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

Part 2: From Conjecture to Facts     We know that King John came to Odiham some time between 3 and 7 June 1215 on his way from Windsor to Winchester and that he was back in Odiham on 9 June and then back to Windsor and Runnymede where, after 2 or 3 days negotiation, he signed the Magna Carta. In 1216 the castle was besieged by the Dauphin of France, who got clearance from the attack, as King John had been excommunicated for appointing his own Archbishop of Canterbury. The siege lasted 15 days and then the defenders gave in on condition that they could go free. The French were surprised to find that the garrison consisted only of 13 men all told. From 1346 to 1357, King David of Scotland was kept prisoner here until a ransom and hostages were handed over. The Countess of Leicester made her home in the castle in 1265 and records in the British Museum give much detail of life in the castle at that time, listing purchases of food and wine and the fact that she fed 800 paupers with bread, cider and threequarters of an ox. At about the same time a stud was maintained to breed horses for the Crown. It is possible that by the time Good Queen Bess was on the throne, the castle was getting rather neglected. A large new house had been built in Odiham, sometimes called 'Odihal Palace' and probably the peasants living near the castle moved away to higher, drier ground and nearer to their work at the big house in the expanding new town of Odiham.     A fine engraving of the castle in 1772 shows it to be in a similar state to that in which we see it today, but without any pine trees growing so close to it, and another engraving from the middle 1800s does show the pine trees.     Canal near the castle In the late 1780s, John Pinkerton was probably walking in the area, supervising the navvies working on the new canal. Possibly he could have been discussing with William Jessop, the consulting engineer, the problems posed by the castle moat.     Maybe whether to build a culvert under the canal to connect the severed section of the moat, and agreeing with the landowner, Sir Henry St. John Mildmay, lord of the manor, that they could divert the river Whitewater into the outer moat and so save some digging when the aqueduct was built. River Whitewater     The Mildmay estates were broken up just after the 1914/18 war, and Odiham Castle passed to Lord Dorchester of Greywell who, in 1963, gave it to the people of Odiham.

An attractive sketch of the castle appeared in the Peterborough column of the Daily Telegraph at the time.     Now the castle is in the ownership of Hampshire County Council, which has carried out a lot of protection works into the walls in recent years.     The castle is managed by the Countryside Service and staff keep it generally tidy. Occasionally, when more work is to be done, Countryside Rangers from Yateley and Basing House come in to help. [pictures: Arthur Dungate]     Further information     In the latter half of 1981, Peter Fethney, at that time the canal Society's Archivist, published the following in reply to recently published newspaper reports on the archaeological dig carried out at Odiham Castle by the Hampshire County Museum Service - Odiham was a royal manor in 1086 and there is evidence of a royal residence there during the reign of Henry I (1100-1135), and probably through to the time of John himself (1199-1216). This, of course, includes the reign of Heinry II (1154-1189), the notorious dismantler of private fortresses, who felt that castle ownership should remain the prerogative of the crown, and it is not inconceivable that an earlier structure existed before the advent of King John. However, there is absolutely no doubt that John built his "new" castle on the present site. The Chart Rolls refer to the purchase of 20 acres of land and certain property from Robert the Parker, his tenant, while a thirteenth-century chronicler describes the structure, soon after it was built, as -

"A castle... set in fair meadows and close to the woods which the King had caused to be built for his sport (pour lui deporter)". Roger of Wendover also tells us with enthusiasm how it was besieged by the Dauphin of France in July 1216 and held for the King by a small garrison. The castle was, in fact, a residence, conveniently sited between Winchester and Windsor, which a pleasure-loving monarch could visit in transit, and John may well have been influenced as much by the good hunting in Odiham as by military necessity. Levelling and ditching of this site, together with the erection of buildings was in hand in 1207 under the direction of Jqhn Fitz Hugh, though whether the keep had been completed at that time cannot be determined with certainty. The architectural historian, John Hawey, estimates that this type of structure would have taken 4 or 5 years to build and it was certainly undergoing repairs in 1213-1214. It was not unknown for such a building to have had more than one false start, especially on marshy ground, and the recently discovered sump and underlying structure may, in fact, have served to stabilise the foundation. During the reign of the Angevin kings, the rectangular keep, with its blind and vulnerable corners, was giving way to the polygonal type whose inspiration came from abroad. Orford (1166-1172), Chilham (1173-1177), (and an octagon like Odiham), and Conisbrough (c. 1190, a hexagon) are typical of the traditional keep which, as early as 1200, was already in process of being supplanted by the perfected circular structure. Conisbrough, which I know well, reveals, with its corner buttresses, a glimpse of what Odiham must have been like in its heyday. Had the Odiham keep been rebuilt later in the 13th century, or even as suggested, in the 14th century, there is no doubt that it would have been made either cylindrical or entirely different. All our documentary evidence (the Pipe Rolls and other sources), refers to modification, maintenance and embellishment of King John’s Castle, never to the re-building of the original structure. Its hall and chapel are gone; its kitchen, situated over the moat, long vanished; a vestige alone remains of its hooded fireplace; but I submit that, in all its dereliction, what remains is what King John spent his £1,000 upon.     [from: BC News 99, October 1981]   BACK

Last updated May 2002