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06/25/2007: "A Brief History of Nunney Castle"
listening to: FM 90.7 -- Andrews University -- Classical
Introduction
Nunney Castle is a small, French style castle surrounded by a deep moat, built for Sir John Delamare in 1373. A veteran of the Hundred Years War, Sir John would later become Sheriff of Somerset.
During the Civil Wars (1642-51) Cromwell's men used cannon to blast a great hole in the north wall of the castle, forcing the garrison to surrender. The badly damaged wall finally collapsed in 1910.
Due to its small size and ruined interiors there is not a lot to see at the castle, but, surrounded by its moat, it is an attractive feature in a pretty village.
From http://www.castlexplorer.co.uk/england/nunney/nunney.php
This entry should have been titled “That, and Fifty Cents . . .” Although my ancestors lived in an English castle for centuries, it has no bearing on my life today as I live day-to-day. The knowledge that my blood relatives were wealthy landowners, and two quarters, could get me a newspaper off the street.
That being said, it’s still a fun exercise inspired by our Thursday night Bible study. One of our questions centered around how our ancestral families affected our lives today. Of course, I had to mention the whole “castle thing,” and my friends requested some more detail, history, and pictures.
So, what follows is a completely self-indulgent exercise in family history. I have some pictures to share, but a whole lot more. I did my homework on the Web, and used well over twenty different sites to piece together this essay on the rise and fall of Nunney Castle in Somerset County of England.
Structure
Nunney Castle is a rarity amongst British castles. Designed with a strong French influence, probably obtained from its veteran owners exploits during the Hundred-Year War, its nearest likeness can only be found in Ireland. Dominating the Somerset village of Nunney, on the west bank of Nunney Brook , and beside a medieval church, Nunney Castle consists of a rectangular Tower House with large drum towers at each corner. The curtain wall between the southwest and northeast towers is so short (approx. 1 meter) that the towers appear to be virtually joined together. It was built of beautiful ashlar masonry and shows surviving windows with cusped tops and mullions of early Perpendicular style.
The site is very low and, despite the watery defense of the narrow moat, seems a weak one for a castle of the later fourteenth century, when cannon was coming into the warfare picture. For there is rising ground quite comparatively close, from which even Edwardian siege guns could have made havoc with the walls. Moreover, the houses of the village are only a stone's throw from the moat - the castle was actually in the middle of it. The moat is 25 feet wide and 10 feet deep in the centre and originally come right up to the castle walls. Outside the moat on three sides there originally stood a 12 feet high curtain-wall. The fourth side was said to be "defended by the brook"! The castle is yet today is surrounded by the moat, which was restored in the early part of the 20th century.
Originally the curtain walls would have risen to the same height as the towers, at that time capped with conical roofs. A machicolated parapet extended around the perimeter of the wall and towers, as the protruding corbels indicate. The parapet would have stood proud of the wall, supported by the corbels, and in between each corbel there would have been a hole allowing various objects to be thrown down onto any attacking force below. Normally this feature would be reserved for gatehouses, as the cost to machicolate the entire wall area was usually prohibitive.
Accommodation was arranged with a kitchen on the ground floor, where remains of a large fireplace and side oven are still visible, and storage facilities in the base of the towers with a well at one end. The rather dark servants quarters were on the first floor of the tower. The better-lit Great Hall and Lord's Solar occupied the 2nd and 3rd floors respectively. A fireplace was added to the Great Hall in the 16th century. The upper stories of the towers would have provided additional accommodation, and a Chapel, indicated by a large mullioned window, was located at the top of the southwest tower, adjoining the Solar. The altar-slab in the Chapel with its five consecration-crosses still exists. The positions of the windows and other holes for floor-joists clearly show the layout. No indications of partition-walls remain. They were probably timber-framed.
Access to all was by a large newel stair in the northwestern tower. These stairs have been destroyed and there is now no means of access to these upper stories.
A fixed bridge, on the site of the present one, originally came as far as the abutment now visible in the pit under the inner end of the bridge. Without the water defence the main entrance would have been very inadequately protected, as it had no portcullis (grating across the entrance) or even provision for a draw-bar. The only other defence and would have been crossfire from loops in the flanking towers.
Seventeenth century drawings, which chance to have survived, show that the four corner towers were once surmounted with high conical roofs and that there was a rampart walk below them, going round the whole top storey of the castle. The projecting corbels on which it rested are still very visible and seem to hint that the walkway was partly or wholly of timber, standing out from the face of the castle.
As a fortified manor house, the building must have impressed the locals, which was doubtless its real purpose, it being quite useless as a fortress. Its towers do not have battlements and it seems that originally they were topped with conical roofs in typical French (and fairy-tale) style. A Royalist officer came to Nunney in 1644 presumably to consider the defensive potential of the castle and sketched it with its conical roofs. It was not a serious castle though but simply a fortified manor—a folly really. It did not have a commanding position as a castle should have but was set on low terrain compared with nearby ground and therefore cannot be seen except from its immediate surroundings.
History
Sir John de la Mere, a Knight, became tenant-chief of the royal property in Nunney and obtained a license to erect (also known as “license to crenellate”) a fortification at Nunney from King Edward III. A church had already been erected in the best position, so de la Mere chose a low-lying site on which to build the castle, which was very small. He is said to have built it with ransom-money obtained in the great Wars with France.
Such substantial structures as castles can hardly be put up overnight and by the time work was proceeding apace on the castle Sir John had died and been laid to rest (about 1390 AD) in the Chapel of St Katherine in the north transept of the nearby All Saints Church, the chancel of which pre-dates the castle. The castle was only completed in the next century. Some of the stones used were huge like the very large one by the entrance and they plainly took some effort to get into position. They came from a quarry at Doulting near Shepton Mallet. The architect might have been Henry of Wynford who, as chief master of the King’s Works, worked on the royal castle of Windsor in 1372 and before that in 1364 AD on Wells Cathedral, just 15 miles down the road from Nunney. It had its own well, a chapel in one of the towers as well as a chantry house in the grounds and an orchard.
De la mere had served in the French wars and had become rather enamored of the French chateau style and paid more attention to this than the construction of a fortification. And the loops or what is the window slots were suitable only for bows or crossbows. The castle had no outer buildings protecting it.
Little else is known of Nunney Castle's history and it appears to have been largely uneventful. The most notable chapter seems to have been during the English Civil War.
The family were Royalists and Roman Catholic in the Civil War. Two of Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarian regiments besieged the castle on the high ground nearby. The castle garrison consisted of only eight Irishmen with their captain, and some Catholic refugees. Never designed to withstand cannon, the north wall was soon breached above the entrance, and the castle surrendered within two days. A traitor is said to have warned the besiegers that the west curtain was the weakest section of the walls and so it proved to be. The wall betwixt the towers on the north side was quite thin because a stairwell—still visible—had been built into its thickness. Colonel Richard Prater, who held the castle until September 20, 1645, lost it to General Fairfax, the commander of Cromwell's forces in the battle that took place at Nunney.
Colonel Prater, on his surrender, offered to hold the castle for Cromwell. An offer which was refused and the castle was confiscated.
Fairfax, known as Black Tom because of his dark skin, was a Yorkshireman, the 33 year old commander of the Parliamentary army, a stern disciplinarian who routed the Royalists.
Richard Prater's grandson, the son of George Prater, was executed when the Castle fell. His name was also Richard Prater, Esq. He was a Capt. in the Caviliers for King Charles.
After the Civil War, Parliament voted that all strongholds which had resisted them should be "slighted" i.e. partially destroyed and rendered indefensible. It is probable that the floors and partitions were removed at this time. Nunney Castle was rendered uninhabitable, and so it has remained ever since.
The hole resulting from the cannon fire remained until Christmas Day 1910 when the fabric finally succumbed to the elements, causing the bulk of the wall to collapse into the moat. This resulted in the great void that is a prominent feature of Nunney Castle today. It was probably ineffective repairs after 1660, which caused this same front to fall down. The moat was later cleared and is fed today by the small stream that runs through the attractive village.
When the Reverend John Collinson described Nunney in 1791 as “a dry and healthy spot, part hilly and part plain”, he must have had the dampness and unhealthiness of much of the rest of Somerset in mind. Collinson tells us that the castle of Nunney had been dismantled and by his day was “fast going to decay”. He also reported that the moat was choked with weeds and rubbish.
By 1828 it was used only as a pen for hounds and local villagers had used the stone to build their cottages—several of them have unusually grand fireplaces! By 1889 its value had been appreciated and a small charge was made for visitors to inspect the ruins but no effort was made to preserve them.
In 1926 the Castle was put into the care of what is now English Heritage. It was then cleared of its thick growths of ivy and consolidated. To the present day English Heritage have maintained the Castle in its 1927 condition.
Sources for Essay:
http://www.castlexplorer.co.uk -- primary source for pictures for this entry
http://domainhelp.search.com/reference/Nunney
http://enchantedfamily.com
http://home.comcast.net/~jackycat
http://homepage.mac.com/philipdavis
http://homepage.mac.com/sikora/page10
http://www.answers.com/topic/nunney-castle
http://www.askwhy.co.uk/frome
http://www.britannia.com
http://www.brookecountywvgenealogy.org
http://www.castlexplorer.co.uk
http://www.ecastles.co.uk
http://www.genuki.org.uk
http://www.rootsweb.com/~engsom
http://www.somerset.gov.uk
http://www.touruk.co.uk
http://home.comcast.net/~jackycat
http://www.askwhy.co.uk
Summary of Ownership
De La Mere - Family and heirs.
Paulet - Family and heirs.
George Prater purchased it from John Prather Estate.
Richard Prater inherited Nunney Castle from his father George Prater in June of 1564 and lived in Nunney Castle until his death in 1580.
Anthony Prater was trustee of the Estate from 1580 to 1586 (6 years) when his brother Richard died.
When Richard's son George became of age in 1586 Nunney Castle was passed to him.
Richard Prater heirs lived there until 1645 when Col. Richard Prater lost the castle to Fairfax, the commander of Cornwells forces in the battle that took place at Nunney.
Main source for ownership summary: http://www.answers.com/topic/nunney-castle
Other References
http://medieval.etrusia.co.uk - brief comments, some pictures
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Nunney_Castle - brief comments, links
http://www.castlesontheweb.com - three pictures
http://www.ecastles.co.uk/nunney.html - very brief comments, one nice picture
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk - very brief comments, one nice picture
http://www.frometouristinfo.co.uk - features history books on the local area
http://www.greydragon.org - a few pictures
http://www.orgsites.com - pictures of Nunney and other sites related to Prater/Prather history
http://martin.prather.net - lots of pictures of castle and town, and detailed family history
http://www.somerset.gov.uk - English Civil War history as it relates to local area
http://www.suzisunflowers.co.uk - although the website layout is bizarre, there are several pictures of the castle chimney.
http://homepage.mac.com/philipdavis - history of permission to build castles
http://www.flickr.com - plenty of pictures, but I have not reviewed very many of them. View at your own risk.
