Gloucester Castles

Description

Castle documented in Domesday, where it is recorded that 16 houses were demolished to make room for it. The removal of a further 8 houses before 1100 probably marks the building of the castellum. It became a Royal Castle in 1155 and records of its maintenance occur regularly until the reign of Edward IV. Parts were used as a gaol until 1791 when it was demolished to make way for a new prison. (PastScape)
(SO 82751855) The keep or great tower of Gloucester Castle must have been erected by Domesday, where it is recorded that 16 houses were demolished to make room for it. The removal of a further 8 houses before 1100 probably marks the building of the castellum (Fullbrook Leggatt 1952).
It became a Royal Castle in 1155 and records of its maintenance occur regularly until the reign of Edward IV. After that the castle appears to have been neglected and no vestige of it now remains (HKW).
(SO 82791856) A square building shown on Hall and Pinnell's Map of 1780 probably represents a surviving part of the castle, possibly the keep, which was used as a gaol until 1791 when it was demolished to make way for a new prison (Lobel).
The original timber and earthwork castle lay slightly to the east of the later castle, between modern Barbican Road and Ladybellegate Street. The later castle can be reconstructed from documentary evidence and consisted of a great keep, a stout polygonal curtain wall and entrance gateway on the East side (Heighway 1985).
In 1990, three trenches were excavated on the site of the Magistrates Court, and locate the northern ditch of the Norman motte. A geophysical survey showed the motte ditch to be 50m in internal diameter. The bailey, to the east of the motte, was rectangular, being 111m x 90m, and closely followed the line of the Roman insulae. The ditches were about 6-8m wide (Aktin 1991). (PastScape)

May have been the site of an earlier Saxon stronghold (Baker and Holt 2004)

Comments

Gloucester is sometimes, with justification, considered as having two castles. The first, built soon after the Conquest was a timber and earthwork castle, built in the SW corner of the Roman walled town, using the surviving Roman wall, probably originally just as simple ditched enclosure but with a motte soon constructed over the Roman wall. The second, a stone castle, was built outside the Roman town wall, (This new castle is dated from early C12 by the VCH but otherwise dated from early C13), on an adjacent site west of the old castle. The old castle site was kept within the outer defences of the new castle but it seems most unlikely that any of the timber building remained in use. (comments 2015)
Recent investigations (late 2015) found 'remains of a Norman castle similar to the Tower of London' (although elsewhere described as like Canterbury castle - there don't seem to be any evidence for an apse so not like the White Tower) under the prison yard, in the 'new' castle site. This building is estimated to have been 30m by 20m with wals about 4m thick. If the estimated date of 1120 is correct then the VCH is correct and the second castle (arguably, more accurately described as a castle extension) was constructed within a generation of the first.