Orford Castle is a castle in Orford in the English county of Suffolk, 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Ipswich, with views over Orford Ness. It was built between 1165 and 1173 by Henry II of England to consolidate royal power in the region. The well-preserved keep, described by historian R. Allen Brown as "one of the most remarkable keeps in England", is of a unique design and probably based on Byzantine architecture. The keep stands within the earth-bank remains of the castle's outer fortifications.
History
12th century The honour of Eye was a landholding that included Orford and at various points was under royal control. In 1156, Henry II granted the honour to Lord Chancellor Thomas Becket and confiscated it in 1162 when the then Archbishop of Canterbury came into conflict with the king and fled to France. Prior to the building of Orford Castle, Suffolk was dominated by the Bigod family, who held the title of the Earl of Norfolk and owned key castles at Framlingham, Bungay, Walton and Thetford. Hugh Bigod had been one of a group of dissenting barons during the Anarchy in the reign of King Stephen, and Henry II wished to re-establish royal influence across the region. Henry confiscated the four castles from Hugh, but returned Framlingham and Bungay to Hugh in 1165. Henry then decided to build his own royal castle at Orford, near Framlingham, and construction work began in 1165, concluding in 1173. The Orford site was around 2 miles (3.2 km) from the sea, lying on flat ground with marshes stretching as far as the River Ore, about 1⁄2 mile (0.80 km) away. The construction of Orford Castle may also have been motivated by the prospect Becket's return from exile in France with armed support.
The design of the keep was unique, and has been termed "one of the most remarkable keeps in England" by historian R. Allen Brown. The 90-foot-high (27-metre) central tower was circular in cross-section with three rectangular, clasping towers built out from the 49-foot-wide (15-metre) structure. The tower was based on a precise set of proportions, its various dimensions following the one-to-the-root-of-two ratio found in many English churches of the period. Much of the interior is built with high-quality ashlar stonework, with broad, 5-foot-6-inch-high (1.68-metre) staircases. The best chambers were designed to catch the early morning sun, whilst the various parts of the keep were draught-proofed with doors and carefully designed windows. Originally the roof of the keep, above the upper hall, would have formed a domed effect, with a tall steeple above that. The chapel above the entrance to the keep was unusually shaped; historian Stephen Brindle suggests that such a design "would not normally have been thought seemly for a room dedicated to the service of God". The keep was surrounded by a curtain wall with probably four flanking towers and a fortified gatehouse protecting a relatively small bailey; these outer defences, rather than the keep, probably represented the main defences of the castle. The marshes nearby were drained, turning the village of Orford into a sheltered port. The castle, including the surrounding ditch, palisade and stone bridge, cost £1,413 to build, the work possibly being conducted by the master mason Alnoth. Some of the timbers were brought from as far away as Scarborough, and the detailed stonework being carved from limestone from Caen in Normandy, the remainder of the stone being variously local mudstone and coralline, as well as limestone from Northamptonshire.
The design of the keep has attracted much historical interest. Traditional explanations for its unusual plan argued that the castle was a transitional military design, combining both the circular features of later castles with the square angled buttresses of earlier Norman fortifications. More recent scholarship has critiqued this explanation. The design of the Orford keep is hard to justify in military terms, as the buttresses created additional blind spots for the defenders, whilst the chambers and staircase in the corners weakened the walls against attack. Square Norman keeps continued to be built after Orford, whilst Henry II was aware of fully circular castle designs before building the keep. A round keep was constructed at New Buckenham, Norfolk, in 1146, for example. Historians have therefore questioned to what extent the design can be seen as legitimately transitional. Instead, historians now believe that the design of Orford Castle was instead probably driven by political symbolism. Architectural historian Sandy Heslop argues that the plain, simple elegance of the architecture would, for mid-12th-century nobility, have summoned up images of King Arthur, who was then widely believed to have had Roman or Greek links. The banded, angular features of the keep resembled the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, then the idealised image of imperial power, and the keep as a whole, including the roof, may have been based on a hall that had been recently built in Constantinople by John II Komnenos.
13th to 19th centuries
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