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![[Picture: Corfe Castle, Dorsetshire]](https://www.fromoldbooks.org/OldEngland/pages/0919-corfe-castle-dorsetshire/0919-corfe-castle-dorsetshire-q72-214x200.jpg "[Picture: Corfe Castle, Dorsetshire]")
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Corfe Castle, Dorsetshire, in Corfe, Dorset, England more
castles, ruins, towers, sheep, views, people, victorian costumes, trees
Here we see an 1840 engraving of the ruins of Corfe Castle. Partsof a collapsed gatehouse (at a guess) are in the foreground, along with a man in a top hat with a walking stick, a woman in a bonnet and dress with bustle, a dog, and perhaps a teenager sitting on the grass; behind them, through the broken gateway, we see a wall, and then a hill with sheep grazing on it, and beyond that rises the remains of the square stone castle keep.
Corfe Castle was build by William the Conqueror in the 11th century, and was one of the first to be built in stone.
Unfortunately, like many other castles, Corfe was ‘slighted’ into ruins in the civil war in 1645.
Our author, Sir Charles Knight, quotes Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy’s Itinerary of King John, to say that the King visited Corfe aftter signing Magna Carta in 1214:
“Previously to the sealing of Magna Charta, namely, from the 1st to the 3rd of June, 1215, the King was at Windsor, from which place he can be traced, by his attestations, to Odiham, and thence to Winchester, where he remained till the 8th. From Winchester he went to Merton; he was again at Odiham on the 9th, whence he returned to Windsor, and continued there till the 15th; on that day he met the barons at Runnemede by appointment, and there sealed the great charter of English liberty. The King then returned to Windsor, and remained there until the 18th of June, from which time until the 23rd he was every day both at Windsor and Runnemede, and did not finally leave Windsor and its vicinity before the 26th of the same month; John then proceeded through Odiham to Winchester, and continued in that city till the end of June.
The first four days of July he passed at Marlborough, from which place he went to Devizes, Bradenstoke, and Caine; reached Cirencester on the 7th, and returned to Marlborough on the following day.
He afterwards went Ludgershall, and through Clarendon into Dorsetshire, as far as Corfe Castle, but returned to Clarendon on the 15th of July, from which place he proceeded, through Newbury and Abingdon, to Woodstock, and thence to Oxford, where he arrived on the 17th of that month; and in a letter dated on the 15th of July, between Newbury and Abingdon, the King mentions the impossibility of his reaching Oxford by the 16th, according to his appointment with the barons.”
(p. 114)
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