Durham Castle

Timeline

1. 1072

   Construction begins

   Six years after the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror orders Earl Waltheof of Northumbria to begin work on an early motte-and-bailey castle commanding the River Wear

2. circa 1078

   Norman Chapel built

   The oldest accessible part of the castle, the Norman Chapel, is completed with low columns and roughly carved capitals that still show traces of forced Anglo-Saxon labour

3. 1080

   Bishop Walcher killed

   Bishop Walcher, the first Prince-Bishop to hold the castle, is besieged for four days and killed by Northumbrian rebels, marking the bloody consolidation of Norman authority

4. 1177

   Seizure by Henry II

   King Henry II briefly seizes the castle after a dispute with Bishop Hugh de Puiset, revealing the recurring tension between the Prince-Bishops and the English crown

5. early 14th century

   Great Hall built

   Bishop Antony Bek builds the Great Hall, 14 metres high and over 30 metres long, which becomes one of the largest halls in medieval England and is still in use today

6. 1540s

   Tunstall's Chapel built

   A second chapel is built and named after Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, in a late-Gothic style that is still used today by University College for chapel services

7. 1832

   Bishop's seat moves

   The main residence of the Bishop of Durham is moved to Auckland Castle, ending the castle's role as a bishop's palace and opening the door for its donation to the university

8. 1837

   Donated to University College

   Bishop Edward Maltby completes a major restoration by Anthony Salvin and opens the castle as the residence of University College, Durham, the new university's first college

9. 1840

   Student residence opens

   Full-time use as a student residence begins and the practice continues unbroken to the present day, with more than a hundred students sleeping inside the fortress walls

10. 1939-1945

    Chapel used by RAF

    During the Second World War the Norman Chapel is used as a command and observation post by the Royal Air Force, then reconsecrated shortly after the war and returned to weekly worship

11. 1986

    UNESCO inscription

    Durham Castle is inscribed together with Durham Cathedral as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as a rare physical embodiment of the Prince-Bishop system of government

Detailed History

Construction of Durham Castle began in 1072, just six years after the Norman Conquest of 1066, on the order of William the Conqueror. The work was first supervised by Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, but he rebelled against the king in 1076 and was executed, leaving the unfinished castle to Bishop Walcher. Walcher had also purchased the earldom of Northumbria and became one of the very first Prince-Bishops, holding the right to raise taxes, mint coinage and levy soldiers; in May 1080 he was besieged for four days by Northumbrian rebels and killed. In the 12th century Bishop Hugh de Puiset added Norman arches and the Galilee at the cathedral, and in 1177 King Henry II briefly seized the castle after a dispute with the bishop. In the 14th century Bishop Thomas Hatfield rebuilt the keep and enlarged the motte, and Bishop Antony Bek constructed what was then one of the largest halls in England; Hatfield later added a wooden minstrels' gallery. Bishop Richard Fox, who would go on to serve as Lord Privy Seal to Henry VIII, reduced the hall in the late 15th century, yet it still stands 14 metres high and over 30 metres long. In the 1540s Tunstall's Chapel, named for Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, was built, and Bishops John Cosin and Nathaniel Crewe extended it in the late 17th century. In 1832 the bishop's residence moved to Auckland Castle, and the 1836 Durham (County Palatine) Act stripped the Prince-Bishops of their temporal powers. Bishop William Van Mildert then donated the castle to the new University of Durham, and in 1837 Bishop Edward Maltby completed a major restoration, with architect Anthony Salvin rebuilding the ruinous keep as student accommodation. From 1840 onward the castle has been continuously occupied by University College, Durham, with more than a hundred students living within the fortress walls. In 1986 it was inscribed by UNESCO together with Durham Cathedral as a World Heritage Site, and it remains today one of the very few castles in the world where academic life and public guided tours coexist within the original Norman fabric.

Cultural Significance

Durham Castle is not a stand-alone monument; it forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Durham Castle and Cathedral' (inscribed 1986, criteria ii, iv and vi) together with the cathedral on the opposite side of Palace Green. The decisive reason for inscription is that the castle's lord was not a simple feudal magnate but a semi-autonomous Prince-Bishop wielding taxation, coinage and conscription, embodying the distinctly European medieval fusion of secular and ecclesiastical power in a single physical complex. The Bishop's Court (now a library), almshouses and schools within the precinct make the civic responsibilities of the palatinate visible, while Palace Green itself materialises the ceremonial privileges of the Prince-Bishops as a venue for processions and public assembly. Since 1837 the castle has served as the residence of University College, Durham, the oldest college of the third-oldest English university after Oxford and Cambridge, making it one of the very few World Heritage Sites where ordinary domestic life still goes on inside the protected fabric. The castle and cathedral also recur in popular culture as filming locations associated with the early Harry Potter films and with parts of The Hobbit, and in recent years the joint site has come to anchor cultural tourism for the whole of north-east England.

Architectural Details

Durham Castle is a textbook example of the early motte-and-bailey castle favoured by the Normans, raised on the rocky neck of a meander of the River Wear with a tall conical motte and two concentric baileys, inner and outer. The keep on the motte is octagonal in plan, rebuilt by Bishop Thomas Hatfield in the 14th century and then very extensively reworked by Anthony Salvin in the 19th century as student rooms, so the present exterior is a composite of medieval fabric and Victorian Gothic Revival. The Norman Chapel of about 1078, the oldest accessible part of the castle, has low, roughly hewn sandstone columns, simple cushion-style capitals attributed to forced Anglian labour, and a plain groin-vaulted ceiling without ribs, preserving the architectural language of the immediate post-Conquest decades. Bishop Bek's Great Hall of the early 14th century is a vast timber-roofed space some 14 metres high and over 30 metres long, originally the largest hall in England. Tunstall's Chapel of the 16th century shows slender late-Gothic shafts and surviving sets of misericords that allowed weary clergy to lean during long standing services. The fabric throughout is local sandstone quarried directly from the cliffs below the castle walls and winched up to the building site, a constructional detail unique to the site.