Radar used to search for lost Bridport castle
Bridport once had a castle that probably looked like this...
Could it have been here? No one knows.
IT’S HARD to imagine you could lose a castle, but that is what Bridport seems to have managed…
All the best efforts of the Dorset Castles Research Group have been unable to find it again.
It’s true the castle was very old – roughly 935 years old – but even so, you’d expect some trace to survive.
That’s why group researchers used ground-penetrating radar in five parts of Bridport town centre, to seek evidence of where castle ditches may once have been.
They looked in the car park round the back of Waitrose (1), the area around the museum (2), the New Zealand car park behind the Tourist Information Centre and The Woodman (3), the area around The Chantry (4) and – not numbered on the map – the Borough Gardens.
Why those spots and why the red line on the map? The red line indicates the likely boundaries of Bridport just over 1000 years ago. They can be guessed at because it’s known from Anglo-Saxon documents that Bridport needed 760 men to defend it. One man was supposed to be able to defend a width of 1.26 metres, so if 760 men were required, that means the town’s outer defences must have been about 957 metres in total.
Why the chosen spots? Various reasons. To give just one: as Bridport slopes down to the south, it would make sense for a castle to sit on higher northern ground.
Bridport definitely did once have a castle. Records show it surrendered in 1149 or 1150 (to Henry, Duke of Normandy).
It was probably built between 1066 (after William the Conqueror’s victory at the Battle of Hastings) and the Domesday Book survey of 1086. In 1066 there were 120 houses in Bridport, in 1086 there were 100. The supposition is that 20 were flattened to make space for a castle for William’s soldiers to rule over the people of West Dorset.
So where might it have been?
Despite using radar, researchers found no evidence.
South Street, Bridport, 1912. The Museum is on the right. Photograph copyright Bridport Museum.
But the best bet is the Bridport Museum site.
“In the 13th century the site was referred to as the Castle or as Castlehay (meaning ‘the ground where the castle has been’).” So it says in a post-radar booklet produced by the Dorset Castles Research Group called Early Norman Castles Built in the Anglo-Saxon Burhs of Dorset. (The booklet also covers Dorchester, Wareham and Shaftesbury and this article is heavily and gratefully indebted to it. Subsidised by the National Lottery, Early Norman Castles costs £1.20 and it’s a good read.)
As linguistic traces often outlive physical ones, it’s also worth adding that the pub once over the road from the Museum was called The Castle Inn (it stood where Toymaster now is, and before Toymaster, Frost’s).
The booklet’s on sale at Bridport Museum, and it’s fantastically fitting that an intriguing exhibition about the hunt for Early Norman Castles is also being shown there.
Entrance to the Museum is free; for more details about opening hours click here.
One final point: English Heritage is currently considering a full report called Early Norman Castles in Dorset’s Domesday Boroughs – Interim Report on the Topographical and Geophysical Surveys Undertaken. This may be published and offered for sale later this year. For now, the Museum awaits you.
2 Responses to “Radar used to search for lost Bridport castle”
Nice to see your name in print. Dad.
excellent post. Ne’er knew this, thankyou for letting me know.
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