Restormel Castle lies by the River Fowey, near Lostwithiel in Cornwall. The ringwork castle was constructed after the Norman conquest of England and for many years was controlled by the Cardinham family.
In the late 13th century, it became the centre for administrating the region’s tin-mining industry and was turned into a luxurious residence by Edmund, the Earl of Cornwall. After being owned by Edward the Black Prince for a period in the 14th century, the castle was neglected. It was briefly reoccupied during the English Civil War but was then once again abandoned.
The ruins of Restormel Castle, including its 13th-century shell keep, came to form part of the gardens of a neighbouring manor house, before becoming a tourist attraction in the 19th century. Now in the care of English Heritage, it is open to the public.
History
11th-13th century
Restormel Castle was probably constructed following the Norman conquest of England, in order to control the crossing at the River Fowey in Cornwall. The builder was probably either Turstin, the sheriff of Cornwall, or his son Baldwin Fitz Turstin, and the fortification was probably erected after 1086. The first castle was a ringwork earthwork with an adjacent bailey and a wooden gatehouse. The name “Restormel” comes from the Celtic ros tor moyl, meaning a bare spur of a hill. Baldwin’s descendants continued to hold the manor as vassals and tenants of the Earls of Cornwall for nearly 200 years.
Robert de Cardinham, controlled the castle between 1192–1225. He built up the inner curtain walls and converted the gatehouse completely to stone. The planned town of Lostwithiel was established close to the castle at around the same time and became an important tin mining site . The castle belonged to the Cardinhams for several years, who used it in preference to their older castle at Old Cardinham.
Andrew de Cardinham’s daughter, Isolda de Cardinham, married Thomas de Tracey, who took control of the castle. During the 1260s, the Second Barons’ War broke out between the supporters of Henry III and the rebel barons, led by Simon de Montfort. Thomas surrendered the castle to de Montfort in 1265, but both men died soon afterwards. Although the castle was restored to her at the end of the war, Isolda was persuaded to give Restormel to Richard, the Earl of Cornwall and her feudal lord in 1268.
Richard died in 1271, and his son Edmund took over Restormel as his main administrative base in the region. It was home to the stannary administration and oversaw the profitable tin-mines in the town. He built a shell keep around the ringwork, adding inner chambers and piping water into the castle; the result was a property intended for comfort and leisure, rather than military defence. A large deer park was established around Restormel, providing opportunities for hunting, and the “Duchy Palace” was built in Lostwithiel to host the meetings of the Convocation which oversaw all of the tin mining in Cornwall. Edmund died in 1299 and the Restormel Castle reverted to the control of the Crown.
14th-17th centuries
In 1337, Edward “the Black Prince” was made the Duke of Cornwall by his father, Edward III. The new Duchy of Cornwall comprised 17 antiqua maneria – “old manors” – including Restormel. The castle had fallen into disrepair . but was extensively repaired by order of the Black Prince.
Edward rarely used Restormel as a residence, although he stayed at the castle in 1354 and 1365, and used the 300 deer in the surrounding park as valuable gifts for his political contacts. When he did visit, Edward gathered his feudal subjects at the castle in order for them to pay him homage. In 1372, the prince abandoned the province of Gascony in France, one of the key possessions of the Duchy; this triggered his decision to strip out the contents of Restormel Castle and move them to the prince’s other residences.
Edawrd died in 1376 and his successors paid little attention to the castle. With an absentee lord, the stewardship of the castle became much sought after as a result, and the castle and its estate became known for its efficient administration. By the time the antiquarian John Leland saw it in the 16th century, much of the castle had fallen into ruin and had been extensively robbed for its stonework; as he put it:
“the timber rooted up, the conduit pipes taken away, the roofe made sale of, the planchings rotten, the wals fallen down, and the hewed stones of the windowes, dournes, and clavels, pluct out to serve private buildings; onely there remayneth an utter defacement, to complayne upon this unregarded distresse.”
Henry VIII converted the castle’s parkland back into ordinary countryside, using it for farmland. With the castle no longer in use, a new manor house, initially called Trinity House – later called Restormel Manor – was established during the 16th century a short distance away on lower-lying land adjoining the river.
In 1642, civil broke out between the supporters of Charles I and Parliament. Initially Restormel played no part in the conflict, but Parliamentary forces under the command of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, occupied it in the summer of 1644. Essex was retreating from a Royalist army under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, and Grenville stormed the castle on 21 August. Around this time, the chapel was fortified and a gun platform added.
Parliament was ultimately victorious in the war. It is not clear whether Restormel was subsequently slighted – deliberately damaged to put it beyond military use – but in a survey of 1649, it was recorded to be utterly ruined with only the outer walls still standing. The survey reported that it was too badly ruined to be repaired, and its remains so worthless there to be any value in demolishing it.
18th-21st centuries
In 1753, a lawyer called Thomas Jones purchased the manor and its park from the Duchy of Cornwall. Although the castle was retained by the duchy, Jones invested significantly in the ruins in order to provide a picturesque backdrop for his new home and its extensive garden.
By the 19th century, the castle had become a popular attraction for visitors. In 1846 the British royal family visited the castle; arriving on their yacht the Victoria and Albert up the River Fowey, the royal party toured the ruins. The French writer Henri-François-Alphonse Esquiros, who wrote about a visit to the castle in 1865, described the ruins as forming “what the English call a romantic scene.” He noted that the ivy-covered ruins attracted visitors from the environs who went there “for picnics and parties of pleasure”.
By 1920, a survey showed the castle to be in a “very neglected condition”, heavily overgrown and in need of urgent repair. The Duchy Council concluded that it should be transferred to the control of the government, but a shortage of official funds made this impossible. After some argument between the Office of Works and the duchy, it was agreed in 1925 to pass the castle into the guardianship of the state, in exchange for the duchy offering up £500 towards the costs of repairs.
The ivy and vegetation was removed by the Office of Works and conservation work was carried out on the walls. In 1971, a proposal was made that the castle should be further restored but was dropped after attracting strong opposition. A decade later, the castle was protected as a Scheduled Monument under UK law. It has never been formally excavated. It is now maintained by English Heritage as a tourist attraction.
Architecture
Restormel Castle is located on a spur of high ground overlooking the River Fowey. The castle comprises a south-western bailey and the unusually well-preserved example of a circular shell keep.
The bailey is roughly rectangular, and protected by a earth bank and ditch. By the 14th century, it would have been packed with buildings, including kitchens, a bakehouse and stables, but these have since all been lost, along with the timber wall which once protected the bailey.
The shell keep is an adaptation of the earlier 11th-century ringwork castle. Despite this, the keep appears to stand upon a motte, partially because the ringwork was filled in on the inner side so as to appear to heap against the keep’s wall. This may have occurred in the castle’s later history to provide a garden walk around the ruin.
The shell keep’s wall measures 38 metres (125 ft) in diameter and is up to 2.4 metres (7.9 ft) thick. It still stands to its full height with a wall walk 7.6 metres (25 ft) above the ground, and the crenellated parapet is also mostly intact. The wall is surrounded in turn by a ditch measuring 15 metres (49 ft) by 4 metres (13 ft) deep. Both the wall and the internal buildings were constructed from slate which appears to have been quarried from the scarp face to the north-east of the castle.
The domestic buildings within the wall included a kitchen, hall, solar, guest chambers and an ante-chapel. Water from a natural spring was piped under pressure into the castle buildings. A square gate tower, largely ruined, guards the entrance to the inner castle, and may have been the first part of the original castle to have been partially constructed in stone. On the opposite side, a square tower projecting out from the wall contains the chapel; it is thought to have been a 13th-century addition. It appears to have been converted into a gun emplacement during the English Civil War.
Visiting the castle
Bibliography
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Attribution
The text of this page was adapted from “Restormel Castle” on the English language website Wikipedia, as the version dated 3 February 2019, and accordingly the text of this page is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Principal editors have included Hchc2009 and Prioryman, and the contributions of all editors can be found on the history tab of the Wikipedia article.
Photographs on this page include those drawn from the Wikimedia and Flickr website, and are attributed and licensed as follows: “RestormelCastle” (Public Domain); “Restormel Castle keep plan – labelled” (Crown Copyright, expired); “Restormel Castle 2018 3“, author AtticTapestry, released under CC BY-SA 4.0; “Restormel Castle 2018 1“, author AtticTapestry, released under CC BY-SA 4.0; “Restormel Castle 02“, author Chris Shaw, released under CC BY-SA 2.0; “Restormel Castle“, author James Stringer, released under CC BY-NC 2.0.
