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CAMBRIDGE CASTLE

History of the Cambridge Castle & the Castle Inn pub

CAMBRIDGE CASTLE

CAMBRIDGE CASTLEHistory of the Cambridge Castle & the Castle Inn pub

Lukas Littva

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© Lukas Littva, 2012

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

The moral right of Lukas Littva has been asserted

First published in Great Britain, 2012, published by Lukas Littva

ISBN 000000000000000Designed by Lukas Littva

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Table of Contents

Cambridge Castle

Cambridge county gaol

Castle Inn history

Castle Inn today

Brief history of beer making

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CAMBRIDGE CASTLEHistory of the Cambridge Castle

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Cambridge Castle, History of the Cambridge castle & the Castle Inn pub

Cambridge castle

The Norman castle, erected in 1068, was of the motte and bailey type. It covered some 5 acres; 27 houses were destroyed to clear the bailey, and the motte, which rises to some 80 ft. above the river, was an artificial mound within which Anglo-Saxon gravestones have been found. It is probable that the earliest structure was of wood, but presumably a stone erection replaced it before the time in the 12th century when the pipe rolls record expenditure on works there. This expenditure amounted to £43 in 1156–77, £23 under Richard I, and £60 under John. The strategic importance of the castle diminished after 1215; in the records of Henry III’s reign it is mentioned almost entirely in connexion with royal government and justice. It played no part in the campaigns of the Barons’ Wars, nor was it, apparently, in a condition to be used for a royal residence. Neither Henry III in 1258 and 1267 nor the justices who held the inquiries into rebels’ lands in 1268–70 stayed there.

Edward I, however, determined to make it an efficient stronghold. The Exchequer records tell the detailed story of the way in which an up-to-date building was constructed between 1286 and 1296.This castle had a curtain wall, and a moat, fed by water from a spring in the north-west corner of the bailey; a great hall; a gatehouse with a barbican; and five towers, including the great tower on the mound.

The particulars of the materials, the transport, the provenance of the labourers and their rates of pay, are of much interest.

Building went on steadily in 1286–9 and was then suspended; on 4 October 1291 Edward ordered an immediate resumption of work. In 1293 he spent two nights in the castle, presumably to inspect the works; the first and last king to stay there.

From the military point of view, the subsequent history of the castle hardly seems to justify the £2,525 that Edward spent on it. The camera armigerorum cannot have been in constant use, though the castle guard money was regularly exacted.

Architecturally, the gatehouse, the only portion surviving by 1606, and known to us through Cotman’s fine drawings, testifies to the quality of Edward’s work; to the Cambridge folk of the 17th and 18th centuries it was ‘the castle’, and a French visitor in 1672 described it as dominating the town. But in fact its survival was due to its use as a prison.

Orders concerning repairs and upkeep continue through the following centuries. An inquest into the defective state of the walls and towers and houses was held in 1367, and two tons of stone were purchased to mend the castle walls in 1523.

Eighty years earlier the practice of using the castle as a quarry had been initiated by Henry VI, who authorized the taking of stone from the great hall for the building of King’s College. Later grants were made for the building of Sawston Hall, of Emmanuel College and of Magdalene College.

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Cambridge Castle

Unlicensed plunder was responsible for other losses. Humble folk were in the habit of ‘digging down’ the bank to the south and west and building their cottages on the slopes or even in the moat, and in the early 17th century lawsuits disputing the ownership of such holdings and the herbage rights over the waste slopes to the south produced depositions giving a number of topographical details. Not only squatters’ rights, but the rights of the lord of Chesterton manor, within whose bounds the castle lay, were questioned by the Crown.

The castle site had come to be little more than a neglected area occupied by a few local government buildings when in 1643 it once more acquired military significance. Fifteen houses were cleared away, and the earthworks to the north and west were remodelled according to the latest military science.

Brick barracks were built on the site of Edward’s great hall. According to Bowtell, who surveyed the works in 1785, ‘three strong, though irregular bastions’ were added on the verge of the Norman ditch, measuring 17½ ft. in height and 70 in breadth at the base, made of gault and firm white clay.

But in 1647, by vote of both Houses, the works were ‘slighted’ and in course of time the Cromwellian barracks became in part a Bridewell for petty offenders, in part the gaoler’s house, until the new gaol was built in 1862.

Since 1647 the site has served purely civilian purposes. From the days before the Conquest when the shire moots were held on the Maiden Borough, the old name for the Roman Camp, the county courts assembled there and the county elections, and indeed for many years the Borough elections, were held there. It is called the Shire Hill in 1626.

Soame Jenyns declared at the time of the election of 1780 that ‘he only escaped by accident from being trampled to death in the castle yard by a mob of all the sectaries in the county’. In 1797 Pitt wrote to the Duchess of Rutland urging her to see that ‘our friends’ turn up in force at the meeting in the Castle Yard, to oppose any proposals put forward by the Yorke interest.

It was presumably the building of the County Gaol in 1807 that led to the county elections.

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View of the Castle street, date: unknownSource: Cambridge and County folk museum

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Cambridge Castle

Cambridge castle mound.

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Cambridge County Gaol Site Plan

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Cambridge Gaol

Cambridge County Gaol

As the Eyre rolls report, there were often escapes into sanctuary at All Saints by the Castle, St. Giles, or Chesterton Church. It would seem that in the Edwardian castle the tower to the east of the mound contained the prison, under the Constables’ Chamber.

In the 14th century the castle gaol received not only county prisoners but also those committed by the Vice-Chancellor, though the Borough protested that this was against their liberties. The grant of the castle ‘saving the gaol’ to the Earl of Cambridge in 1340–1 indicated its dual character; it is expressly stated that the sheriff is to have free access to the gaol at the gate of the castle.

Thenceforth the gatehouse was to be the castle gaol until the end of the 18th century.

By the 16th century the office of gaoler was clearly distinct from that of sheriff and several indentures of appointment are extant. The upper floor of the gatehouse came to be reserved for superior prisoners, notably debtors; criminals were housed below.

In the 17th century both Roman Catholics associated with the Gunpowder Plot and Protestant dissenters were imprisoned there. One of the more notable dissenters was Francis Holcroft, ex-fellow of Clare and nonconformist preacher, detained there 1663–72, who had a gentleman’s agreement with the gaoler whereby he was let out after dark on Saturday nights, on the understanding that he was back before daylight on Monday, so that he could minister to his pastor-less coreligionists in the county.

Buck’s print of 1730 shows the gatehouse in good repair with the gables of the gaoler’s house visible above the battlements.

In 1759 the Cambridge Chronicle relates how the criminals in the lower gaol filed off their irons, broke fourteen locks and a massive bar across the door, and had almost escaped when the debtors in the upper prison heard them and gave the alarm.

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In January 1776 Ewin visited the gaol on behalf of Lord Hardwicke, who had heard reports that it was very cold and had sent in some coals. There were then nine debtors and four felons in the gaol itself and one inmate of the House of Correction or Bridewell. Three of the debtors were breakfasting with the gaoler’s family (next door to the Bridewell), and the other six had a warm room with a good fire, whilst some of the felons had been admitted to the House of Correction so as to be warmed by the gaoler’s fire.

Howard visited the gaol and the Bridewell soon after, and reported well of them, on the whole, but observed that there was no chaplain. On his second visit in 1782 he especially commended the keeper of the Bridewell as attentive and humane. There were then fifteen debtors and three felons in the Gatehouse.

Nield’s account in 1802 describes the ‘Low Gaol’ as containing four strong rooms and the ‘High Gaol’ as containing a kitchen and other offices and above them six rooms for the debtors.

The Castle Yard was spacious but not available for exercise because it was not secure. Though there was a chaplain, the prisoners complained they had had no divine service for four months.

He noted that a new gaol was building, ‘upon a plan similar to that at Bury St. Edmunds and by the same ingenious architect’. The design was octagonal, surrounded by a lofty wall, based on the latest Benthamite theories.

It was completed by 1807. The last remains of the Edwardian curtain walls were demolished along with the Bridewell, by order of the justices of the peace, and the gatehouse became the picturesque ruin drawn by Cotman in 1818.

The new County Gaol by the end of the 19th century was standing idle, as Huntingdon Gaol was now adequate for the criminals of both counties. In 1919 arrangements were made to fit it up as a branch repository of the Public Record Office, and records began to arrive there in the following year.

In 1928 the site was acquired for the use of the county council, the records were sent away in 1929 and 1930, and the stones from the castle were used in the building of Emmanuel and Magdalene Colleges, Great St. Mary’s church, the present County Hall and numerous private houses.

The surrounding grounds have been laid out as a small park. All that now remains visible is the great mound, the Norman motte.

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Cambridge County Gaol Enterance DetailSource: Cambridge and County folk museum

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Cambridge County Gaol

Cambridge County Gaol The Lodge DetailSource: Cambridge and County folk museum

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CASTLE INNHistory and The Castle Inn today

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In the 21st year of George II’s reign, so the deeds say, Joseph Orgum, a common brewer, purchased the lease on these premises, then known as The Horseshoe. This was in 1748, six years after the original 500year lease was started and three years after John Day, a brickmaster, became the first licensee.

In 1761 the name was changed to The Castle. (the castle wall remains are still behind the pub.)

The lease has been sold many times since, and at one time, along with 50 other pubs, it belonged to Richard Foster who owned Thompson’s Lane Brewery in Cambridge, all sold in 1859 when The Castle included two parlours, a tap room, bar cellar, kitchen, five bedrooms, a large yard, garden, stables and piggeries.

At the time of the old photograph that goes with this description, the pub was owned by Hawkes & Company, Brewers of Bishop Strotford, Hertfordshiore. This was in 1879 when the licensee, standing outside, was James Gazzard aged 75. Among his lodgers on the night of the 1881 census were two italian marble merchants staying at The Castle inn.

Next door to the north was the County Jail with 175 prisoners

and to the south was the King’s Head Brewery, then owned by J.A. Wooten.

The photograph, which shows The Castle Inn recently redecorated in the Hawkes & Co.mpany style with the new mitre trade mark, was taken by Simpson Bros. of Benson Street, Cambridge and was one of the series commisioned by Hawkes & Co. Another was The Mitre in Bridge street, possibly the original home of the Hawkes Club.

In 1898 Hawkes & Co. with its brewery and 200 pubs were purchased by Benskins, the Watford brewers. The old Hawkes brewery in Bishops Strotford was shut in 1916. Ind Coope bought Benskins in 1957 and in turn shut the Watford brewery in 1972.

This short history was commisioned by Nacer Relizani, the landlord, who in 1989 renovated the patio at the back of The Castle Inn.

In 1994 The Castle was acquired by Adnams Brewery of Southwold, Suffolk. A major programme of renovation and refurbishment was put in hand to restore the character of this historic pub.

Castle Inn

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The Castle Inn today

The Castle Inn nowadays is owned by the Adnams company. It has big garden at the back, seating area upstairs and bar and seating area downstairs. In 1994 it was renovated by the Adnams company.

Pub is very popular locally because it offers nine cask ales and a good selection of imported lagers, ciders and porter.

Underneath the pub is a very old cellar which is kept in a cold temperature.

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The brewing of beer is a universal ancient art. Barley, the main raw material in brewing, was in existence as far back as 3000 BC. The early Neolithic people grew wheat and barley in their fertile valleys. Hieroglyphics show that even in early Dynastic Egypt an ancient beverage was derived from barley.

The art of brewing has remained much the same since the invasion of England some 2000 years ago. In the middle ages the most common drink of the day was ale. Breakfast, of a chine of beef and a loaf of bread, would have been accompanied by gallon of ale. Until 1400 the ingredients of ale consisted of malted barley, water and yeast. The ale was cloudy, full of protein and carbohydrate, making it a good source of nutrition for peasant and noble man. It is thought that in the fifteenth century a new version of ale was introduced to England by merchants from Flanders and Holland, with the introduction of hops. Hops added a measure of bitterness and were thought to help preserve the ale.

The hopped variety was called beer and the unhopped, ale. By the eighteenth century all beers were hopped.

The brewing process is divided into six stages; grinding, mashing, boiling, cooling, fermenting and racking. The malt is cleaned and crushed, the ground malt called “grist”, is mixed with hot water in a vessel called a “mash tun”, then this is allowed to stand, the process is called mashing. Subsequently the resulting liquid, now called “wort” is run into coppers where it is boiled with hops. The hopped wort is then cooled and dropped into fermenting vessels, and mixed with yeast, this process lasts about five or six days. At the end of fermentation the product now called beer is run into casks, this is known as racking.

Interest in beer is heightened by knowledge. We are fortunate in this country to be awash with a remarkable choice of beers; bitters, stouts, milds, porters, and winter warmers. The variety of malt and the blend of hops give each beer its own character with a myriad of flavours. These may be enhanced by the addition of citrus fruits, coriander, nuts and other natural ingredients.

Brief history of beer making

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