Eye Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

In the heart of the small town of Eye, in north Suffolk, a tall grassy motte still towers over the rooftops: together with a few stretches of wall, it is all that remains of one of the very first Norman castles in England. Founded in the years following 1066 by William Malet, a companion of William the Conqueror, it is the only castle in Suffolk mentioned in the Domesday Book and formed the centre of the Honour of Eye, a vast group of estates. The motte, about twelve metres high, is accompanied by an oval bailey whose banks reach more than four metres. Three discontinuous fragments of curtain wall in mortared flint, reinforced with blocks of hard chalk (clunch), bear witness to the rebuilding in stone at the end of the 12th century. The line of the ditch, now buried, still shapes the street plan around St Peter's Church. At the summit stands a curiosity: a nine-sided flint shell built in 1844-1845 for General Sir Edward Kerrison on the site of a former windmill, a kind of romantic sham keep that has in turn become a ruin. The whole site is a scheduled monument and the building is listed Grade I.