Corfe Castle โ€” castle ruin
Image by brendan347 from Pixabay

Corfe Castle

  • 2 min read
  • 50.640ยฐ N 2.059ยฐ W

Interesting facts

  • Corfe takes its name from the Old English word ceorfan, meaning a cutting, after the gap in the chalk ridge where the castle stands.
  • It was one of the first castles in England built partly of stone, at a time when nearly all others were raised in earth and timber.
  • In 1244 Henry III ordered Corfe's keep to be whitewashed, just as he had done with the keep of the Tower of London, which became the White Tower.
  • In 1224 Henry III drew 15,000 crossbow bolts from Corfe's stores to supply his siege of Bedford Castle.
  • King John and Henry III kept Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany, a rival claimant to the throne, confined at Corfe until 1222.
  • In 1203 the prisoner Savari de Maulรฉon reputedly escaped from Corfe by getting his jailers drunk and then overpowering them.
  • During the 1643 siege Lady Bankes's garrison, starting with just five defenders and growing to about 80, held off a force of 500 to 600.
  • The castle finally fell because a royalist officer brought back supposed reinforcements who were in fact Parliamentarian soldiers in disguise.
  • After the Restoration the Bankes family chose not to rebuild Corfe and instead built a new house at Kingston Lacy, while villagers reused its stone.
  • Corfe Castle is widely regarded as the inspiration for Kirrin Island and its ruined castle in Enid Blyton's Famous Five books.

Why it is worth it

Corfe Castle occupies a natural stage. The chalk ridge of the Purbeck Hills in Dorset runs unbroken for miles and then, at one point, is cut by a gap; in the middle of that gap rises a steep, isolated mound, and on the mound stand the ruins. From the surrounding hills the view is of shattered towers leaning at improbable angles above the grey stone roofs of the village that shares the castle's name. It is one of the most dramatic ruins in England precisely because it was destroyed on purpose, and the violence of that destruction is still legible in the fallen masonry.

The first castle here was raised by William the Conqueror soon after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Under Henry I a great stone keep was begun around the end of the eleventh century and finished by 1105, built of the local Purbeck limestone. The site already carried a darker story: tradition places the murder of the young king Edward the Martyr here in 978, before the castle existed in its present form. King John favoured Corfe as a stronghold and a prison, and he and Henry III extended it considerably in the thirteenth century, turning it into a royal fortress with layered wards climbing the hill.

Its end came in the Civil War. The castle belonged to Sir John Bankes, and in 1643 his wife, Lady Mary Bankes, held it for the King against a Parliamentarian siege that failed. A second siege ended in February 1646, when one of the defenders, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Pitman, let enemy soldiers in through a sally gate. Parliament then ordered the castle slighted, and sappers used explosives to split its towers and walls โ€” which is why whole sections now lean or lie where they fell. The Bankes family kept the estate for centuries; Ralph Bankes left it to the National Trust in 1982, and after a long conservation programme the keep was opened to visitors again in 2024.

Getting there

The castle stands above Corfe Castle village on the Isle of Purbeck; Poole is about 10 km away and Bournemouth Airport (BOH) about 22 km. The heritage steam trains of the Swanage Railway call at Corfe Castle station, a short walk from the ruins, with a park-and-ride car park at Norden on the same line; the National Trust has its own car park below the castle.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Dorset 6The Most Beautiful Places in England 93The Most Beautiful Places in the United Kingdom 154The Most Beautiful Castle Ruins in the United Kingdom 7The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in England 10The Most Beautiful Castle Ruins 18The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in the United Kingdom 24The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302

From the encyclopaedia

Corfe Castle is a fortification standing above the village of the same name on the Isle of Purbeck peninsula in the English county of Dorset. Built by William the Conqueror, the castle dates to the 11thย century and commands a gap in the Purbeck Hills on the route between Wareham and Swanage. The first phase was one of the earliest castles in England to be built at least partly using stone when the majority were built with earth and timber. Corfe Castle underwent major structural changes in the 12th and 13thย centuries.

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