Corfe Castle is a beautiful little village. In its small space, it includes a model of the village itself, as it would have been when the castle was intact, and a most impressive castle ruin. Parking is pretty nigh impossible there, so I hopped on the Swanage Steam Railway, which conveniently stops almost in the heart of the village.
You can see the mound and Corfe Castle from high up on the downs. This view shows how the castle was constructed to guard a natural break in the hills. Indeed, the word 'corfe' is a saxon word meaning 'gap'.
In 978, this gap was the scene of the murder of Saxon King Edward, by his step-mother, Queen Aelfrida, to promote his half-brother Aethelred. He was later canonised as St. Edward the Martyr.
The Castle was a royal castle established by William the Conqueror and partially destroyed in the English Civil War. In between the two, it was obviously considered to be strategically important by several Monarchs. After William I started it, Henry I constructed the great stone keep; King John built a suite of private apartments in the western bailey; Henry III built the southern bailey wall; and Edward I built the gatehouse with its' drum towers. now it's a majestic ruin, still guarding the gap in the Purbeck Hills
In the village surrounding the base of the castle mound, is a small miniature replica of the village, which shows how it must have looked when the castle was first built.
The castle, although little is left of it, still towers above the village, and one of the best views is from the garden of the Bankes Arms Hotel ;) It had considerable use as a prison, and one dungeon was an oubliette (french: oubliet = forgotten) , accessible only through a trapdoor in the floor of the room above.
It is said that King John left 22 French knights to starve to death here.
The castle is extensively ruined. On Cromwell's orders, it was blown up with gunpowder.
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