The early days

Bolingbroke Castle in central Lincolnshire was built around 1225 by Randulph de Blundeville, Earl of Chester and from 1217, Earl of Lincoln. It was a strong castle with a deep moat around 100 feet across. The mighty castle walls were over 12 feet thick and they linked five sturdy interval towers and an impressive gatehouse.

By the mid-fourteenth century the castle was under the control of John of Gaunt and his wife Blanche. Their son Henry was destined to become Henry IV, king of England, in 1400. As far as we know, Henry never returned to Bolingbroke Castle before he died in 1413, but it continued to be used as an administrative centre for the Lancastrian estates.

Demise of the castle

However, the town of Bolingbroke gradually became a backwater and by Tudor times the auditors only visited the castle once a year to review the accounts. The castle had become very dilapidated and by 1600 four of the towers were uninhabitable, the main domestic buildings had gone and only the gatehouse and the King's Tower were still in use. By 1636 a survey found that all of the towers were effectively beyond repair.

But history had not yet finished with Bolingbroke Castle. Although no longer a desirable home, as well as militarily obsolete due to the power and range of modern artillery, it was still a relatively strong place when the Civil War broke out in 1642. This War was to lead to its only real moment of glory and ultimately to its final destruction.

Bolingbroke during the Civil War years

In the summer of 1643 a great Royalist army under the Marquis of Newcastle bore down from the north, stationing garrisons in the towns and castles that were captured along the way. 200 men were placed into Bolingbroke Castle in September of that year, securing the surrounding countryside for the King. But Newcastle's advance eventually faltered and he retreated back the way he had come, leaving the garrison at Old Bolingbroke, supported by the stronghold at Newark, to resist an inevitable Parliamentarian counter attack from Boston.

The Royalist garrison strengthened the castle to the best of their abilities and probably built an earth fort in the rout yard as an additional defence, hoping to make an all out assault on the castle costly for the enemy.

On 9th October 1643 a great army of 6000 men commanded by Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax marched from Boston to take Bolingbroke. At 7.00pm they assembled at the castle gate and ordered its surrender, but the Royalists would not yield. Thus began the siege of Bolingbroke Castle.

Meanwhile, a force of 1500 Royalist soldiers commanded by John Henderson, were marching from Newark to relieve Bolingbroke. They met the Parliamentarians just a few miles from the Castle at the Battle of Winceby on the 11th October. The relief force from Newark was defeated in a decisive half-hour battle, which killed 300 of them and quickly turned into a rout. Despite this disaster, the castle held out until 14 November that year, when it surrendered.

The Civil War ended in 1651 and in the following year, Parliament decided that castles such as Bolingbroke, which may yet be held by rebels or malcontents, should be rendered militarily indefensible by blowing up or knocking down the walls. Accordingly, in 1652, Bolingbroke Castle was "slighted", with large sections of the walls removed and thrown into the moat so that it could never be held against an army again.

The castle in modern times

In the 20th century the castle ruins passed into the guardianship of English Heritage who excavated and conserved the remaining walls during the 1980s. In 1995 the management of the castle was taken over by the Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire.

On 11th October, 2003 - the 360th anniversary of the Battle of Winceby, there was a major re-enactment of the siege, with hundreds of trained participants re-creating the drills and methods of combat of the Civil War period. Musketeers and pikemen, cavalry and cannon, were all combined in a spectacular attempt to show how the siege would have progressed. A wreath-laying ceremony took place on Winceby Battlefield at noon on Saturday 11th to remember the fallen.

Dave Start
Director, Heritage Lincolnshire