Mountfitchet Castle and Norman village is a reconstructed Norman castle with accompanying buildings, built as an educational theme park. Situated near Stanstead Airport the castle is a recreation of both the defences and the day to day lifestyle of Domesday England.
Visiting Mountfitchet Castle and Norman Village
Mountfitchet Castle and Norman village is well sign posted and has a large car park in the centre of the village. There are steps to walk up to the ticket office and then you go through to the cafe gift shop and the site.
There are plenty of buildings that you can go inside so even in inclement weather it is still a site worth visiting. The following is an excerpt from the website here:
Come and explore the Castle and roam through the Norman village hidden behind the castle walls, wander in and out of the many houses and listen out for the ancient Church bell tolling serenely across the grounds.
Mountfitchet Castle is unique as being the only wooden Motte and Bailey castle and village to be reconstructed on it’s original historic site anywhere in the world.
The House on the Hill Museum is the largest collection of Toys in the world, with at least 80,000 toys, books and games on display from late Victorian times up to 1990’s.
How better to see the illustration of the social history of our times portrayed through toys, books, games, music, entertainment and family amusement.
The museum also houses a WWI & WWII Blitz and Battle of Britain display, Showbiz Collection and a Rock ‘n’ Roll exhibition. There are many hands-on activities throughout the museum including a puppet theatre, Lego and Brio tables, Quiots to test your skills and WWI & WWII helmets and masks to try on.
My Experience
I’d seen the signs to Mountfitchet Castle and Norman village every time we flew from Stanstead but this was the first time we had visited it. The castle is actually a 1980’s authentic reproduction of an early Norman timber fort and the associated village buildings.
The site is built mostly as an educational attraction for schools and families with children. It is actually rather well laid out with plenty of information boards, interactive siege engines and various rescue animals wandering the site. The goats were predictably greedy and there was a little stream of assorted poultry following Deb and he food bag around!
The village had the usual delights of early Medieval civilisation – a blacksmith, watermill, ducking stool, stocks, whipping post, gallows, kiln and assorted trades houses. The emphasis was on showing how the community ran on low tech, just using items that were naturally available and how everything had a use.
Mountfitchet Castle and Norman Village Photo Gallery
History
The history below is taken from The Atlas Obscura:
Visitors to Mountfitchet Castle would be excused for thinking they had been launched back in time. The Norman motte-and-bailey castle and village is a careful replica of what stood on the site almost 1000 years ago. The 10-acre site has everything from halls to homes, churches to chicken coops, falcons to fertility chairs.
The site is protected by the Department of the Environment as a national historic monument. Artifacts discovered in excavations of the site reveal its transition from an Iron Age hill fort, to a Roman signal fort, to a Saxon settlement conquered during William the Conqueror’s 1066 Norman invasion, when the wooden motte-and-bailey castle was built. By 1215, this wooden fortress was upgraded to a stone castle. Also in 1215, King John launched a destructive attack on the castle after which the castle lay in ruins. Nature moved in. Local villagers took many of the castle’s stones to build their homes. Some of these homes still stand today in the nearby town.
For over 750 years, all that remained of the castle were the ruins left behind. That is until 1975, when local landowner Alan Goldsmith decided to rebuild the castle as it would have stood in 1066. The remaining original earthwork was cleared, allowing work to begin in 1980. A team of craftspeople worked closely with historians and archaeologists to ensure the reconstruction’s accuracy. The construction materials used are both period-appropriate and sourced from historically accurate locations. The reconstruction’s oak came from nearby Suffolk. The roofs’ reeds came from Norfolk. The plaster for each house came from horses and pigs, for their hair and manure respectively. The houses were placed on areas where a geophysics survey found high levels of nitrogen in the soil, suggesting areas of high activity.
Much like they would have in 1066, animals live freely within the 10-acres site. The goats, rabbits, and deer are all breeds and species the Normans would have kept. Most were raised for food, but deer also doubled as a Norman flex. The more deer a baron or lord kept, the greater their status. The deer that live at the castle today are survivors of road accidents or orphans. In fact, a deer that lived much of its long life at Mountfitchet Castle received a world record as the longest living deer on record.
There are also domestic fowl, which the Normans used not only for their meat and eggs, but also for their bones and feathers which were used in tools, textiles, and jewelry. Similar to Mountfitchet’s deer, many of the chickens now at the castle are rescues from battery farms. The fowl too can claim a world record. Little John, a 26-inch-tall Light Brahma cockerel, is recorded as the world’s tallest chicken.
The animals may not be the only residents roaming the castle, however. According to some, the castle and its grounds are haunted. Since the 1920s, half a century before the castle was rebuilt, ghosts have been seen at the grounds. People have heard ghostly flutes playing or the sound of swords clashing, as well as experienced sudden temperature drops or feelings of unease. The site of the Grand Hall seems to be the hub of supernatural activity, and following staff complaints, cameras were installed to record any nighttime occurrences. Even the castle’s animals seem to avoid the church and surgeon’s house, two sites that would have seen a great deal of death.
References
The history above is taken from the Atlas Obscura.
The Wiki site here has a brief history of the site.
The Mountfitchet Castle and Norman Village official website is here.