INTRODUCTION TO TIVERTON CASTLE

Take a trip to Tiverton Castle and experience life as it was 900 years or so ago.
Built in 1106 by Richard de Redvars on the orders of Henry I, the Castle is one of the main tourist attractions of Tiverton.

The de Redvers were the first Earls of Devon and were eventually succeeded by the Courtenays, who rebuilt and enlarged the Castle.

In 1495 Princess Katherine Plantagenet married William Courtenay, who became Earl of Devon. She died in 1527 and was buried in St. Peter's Church in Tiverton. This royal marriage led to the Courtenays' eventual downfall and the senior line died out in 1556. The Castle subsequently had various owners down the ages.

During the English Civil War the Castle was besieged by Fairfax in 1645, and fell to him due to a lucky shot hitting a drawbridge chain. There is an excellent collection of Civil War memorabilia including arms and armour at the Castle.

Today the Castle is a peaceful, private house, and buildings, furnishings and exhibits reflect the colourful history and development.

HISTORY OF TIVERTON CASTLE

Tiverton Castle was always the most important castle of Eastern Devon and the centre of the great holdings of the Courtenay Earls of Devon. Its very considerable remains lie close to the magnificent Church of Tiverton, at the north-west side of the town. The place must apparently have been a quadrangular fortress with round towers at each angle and a great gatehouse in its main front. But only two of its sides now survive and one of these is imperfect. On the western side are the remains of a large hall of the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, joining on to the one surviving complete corner tower.

On the southern side is a strong gatehouse, looking like work of 1350, a little later than the hall on the west front and much later than the surviving angle-tower. Its antique aspect is spoiled by a three-light Tudor window cut in its centre. There is a battlemented walk along all the surviving parts of the curtain wall. The south front has now been converted into a modern private residence and most of its windows, therefore, have been cut square. This, was probably done by the Giffords, its tenants in the days of Elizabeth and the earlier Stuarts.

Tiverton stopped in the possession of the Courtenays till Henry VIII slew the head of their house and confiscated their lands in 1539. The King gave the castle to Lord Russell, the ancestor of the Dukes of Bedford, whom Leland found in possession there in 1540. Russell exchanged it for other lands with Lord Protector Somerset. When Queen Mary restored Edward Courtenay to the Earldom of Devon in 1553, she could not get back for him all the spoil which her father's courtiers had obtained but Tiverton was recovered and returned to him.

On his death, in exile in 1556, it was found that his nearest heirs were four great-aunts who, having to divide his property, sold Tiverton Castle to one Roger Gifford. When this gentleman's estate was cut up among co--heiresses and no single person wished for so large an abode, it was let out to farmers. They allowed the hinder parts of the castle fall into decay and lived in the gatehouse and the adjacent front, which were rescued from agricultural uses and made into a residential tenement.