Tattershall Castle, East Midlands

The tower is all that remains of this late 15th Century castle.  It would have once been in the middle of a complex of outbuildings, defensive walls and bridges spanning its moat.  The first noticeable feature of Tattershall is that it is built of brick, a new material in Britain, which came into fashion at the end of the 15th century.  

There had been an earlier stone castle on the site from the early 13th century, but in the 15th century Tattershall Castle passed to Ralph, the 3rd Baron Cromwell, who was Lord Treasurer to Henry VI, a title that would be Chancellor today.  He enlarged the castle and built the great tower. 

The builder of Tattershall, Ralph Cromwell, while still in his teens, entered the service of the Duke of Clarence, second son of Henry IV. In 1415 he fought at Agincourt under Henry V, who then promoted him to command various garrisons in France, until in 1420 he was appointed negotiator at the Treaty of Troyes.  He was also present at the trial and burning of Joan of Arc in Rouen. He succeeded as the 3rd Lord Cromwell in 1417. Upon the death of Henry V he was appointed to the council of the infant King Henry VI. 

The tower at Tattershall is 33.5 meters tall and six stories, it is a masterpiece of medieval brickwork.  It differs from early castle keeps in that it was built primarily for status and comfort, as opposed to defense. 

When work began on the tower in the 1430’s, brick was still a relatively novel building material.  It was introduced and encouraged by migrant workers from the brick-building areas of Flanders and northern Germany, who settled around Hull in the 14th Century.   We do have a building account for Tattershall that states that in 1434-5 ‘Baldwin Doucheman (Dutchman) supervised the firing of 500,000 large tiles (bricks) for the Great Tower’, which were produced nine miles to the north in Edlington Moor and 12 miles south in Boston. 

The design of the tower is simple with one main room on each level, the more important rooms being higher in the building.  The vaulted corner turrets contained the spiral staircase or the garderobe. The garderobes (toilets) were located in the north-east and south-east corners.  The shaft jointed at each floor and emptied into sumps at the bottom, with outlets to the moat.  The shaft was also open at the top for ventilation. 

Outside the second floor Audience Chamber there is another new invention at Tattershall - the corridor or hallway.  Previously, medieval buildings led from one room to another, without the use of an interior hallway, the closest early hallways being the covered passage, which was external to the building.  While this example was built as an impressive passage to the audience chamber, it is still also an early interior corridor. 

The crenellated chimneypiece contains Cromwell’s coat of arms in the center, flanked by panels containing either the Treasurer’s purse to represent his position, or the coats of arms of Cromwell and the families into which they married. 

By the early 20th Century, Tattershall was a ruin and falling into decay.  It was saved by Lord Curzon, who rescued it and restored the buildings. Upon his death in 1925, he left it to the National Trust who still look after it today.

Lord Curzon gives us his own words when he explains: “ The attention of the public, having been called to the sale of the Castle and to the abstraction of the mantelpieces, which were carried off by the dealers to London, and an abortive attempt to save both having been made by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest, I was led in the past autumn to look into the question by my interest in archaeological matters, and my strong feeling against the destruction or spoliation of one of the foremost and most splendid of our national monuments.“

In another letter he writes: “When I got back to town on Friday I found that negotiations were proceeding for the acquisition of the castle for purposes of vandalism if not of demolition.  I therefore cut the Gordian knot by buying it myself.  I tell you this in the strictest confidence, because I do not want it to be known that I am the purchaser….One of my reasons for preserving secrecy is that I may want to purchase some of the adjoining land; another is that I have not abandoned all hope about the fireplaces.  

Lord Curzon made every attempt to protect the castle and even went to the extreme of having the ports watched so that he could track down the fireplaces, which he did, and purchased them back for £5,155.00 - a large sum today but a fortune in 1912.  It is to the unsung heroes of history that we owe the survival and restoration of many of the world’s architectural treasures and I’m happy to shine a light on the works of this man.