King John's, or Odiham Castle by David Gerry (from articles in BC News 81, 82, September - December 1978)

Part 1     Over the years since it started service in 1978, the Canal Society's trip boat John Pinkerton has carried many thousands of visitors up the canal to King John's Castle at North Warnborough.     The castle's past is clouded in the mists of time and we have only a sketchy outline of what it was like and what happened there.     It seems that the castle was genuine Norman, and while no details of its building have been found, it was probably constructed in the 12th century of fairly typical Norman layout, with a stout keep on a slight mound surrounded by two moats forming an inner and outer bailey.

The keep is octagonal, which is unusual, if not unique. Today there is no sign of any outer walls, though probably stout timber pallisades stood on both the edge of the inner bailey and between the two moats.     The walls we see today are the rubble core of the original walls which had a skin of dressed stone and flints; just a little bit of the original facing remains inside close to ground level to show what the surfaces were like when built.     Sockets can be seen in the wall where joists once supported the floors.     A chimney can be seen in the wall where a fireplace had been in the first floor. The iron bars by the chimney are modern.

The windows are large and some have still a plaster skin hanging under the arch. Were they ever painted?     In the walls there is a trace of what might have been a stairway, but perhaps it was only a latrine chute....     The large windows suggest to me that the building was not intended to be heavily fortified, but rather that it was perhaps a country house. I doubt if there were battlements on the wall, nor that there was a walkway around the top.     The dips in the ground in the centre of the keep is the site of some schoolboy excavations in the 1950s, according to Stan Knight, who thinks that the boys uncovered the base of a central pillar that probably supported the floor above.

It is known that the roof was of lead, as there are records of it being repaired. It seems probable that the entrance was on the first floor, probably from wooden steps or ramp with perhaps a lift bridge in it for security.     There may well have been a chapel, but if so, it was wooden and stood close to the moat. There were probably several wooden buildings around the central tower. There are some very large stones lying at the edge of the moat and, as yet, their purpose is not clear.     Odiham Castle was the main building in the royal park of Odiham which further back in time saw a Roman villa established near Lodge Farm; indeed the tiles over the chimney place in the castle may well have come from there. It is possible that a settlement existed on the castle site long before the building we see was started. But why build in this rather damp area? The river, of course, provided water and maybe aided the defensive works. In Norman times it seems possible that the main road from London to Portsmouth or Porchester passed close by the castle.     The road probably turned off the Winchester Road, now the A30, just east of Hook, having crossed North Warnborough Common, re-crossed the Whitewater on the ford that still exists in Tunnel Lane near the canal lift bridge     It then crossed the line of the canal and today is a footpath leading across to the Greywell Pumping Station which stands beside, if not on it. The road then continues as a bridleway past the spring heads of the Whitewater to Upton Gray and over the hills to the coast.     In the field beside the towpath and next to the outer moat of the castle there are many strange lumps in the ground and peculiar marks showed up in the turf during the drought of 1976. Could that be where the first village of Odiham was?     The canal is on the right, with the River Whitewater to the left     In the field by the towpath, close to the lift bridge, before it was covered with silt when the canal was being dredged, there was a regular pattern of ditches. The owner of the field, Lt.Col O. Newton-Dunn, had a theory that these were the horse lines for the castle. In other words, this area served the purpose of a car park today. It was thought that there may well have been hitching rails along the ridges between the ditches, perhaps with crude thatched roofs to protect the horses parked for the night and, of course, each morning serfs would have come with baskets and cleared the ditches of manure, probably dumping it not far away on the common.     All this is conjecture, but what about FACTS?   NEXT - From Conjecture to Facts BACK

Last updated May 2002