Carisbrooke Castle: the Island fortress that became a royal prison Climb towards Carisbrooke Castle with me and watch how cleverly it conceals its strength. It does not cling theatrically to a sea cliff or thrust itself above the landscape like a stone crown. Instead, it occupies a commanding hill near the centre of the Isle of Wight, where roads, valleys and approaching danger could once be watched. As you near the gatehouse, the walls rise, the ground steepens and the modern village begins to fall away. Pass through the entrance and you enter more than a medieval ruin. Carisbrooke is a Grade I listed castle and a nationally important scheduled monument whose surviving earthworks, walls and buildings record over a thousand years of defence, power, imprisonment and Island life. Historic England Begin before the Norman castle existed. Archaeologists have found three sixth-century Anglo-Saxon graves here, providing the earliest certain evidence of activity on the hill. At about the year 1000, the hilltop was enclosed by a substantial earthen bank, later faced with stone, around an area containing large timber buildings. This was probably an Anglo-Saxon burh, a fortified settlement or place of refuge constructed when Viking raids threatened England’s coasts and communities. Imagine the warning travelling inland, livestock being driven uphill, families carrying whatever they could manage and the gate closing behind them. The precise voices are lost, but the defensive purpose is written into the ground beneath your feet. After the Norman Conquest, the existing enclosure was adapted to secure the Island for its new rulers. Deep ditches were cut inside the Saxon defences to form a protected Norman stronghold. In 1100, Henry I created a powerful Island lordship for Baldwin de Redvers, one of his important supporters. Baldwin probably established the massive motte-and-bailey castle whose shape still dominates the site. Climb towards the shell keep and notice how much labour was embodied in the mound itself. Earth had to be cut, carried and packed before stone walls could rise above it. Every basketful represented someone’s aching back and someone else’s determination not to be attacked unexpectedly. The castle soon received a severe lesson in the importance of water. Following Henry I’s death, Baldwin supported the king’s daughter Matilda against her cousin Stephen in the civil war now known as the Anarchy. In 1136, Baldwin apparently intended to hold Carisbrooke against Stephen, but the castle’s water supply failed. Stone walls, steep banks and armed defenders became useless when the wells ran dry, and Baldwin was forced to surrender. It is a wonderfully blunt piece of military history: however impressive your fortress may be, nobody defends it for long without something to drink. English Heritage In the thirteenth century, Carisbrooke became more than a defensive position. Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Devon and the last of the de Redvers line, was one of the greatest heiresses in medieval England. She transformed the castle into a residence suitable for a major landholder, developing the great hall, her private chamber, a chapel and other buildings arranged around the central courtyard. Picture horses entering through the gate, servants crossing the yard with baskets and firewood, meals being prepared and petitions brought before the formidable “Lady of the Wight”. In 1293, during the final days of her life, Isabella sold her estates to Edward I. Carisbrooke Castle has remained Crown property ever since. Crown ownership did not bring tranquillity. The Isle of Wight was raided five times between 1336 and 1370 during periods of war with France, and Carisbrooke Castle was besieged in 1377. Island tradition credits an archer named Peter de Heynoe with killing the French commander and breaking the attack. He became one of Carisbrooke’s celebrated heroes, although the dramatic single shot belongs more securely to local tradition than to firmly documented military history. That distinction should not spoil the tale. It simply reminds us that castles accumulate legends almost as readily as they accumulate moss. By the sixteenth century, Henry VIII’s coastal forts had reduced Carisbrooke’s strategic importance. The danger had not disappeared, however. Elizabeth I appointed her cousin George Carey as captain of the Island in 1583. Carey improved the domestic accommodation and added an ambitious range containing seventeen rooms and a long gallery. As fears of Spanish invasion intensified, he also turned Carisbrooke into a modern artillery fortress. Between 1597 and 1602, an enormous low rampart, nearly a mile long and strengthened by five bastions, was constructed around the medieval castle. Its shape was designed for an age of cannon rather than arrows. These expensive defences were never tested in battle, which may sound disappointing until one remembers that the best fortress is often the one nobody is willing to attack. Now find the well-house and listen for the treadwheel. The surviving sixteenth-century wheel raises water from a well approximately 49 metres, or 161 feet, deep. Donkeys have worked the mechanism for centuries, and the castle’s resident donkeys still demonstrate it today. Watch the animal step steadily inside the great wooden wheel as the rope winds around its axle and the bucket makes its long journey upwards. The arrangement is ingenious, memorable and slightly humbling. Kings, captains and engineers may dominate the written history, but the castle could not function without water, labour and, on this occasion, a patient donkey doing the heavy lifting. English Heritage Carisbrooke’s most famous prisoner arrived on 13 November 1647. Charles I had escaped Parliamentary custody at Hampton Court and came to the Isle of Wight believing its governor, Colonel Robert Hammond, might help him. Instead, Hammond informed Parliament, and what Charles expected to be a refuge became another prison. The king initially lived with some ceremony in the hall range, accompanied by members of his household. A bowling green was even prepared for him, proving that captivity could be courteous without being any less real. On 20 March 1648, Charles attempted to escape through a bedroom window. He planned to lower himself about three metres on a silk cord, cross the courtyard and leave through the outer defences. Unfortunately, he had misjudged the gap and became wedged between an iron bar and the window frame. Unable to move forwards, he had to retreat into the room and signal that the attempt had failed. A second plan involved nitric acid, a hacksaw, bribed sentries, waiting horses and a ship intended to carry him towards Holland. On 29 May, while Charles was working on the window bar, Hammond entered and observed that he had heard the king was “going away”. The plot had been betrayed. Charles reportedly laughed, but his opportunity had vanished. He left Carisbrooke for negotiations at Newport in September and was eventually taken to London, where he was executed on 30 January 1649. English Heritage The tragedy continued after his death. Charles’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was confined at the castle and died here in 1650. Carisbrooke therefore holds two very different royal memories: the failed schemes of a deposed king and the short life of a child caught in the consequences of civil war. By the nineteenth century, the castle was becoming a monument and visitor attraction. It passed into the care of the Office of Works in 1856. Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter and Governor of the Isle of Wight, later supported its restoration. On 11 August 1898, she opened Carisbrooke Castle Museum in the restored gatehouse as a memorial to her husband, Prince Henry of Battenberg. The museum is the oldest on the Isle of Wight and now cares for more than 37,000 objects connected with Island history. The Chapel of St Nicholas was rebuilt in 1904 and later became the Island’s war memorial. Carisbrooke Castle Museum When I ask you to imagine Viking warnings, medieval servants or the scrape of Charles’s hacksaw, I am placing human experience around documented events. The burh, building phases, siege, artillery ramparts and escape attempts are matters of historical and archaeological record. The exact words shouted across a particular courtyard are not. Stand quietly, feel the wind crossing the battlements and allow the surviving walls to supply what documents cannot. Professor Follies offers one final warning to the Carisbrooke Banshee. This castle has resisted Vikings, French raiders, Spanish invasion scares and an escaping king armed with a silk cord, nitric acid and an unfortunately optimistic opinion of his own width. A spectral wail is unlikely to frighten the guards, although it may cause the donkeys to lodge a formal complaint.