Penhallam

Penhallam is the remains of a fortified manor house near Jacobstow in Cornwall. It stands in a sheltered valley where two tributaries meet the River Neet, now partly woodland and partly marshland. The site was first used shortly after the Norman invasion, when Tryold or his son Richard fitz Turold built a ringwork castle here. By 1086 a manor was recorded in the Domesday survey, built on a raised area above the marshes. The ringwork had an earth bank up to 15 metres wide and a wet moat up to 12 metres across. The Cardinham family turned Penhallam into a sophisticated manor between the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Andrew de Cardinham expanded the site into a quadrangle of ranges around an internal courtyard, with a hall, chapel, lodgings and a gatehouse protected by a drawbridge. The exterior walls were whitewashed, making the house highly visible from the nearest road. A deer park stretched up the valleys to the south-west, used for hunting by the family. Today the foundations of the manor house are visible, exposed and protected after archaeological work between 1968 and 1973. The moat has been cleaned and refilled, and the site is managed by English Heritage. Visitors can walk around the quadrangle’s outline and see the remains of the gatehouse and service buildings. The sheltered valley still shows traces of the medieval landscape, with woodland and marshes where the deer park once lay.