Bletchingley Castle

Bletchingley Castle stands as a ruined Norman ringwork and bailey on a hilltop beside the Greensand Way in the village of Bletchingley, Surrey. The inner enclosure is a near-circular earthwork ditch more than six metres deep on the north and east sides, with a bank rising up to two and a half metres above the interior. A three-metre causeway marks the original entrance on the north-east, where visitors once crossed into the castle’s heart. The outer bailey, defended by further banks and ditches, once held stables and storehouses. A small mound on the north-west may have supported a barbican guarding the approach. The site witnessed key moments in the 13th century when Simon de Montfort and Gilbert de Clare passed nearby on their way to the Battle of Lewes. Earlier, four knights who killed Thomas Becket stopped at the castle’s tower in 1170 while travelling to Canterbury. John Aubrey noted a five-foot-thick wall still standing in 1697, and Manning recorded visible foundations in the early 19th century. Archaeologists have found traces of a Norman domestic building and an undercroft surviving beneath rubble up to two and a half metres high. Visitors today find a grassy mound partly covered by trees and brambles, with sections of wall, doorways and arches exposed where vegetation has been cleared. The ringwork’s deep ditch and high bank give a strong sense of the castle’s original scale, while the causeway shows how people once entered. On the western side the earthworks were cut back for Castle Hill, a Victorian house that now overlooks the ruins. The stable house and garden cottage sit near the centre of the mound, their paths crossing ground that once formed the bailey.