DEFENDING Hampshire

From motte and bailey structures to great stone fortresses, Hampshire’s castles are bursting with stories and secrets

- Steve Roberts

PORTCHESTER

This is the place to start your castle tour, for Portchester reflects both the antiquity and evolution that can lie behind fortification, a medieval castle built within the precincts of a Roman fort. Here is perhaps the best-surviving Roman fort in England, one of the famed ‘Saxon Shore Forts’ of the late-3rd century AD, a nine-acre square that lay abandoned until an Augustinian priory was founded in the 1130s, with Henry I adding the stone keep in the opposite corner. The castle was favoured by royalty, with Henry V, Margaret of Anjou (Henry VI’s queen), and Elizabeth I among the visitors. Portchester also served as a prison during the Napoleonic Wars (see page xx). I particularly like the story, possibly apocryphal, of a senior officer’s steed that was stolen and eaten by French internees.

ODIHAM

King’s John’s castle-cum-hunting lodge of Odiham certainly saw action during the First Barons’ War of 1215-17. Having reluctantly sealed Magna Carta in June 1215, John tried to wriggle out of its provisions, hence the civil war as the barons tried to bring him to book. At Odiham a gallant force of a baker’s dozen held out for a fortnight against the French, who’d come over to support the barons, offering an alternative king into the bargain. The castle sits on the Basingstoke Canal – which it predates – at North Warnborough and, while ruined, does possess a rare octagonal keep. John built the castle as a handy stopover when travelling between Windsor and Winchester. By the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, the castle was a ruin.

Winchester and Wolvesey