Beneath the Surface of Nottingham Castle

A castle has stood on the narrow sandstone ridge above Nottingham since 1068 when William the Conqueror commanded its construction to defend the crossing of the River Trent on the important trade route between London and York and although little now remains of this castle the grounds provide a pleasant escape.

The 17th-century Italian Renaissance ducal palace that now surmounts the hill is an architectural gem and is home to the first, and still one of the finest municipal, museums and art galleries outside of London, with excellent displays on the history of the city and a stunning art collection.

For those wishing to delve deeper into the castle’s bloody and intriguing history, Mortimer’s Hole Tours will quite literally take you beneath the surface of the castle and its extensive grounds.

Quick Tips:

The castle is open from 9am to 5pm every day; however, you should try to avoid visiting during the weekend as admission costs £1.50/80p on Saturdays and Sundays but is free Monday to Friday.

The grounds makes a pleasant picnic spot and so if you are visiting on one of the three days of clement weather we Brits refer to as summer then it is well worth bringing along a couple of pork pies and a bottle of Pimms for your lunch.

For those of you that have the unfortunate affliction of children, then you will find a number of interactive displays in the museum to distract them for a while and if that fails then there is always the Lookout! children’s play area in the grounds.

Best Way To Get Around:

For locals there is an extensive bus network that swarms all over the county and beyond with a maximum fair of £1.20 to get you from the outskirts to the heart of the city or vice-versa.

While those travelling from further afield can alight at the train station and hop on the hand new tram service that will take them to the market square a short walk from the Castle along Maid Marian Way.

Nottingham is also served by Nottingham: East Midlands airport just in case there are any international visitors intent on making Nottingham their base when exploring this green and pleasant land.

Sticking to the medieval layout of the castle’s three baileys, the grounds of this once great medieval fortress lay thick with the history and intrigue that seethes beneath their modern natural beauty.

The heavily restore mid-thirteenth century gatehouse on the corner of Castle and Lenton Roads leads you into the lower bailey. This was converted into a recreational park during the Victorian era and is home to an ornate, listed bandstand, a romantic statue of WWI fighter pilot Albert Ball VC and a medieval bridge as well as some fine lawns and spectacular flower beds.

A steep incline leads to the middle bailey where in the mid-fifteenth century Edward IV built one of England’s finest royal palaces with a sumptuous suite of apartments overlooked by the magnificent four storey "Richard’s Tower" so named as it was here in 1485 that Richard III learned of the death of his son and set off to meet his own fate on Bosworth Field. All that now remains of this once great palace however is the crumbling base of the northeast tower and the middle bailey is now home to a children’s play area.

A final climb brings you to the heart of the castle at the upper bailey, Henry II built the first stone keep here in 1170 and it quickly became the main royal residence in central England. It was a favourite of King John, the villain of the Robin Hood legends, and was besieged by Richard the Lionheart in 1194 when he reclaimed his crown from his errant brother. It was here in 1330 that followers of Edward III captured his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Richard Mortimer who had reputedly murdered his farther and usurped the crown.

By the 16th century the castle had fallen from royal favour and had crumbled to ruin and in 1622 James I sold the castle to the Earl of Rutland who stripped it for building supplies. However it was here in 1642 that Charles I raised the royal standard and signalled the start of the Civil War, he received little support from the people of Nottingham and the castle became an important military base for his opponents. This though did nothing to save it from the orgy of destruction that followed the king’s defeat and in 1651 Oliver Cromwell issued orders for its demolition.

Little now remains of the medieval castle, but the grounds offer a welcome escape from the busy city and are a popular lunch spot for local office workers in the summer.

On the summit of the upper bailey, where once stood a mighty stone keep, now stands a prospect house that when completed in 1679 was considered so impressive that its owner insisted that it be known as Nottingham Castle and so the name of the long gone fortress lives on.

William Cavendish, the First Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne purchased the crumbling remains of the medieval castle in 1663 and cleared the upper bailey to make way for his palatial home. Inspired by the architecture of Renaissance Italy it was, when completed by William’s son Henry, unique in England of that time. The eastern frontage that faced the town was spectacular with a wide central staircase leading up to the entrance to the state rooms, and surmounted by a statue of the duke on horseback Although the staircase has now gone and the equestrian statue has been badly damaged the east face of the building is still an impressive indication of the former grandeur of this building.

The palace was for many years one of the finest private residences in England with opulent state apartments decorated with the finest tapestries, fine art and furniture that money and influence could buy. All this decadence was however to come to an end one cold October night in 1831. While the duke was away in London voting down the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, an angry mob of protestors swarmed up the hill from the town and ransacked the castle, destroying the furnishings, defacing the art works (including the horse-bound statue of the first duke) and left the building ablaze. Upon his return the duke found his former home nothing but a smoking ruin, choosing not to restore it, he instead moved away, leaving the burnt out shell of the palace as a conspicuous memorial to the folly of the people of Nottingham.

In 1875 the palace and its grounds were leased to the Corporation of Nottingham, which set about restoring what was by then an embarrassing eyesore. Local Architect Thomas Chambers Hines renovated the building, restoring the exterior to much as it had been prior to the riots, but transforming the interior into a modern exhibition space with only two floors instead of the original building’s three in order to provide more light and better air circulation. So it was that on the 4th of July 1878 the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) officially opened the building as the first provincial municipal museum in England.

The building may no longer be a magnificent palace or even a state-of-the-art display space but the edifice still contains a great deal of architectural charm and the museum is well worth a visit.

When it opened in 1878 the Nottingham Museum and Art Gallery was the first municipal museum outside of London and brought together for the first time the historical and artistic treasures of an entire county.

At the heart of the museum is "The Story of Nottingham" galleries, which lead you through fifteen hundred years of city history, from the foundation of the Saxon village known, somewhat unfortunately, as Snottingham to the present day city. The exhibits include an entertaining audio-visual presentation on the history of the castle, a fascinating scale model of how the castle would have looked during its heyday, a reconstruction of the interior of a medieval home and a selection of the alabaster religious icons for which the area was once famous.

The story of the city continues in the "Meet You at the Lions" galleries, a misguided community project that recounts life in modern Nottingham. Exhibits include a bronze bust of legendary football manager Brian Clough and the outfits worn to victory by the Olympic gold medal winning figure skaters Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean. Further local interest is added by the Nottinghamshire gallery of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters’ Regimental Museum, a collection of personal artefacts from the local people who have fought in the regiment that was once known as the Robin Hood Rifles and drilled in the castle grounds.

The museum’s permanent art collection includes an astounding variety of pieces of both local and international interest. The Decorative Arts collection includes one of the world’s finest collections of English domestic Georgian silverware and a complete Victorian collection of Wedgwood. The Ceramics collection includes pieces of the brown salt glazed pots for which the area was famous in the 18th century and the Ballantyne collection of late 20th century studio pottery. The extensive Fine Art collection displayed in Thomas Chambers Hines’ magnificent Victorian Long Gallery includes works from local artists including watercolours from Paul Sandby and Richard Parkes, portraits from Sir William Nicholson and Dame Laura Knight, and painting of the area from such famous artists as J.M.W. Turner and Jan Sibrecht.

The museum and art gallery is still one of the finest provincial museums in the county, with something of interest for all ages, and it is really worth a quick visit if you are in the area for a couple of days.

The sandstone ridge upon which the castle is built is riddled with tunnels and chambers that have been hollowed out over the years. For safety reasons, these are only open to group that go with the organised tour.

The tour starts from the main courtyard where you can get a fine view over the and proceeds to the scale model of the castle in the museum as the guide details the development of the settlement and the castle right up to the present day, before finally descending a steep set of stairs. The first of the chambers visited is directly below the palace and has been used in the past as a dungeon and as a slaughterhouse and meat store. This is however just a foretaste of what is to come and then tour quickly emerges from this subterranean world into the rear courtyard where the palace’s coach entrance and stables can be viewed. Next, the tour leads back to the upper bailey along the fabulous eastern façade where the guide pauses to point out some of the interesting details and give a brief history of the palace, its destruction and rebirth.

Finally, you reach the highlight of the tour as the group enters Mortimer’s Hole itself. This 321 foot long service passage was dug as a shortcut for good delivered from the town below. The tunnel takes its name from Roger Mortimer who took up residency in the castle along with his lover Queen Isabella following their French backed invasion of England in 1326 that resulted in the death of Isabella’s husband Edward II and the usurpation of their teenage son Edward III. Each night the security conscious Isabella would supervise the locking of the castle gates and take the only set of keys to her chamber until the morning. This continued until one night in 1330 when a disaffected guard supplied Edward and his followers with a key to the service tunnel, whereupon they crept into the castle, dragged Mortimer off to be executed and reclaimed the crown.

It is not known whether this is the actual tunnel that they used but it has some interesting features of its own, including a chamber that was originally used as a pigeon loft where the roosting niches are still visible. During the civil war, the roof of the chamber was removed, two cannons were installed and the niches were used for storing cannon balls. The tour emerges in Brewhouse Yard at the foot of the ridge from where it is a short walk passed the famous Robin Hood statue to the gatehouse where the tour ends in a small room used by the current Sheriff of Nottingham for ceremonial purposes.

The tour provides a wonderful overview of the history of the castle and a chance to see some of the areas not normally open to the public, but the narrow passageways and steep steps that can be quite slippery may not be to everyone’s tastes.