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A Survey of Colchester Castle

Colchester Castle is a most interesting and complicated building, and yet despite extensive and repeated study over many years, it is still far from being properly understood. Big issues still remain unresolved, and no doubt the castle will hold on to some of its secrets for many years to come.

In the 19th century, there was a prolonged and at times acrimonious debate about whether or not the building was Roman. And it is easy to see why people might think that. Not only is the castle largely built of Roman building materials (all robbed from the Roman town), but the coursing of the walls is in places very similar to Roman work. Moreover, being Norman and thus `Romanesque', the building recalls Roman architecture because of its round-headed arches and vaults. However, in the early 20th century, the matter was settled with honour on both sides when it was found that the so-called `vaults' in the basement of the castle were Roman. It turned out that the castle had been built around and over the podium or base of a massive Roman temple which we now know was the Temple of Claudius.

Since then, the main area of controversy has focused on the original height of the castle. This is a more important issue than might appear at first, since really it is about trying to determine what precisely is missing -- this is critical because it impacts on the design of the building, and whether or not the original concept was ever realised. The problem stems from the fact that the castle was partly demolished in the 17th century, and there are no unambiguous drawings or records showing what the castle was like before the demolition started.

Opinion is divided about how much has been removed from the top of the castle. Broadly, there are three different views: that it had another two storeys, one storey, or very little apart from towers and battlements. Each view can be justified, and none can claim proof.

Colchester Castle is very similar to the White Tower in London (the Tower of London), and comparison between the two suggests that there should have been two more storeys at Colchester. Of all the possibilities, this is the most likely. However, a big objection to this idea is to do with the resultant size of the castle. Another two storeys would mean that the castle would have been the largest Norman castle in the land by a large margin, and why would such a big castle be needed in a minor place like Colchester? However, the size of the `footprint' of the building is easy to explain. The decision to build the castle round the podium of the Roman temple dictated the size of the building and meant that the ground plan had to be much bigger than even that of the White Tower of London.

A few years ago, important discoveries were made at the White Tower which have a considerable bearing on the problem of the height of Colchester Castle. There it was found that, in its early form, the uppermost storey of the great Norman keep was not a true storey at all, but had started off as a fake top to the building which merely enclosed and hid from view the original roof. The windows which gave the impression of a storey turn out to have been largely for show, since they were above the level of the base of the original roof. In effect, the roof was set inside the top of the building.

The radical reinterpretation of the White Tower was prompted by the discovery behind some museum cases of triangular shapes resembling the upper parts of gable walls, and it was confirmed by the subsequent discovery of outlets for drains passing through the thickness of the keep wall. The outlets were at the same level as the base of the presumed original roof, and their purpose was to remove rainwater which otherwise would have been trapped inside the keep. They were found in the floor of a passage which is in the thickness of the outer wall and runs around all of the building except for the chapel.

If Colchester Castle had less than two more storeys, then there must have been a major change of plan when the building reached first-floor level. Whatever form any revised design took, the discoveries at the White Tower indicate that the level of the Norman roof would have to correspond to the base of the roof of the castle today. This would mean that the main hall and the chapel were never built, and that the lower hall and the crypt of the chapel would have been used in their place.

A problem with the minimalist reconstruction of Colchester Castle (i.e., no additional storey) is that it does not take into account what appears to be the remains of a window above the present roof level near the north-west corner of the castle. One additional storey seems more likely than none at all, but it is hard to square the remains of the chapel with an arrangement of this kind.

The Trust has been making detailed scaled plans of the castle as part of a project to draw together and publish the various pieces of work which have been undertaken in the building in recent years. This will include the major survey of the outside face of the keep when, between 1984 and 1993, every stone was carefully drawn at a scale of 1:20. It will also include the excavation of the chapel on the roof in 1988.

One objective of the work is to try and resolve the mystery of the original height of the building. Part of the project has involved trying to reconstruct the building in three dimensions with a computer model, and the preparatory work for this has thrown up some problems which were not otherwise apparent. The whole issue of the original height of the castle is a very complicated one and, although several interesting and significant pieces of evidence have emerged during the survey and the 3-D modelling, no convincing case can yet be made for any of the three possible solutions.

The vital clues to solve the mystery may await discovery in the tops of the castle walls where, regardless of how many storeys once existed, there should either be chutes for latrines or outlets for drains. If there had been two more storeys, then there should be the lower parts of chutes belonging to latrines in the missing floor (remember that the upper storey would have been a dummy). If there had been one more storey or even none at all, then there should be channels for the drains which drained the roof as at the White Tower.

With luck, an inspection of the top of the keep wall -- a kind of archaeological dig into the masonry -- could make everything clear. This might mean removing bits of the restoration carried out by Charles Gray. In the 18th century, Gray saved what was left of the castle from further ruin. Although we are not told that this is the case, there is a sense that his restorations were designed to echo what he believed had been removed. For example, his round tower on the south-west corner may be a reference to an earlier round tower in that position, and the square room in the opposite corner with its curious brick pinnacles may similarly echo a square predecessor or even square towers at the corners. One of his other projects was to create a wall walk around the top of the castle on its west and north sides. We need to take a close look at this restoration to see if it is a recreation of the passage in the thickness of the wall like the one referred to above at the White Tower, and to see if any channels for drains can be found in the floor of it.

Acknowledgements

The stone-for-stone drawings of the castle were done by Bob Moyes and Terry Cook of the Colchester Archaeological Trust on behalf of Colchester Borough Museums Service and English Heritage. Stephen Benfield of the Trust prepared the scaled plans of the castle. The current project is being funded by Colchester Museums.

We are especially indebted to the following people: Joseph Crittendon and Philip Taylor of Scout Design for the 3-D models, and June and John Wallace for helping survey the vaults and roof of the castle.

Philip Crummy, December 2000