Construction According to the
Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis (Abingdon Chronicle), Oxford Castle was built by the
Norman baron Robert D'Oyly the elder from 1071 to 1073. D'Oyly had arrived in England with William I the Conqueror in the
Norman Conquest of England, and William granted him extensive lands in Oxfordshire. In due course D'Oyly became the foremost landowner in Oxfordshire and was confirmed with a hereditary royal constableship for Oxford Castle. Oxford Castle is not among the 48 recorded in the
Domesday Book of 1086, but not every castle in existence at the time was recorded in the survey. D'Oyly (d'Oilly)'s Oxford holdings are, however, mentioned in the Domesday Book as "Meadow 30 acres. 1 mill, value 10 shillings. The mill mentioned is presumably the Castle Mill, formerly adjacent to the still surviving St. George's Tower, rebuilt in 1781 before eventually being demolished in 1930. D'Oyly positioned his castle to the west side of the town, using the natural protection of a stream off the
River Thames on the far side of the castle, now called
Castle Mill Stream, and diverting the stream to produce a
moat. There has been debate as to whether there was an earlier English fortification on the site, but whilst there is archaeological evidence of earlier Anglo-Saxon habitation there is no conclusive evidence of fortification. The initial castle was probably a large
motte and bailey, copying the plan of the castle that D'Oyly had already built away at
Wallingford. There has been debate over the sequencing of the motte and the bailey: it has been suggested that the bailey may have built first (thus utilising the pre-existing St. George's Tower as the first keep) which would make the initial castle design a
ringwork rather than a motte and bailey. By the late 12th to early 13th century, the original palisade walls and wooden keep had been replaced in stone. The new curtain wall incorporated St George's Tower, which is built of
coral rag stone, at the base and tapering significantly toward the top for stability. This was the tallest of the castle's towers, and is now believed to be a survival from late Saxon times (c. 1020) as a watch tower associated with the west gate of the Saxon city. Evidence that this tower is Saxon in origin and thus pre-dates the castle itself is presented in Poore
et al. (2009), who comment that "a single, massive stone tower does not seem to belong within the outer defences of an earth-and-timber castle", and other sources have concurred on architectural grounds, also noting that its orientation does not match that of the remainder of the castle, and that its height would have originally afforded an extensive view over the city, but which would have been superseded (and in fact, blocked) with the construction of the castle motte. The date of the remaining towers is uncertain although the southernmost, round tower, of which the base still remains, is dated to 1235 in various documentary sources, including Woolnoth's
The Ancient Castles of England and Wales of 1825; in at least one source, it is referred to as "Henry III's Tower". Inside the walls the buildings included a chapel with a crypt attached to St George’s Tower, In 1074 D'Oyly and his close friend,
Roger d'Ivry had endowed a chapel with a college of priests, which is presumed to be the structure in question; at an early stage it acquired a dedication to
Saint George. As detailed below, the crypt of this chapel still survives, albeit in a new location within the castle, having been moved and reconstructed from its original materials in 1794. The ten-sided stone
shell keep, , constructed in the 13th century to replace an earlier wooden structure, closely resembled those of
Tonbridge and
Arundel Castles. The keep enclosed a number of buildings, leaving an inner courtyard only across. Within the keep, stairs led down to an underground wide stone chamber, with an
Early English hexagonal vault and a deep well providing water in the event of a siege.
Role in the Anarchy and Barons War escaped from a siege of Oxford Castle in 1141 during
The Anarchy.
Robert D'Oyly the younger, Robert D'Oyly the elder's nephew, had inherited the castle by the time of the civil war of
the Anarchy in the 1140s. Stephen responded by marching from
Bristol in the Autumn of 1142, attacking and seizing the town of Oxford and besieging Matilda in the castle. Finally in December, Matilda responded by escaping from the castle; the popular version of this has the Empress waiting until the
Castle Mill Stream was frozen over and then dressed in white as
camouflage in the snow, being lowered down the walls with three or four knights, before escaping through Stephen's lines in the night as the king's sentries tried to raise the alarm. The chronicler
William of Malmesbury, however, suggests Matilda did not descend the walls, but instead escaped from one of the gates. At the end of the war the constableship of Oxford Castle was granted to
Roger de Bussy before being reclaimed by Henry D'Oyly, Robert D'Oyly the younger's son, in 1154. In the
Barons' War of 1215–17 the castle was attacked again, prompting further improvements in its defences. The remaining wooden buildings were replaced in stone, including the new Round Tower which was built in 1235. King
Henry III turned part of the castle into a prison, specifically for holding troublesome University
clerks, and also improved the castle chapel, replacing the older barred windows with
stained glass in 1243 and 1246. Due to the presence of
Beaumont Palace to the north of Oxford, however, the castle never became a royal residence.
14th–17th centuries , 1578 published in
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, No. 328, August 23, 1828 's map of Oxford, 1605, showing the castle (labelled "P") at upper right. (North is at the bottom of this map) 's
Oxonia Illustrata map/bird's eye view, published in 1675 (BL 128.h.10), with north at the bottom. The Castle Mill is visible adjacent in the stream adjacent to the prominent St. George's Tower, and a portion of the round base of the southernmost tower also remains. were held there until 1577, when plague broke out in what became known as the "
Black Assize": the
Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, two knights, eighty gentlemen and the entire
grand jury for the session all died, including Sir Robert D'Oyley, a relative of the founder of the castle. Thereafter assizes ceased to be held at the castle. although this is contradicted by the castle's appearance in
John Speed's map of Oxford, 1605. In 1611
King James I sold Oxford Castle to Francis James and Robert Younglove, who in turn sold it to
Christ Church (a college of the university) in 1613. The college then leased it to a number of local families over the coming years. By this time, Oxford Castle was in a weakened state, with a large crack running down the side of the keep. A map of the castle prepared for Christ Church in 1615 shows the keep on its mound, St George's Tower with associated buildings and sections of the curtain wall remaining to the north and south, and the next tower to the south, plus a single remaining tower to the north-east, as well as the Castle Mill and a southern entrance to the castle complex; this map indicates that by 1615 houses and gardens had been laid out over more than half of the Castle Ditch or moat, which appears to still contain water. In 1642, the
First English Civil War broke out, and the
Royalists made Oxford their capital. Parliamentary forces successfully
besieged Oxford in 1646, and the city was occupied by
Colonel Richard Ingoldsby. Ingoldsby improved the fortification of the castle rather than the surrounding town, and in 1649 demolished most of the medieval stonework, replacing it with more modern earth
bulwarks and reinforcing the keep with earth works to form a probable gun-platform. In 1652, in the
third English Civil War, the Parliamentary garrison responded to the proximity of
Charles II's forces by pulling down these defences as well and retreating to
New College instead, causing great damage to the college in the process. As with other prisons at the time, the owners, in this case Christ Church College, leased the castle to wardens who would profit by charging prisoners for their board and lodging. For most of the 18th century, the castle prison was run by the local Etty and Wisdom families and was in increasing disrepair. A view of the castle published in 1769 in the work "England Displayed" by P. Russell and Owen Price is of interest in that it shows the appearance of the chapel attached to St George's tower prior to its demolition in 1794, as well as the motte and some then-surviving portions of the curtain wall including an arch or gateway in the wall immediately to the north of the tower. The chapel and/or associated buildings are also shown, from a range of angles, in views by other artists including
Samuel and Nathaniel Buck's
Antiquities (drawing dated 1729), a 1773 engraving included in
Francis Grose's
Antiquities of England and Wales, 1786, a painting by
Michael Angelo Rooker dating from 1779, and a view by the artist John Baptist Malchair dating from 1784. In the 1770s the prison reformer
John Howard visited the castle several times, and criticised its size and quality, including the extent to which
vermin infested the prison. Partly as a result of this criticism, it was decided by the County authorities to rebuild the Oxford Prison. In 1785 the castle was bought by the Oxford County Justices and rebuilding began under the London architect
William Blackburn. The wider castle site had already begun to change by the late 18th century, with
New Road being built through the bailey and the last parts of the castle moat being filled in to allow the building of the new
Oxford Canal terminus. Building the new prison included demolishing the old chapel attached to St George's tower and repositioning part of the crypt in 1794. Harris gained a reasonable salary as the new governor and used convict labour from the prison to conduct early archaeological excavations at the castle with the help of the antiquarian Edward King. In the 19th century the site continued to be developed, with various new buildings built including the new County Hall in 1840–41 and the
Oxfordshire Militia Armoury in 1854. In 1888 national prison reforms led to the renaming of the county prison as
HM Prison Oxford.
Today centre left, the square St George's Tower front left and the round Debtors' Tower (constructed in the 18th century, not part of the original building). Behind is
Nuffield College with its square tower with a copper-covered
flèche. by William Blackburn 1785–90, on foundations of 1235 round tower Today, the remains of the Saxon St.George's Tower, Motte-and-Bailey Mound, the Prison D-Wing and Debtor's Tower make up the
Oxford Castle & Prison tourist attraction. columns and capitals The prison was closed in 1996 and the site reverted to
Oxfordshire County Council. The Oxford Prison buildings have since been redeveloped as a restaurant and heritage complex, with guided tours of the historic buildings and open courtyards for markets and theatrical performances. The complex includes a hotel in the
Malmaison chain, Malmaison Oxford, opened 2005, occupying a large part of the former prison blocks, with cells converted as guest rooms. However, those parts of the prison associated with corporal or capital punishment have been converted to offices rather than being used for guests. The
mixed-use heritage project, officially opened on 5 May 2006, won the
RICS Project of the Year Award 2007. The full extent of the original castle is somewhat obliterated today, especially with the intrusion of the newer
County Hall into the eastern side, while New Road runs over the location of north-east portion of the curtain wall with its two square towers; nevertheless the position of its outer perimeter moat is approximated by portions of New Road,
Castle Street and Paradise Street (refer map at right), while the remains of the original Barbican lie underneath the modern
Westgate shopping centre. Since 1954 the two oldest parts of the castle have been Grade I listed buildings: the 11th-century motte with its 13th-century well-chamber, the circa 11th-century St George's tower (listed as Norman, but now generally believed to be Saxon), the relocated crypt chapel, and the 18th-century D-wing and Debtors' Tower. The site is protected as a
Scheduled Monument. As at 2018, guided tours of the surviving medieval and 18th-century portions are available to visitors via a commercial operator, Heritage Projects (Oxford Castle) Ltd, with opening hours and pricing available via their website. ==See also==