Somerton Castle: Seven Centuries of Power, Captivity, and Silence on the Lincolnshire Edge

Stand on the quiet lane that cuts through Boothby Graffoe, a few miles south of Lincoln, and you might not immediately realise you are passing through the bones of a medieval fortress. The moat is still there — a wide, grassy depression tracing the outline of walls that once held a king. Two drum towers still rise above the farmhouse that grew around them, their limestone flanks weathered to the colour of old bread. Rooks wheel overhead. The Lincolnshire Edge stretches out flat and enormous in every direction. Somerton Castle does not announce itself. It simply endures.

A Bishop's Ambition in Stone

The story begins in 1281, when Antony Bek — a well-connected cleric who would be consecrated Bishop of Durham two years later — received a royal licence to crenellate his manor at Somerton. Bek had inherited the estate from his mother, Eva de Gray, and he intended to transform it into something far grander than a country house. What rose from the Lincolnshire limestone was a quadrangular castle in the most fashionable military style of the age: four circular corner towers linked by curtain walls, enclosing a rectangular inner ward, the whole surrounded by a moat. It echoed the great Edwardian fortresses then being raised across Wales, a conscious statement that Bek moved in the same circles as the king himself.

And indeed he did. In 1309, Bek gave the castle outright to King Edward II, and Somerton entered the turbulent orbit of the English Crown.

Crown, Captivity, and a French King

Under royal ownership, Somerton's fortunes rose and fell with the monarchy itself. When Edward III came to the throne in 1330, the castle was already deteriorating — lead had been stripped from the towers, the chapel roof leaked. The king appointed the military engineer John Crabbe as constable and visited Somerton personally in the autumn of 1334 to authorise repairs. Over two years, some £222 was spent rebuilding the outer drawbridge and restoring the moat.

The castle also witnessed darker episodes. In the winter of 1335–1336, Countess Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, was abducted from Bolingbroke Castle and brought to Somerton by Baron Hugh de Fresne. They later married — but without royal consent, and Edward III ordered the pair held captive in separate towers within the very walls where the crime had taken place.

Somerton's most famous chapter, however, belongs to a foreign monarch. In 1356, the English defeated the French at the Battle of Poitiers, capturing King John II of France. After years of negotiation, John was moved to Somerton in 1359, where he remained for some six months under the watchful eye of Sir Saier de Rochford, who received two shillings a day for the king's safekeeping. By all accounts, it was a gilded cage — John was permitted a full retinue and kept in considerable comfort. An outer earthwork may have been raised during this period, less to keep the king in than to remind everyone of the gravity of what Somerton held.

Decline, Reinvention, and What Remains

After the Hundred Years' War, Somerton entered a long twilight. By 1393 it needed £100 in repairs. In 1408, Henry VI granted the castle to Sir Ralph Rochford, who spent over £112 restoring it, but the effort could not arrest the larger decline. The Dukes of Clarence held it from 1415 until the execution of George Plantagenet in 1478, after which it passed to the Duchy of Lancaster under Henry VII. By the time a surveyor inspected it in 1601, he found it "utterly defaced and fallen almost downe to the ground."

The castle was sold by Charles I in 1628, passing through the Hussey, Pochin, and Cholmeley families before Isaac Marfleet of Bassingham purchased it in 1812. Somewhere along the way — probably in the Elizabethan period — a farmhouse was grafted onto the surviving south-east tower, and the castle became what it still is today: a working farm wrapped around the remnants of a medieval fortress.

What survives is remarkable. Parts of three circular drum towers still stand, their limestone walls several feet thick. The moat traces its medieval course around the inner ward. Earthwork banks and ditches mark the outer bailey to the north, where service buildings and stables once stood. The site is a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Monument — recognition that Somerton, even in ruin, remains one of the most significant early Edwardian castles in England.

A Castle Running Out of Time

Around 2010, Somerton was placed on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk register, a stark acknowledgement that the surviving fabric was deteriorating. The castle is privately owned and not generally open to the public, though it can be glimpsed from the lane that passes through the site. Conservation architects have been commissioned to plan a restoration, and North Kesteven District Council has approved planning for sensitive new building work — but the future of Somerton depends, as it always has, on whether anyone is willing to invest in its survival.

Visiting Somerton Castle

Somerton Castle stands on a minor road roughly two miles from Boothby Graffoe, west of the A607 south of Lincoln. As a private residence it is not open for tours, but the public road passes directly through the site, offering clear views of the surviving towers, the moat, and the farmhouse that has sheltered within the castle's walls for the better part of five centuries. It is a place best visited on foot or by bicycle, slowly, with time to let the silence settle.

This article was partly inspired by old photographs and home recordings that came to light when someone brought their personal memories to be digitised. It made us wonder what else might be out there — in attics, shoeboxes, old cupboards — connected to Somerton Castle and the families who lived in its shadow. If anyone holds old media connected to this place, services like EachMoment can help preserve them for future generations.