Rockingham Castle

Rockingham Castle stands on a hill in Rockingham Forest, two miles from Corby in Northamptonshire. Its elevated position gives wide views over the Welland Valley. The site was used in the Iron Age, Roman times and by the Saxons before the Normans built a wooden castle here after 1066. William II replaced it with stone walls and a keep within thirty years. The castle served as a royal retreat for hunting deer and wild boar through the Norman and Plantagenet centuries. The castle’s twin D-tower gatehouse was added in 1270 by Henry III. Edward III was the last monarch to visit while it belonged to the Crown. By the late 15th century it had fallen into disrepair until Sir Edward Watson took a lease from Henry VIII. His family turned part of the ruins into a Tudor house with gardens. During the Civil War the royalists held the castle until Parliament’s forces captured it in 1643. Today the castle is the home of the Saunders-Watson family. Visitors walk through the strong gatehouse with its two semicircular towers and enter a central passage once guarded by a portcullis. Beyond the gatehouse lie halls, cottages and other stone buildings within high walls. The grounds include a cricket pitch used by Old Eastonians Cricket Club. Charles Dickens visited and may have used the castle as a model for Chesney Wold in Bleak House.