Faringdon Castle was a Norman castle standing just outside the market town of Faringdon in the English county of Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), some 17 km to the north-east of Swindon (grid reference SU297957).
This castle was built on the site of an Iron Age hillfort known as Faringdon Clump by Robert, Earl of Gloucester in 1144 in support of Matilda in the Anarchy. The Gesta Stephani, a contemporary chronicle, recorded the founding of the castle and the earl's activities, noting that it was "strongly fortified by a rampart and stockade, and putting in it a garrison that was the flower of his whole army he valorously restrained the wonted attacks from the king's soldiers, who had been coming out of Oxford and other castles round about to harass his own side". A few weeks after Faringdon Castle was built it was besieged by Stephen and after four days the castellan, Brian De Soulis, surrendered. The castle was destroyed within a year or two.
In the 1930s a 104ft brick tower known as Faringdon Folly was built on the site by Lord Berners.
The story of the castle and of Brian de Soulis figures in the last of the Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters, Brother Cadfael's Penance.
Famous quotes containing the word castle:
“If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)