Ludgershall Castle and Cross (Wiltshire)
The ruins and earthworks of a royal castle dating mainly from the 12th and 13th centuries. Free admission.
Introduction
The ruins and earthworks of a royal castle dating mainly from the 12th and 13th centuries, frequently used as a hunting lodge. The remains of the medieval cross stand in the centre of the village. This site is maintained by English Heritage.
Open seven days a week, All year round.
History to the present day
A recent imaginative and perceptive study of the castle in the context of its landscape has suggested that the castle’s southern enclosure was formed out of the surviving earthworks of an iron age hillfort.
During the twelfth century, it played an active part in the turbulent civil wars, and an 1141 the Empress Maud was holed up in it after her defeat at Winchester, and only escaped to Devizes by impersonating a corpse on a bier. If the hillfort theory is correct, the earthworks were refortified and a second enclosure was added to its northern side, thus making a kind of double ringwork figured like an eight. The principal castle buildings, from the twelfth century onwards, were created in the northern ring, away from the settlement but overlooking the northern park.
Extensive earthworks remain from the 12th century castle along with one of the wall towers. It was used for a time as a royal hunting lodge, but fell into decay after the 15th century.
Archaeological excavations conducted each summer between 1964 and 1972, clarified the dates and sequence of building work, which correspond neatly with documentary evidence. Disagreements remain, however, over how the buildings relate to earlier and subsequent features in the wider landscape. Timber buildings may have been present on the site before the first recorded royal visit in 1103, although no archaeological evidence for them was found.
