Castle Camps

Castle Camps stands in the gentle farmland of south-east Cambridgeshire, where the last earthworks of a Norman castle rise beside a working farm. The village grew around the old manor, once held by Saxon nobles before William the Conqueror gave it to Aubrey de Vere I. For five centuries the de Vere family kept the estate, building a motte-and-bailey fortress that dominated the county. By the late 15th century a four-storey brick tower was added, and in the 16th century the manor house was rebuilt in brick. Storms and time have removed most of the stonework, yet the flat-topped motte still covers just over an acre. The site is worth the journey for anyone interested in early English fortifications. The Domesday Book of 1086 records the manor’s value and plough-lands under both Saxon and Norman lords. Aubrey de Vere I may have raised the first castle soon after 1066, and by the 12th century it was the largest fortress in Cambridgeshire. Between 1265 and 1331 masons enlarged the bailey, and a sketch of 1731 shows the brick tower still standing. The final remains are modest—a rubble heap and earthworks—but they mark one of the county’s earliest Norman strongholds. Visitors find the motte’s grassy summit reached by gentle slopes, with Castle Farm built partly from the old manor’s back wall. A Scheduled Monument sign marks the rubble in the farmyard, and nearby Wigmore Pond offers the parish’s highest point at 415 feet. The village itself is quiet, with only earthworks and a farmhouse to show the castle’s past. The contrast between the rolling fields and the ancient mound gives a sense of how power shifted from Saxon thanes to Norman earls.