# Hedingham Castle

Grade I listed historic house museum in Castle Hedingham, United Kingdom

Castle Hedingham, United Kingdom

Palace · Fortification

## Story

• Hedingham Castle at Castle Hedingham in Essex keeps a Norman tower faced with stone from Barnack, counted among the best preserved keeps of its kind.
• Aubrey de Vere I held the manor by 1086, and the stone keep is placed in the earlier twelfth century, when his grandson became Earl of Oxford.
• Matilda of Boulogne died here on 3 May 1152, and the de Veres lost the castle after 1462 and received it back after Bosworth.
• A four-span brick bridge survives from the late fifteenth century, beside a house built for Sir William Ashhurst around 1719.
• Digs from 1868 to 2022 have traced the Tudor hall, the Norman gatehouse and a tower’s deep footings, and the Lindsay family still live beside the keep.

## Visiting

General admission is closed for the rest of 2026, while event tickets still allow a visit. On the 2026 calendar the keep and gardens were open on selected dates from 15 March to 11 October, from 11:00 until closing time at 16:00, and the castle closes at 15:00 on Sunday 23 August. The keep and grounds are also described as open from Easter to October, and school groups may enter through the year on tickets arranged with the castle. Adult tickets are £12, senior tickets are £11, and junior tickets for ages 4 to 16 are £10.
Under-4s are free on admission, and carers are free on admission. A one-adult family ticket is £28 and a two-adult family ticket is £38. One family ticket covers one adult and up to four children aged 4 to 17, or two adults and up to three children aged 4 to 17. Another family ticket covers as many children under 17 as fit in one car, so long as one child is five or over.
Residents of Castle Hedingham and Sible Hedingham pay an admission of £5 on proof of address. A residents’ season ticket for general admission is £25 for one adult or £45 for two adults and up to five children under 18. Groups of ten or more can receive 10 per cent off tickets. Tickets may be bought on the gate by card, and visitors are asked to book in advance.
Payment for tickets and the tea room is by card only. Historic Houses members book a ticket and show a membership card for free admission on ordinary open days. A Gardeners’ World two-for-one card is accepted for admission on those days. Dogs are not allowed inside the castle, must be kept on a lead in the grounds, and are not allowed on event days except registered guide and medical assistance dogs.
Entry to the keep is by steep stairs, so prams and wheelchairs are not allowed, and there is no lift. Festive illumination tickets run from 6 to 20 December 2026, with time slots from 16:30 and last entry at 21:00. Those tickets are £15, children under 4 go free, and the 6 December gala tickets are £20. Bought tickets are not transferable, and refunds are refused unless a government closure cancels the day.

## History

Hedingham Castle stands at Castle Hedingham in Essex, on a spur above the River Colne. Its Norman keep is faced with Barnack ashlar over flint rubble and lime mortar, and it has been called one of the best preserved Norman tower-keeps in England. The earthwork is described both as a ringwork with two baileys and as a motte and bailey. The oval mound measures 142 by 133 metres, with a platform of about 0.88 hectares.

Aubrey de Vere I held the manor by 1086, and one account places the grant in 1066. The fortifications have been dated around 1100, in the late eleventh century, and in the early twelfth. The keep has been placed around 1140, in the 1130s and 1140s, between about 1125 and about 1160, and in 1130 to 1140. Aubrey de Vere II, killed in London in May 1141, most likely began the stone tower, and his son finished it.

That son became Earl of Oxford by a grant of Empress Matilda in 1141, or of Queen Matilda in 1142. Henry II formally recognised the earldom in January 1156. Matilda of Boulogne, queen to Stephen, died at the castle on 3 May 1152 while visiting Euphemia, the countess. The earl and his wife also founded a small nunnery here.

The keep is nearly square, 53 by about 58 feet, and more than 70 feet high, with walls about 11 feet thick at the base. Accounts give it five floors, four storeys, or an original three storeys under a pyramidal roof, with a later storey made from the battlements. A huge Romanesque arch spans the hall. The forebuilding was added soon after the keep and was taken down between 1665 and 1738.

The castle was besieged in 1216 and 1217, or taken by King John in 1215 and retaken by the French. One account calls that the only military action here. John de Vere, the twelfth Earl, was born at Hedingham in 1408 and beheaded in 1462. The castle then went to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to Henry Barley, and in 1475 to John Howard.

John de Vere, the thirteenth Earl, was restored after Bosworth in 1485. He is credited with a rebuilding in or around 1496, and he died at the castle on 10 March 1513. A survey of 1592 shows brick towers, a chapel, a hall and a Norman gatehouse. After Elizabeth I visited in 1561, most buildings except the keep were razed.

The red-brick bridge of four spans survives from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Sir William Ashhurst’s house is dated to a purchase in 1693 and to a sale in 1713, placed in the outer bailey and in the inner, and called both Queen Anne and Georgian, finished in 1719. The Majendies held the estate until Musette Majendie left it to her cousin Thomas Lindsay. Jason Lindsay and Demetra live there now.

Digs in 1853 and in 1868 or 1869 found the Tudor hall, chapel, towers and gatehouse. Work in 2014 and 2015 uncovered the Norman gatehouse, a flint curtain, the basement floor, and burning from a fire dated 23 January 1918 and also 25 September 1918. A further notice gives a fire in 1954. In 2022 the footings of a Tudor tower were exposed, 1.8 to 1.9 metres deep, and the keep, listed at Grade I and scheduled since 1915, is assessed in poor and declining condition.

## Photographs

- [Hedingham Castle, normannische Burg in East Anglia — Agnete](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Hedingham_Castle.jpg)
- [Castle Hedingham Keep View of Castle Hedingham taken from the start of the Hedingham Valley walk at Castle Hedingham — Geoff Holland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Castle_Hedingham_Keep_-_geograph.org.uk_-_359835.jpg)
- [Castle Hedingham, Essex Castle Hedingham's very well preserved keep. Built in 1140 by Aubrey de Vere, on a flat, raised platform that was the site of an — Nick Barker](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Castle_Hedingham%2C_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_487863.jpg)
- [Castle Hedingham, Essex, England Former family seat of the Earls of Oxford, the Norman castle possesses the largest Norman arch in the UK — J.Alfred Gotch](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/08-Castle-Hedingham-Essex-the-Keep-q85-428x500.jpg)
- [A wall marble monument memorial with inscribed plaque to Vero William Taylor in the south aisle of St Nicholas' Church at Castle Hedingham in Essex, England. — Acabashi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Castle_Hedingham%2C_St_Nicholas%27_Church%2C_Essex_England%2C_memorial_to_Vero_William_Taylor.jpg)
- [Hedingham Castle — Edward Dayes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Edward_Dayes_-_Hedingham_Castle%2C_Essex_-_B1975.3.1225_-_Yale_Center_for_British_Art.jpg)
- [18th Century Dovecote in grounds of Hedingham Castle — PAUL FARMER](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/18th_Century_Dovecote_in_grounds_of_Hedingham_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3162546.jpg)
- [Castle Hedingham, Colne Valley, Essex — Christine Matthews](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Castle_Hedingham%2C_Colne_Valley%2C_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3460575.jpg)
- [Castle Hedingham, Colne Valley, Essex — Christine Matthews](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Castle_Hedingham%2C_Colne_Valley%2C_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3460578.jpg)
- [Castle Hedingham, Colne Valley, Essex — Christine Matthews](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Castle_Hedingham%2C_Colne_Valley%2C_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3460623.jpg)

## Sources

- [Hedingham Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedingham_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Hedingham Castle scheduled monument](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1002218) — Historic England
- [Hedingham Castle listed building](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1122959) — Historic England
- [Hedingham Castle on the Heritage at Risk register](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/heritage-at-risk/search-register/list-entry/334906) — Historic England
- [Visit the Castle and Gardens](https://www.hedinghamcastle.co.uk/visit) — Hedingham Castle
- [Entry and Prices](https://www.hedinghamcastle.co.uk/entry-prices) — Hedingham Castle
- [General Admission: Castle and Gardens](https://www.hedinghamcastle.co.uk/events/general-admission) — Hedingham Castle
- [Keep Festive Illuminations Trail](https://www.hedinghamcastle.co.uk/events/keep-festive-illuminations) — Hedingham Castle
- [Archaeological monitoring, test pits and building recording, June 2014 to December 2015](https://catuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CAT-report-0849.pdf) — Colchester Archaeological Trust
- [Archaeological monitoring and historic building recording, March to April 2021](https://catuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CAT-report-1664.pdf) — Colchester Archaeological Trust
- [Archaeological evaluation at Hedingham Castle, 2022](https://doi.org/10.5284/1131220) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Hedingham Castle historic building recording, 2023](https://www.placeservices.co.uk/projects/hedingham-castle-historic-building-recording/) — Place Services
- [Hedingham Castle.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hedingham_Castle.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Hedingham Keep - geograph.org.uk - 359835.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Hedingham_Keep_-_geograph.org.uk_-_359835.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Hedingham, Essex - geograph.org.uk - 487863.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Hedingham,_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_487863.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [08-Castle-Hedingham-Essex-the-Keep-q85-428x500.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:08-Castle-Hedingham-Essex-the-Keep-q85-428x500.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Hedingham, St Nicholas' Church, Essex England, memorial to Vero William Taylor.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Hedingham,_St_Nicholas%27_Church,_Essex_England,_memorial_to_Vero_William_Taylor.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Edward Dayes - Hedingham Castle, Essex - B1975.3.1225 - Yale Center for British Art.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Dayes_-_Hedingham_Castle,_Essex_-_B1975.3.1225_-_Yale_Center_for_British_Art.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [18th Century Dovecote in grounds of Hedingham Castle - geograph.org.uk - 3162546.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:18th_Century_Dovecote_in_grounds_of_Hedingham_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3162546.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Hedingham, Colne Valley, Essex - geograph.org.uk - 3460575.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Hedingham,_Colne_Valley,_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3460575.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Hedingham, Colne Valley, Essex - geograph.org.uk - 3460578.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Hedingham,_Colne_Valley,_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3460578.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Hedingham, Colne Valley, Essex - geograph.org.uk - 3460623.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Hedingham,_Colne_Valley,_Essex_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3460623.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Hedingham Castle stands in the village of Castle Hedingham in Essex, on a natural spur above the northern bank of the River Colne. The surviving stone tower is a Norman keep faced with ashlar brought from Barnack in Northamptonshire, an unusual facing for an Essex castle, whose walls are otherwise flint rubble bound with lime mortar. It has been called arguably the best preserved Norman keep in England, one of the best preserved of its kind in the country, one of the best preserved in northern Europe, and one of the best preserved and least altered Norman tower-keeps, ranking among the most important Norman buildings. The earthwork has been described both as a ringwork with two baileys and as a motte-and-bailey. The oval mound measures 142 metres by 133 metres and gives a roughly level platform 121 metres by 91 metres, about 0.88 hectares. It was made by cutting a ditch across the spur and scarping the natural slopes. A counterscarp bank on the north-west averages 3 metres high and is between 23 and 38 metres wide. The inner bailey, to the east or north-east, is rectilinear, up to 77 metres long and 42.6 metres wide, about 0.38 hectares, with a ditch up to 8.7 metres deep and on average 28 metres wide. Its internal bank rises from 1.2 metres to 2.3 metres, and part of the eastern side, at 4.4 metres, stands higher than the castle mound. Eighteenth-century gardening levelled much of the southern inner-bailey rampart and turned most of a southern counterscarp into a terrace, leaving an eastern remnant about 48 metres long, 16 metres wide and 0.3 metres high. The outer bailey, about 5.17 hectares, lies to the south-west and is largely buried under the medieval village. At its springing, two banks, one 10 metres wide and 2.5 metres high and the other 2 metres wide and 7.7 metres high, frame a narrow ditch. After about 70 metres the northern bank is lost, and the southern bank falls to a scarp between 0.8 and 1.8 metres high before it meets the steep edge of Bayley Street. Later property boundaries along Crown Street, Churchponds and Castle Lane still trace the rest.

The manor of Hedingham was one of the principal estates of Aubrey de Vere I, who died about 1112 or 1113. He was a tenant-in-chief of William the Conqueror in 1086, and also a tenant of Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances, and of Count Alan of Richmond. His origins are obscure. A much later source named his father Alphonsus. He may have come from Ver in the Cotentin or from Ver-sur-Mer, and late medieval claims of descent from Charlemagne through Flanders or Guînes are not supported. The only Guînes connection of the English Veres was a later, short marriage. In Domesday Book he appears as Aubrey the chamberlain, Aubrey the queen’s chamberlain, and Aubrey de Vere. He and his wife held land in nine counties. Their estates were valued at about £300, a middle rank among post-conquest barons, and both were accused of seizures, including expansion into Little Maplestead. He held Castle Hedingham, Beauchamp Walter, Great Bentley, Great Canfield, Earls Colne, White Colne and Dovercourt in Essex, with manors in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, houses in Colchester and a house in Winchester. One account places the grant of Hedingham after the Conquest, by 1086, and says he ordered vineyards to be planted. Another places the grant in 1066, after the Battle of Hastings, with the earthworks raised very soon after he was confirmed in the lands. A scheduling summary places a ringwork and tower keep in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries for Aubrey De Vere, and calls him one of the Conqueror’s most important knights and the husband of the Conqueror’s half-sister Beatrice. His own life names his wife as Beatrice by 1104, and almost certainly in 1086, without identifying her as that half-sister. The Beatrice who was heiress of Guînes was his grandson’s wife. Aubrey I served Henry I of England as a chamberlain and as a local justiciar in Berkshire and Northamptonshire. His eldest son Geoffrey died at Abingdon Abbey after a relapse, and the parents founded Colne Priory, dedicated in March 1111. Aubrey joined that house within a year and died soon after. He was buried there with his youngest son William, and the priory became the Vere mausoleum.

Aubrey de Vere II, born about 1085 and killed in May 1141, was the eldest surviving son of Aubrey and Beatrice. Henry I made him sheriff of London and Essex and co-sheriff, with Richard Basset, of eleven counties. In 1130 he owed the king 550 pounds and four palfreys, including a debt for the escape of prisoners. In June 1133 Henry awarded him and his heirs the office of Lord Great Chamberlain. The castle account dates that master-chamberlainship to 1133 as well. He was a frequent charter witness for Henry I and for Stephen of England, and in 1139 William of Malmesbury has him as Stephen’s spokesman at the church council in Winchester after the seizure of the bishops’ castles. In May 1141, during the civil war, a London mob killed him. He was buried at Colne Priory. His wife Adeliza, daughter of Gilbert Fitz Richard of Clare, survived him by twenty-two years, mostly as a corrodian at St Osyth’s. The stone tower at Hedingham was most likely begun by Aubrey de Vere II and completed by his son. The castle’s fortifications and outbuildings have been placed around 1100, and the keep around 1140, and also in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries for the castle, with the keep in the 1130s and 1140s. Another account has the first Earl of Oxford, Aubrey de Vere, building the keep around 1140. The scheduling leaves the precise year of the keep unknown and, on style, places it between about 1125 and about 1160. A gateway summary dates the castle to 1130–1140 and attributes it to Aubrey de Vere as Earl of Oxford. The 2014–15 investigation calls the earthworks late eleventh to early twelfth century and the stone keep an addition of the first half of the twelfth century, probably to mark the earldom.

Aubrey de Vere, 1st Earl of Oxford, was born about 1115 and died on 26 December 1194. In 1136 or 1137 he married Beatrice, daughter of the constable of Bourbourg and heiress of Manasses, Count of Guînes. After Manasses died late in 1138, Aubrey did homage to Thierry, Count of Flanders, and became Count of Guînes by his wife’s right. The marriage may not have been consummated, because Beatrice was in poor health, and between 1144 and 1146 her father arranged a divorce with Aubrey’s consent. There was no child, and the Guînes title ended with that divorce. The castle account says that by the time of the earldom he had already been Count of Guînes for several years. His father was killed on 15 May 1141, after Stephen had been captured at the Battle of Lincoln in February. Aubrey did homage to Empress Matilda. His brother-in-law, the Earl of Essex, appears to have negotiated an earldom in July 1141, confirmed by Henry FitzEmpress, as Earl of Cambridgeshire unless that county was held by the King of Scots, in which case Aubrey could choose another title. He took Earl of Oxford. The castle account dates the grant by Empress Matilda to 1141. The scheduling dates the creation by Queen Matilda to 1142, and thinks the keep may have been built to celebrate the elevation. The House of de Vere records that the earldom was granted by Empress Matilda, eventually recognised by Stephen, and formally recognised by Henry II only in January 1156, when Aubrey began to receive the third penny of Oxfordshire. In 1143 Stephen arrested both earls at St Albans and forced them to surrender castles. Geoffrey de Mandeville rebelled. Aubrey does not appear to have joined him openly. He married Euphemia in or before 1151. Stephen and Queen Maud gave her the manor of Ickleton. She was dead by 1154, without known issue, and was buried at Colne Priory.

Matilda of Boulogne, queen of England and wife of Stephen of England, died at Castle Hedingham on 3 May 1152. She was born about 1105, inherited Boulogne in 1125, and was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 22 March 1136. During the Anarchy she led the siege of Dover in 1138, brokered the Treaty of Durham on 9 April 1139, and after Stephen’s capture at Lincoln on 2 February 1141 took the leadership of his party. On 24 June 1141 the Londoners drove Empress Matilda from the city, and in September the queen’s forces routed the empress at Winchester and captured Robert of Gloucester, who was exchanged for Stephen. In April 1152, after a London council at which Stephen declared for their son Eustace, the queen visited her friend and former lady-in-waiting Euphemia, countess of Oxford, at Hedingham. She fell ill around 1 May. Prior Ralph of Holy Trinity Priory gave the last rites. Stephen and Eustace were likely present when she died on 3 May. She was buried at Faversham Abbey. Matthew Paris is the St Albans chronicler, author of the Chronica Majora, whose narrative is the one attached to that date of death in the castle’s history. Henry Richards Luard, born in London on 25 August 1825 and died in Cambridge on 1 May 1891, edited seventeen volumes of medieval chronicles for the Rolls Series, among them the chronicle that carries the queen’s death. He was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, vicar of the Church of St Mary the Great from 1860 to 1887, and registrary of the university. Her death was a political as well as a personal blow. Eustace’s coronation was not pursued, Eustace died in 1153, and Stephen accepted Empress Matilda’s son Henry as heir. The Anarchy is dated 1138 to 1153 in the empress’s life, and 1135 to 1154 covers Stephen’s reign. Empress Matilda, born about 7 February 1102 and died 10 September 1167, had been Holy Roman Empress as the wife of Henry V from 1110 to 1125, her father’s nominated heir, and the claimant whose cousin Stephen of Blois took the crown.

In the winter of 1152–1153 Aubrey was with Stephen at the siege of Wallingford and attested charters as earl Aubrey. In 1162 or 1163 he married Agnes, daughter of Henry of Essex, then probably twelve. Henry of Essex was soon ruined in a judicial duel. Aubrey tried to annul the marriage, claiming Agnes had been betrothed to his brother Geoffrey, and he shut her away from church and from his company. Pope Alexander III, in 1171 or 1172, ordered her restoration on pain of interdict and excommunication. They had four sons, Aubrey, Ralph, Robert and Henry, and a daughter Alice. In the war of 1173–1174 Aubrey helped repel Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, who landed in Suffolk on 29 September 1173. He attended the coronation of Richard I on 3 September 1189. In 1184 he obtained the wardship of Isabel de Bolebec’s person, and in 1190 he paid 500 marks to marry her to his heir. He and his wife founded a small nunnery at Castle Hedingham. The House of de Vere also counts Colne Priory and Hatfield Broad Oak Priory among the family’s Essex foundations. He died on 26 December 1194 and was buried at Colne Priory. Agnes was later buried beside him.

The keep is nearly square. The east and west sides are 53 feet, 16 metres, and the north–south sides about 58 feet, 18 metres. The main block stands more than 70 feet, 21 metres, and the turrets rise another 15 to 25 feet, 4.6 to 7.6 metres, above the parapets. The walls are about 11 feet, 3.4 metres, thick at the base and average 10 feet, 3 metres, at the top. A scheduling description instead counts four storeys, with a ruinous forebuilding on the west, entry at first-floor level by a stair on the western side, a spiral stair in the north-west tower, and only two towers remaining to full height. The first floor is a large room with small chambers. The second floor is a hall open originally to a high pyramidal roof, surrounded by a gallery with double windows, and spanned by a huge Romanesque arch that repeats a slightly smaller arch in the room below. That arch has been called probably the largest Norman arch in England. The third floor is described as an addition made out of the original battlements. The ground floor was a storeroom with no external door until the eighteenth century, when two large openings were broken through so that carriages could be kept in an unused tower. Those openings are placed on the eastern side in one account and on the north-eastern side in another. A recent reading, by Philip Dixon and Pamela Marshall (archaeologist), argues that the original tower was three-storeyed, with a pyramidal roof and no sleeping chambers, kitchen, service rooms or oratory, the second and third floors being two reception rooms, and that a fourth storey was later made from the battlements, with the forebuilding added afterwards. Pamela Marshall, a castle archaeologist elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2007, taught at Nottingham until retirement, chaired or served as secretary of the Castle Studies Group from 2000 to 2014, and completed a doctorate in 2006 on eleventh- and twelfth-century donjons. The castle’s own description counts five floors, including the banqueting hall with a large fireplace and a central arch of two storeys, and treats a top floor of about the fifteenth century, replacing a pyramidal roof, as a recent theory. Older comparisons give the keep four floors and four turrets, on the same general plan as Rochester Castle, whose great tower was begun about 1126. John Alfred Gotch published floor plans of the Hedingham keep in The Growth of the English House in 1909. John Alfred Gotch, born in Kettering on 28 September 1852 and died there on 17 January 1942, was an architect and architectural historian. His brother was the painter Thomas Cooper Gotch. He trained at Zürich and King’s College London, opened a Kettering practice in 1879, partnered Charles Saunders from 1887, and retired in 1938. A second edition of The Growth of the English House, covering the English house from 1100 to 1800, appeared in 1928.

Rochester Castle makes the comparison concrete. Its keep, built after Henry I granted the castle to Archbishop William de Corbeil in 1127, was probably finished before Corbeil’s death in 1138 and certainly before 1141. It is 70 by 70 feet externally, with walls 12 feet thick at the base tapering to 10 feet, and turret tops 125 feet above the ground. Kentish ragstone forms the core and Caen stone the face. A cross-wall divides it from top to bottom. Rooms in the wall thickness, a gallery, and a forebuilding guarding a first-floor door are the features also read at Hedingham. Rochester’s forebuilding and curtain survive. Hedingham’s do not. At Hedingham the forebuilding was bonded into the keep by cutting away ashlar at the ends and, along the rest of the join, by building against the finished face. The battered plinth of the keep continues behind it. That is evidence that the forebuilding was added after a free-standing tower, though soon afterwards, probably within a few years and by the middle of the twelfth century, in the same flint, mortar and Barnack ashlar. Before it, the first-floor door was likely reached by a timber walkway. The ground floor of the forebuilding appears to have been vaulted. It was a simpler block than Rochester’s, without a chapel over the entrance. It was intact in a survey of 1592 and still standing, at a lower height than Rochester’s, in a drawing of 1665. A drawing of 1738 shows the entrance with no forebuilding, and a survey of 1796 shows the ruin much as it is now. Demolition therefore falls between 1665 and 1738, most likely for building stone. Essex has little freestone. In 1683 the top two storeys of Colchester Castle were taken down for materials. The twentieth Earl died in 1703, and in 1713 the castle was sold to a London owner with no earlier tie to the place, who then built a large house. Lewis Majendie, writing up the 1868 dig, recorded that alterations in the house showed unusually thick walls, faced with new brick, but really built of old material from the castle. The ashlar of the forebuilding may have gone into that house. The theory is not proved, because the mansion’s visible face is red brick.

Two of the four corner turrets are missing. Their loss has been put down to the building works of Henry VII of England, which consumed large quantities of stone. The outer hall, drawbridge and other medieval buildings were replaced in the Tudor period and have themselves gone, except the red-brick bridge of four spans on the north-east, built in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century and restored several times, including a late twentieth-century restoration. The bridge has four-centred arches of two chamfered orders and probably replaced a drawbridge. It is the only complete survival of the late fifteenth-century work, yet neither the 1592 survey nor an unattributed survey of the early seventeenth century shows the bridge. A chapel once stood south of the keep in the inner bailey. Roman tile is worked into the back of the fireplace and, on the published account, nowhere else in the keep. A Roman tegula is also visible in the surviving ashlar inside the forebuilding.

John I of England, John, King of England, reigned from 1199 to his death on 19 October 1216. He lost Normandy to Philip II, sealed Magna Carta in 1215, and fought the First Barons’ War. At Hedingham the military record does not agree with itself. One account says the castle was besieged twice, in 1216 and in 1217, and that both sieges were short and successful for the attackers, in the dispute among John, the rebel barons and the French prince. Another says that by 1214 the castle was in Crown hands and that it was captured in 1216. The scheduling says that in 1215 the barons, among them Robert, the 3rd Earl, took arms and invited the French dauphin, that John besieged Hedingham and took it, and that French soldiers recaptured it shortly afterwards. It calls that the only recorded military action at the castle. Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford, about 1173 to 1221, is listed among the twenty-five barons of Magna Carta. The same years at Rochester Castle were a different kind of siege. Rebel barons seized Rochester in 1215. John arrived on 13 October, undermined the south-east corner of the keep with a mine fired by pig fat, and received the surrender on 30 November after nearly two months. Prince Louis took Rochester in 1216, and it returned to royal control in 1217. Roger of Wendover names William d’Aubigny of Belvoir as the leader of the Rochester garrison. Nothing in the Hedingham accounts describes a mine, a collapsed corner, or a siege of weeks. The two castles share a plan and a decade. They do not share a battle narrative.

The earls then held Hedingham for most of the later Middle Ages, with a break in the Wars of the Roses. Those wars, fought from 1455 to 1487 between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, ended the male Lancastrian line in 1471 and the Plantagenet kingship at Bosworth. John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford, was born at Hedingham Castle on 23 April 1408 and beheaded on Tower Hill on 26 February 1462. He inherited as a minor in 1417, married Elizabeth Howard without royal licence and was fined £2,000, and said in 1437 that his lands were worth only £500 a year. He was knighted at Leicester on 26 May 1426, sat on the Privy Council, mustered men for the relief of Calais in 1436, treated for peace with France, sailed with the Duke of York in 1441, and was named against Jack Cade’s rebels in 1450. He came late to the Battle of St Albans in 1455 and committed himself to Margaret of Anjou in 1459. In February 1462 he, his eldest son Aubrey, and Sir Thomas Tuddenham were convicted of treason before John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. Aubrey was beheaded six days before his father. Edward IV of England at first let the second son succeed. On 18 January 1464 he licensed John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, to enter his father’s lands, and on 26 May 1465 made him a Knight of the Bath. The castle account says that on the 12th Earl’s execution the castle was taken from the Veres and given by Edward to his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III of England, who bestowed it on Henry Barley, Sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire. On Barley’s death in 1475 it passed to Sir John Howard, a Yorkist and the cousin of the 12th Earl’s wife Elizabeth Howard, later John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk. The 13th Earl’s own life adds a second confiscation. He was attainted early in 1475, and his mother was forced to surrender her property to the Duke of Gloucester. The scheduling, by contrast, says little is known for about two hundred years until the accession in 1461 of John, the 13th Earl.

John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, was born on 8 September 1442 and died on 10 March 1513. He was the second son of the 12th Earl and Elizabeth Howard, herself a first cousin of John Howard. After a pardon in April 1469 he joined Warwick and Clarence, bore the sword before Henry VI on 13 October 1470, and as constable condemned Tiptoft. At Barnet on 14 April 1471 his men, returning through fog, were shot by their own side, who took the Vere star for Edward’s sun. He fled with forty men, seized St Michael’s Mount, surrendered on 15 February 1474, and was imprisoned at Hammes. In 1478 he went over the wall into the moat, whether to escape or to die. Richard III ordered his transfer on 28 October 1484. Before it happened he escaped with Sir James Blount and joined Henry Tudor. At the Battle of Bosworth Field he commanded the archers and the vanguard in a wedge, and John Howard, leading Richard’s vanguard, was killed. Richard III died there on 22 August 1485. Henry VII of England restored the earl’s lands and the hereditary chamberlainship. The castle account dates the return of Hedingham to this Lancastrian earl after Bosworth. The House of de Vere dates the forfeiture to 1475 and the restoration to 1485. The scheduling credits the 13th Earl with a great rebuilding in or around 1496, including the Great Brick Tower and the bridge, and with fighting at Bosworth as a Lancastrian whose lands Edward IV had confiscated. His own life says he lived at Wivenhoe and at Castle Hedingham, added to the twelfth-century keep, and built a new great hall and several towers. He kept a chapel choir, commissioned Caxton’s Four Sons of Aymon in 1489, kept players from 1492 to 1499, and employed the composer Mychelson in 1490. His jousting helm is in the Bargello in Florence. He died at Castle Hedingham on 10 March 1513 and was buried at Colne Priory on 24 April. He had no child by Margaret Neville or by Elizabeth Scrope, and his nephew succeeded.

A survey by Israel Armyse, also spelled Israel Amyce, dated 1592, and an unattributed survey of the early seventeenth century, show the keep, a stone gatehouse, the Great Brick Tower, a brick turret, a chapel, a hall and pantries, kitchens, stone lodgings and a well inside the old ringwork, with a curtain on two sides of the mound. The inner bailey held a granary, stables, a barnyard and a brewhouse. In the ditch were a tennis court north of the bridge and archery butts to the south. The tennis-court site is now two parallel brick walls, 2.9 metres high, enclosing 28 by 8.7 metres, the eastern wall built into the eighteenth-century stable. The butts are marked by a wall 21 metres long and up to 2.9 metres high. The scheduling says that after a visit by Elizabeth I in 1561 the 17th Earl committed great waste on the castle hill and, by his warrant, had most of the buildings except the keep razed. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, lived from 1550 to 1604. He was a poet and a favourite of Elizabeth, and some readers argue that he wrote work attributed to Shakespeare. In the Dutch war of 1666 the castle was damaged to stop Dutch prisoners being held there. Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford, the last of the title, died in 1703 at 10 Downing Street, without a son. The earldom became extinct, or dormant. His daughter Diana married the 1st Duke of St Albans. The House of de Vere had headed the earldom from 1141 to 1703. Macaulay called it the longest and most illustrious line of nobles England had seen.

Sir William Ashhurst then enters, and the dates do not settle. His life says he inherited property in Castle Hedingham in 1680 on his father’s death, and that when in the country he lived in a Queen Anne red-brick mansion he built in the outer bailey after purchasing the castle in 1693. He died on 12 January 1720. The castle’s description places that mansion in the outer bailey around 1700, between a purchase in 1693 and a death in 1719. Its history section says the castle was purchased by William Ashhurst in 1713 and that he died in 1720, the estate then passing to his great-great-granddaughter Margaret Elizabeth Lindsay, wife of Lewis Majendie. The scheduling says the estate was sold to Sir William Ashhurst in 1713, that he demolished the inner-bailey buildings and levelled ground around the keep, reusing materials, and that the house, in the inner bailey, was completed in 1719, the year of his death, his son Robert probably finishing the gardens. The present owner’s account calls the house Georgian and dates it to 1719, built by Sir William Ashhurst, Lord Mayor of London. The 2014–15 record also places a red-brick mansion of 1719 on the inner bailey. Benjamin Disraeli, born Benjamin D’Israeli on 21 December 1804 and died 19 April 1881, twice prime minister, is the writer whose letters of 1848 to 1851 are filed with the study of the dovecote for the Queen Anne house and for the death on 12 January 1720. Ashhurst himself was a woollen draper, a Whig member for the City of London, Sheriff in 1691–92, Lord Mayor in 1693–94, a director of the Bank of England, and a nonconformist supporter of the Glorious Revolution. He was knighted on 29 October 1687. An unattributed view of 1719 shows the new house, a great avenue, the Tudor bridge, and what looks like a curtain around the crest of the mound. A survey by Bailey in 1785 draws the eighteenth-century gardens in detail. Between 1766 and 1785 the estate passed by marriage to the Majendie family, who in the 1890s tried at least three times to sell it and each time withdrew it when it failed to reach its reserve.

Lewis Ashurst Majendie, born in 1835 and died on 22 October 1885, was Conservative member for Canterbury from 1874 until he resigned in 1879. In 1869 he married Lady Margaret Elizabeth Lindsay, daughter of Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford. They lived at Hedingham Castle and had two sons and a daughter. The castle history gives the Majendies 250 years, until Musette Majendie left the estate to her cousin, the Honourable Thomas Lindsay, descended from the Veres on both sides. Musette Frances Jacqueline Natalie Majendie, born on 1 December 1903 and died on 24 January 1981, was that owner. From 1930 she trained unemployed men from northern towns and mining villages for service work, and she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1935 Birthday Honours. She was a scout leader from 1910. The keep was the hut of the 1st Castle Hedingham Scouts, and the castle is on the unit badge. She received the Scout Medal of Merit in 1930 and the Silver Acorn in 1935. With Dr Margery Blackie, who came to treat the castle as home at weekends and lived there with her in 1980–81, she gave two acres to Halstead Council in 1951 for council houses, ground that had been meant for a war memorial until another site was found. They opened the gardens for the National Gardens Scheme and held shows for the scouts and for homeopathy. A blue plaque was unveiled for her at the scout hut on 23 June 2022. The present account says the estate returned to Vere descendants, the Lindsays, in the early 1980s, and that it is the home of Jason Lindsay, his wife Demetra and their three children. The castle history names Jason Lindsay and Demetra as the residents, with their children.

The castle was excavated in 1853 under Mr Harrod and Sir Beevor, also recorded as T. Beevor. No report of that dig survives. In 1868 the owner, L. A. Majendie, also placed in 1869 by a gateway summary and by the date of his paper, dug on the ringwork, mostly west of the keep. Chancellor drew the walls. They found the Great Brick Tower, its stair turrets, two other brick towers, the chapel, the hall with pantries and cellars, rubble foundations of the gatehouse, and the curtain. An almost square brick tower of about 8.5 by 8.2 metres lies 25 metres south-west of the keep as a slight earthwork, with hall fragments in a square cut of the bank and another brick tower south of the keep. A brick curtain around the south and west of the mound is at least 0.6 metres thick, in alternate headers and stretchers, probably Tudor and probably rebuilt in the eighteenth century. In October and November 1995 the Royal Commission surveyed the keep and the earthworks, the work of Moraig Brown, tied to restoration of the keep and the bridge. In 2008 a geophysical survey by Colchester Archaeological Group located several buildings of the Tudor castle, including what may be the cellar of the great hall, and found no foundations of the Great Tower. A ground-penetrating radar survey immediately around the keep, made just before the next excavation, was used to route new service trenches.

From June 2014 to December 2015, during restoration commissioned by Mr and Mrs Lindsay, service trenches, seven test pits and a record of the forebuilding were made. The original Norman gatehouse was found, with later Tudor repairs, on the west side of the bridge. Just north of the stables, in a trench for heating pipes to the keep, the lower courses of a flint curtain thought to be Norman were found, about 1.8 metres wide and thought to have stood about 3 metres high. Another flint and lime-mortar foundation, about 4 metres thick, climbs the side of the mound and is badly damaged by roots. Tudor brick foundations on the inner bailey use unfrogged bricks of 25 by 6 by 11 centimetres. A shallow foundation cut into the rampart, six courses deep, with later pavior bricks on top, is too slight for a tower and does not appear on the 1592 survey. The top of the mound, even where trenches reached a metre down, showed Tudor and later makeup rather than Norman layers, evidence of terracing between the keep and the rampart. The basement test pits found no well and no tunnel. They found the original floor, a later clay floor, and burning from the fire, buried by up to 900 millimetres of rubbish thrown in afterwards. A large hole cut into the foundations in one pit was left unexplained. Fifteen pottery sherds, weighing 310 grams, included one early medieval sandy sherd of the eleventh to early thirteenth century, six medieval sandy greyware sherds, two sandy orange sherds, one post-medieval redware sherd of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, English stoneware and Staffordshire-type white earthenware. A flat-topped rim may be a cooking pot or a bowl. A large flared bowl is almost certainly from the north-Essex Hedingham pottery industry, though most of the medieval sherds do not closely match the published Hedingham coarseware fabrics. Grey-glazed bricks of the fifteenth to early seventeenth century and peg-tile were also recovered. A piece of a medieval limestone mortar, about a fifth of a base roughly 350 millimetres across, with a rib scar and pecked underside, is provisionally of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It had been reused as building stone and was residual in a later layer. Worked stones from the present stair include a finely edged slab, probably a Tudor lintel from the lodgings, the chapel or the great chamber shown in 1592, and medieval mouldings from a door and a window, suited to a chapel or to the gatehouse rather than to the still-intact keep. Norman steps of the forebuilding stair survive beside a later brick stair.

The keep fire is dated three ways. The scheduling says that in the First World War the castle was a training camp and the keep a lookout, and that on 23 January 1918 a hut on the top caught fire and destroyed all the internal wooden floors, which had been restored by 1926. A newspaper of 25 September 1918 says the interior was entirely burnt out while the keep was a military signalling station for aircraft, the fire supposed to have started in a hut on the top, and that only the massive walls remained. A gateway summary says the interior suffered from a fire in 1954. The basement burning sat directly on the Norman floor, which suggests the basement had stayed clear, and at about its Norman depth, until the fire.

In March and April 2021, lightning-conductor cables were fixed on the eastern and southern sides of the south-eastern turret, coloured to the ashlar. The watching brief found nothing of archaeological interest. The same season recorded a decaying patch of the west wall, immediately above the first-floor entrance. It is an infill of reused Tudor and Norman material, brick, tile, limestone ashlar and clunch, in lime mortar, unlike the regular ashlar around it. A blocked second-floor door into the forebuilding has been suggested because of the position. Drawings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries show no such door and no infill until 1831, and they show the window there with a carved stone surround, now a brick arch and clunch. The damage is the worst on the keep and is tied to the void for the portcullis over the entrance. In 2022 three test pits south-west of the keep exposed the buried feet of a Tudor tower. The turrets had foundations 1.8 to 1.9 metres deep, with a possible construction cut for the western turret, and a later wall on those foundations continued 1.35 metres below the ground. Beneath it was an earlier brick wall running north to south, probably an internal wall of the tower. In 2023, before repairs, a record was made of that brick tower, newly exposed south-west of the keep after trees were cleared, of a brick buttress and a stretch of brick curtain bonded to the south side of the bridge, of four window openings on the west and south faces, of eight window alcoves inside, four on the ground floor and four on the fourth floor, and of the wall-heads. The keep is assessed in poor condition, highly vulnerable, with a declining trend, and at a priority of slow decay for which no solution has been agreed. It is in private ownership. The standing keep was first listed on 7 August 1952 and the entry was amended on 5 April 2016. The earthworks, keep and baileys were scheduled on 13 January 1915 and that entry was amended on the same day in 2016. The keep is listed at Grade I. The bridge and the house are listed at Grade II*, and the stable and the dovecote at Grade II. The scheduling excludes the house, its service buildings and the formal gardens, while including the ramparts and the ground beneath modern surfaces.

The Norman keep and the grounds are open to the public from Easter to October, and school visits run through the year, while the house remains a family home. For 2026, general admission was set on selected dates from 15 March to 11 October, from 11:00 to 16:00, with a close at 15:00 on Sunday 23 August because of evening theatre, and the visit notice then said general admission was closed for the rest of 2026, with events still available. The grounds have been used for jousts, archery, falconry, re-enactments, fairs, car shows, concerts and theatre. Episode 2 of The Landscape of Man, shown in 2010, followed the recovery of gardens that had gone to wilderness through the twentieth century. The Reckoning was filmed here in 2004, and the television Ivanhoe in 1997. In 2001 the group Steps filmed part of the video for Words Are Not Enough inside the keep. Made in Britain, in 2005, brought Fred Dibnah, the Bolton steeplejack and television presenter born on 28 April 1938 and died on 6 November 2004. The Shakespeare Theory, in 2013, brought Derek Jacobi, the actor born on 22 October 1938 and knighted in 1994. A History of Britain used the castle with Simon Schama. A March 1997 sitting for Vanity Fair placed Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow at the castle. The photograph hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Alexander McQueen, Lee Alexander McQueen, was born on 17 March 1969 and died on 11 February 2010. Isabella Blow, born Isabella Delves Broughton on 19 November 1958 and died on 7 May 2007, bought the whole of his graduate show and became his patron. John Cleese, born on 27 October 1939, uses the castle as the setting of The Dinosaur Hour. The keep’s present stair has been rebuilt with a modern banister, and a modern platform covers the dungeon in the forebuilding so that visitors can reach the first-floor door.

Canonical page: https://getsitesee.com/places/hedingham-castle