then slighted. Sir Walter Raleigh, who had received it from Elizabeth I, had given up modernising it in order to build a new house on the other side of the lake. In the care of English Heritage, the ensemble offers a striking reading of a Romanesque bishop's palace.