Norfolk Journey: Castle Acre

DSCN7206
The remains of the Inner Bailey and curtain wall
William de Warrenne came to England in the army of William the Conqueror and fought at the Battle of Hastings. Afterwards, he became one of the King’s most trusted magnates. He was made Earl of Surrey and acquired lands in Norfolk through his wife. He chose the village of Acre near Swaffham as his base in the area.

Castle Acre is one of the best examples of a Motte and Bailey Castle from the early Middle Ages and the fortifications that remain give you a good indication of quite how formidable these castles must have seemed.

DSCN7210
Outer Bailey

DSCN7221
Outer Bailey c 12th century
 

The original castle was a moated Manor House but in the 12th century, the fortifications were improved, including the building of a keep to replace the Manor House.

DSCN7212
13th century keep which replaced the original manor house

DSCN7214
Remains of 13th century keep

DSCN7208
Ditch surrounding Outer Bailey
However, by the end of the 14th century, the Earls of Surrey had moved on to live at other estates and the castle had been abandoned.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.