Marshwood Castle

Marshwood Castle
Dorset
Type:	Fortified house
Location
Grid reference:	SY40459769
Location:	50°46’33"N, 2°50’45"W
History
Information
Condition:	Ruins

Marshwood Castle was a mediæval fortified house in the Marshwood Vale in western Dorset, of which now only bare ruins remain on Lodge House Farm. The site is now a scheduled ancient monument. The shattered tower within the ruin is also a Grade II* listed building.

What survives is a roughly rectangular enclosure with the upstanding remains of a rampart bank in the north-western angle and along the north side, a mound standing to a height of approximately eight feet and topped with the masonry base of an angle tower in the south-western angle. All is surrounded by a partially buried outer ditch of up to eight feet wide and five feet deep with the banks and ditches of an outer enclosure beyond.

Records show there was once within the enclosure a chapel dedicated to St Mary, known to have been ruined by the 17th century.

History

Marshwood Castle is first documented in 1215 as the Head of the Honour and Barony of Mandeville of Marshwood. It might be a fortress mentioned in the Domesday Book for Wootton Fitzpaine. The notorious De Mandevilles rose to become the Earls of Essex from around the 1140s but their constant rebellions and civil warring did not promote the family, whose name died out in c. 1191.

it is now thought the present earthworks reflect a later ‘water castle’ or fortified house dating perhaps from the 1350s to 1360s.

In 1357, repairs were commissioned for the ‘castle and park’ by Edward III on behalf of his son Lionel of Antwerp.