Introduction

The quest for information on the castles of Suffolk has been a complicated assignment undertaken over many years. There has been considerable disagreement in the past by many eminent historians as to the nature of many places mentioned in this book. Much information discovered in the past has been contradictory and has been based on the flimsiest of evidence. My task therefore has been to sift through the sources available and to try and sort out fact from fiction.

For the purpose of this book I have included all reputed sites of castles in Suffolk. Forty-six are listed in total, although some are Roman sites and cannot truly be called castles. The list is probably incomplete and the exact number may never be known. Many are called castle merely out of habit. Some have little or no documentary evidence to support their existence. Many sites are damaged, overgrown and inaccessible and deserve serious archaeological study. This book will help to heighten awareness of their existence and encourage further research.

There have been many ‘dead ends’ in my research. For example, a book by Robert Reyce of 1618, the earliest travel guide, called a Breviary of Suffolk, ora Plaineaml Familer Description of the County mentions a castle at Glcmsford: ‘The castle at Glemisfford besides the scituation on high shewth yet some traces and ruins.’ But then the trail runs cold, apart from a one-line entry in the parish church guide book. At Glemsford there are no ruins or traces evident and local people answeryour enquiries with an amused shrug of the shoulders.

There are also many people with their own opinion. One person was sure that there used to be a castle in Bury St Edmunds because of Castle Road. (There was a small garrison of soldiers housed by the building called St Andrew’s Castle, a Victorian building which is now St Louis Middle School, but it was certainly never a castle.) The connection with the road was the insignia of the Suffolk Regiment. A number of other roads and pubs in Suffolk also have a regimental connection.

The biggest problem for my research has been the fact that so many writers have simply copied down information from older books and so have com-

Pounded errors, misconceptions and gossip without any reference to the primary evidence, if it exists at all. I will surely also be guilty of this as I am simply a collator of information, but hopefully I will have helped to sort out some of the fact from the fiction. I have acted in good faith and I offer my humble efforts as a starting point for further research. Another confusion is often caused by the fact that families often employed the same Christian name, the Bigods and the de Clares being prime examples.

We all have our own ideas of what a castle was. As a youngster mine was of a palatial Walt-Dis-ncy-like complex with towers, thick battlemented walls, grim dungeons and obligatory torture chamber! The castles of Suffolk were all less glamorous than that, but they embrace a wide variety of styles over a two-thousand-year period. Each has its own fascination and story to tell.