Corfe Castle in the Rain

Thursday 22 February 1996. Thursday was as rainy as Wednesday had been sunny. But never mind, we make the most of it and visit Corfe Castle, somewhere we haven't been before.

Even in the weather the castle is an imposing sight. The earthwork belongs to a castle from centuries before the Norman stone castle. This was the scene, in 978, of a royal murder as Edward, the boy King was stabbed in the back by an assassin in the pay of his step-mother who wanted her own son, Æthelred II (The Unready), to be king. "Unready" in this case has a different meaning to the modern use of the word. Made up of shortened forms of two Anglo Saxon words Æthel - noble - and red (ræd) - advised - the epithet originally meant "ill-advised". However he wasn't called that until around 1180 and as he died in 1016 it may be true but it may not be how his contemporaries thought of him.

Apart from the castle we wanted to find the shop that was the inspiration for one of Miss Franny's Liliput Lane cottages, Purbeck Stores, seen above and below.

She started with a couple of cottages and then it grew into a hamlet, then a village, then a town and at time of writing (2023) we now have a collection resembling Birmingham...

The Bankes Arms in the village commemorates Sir John Bankes, a lawyer and politician in the House of Commons from 1624 as MP for Woolton Bassett and later for Morpeth until 1629 when King Charles I decided to rule without a parliament. He did however become Attorney General and Chief Justice to the King during the Civil War. He bought Corfe Castle in 1635 and was serving in combat in London and Oxford when Corfe became besieged by a Parliamentary force for three years 1643-1645. His wife put up a strong defence and was only defeated by the betrayal of one of her officers opening a sally door to let in the enemy. She became known as Brave Dame Mary and was allowed to retain the keys to her castle which was, however, slighted (knocked down so much as to render it undefendable) following the end of the siege.

The castle dominates the village main street from its impressive mound overlooking the village. There are post holes on the mound, the only remnants of the Saxon hall where King Edward the Martyr may have been murdered in 978 CE. William I the Conqueror ordered the stone castle to be built soon after the Conquest in 1066. It would only be partially built in stone. There would still be a lot of earth and wood employed. Subsequently future Kings added to it, Henry I began building the stone keep. During the Civil War between King Stephen and the Empress Maud, the king laid siege to it in 1139. Kings John and Henry III spent fortunes on building work and the latter ordered the keep of both this and the Tower of London to be whitewashed - which is why the London stronghold is known as The White Tower. It remained in royal hands until Elizabeth I sold it in 1572.

There are at least two other curiosities in the village. In a small square we found the old village water pump hiding within a blue wooden jacket. Unusually after all this time it retains its handle, though we didn't try pumping it - there was enough water falling from the sky...

Corfe Castle also has the smallest town hall in the country, just a short distance from the village pump.

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