Sherborne Old Castle

Heritage listing

Details The monument includes an enclosure castle with a central building, incorporating a great tower within a large bailey, an earlier Christian cemetery, and Civil War siegeworks at Sherborne, situated on a natural knoll in the Yeo Valley. The earliest deposits identified at the site include the remains of the Christian cemetery which dates from the ninth century AD. Part excavations have located burials across the hilltop, although many had been disturbed by the structures of the later castle. Some of the graves were found to have distinctive rounded ends. The ditches of a rectangular enclosure have also been identified nearby and this may be later than the cemetery. The function of the enclosure is uncertain. During the early 12th century an enclosure castle was built on the hilltop. The site is now known as `Sherborne Old Castle', distiguishing it from the later residence now known as `Sherborne Castle', 300m to the south. The enclosure castle had at its centre a block of buildings constructed of local stone, using a rubble core with Ham Hill ashlar facing. This was surrounded by a curtain wall and outer ditch, enclosing an octagonal area of 1.4ha. The natural hilltop was extensively levelled for the construction of the castle and to increase the gradient of the outer slopes, thus enhancing its defences. The central building survives as a partly upstanding ruin within the centre of the bailey. The great tower consists of a main block, and a turret on the west side and a southern extension. The central building dates from around 1130, although the surviving remains also include at least three additional phases of construction. The ground floor of the tower is divided by a spine wall, aligned north-south, supporting two barrel vaults linking with added groined vault

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.