Castles in London England

Short answer

• London has only one true surviving medieval castle in its center: the Tower of London. It was built by William the Conqueror in the 1070s and has served as a fortress, a royal palace, a prison, and a mint across nearly 1,000 years.
• Most places that appear on lists of castles in London are not castles at all. Hampton Court Palace and Eltham Palace are palaces, Severndroog Castle is an 18th century memorial folly, and Bruce Castle is a 16th century manor house that only carries the name.
• Two more Norman castles once stood in the City of London, Baynard's Castle and Montfichet's Tower, but both are gone. Their sites survive only as buried remains and street names near Blackfriars.
• A second Norman castle site survives in outer London at Ruislip, where a motte and bailey castle built shortly after the Norman Conquest remains as earthworks and buried archaeology at Manor Farm.
• Windsor Castle is not a London castle. It stands in Windsor, Berkshire, about 22 miles west of central London. It is the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world, according to the Royal Collection Trust, but it belongs to a different county and a different day out.
• The honest count is therefore one great castle to visit in central London, a handful of genuine castle sites and castle named buildings across Greater London, and a set of famous palaces that are worth visiting for their own history rather than as castles.

The Honest Answer First

Search for castles in London and you will find lists of 10, 16, or 18 castles. Most of those lists are misleading. They mix real castles with palaces, ruins in other counties, and buildings that only have the word castle in their name. Some even list Windsor Castle, Warwick Castle, and Dover Castle as London castles, even though none of them stands in London. A reader who trusts those lists will plan a trip around buildings that are not what they seem, or spend a day traveling to a county they never meant to visit.

The truth is simpler and more interesting. London has one great surviving medieval castle, the Tower of London, and it is one of the most important castles in the world. Around it sits a smaller group of real castle sites, most of them lost or reduced to earthworks, plus a set of grand palaces and castle named buildings that tell their own part of London’s story. This article gives you that honest list, explains what each place really is, and says plainly which famous names do not belong on it.

The distinction matters because a castle is a specific kind of building. Our guide to the parts of a castle explains the pieces that make a castle work as a fortification: walls, towers, a keep, a gatehouse, and a moat. A palace, by contrast, is built for living and for display, not for defense. A folly is built for ornament, and a manor house is a country home. When you know the difference, London’s list stops looking thin and starts looking honest. One real castle, several lost ones, and a set of palaces that are worth visiting on their own terms is a good story, and it is the true one.

What Counts as a Castle

A castle is a fortified residence. It was built to be defended, to control territory, and to impress everyone who saw it with the power of its owner. The classic English castle has thick walls, towers, a strong gate, and often a moat or a raised mound called a motte. Many castles also served as homes for kings and lords, so they contain halls, chapels, and comfortable rooms inside their defenses. The Tower of London is the textbook example: a fortress and a palace in one set of walls.

A palace is different. It is a grand residence built for ceremony, comfort, and display, without the defenses of a castle. Hampton Court Palace has courtyards, a great hall, and gardens, but it was never a fortress. Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace are also palaces, not castles, even though they are royal homes. Calling them castles is a common mistake, and it confuses the history of both kinds of building.

A fort is a purely military building, usually built for soldiers rather than for a lord’s household. London’s Roman fort and its later defensive walls were forts and walls, not castles, though they later became part of the city’s castle defenses. A folly is a decorative building put up for looks, often in the shape of a castle, but never meant to be defended. Severndroog Castle in Greenwich is the clearest London example. A manor house is a large country house, and Bruce Castle in Tottenham is one of those, despite its name.

Keeping these types apart is the key to this whole article. Every place below is labeled for what it actually is, so you can tell at a glance whether you are looking at a real castle, a lost castle, a palace, a folly, or a manor house with a misleading name.

The Tower of London: London’s One True Castle

The Tower of London is the answer to this article’s question, and it is a large answer. It stands on the north bank of the River Thames in the City of London, beside Tower Bridge, and it has dominated the London skyline for nearly 1,000 years. Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that cares for it, calls it a mighty fortress, a royal palace, and an infamous prison, and all three descriptions are true.

William the Conqueror began the Tower in the 1070s, fresh from his victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and his coronation as king. He was nervous about rebellion in a city he had just conquered, so he built a massive stone fortress to defend his power and to proclaim it. Masons came from Normandy, bringing stone from Caen in France, while most of the labor was provided by Englishmen. The great keep at its heart, the White Tower, took around 20 years to build. Nothing like it had ever been seen in England before, and William intended it to dominate the skyline and the hearts and minds of the defeated Londoners.

The fortress kept growing. Henry III, who reigned from 1216 to 1272, and his son Edward I, who reigned from 1272 to 1307, expanded it with huge curtain walls, a series of smaller towers, and an enlarged moat. Their work turned the Tower into England’s largest and strongest concentric castle, a castle with one ring of defenses inside another. In 1240 Henry III had the great keep painted white, which is how it became the White Tower. Inside the walls, the kings also built a magnificent medieval palace, and for 500 years monarchs used the Tower as a surprisingly luxurious palace as well as a fortress.

The Tower’s history is a tour through English history itself. It controlled the nation’s money, since all coins of the realm were made at the Tower Mint from the reign of Edward I until 1810. Arms and armor were made, tested, and stored there until the 1800s. Kings and queens locked away their valuables and jewels there, and the Crown Jewels are still kept and guarded at the Tower today. Its defenses failed only once, during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, when rebels ran in through the open gates.

It is also the setting for some of England’s darkest stories. For over 800 years, men and women have been sent to the Tower as prisoners. During the Tudor period it became the most important state prison in the country, and the future Elizabeth I, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Guy Fawkes were all sent there. Henry VI was murdered at the Tower in 1471 during the Wars of the Roses, and the Princes in the Tower, the children of Edward IV, vanished within its walls in 1483. Two skeletons found at the Tower in 1674 were re-examined in 1933 and proved to be those of two boys aged about 12 and 10, exactly the ages of the princes when they disappeared. The Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula is the burial place of three queens of England, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Jane Grey, all executed within the Tower in the 16th century. Anne Boleyn had been held in luxurious lodgings before being executed by sword on Tower Green, only three years after Henry VIII had modernized the royal rooms for her coronation in 1533. Lady Jane Grey was executed for high treason in 1554, aged only 17.

The Tower is still a living place, not only a monument. The famous Yeoman Warders, known as Beefeaters, have guarded it for centuries. Henry VIII decreed that some of the Yeomen of the Guard would stay and guard the Tower permanently, and their successors still live there with their families, alongside the Resident Governor and a garrison of soldiers. They still carry out the Ceremony of the Keys, locking and unlocking the Tower every day. The ravens are cared for by a dedicated Yeoman Warder known as the Ravenmaster, and the old story says that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, both it and the kingdom will fall. The Tower also had a royal menagerie of exotic animals that lasted until the 19th century, and it has been a visitor attraction since the 18th century, with visitor numbers rising sharply in the 1800s.

What a visitor sees today is the whole layered history in one place: the White Tower, the medieval palace remains, the walls and towers, the Crown Jewels, the Chapel Royal, and Tower Green. UNESCO inscribed the Tower of London on the World Heritage List in 1988, under criteria (ii) and (iv), recognizing it as a model of medieval military architecture and a place of exceptional historic continuity. Historic Royal Palaces describes it as the most complete example of an 11th century fortress palace remaining in Europe. It now attracts over three million visitors a year. If you visit only one castle in London, this is the one, and it is enough on its own to justify the trip. For a wider sense of how the Tower fits into the castles of Europe, see our guide to famous castles in Europe.

The Lost Castles of the City: Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet’s Tower

The Tower was not the only Norman castle in medieval London. Two more stood at the western end of the city, where the old Roman wall met the River Thames near what is now Blackfriars station. Both are gone, but their story explains how London was defended, and their names still survive in the streets around them.

Baynard’s Castle was a Norman fortification built by Ralph Baynard, a follower of William the Conqueror and Sheriff of Essex. It stood at the point where the old Roman walls and the River Fleet met the Thames, just east of what is now Blackfriars station. The Norman castle stood for over a century before King John demolished it in 1213. A second building, a medieval palace, was later built a short distance to the southeast on the same site, and that building was mostly destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, though fragments survived into the 19th century. The site is now occupied by modern buildings, and the castle is commemorated in Castle Baynard Street and the Castle Baynard ward of the City of London. Its buried remains are a scheduled monument, protected by law, but there is nothing to see above ground.

Montfichet’s Tower stood about 70 meters north of Baynard’s Castle, on Ludgate Hill between where St Paul’s Cathedral and City Thameslink station now stand. It was a Norman fortress, probably built in the late 11th century, and its name came from the Montfichet family of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex. It was in ruins by 1278, when it was included in a land sale with Baynard’s Castle to form the precinct of the great priory of Blackfriars. Like Baynard’s Castle, it was destroyed by King John in 1213, and nothing of it survives above ground.

These two castles were part of a single defensive line. The old Roman wall of London, built between 190 and 225 CE, was modified in the medieval period with crenellations, gates, and bastion towers, and it formed a defensive line that incorporated the Tower of London, Baynard’s Castle, and Montfichet’s Tower. A visitor walking the City today can still trace the line of that wall in places, and the names Castle Baynard Street and Blackfriars mark where the western castles stood. They are castles you visit with your imagination and a map, not with a ticket, but they are genuine London castles, and no honest list can leave them out.

Ruislip: London’s Other Norman Castle Site

The second genuine castle site in Greater London is far from the center, at Manor Farm in Ruislip, in the London Borough of Hillingdon. Here the remains of a motte and bailey castle, built shortly after the Norman Conquest, survive as earthworks and below ground archaeological remains. Historic England lists it as a scheduled monument, first listed in 1934, and describes it as a motte and bailey castle with the remains of a Benedictine priory and a curvilinear earthwork, about 280 meters north northwest of St Martin’s church.

The history is short and partly uncertain, which is honest to say. The Manor of Ruislip was in the possession of Ernulf de Hesdin at the time of the Domesday survey, and in about 1087 it was granted to the Abbot and Convent of the Benedictine Abbey of Bec in Normandy. A monastic cell was established on the site in the 12th century. The castle itself was probably a timber fortification on a raised mound, the motte, with an enclosed yard, the bailey, beside it. The motte is oval, about 45 meters long east to west by 32 meters wide north to south. No stone castle ever rose here, and the site later became a manorial farm, with a barn dating to about 1300 as the main surviving medieval building.

What a visitor sees at Ruislip today is therefore very different from the Tower. There are grass covered earthworks, a moat and bank, and a historic farm complex, not towers and walls. It is a place for a reader who wants to see how the Normans first secured the land around London, with simple timber and earth castles raised quickly after the Conquest, rather than for someone expecting a second Tower. It is worth including precisely because it is real, and because it shows the other end of the castle scale from the Tower’s stone magnificence. Motte and bailey castles were introduced into Britain by the Normans, and they continued to be built and occupied from the 11th to the 13th centuries.

Hampton Court Palace: Why It Appears on Every Castle List

Hampton Court Palace appears on almost every list of castles in London, and it is not a castle. It is a palace, and one of the great palaces of England, but the distinction is real and worth keeping. It stands on the border of Greater London, in East Molesey on the River Thames, and its history is Tudor and royal rather than Norman and military.

The original Tudor palace was begun by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in the early 16th century. Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, wanted a grand building where he could host the King and the royal court as well as monarchs from across Europe, and he spent huge sums turning an ordinary country house into a magnificent palace. He was so successful that Henry VIII eventually took Hampton Court for himself. By the 1530s it was a palace, a hotel, a theater, and a vast leisure complex, used by the King to demonstrate magnificence and power through lavish banquets, extravagant court life, and fabulously expensive art. All six of Henry VIII’s wives visited Hampton Court. His third queen, Jane Seymour, died there giving the King his longed for son, Edward, later Edward VI. His fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was arrested there and later executed at the Tower of London.

The palace kept making history after the Tudors. In 1603, William Shakespeare’s King’s Men first performed Hamlet and Macbeth for the new Stuart King, James I, in the Great Hall. James also organized the 1604 Hampton Court Conference there, which resulted in the publication of the King James Bible in 1611. In 1647, Charles I was held under house arrest at Hampton Court after his defeat in the Civil War, and he escaped through the Privy Garden before being recaptured and executed in 1649. During the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell saved the palace from destruction by making it his home. When William III and Mary II took the throne in 1689, they commissioned Sir Christopher Wren to build an elegant new baroque palace, creating the spectacular Fountain Court while leaving much of the Tudor palace intact.

The royals left in 1737, and the palace was filled with grace and favor residents, often aristocratic widows given free accommodation in return for their husbands’ service to the monarch. Queen Victoria opened the palace to the public in 1838, and by 1881 over ten million visitors had been recorded. The Great Kitchens, enlarged by Henry VIII, once served 1,600 meals a day to feed the up to 800 courtiers who could accompany the King. The famous Maze is thought to have been created at the end of the 17th century, and it was replanted in the 1960s with yew hedges.

A visitor to Hampton Court sees Tudor courtyards, the Great Hall, the Great Kitchens, Wren’s baroque Fountain Court, and the gardens, including the Maze and the Long Water commissioned by Charles II. It is a superb day out and one of the most important historic houses in England. It is simply not a castle, and this article lists it here so that readers searching for castles in London can find the place they actually mean, without being misled about what it is.

Eltham Palace: A Medieval Palace With a Moat

Eltham Palace, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich in southeast London, is another grand building that appears on castle lists and is really a palace. English Heritage describes it as a unique marriage between a medieval and Tudor palace and a 1930s millionaire’s mansion, and that double identity is what makes it worth visiting.

The site goes back to the Domesday survey of 1086, when the manor of Eltham belonged to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, half brother of William the Conqueror. In 1295 Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, acquired the estate. He seems to have rebuilt the manor house and constructed a defensive perimeter wall of stone and brick within the line of the moat, with a timber drawbridge leading to the house. Bek presented the manor to the future Edward II in 1305, and from the 14th to the 16th century Eltham was an important royal palace where monarchs often stayed and hunted in the surrounding parks.

Edward III spent much of his youth at Eltham and visited frequently as king. In 1364 he received John II of France there amid great dancing and caroling. Edward IV was a favorite resident, and the magnificent surviving great hall was built during his reign in the 1470s. One of the most lavish feasts ever held at the palace was given for some 2,000 people during the Christmas season of 1482. Henry VIII passed much of his boyhood at Eltham and was the last monarch to spend substantial amounts of money or time there. In 1525 Cardinal Wolsey drew up the Ordinances of Eltham at the palace, regulations designed to reduce waste in the royal household.

After that, Eltham declined. In 1651 Parliament sold it to Colonel Nathaniel Rich, who demolished many buildings and stripped the lead off the great hall roof. When the diarist John Evelyn visited in 1656 he lamented that both the palace and chapel were in miserable ruins. The great hall survived as a barn and later as an indoor tennis court. In 1933, Stephen and Virginia Courtauld took a 99 year lease from the Crown and commissioned the architects Seely and Paget to design a modern home on the site while retaining the medieval great hall. English Heritage took responsibility for the great hall in 1984 and for the entire site in 1995.

A visitor today sees the medieval great hall, the moat, the 1930s house with its striking modern interiors, and the gardens. The moat and the defensive wall are the reason Eltham is sometimes called a castle, but it was a royal residence with defenses, not a fortress built for war. It belongs on a list of London’s great historic houses, and it is included here because so many castle lists include it without explaining the difference.

Severndroog Castle: A Castle in Name Only

Severndroog Castle, on Shooter’s Hill in southeast London, is a genuine London landmark with castle in its name, and it was never a castle at all. It is a folly, a decorative tower built as a memorial, and its story is stranger and more interesting than a real castle’s would be.

The tower was designed by the architect Richard Jupp, and the first stone was laid on 2 April 1784. It was built to commemorate Commodore Sir William James, who in April 1755 had attacked and destroyed the island fortress of Suvarnadurg, rendered in English as Severndroog, of the Maratha Empire on the western coast of India, between Mumbai and Goa. James died in 1783, and his widow, Lady James of Eltham, had the tower built as a memorial to him. The name of the tower comes from the Indian fortress her husband had captured, not from any castle that stood on Shooter’s Hill.

The building is a Gothic style tower, 63 feet (19 meters) high and triangular in section, with a hexagonal turret at each corner. It was designated a Grade II* listed building in 1954. It has had many uses since it was built, including work in trigonometric surveys, and after a long period of dereliction it was restored and reopened to the public in 2014. It stands in Castle Wood on Shooter’s Hill, one of the highest points in London, and its roof platform gives wide views over the city.

Severndroog is worth a visit for its views, its odd triangular shape, and its memorial story. It is also the perfect example of why a name is not evidence. A visitor who arrives expecting battlements, a keep, and a portcullis will find a small elegant tower with a viewing platform instead. That is not a disappointment if you know what you are looking at, and this article includes it so that nobody is misled.

Bruce Castle: A Manor House With a Castle Name

Bruce Castle, in Lordship Lane in Tottenham in north London, is another building whose name promises more than the building delivers. It is a Grade I listed 16th century manor house, formerly called the Lordship House, and it is one of the oldest surviving English brick houses. Historic England’s listing describes it as a house of about 1600, built of red brick, with additions from 1684 and the 18th century.

The name comes from the House of Bruce, which historically owned a third of the manor of Tottenham, but there was no castle in the area, and the family is unlikely to have lived nearby. The name Bruce Castle appears to have been adopted by Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine, who settled at the Lordship House in the 17th century. The house has been home to Sir William Compton, the Barons Coleraine, and Sir Rowland Hill, among others. A detached cylindrical Tudor tower stands immediately to the southwest of the house and is generally considered the earliest part of the building. It is built of local red brick, 21 feet (6.4 meters) tall, with walls 3 feet (0.91 meters) thick.

The house is now a museum holding the archives of the London Borough of Haringey, and its grounds have been a public park since 1892, the oldest public park in Tottenham. It is a fine historic house and a good local museum, and it is included here because its name puts it on castle lists. A reader who visits expecting a castle will find a handsome brick manor house instead, and that is worth knowing before the trip.

Windsor Castle: The Famous Exception That Is Not in London

No discussion of castles in London is complete without Windsor Castle, because it is the name most often wrongly added to the list. Windsor Castle is a real castle, and a very great one, but it is not in London. It stands in Windsor, Berkshire, about 22 miles west of central London, and it belongs to a day trip out of the city rather than to a list of London castles.

The Royal Collection Trust describes Windsor Castle as the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. Founded by William the Conqueror in the 11th century, it has since been the home of 40 monarchs, and it remains an official residence of the King. Its State Apartments, St George’s Chapel, and Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House are among the most visited royal interiors in Britain. It is, by any measure, one of the greatest castles in the world, and it is easy to reach from London by train. None of that makes it a London castle. The same is true of the other famous castles that travel guides attach to London, such as Warwick Castle, Leeds Castle, Hever Castle, and Dover Castle. They are real castles, and several of them are excellent day trips, but they stand in Warwickshire, Kent, and other counties, not in London. For the castles that do belong on a wider European list, see our guide to famous castles in Europe, and for the oldest of them, our guide to the old castle in the world.

The confusion is understandable. Travel writers group attractions by how easy they are to reach from a base, and Windsor is an easy train ride from London. But a reader asking which castles are in London deserves a geographical answer, not a travel time answer. Windsor is in Berkshire, and this article says so plainly so that the reader can plan properly.

The Palaces People Mistake for Castles

Two more royal buildings appear regularly on castle lists and deserve a short correction here. Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace are palaces, not castles. Neither was built as a fortification, and neither has the walls, towers, and gatehouse of a castle. Buckingham Palace is the London residence of the monarch and the center of royal ceremony, and Kensington Palace is a royal residence in Kensington Gardens with a long history of its own. Both are worth visiting, and both are palaces in the full sense of the word. They are included here only to complete the correction, so that a reader who finds them on a castle list knows why they do not belong on it.

The pattern across all of these examples is the same. London is rich in royal palaces, grand houses, and historic sites, and poor in surviving castles, because the city’s one great castle, the Tower, did the work of all of them. The palaces grew up around a court that no longer needed new fortresses, and the castle named buildings grew up later, when the word castle had become romantic rather than military. Understanding that pattern is more useful than a long list of wrongly labeled buildings.

Castles Near London Worth a Day Trip

If the Tower has left you wanting more castles, the country around London has some of the finest in England, and they make good day trips by train or car. Leeds Castle in Kent is often called the loveliest castle in the world, and Hever Castle in Kent is a romantic double moated castle set in gardens. Rochester Castle and Dover Castle, also in the southeast, are great stone fortresses with long military histories. Warwick Castle, further away in Warwickshire, is one of the most visited castles in England. None of these is in London, and this article does not present them as London castles, but a reader planning a castle trip from a London base will find them rewarding. Our guide to castle tours in Europe covers how to plan longer castle trips, and the same principles apply to a day trip from London: check opening arrangements with the official site before traveling, allow a full day for the larger castles, and remember that working royal residences can close at short notice for official events.

How to Plan a Visit to London’s Castles

The practical advice for this topic is simple, because there is only one castle that needs a ticket and a plan. Start with the Tower of London, and allow at least half a day for it. The White Tower, the Crown Jewels, the Chapel Royal, and the walls and towers each deserve unhurried time, and the Yeoman Warder tours are the best introduction to the building’s history. Check the official Historic Royal Palaces site before traveling for opening arrangements and any closures, since the Tower is a working historic site with a resident community and a garrison.

The other places in this article need less planning and different expectations. Hampton Court Palace and Eltham Palace are full days out in their own right, and both are managed as historic visitor attractions with gardens to explore. Severndroog Castle and Bruce Castle are smaller visits, best combined with a walk in their surrounding woods and park. Baynard’s Castle, Montfichet’s Tower, and the Ruislip earthworks are sites to visit with a map and an interest in history rather than with an expectation of standing buildings. The London Wall itself can be traced in fragments around the City, and it ties the Tower and the lost western castles together into one defensive story.

A final practical note: do not trust a list that counts castles by name alone. Check whether the building was built as a fortress, whether it stands in London, and whether anything survives to see. Those three questions will sort every list you find, and they are the questions this article has applied to each place above.

FAQ

How many castles are there in London?

There is one true surviving medieval castle in central London, the Tower of London. Across Greater London there are also genuine castle sites, including the lost Norman castles of Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet’s Tower in the City and the motte and bailey earthworks at Ruislip, plus buildings with castle in their name that are not castles, such as Severndroog Castle and Bruce Castle. Lists that claim 10 or 18 castles in London are counting palaces and castles in other counties as well.

What is the oldest castle in London?

The oldest castle in London is the Tower of London, begun by William the Conqueror in the 1070s after the Norman Conquest. The Ruislip motte and bailey site is of a similar date, built shortly after the Norman Conquest, but it survives only as earthworks, while the Tower survives as a complete castle.

Is Windsor Castle in London?

No. Windsor Castle is in Windsor, Berkshire, about 22 miles west of central London. It is the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world, according to the Royal Collection Trust, and it is an easy day trip from London, but it is not a London castle.

Is Hampton Court Palace a castle?

No. Hampton Court Palace is a palace, not a castle. It was begun by Cardinal Wolsey in the early 16th century as a grand residence, taken over by Henry VIII, and later remodeled by Sir Christopher Wren for William III and Mary II. It was never built as a fortress, though it is one of the great historic houses in England.

What is the Tower of London famous for?

The Tower is famous as a fortress, a royal palace, a prison, and the home of the Crown Jewels. It was built by William the Conqueror in the 1070s, expanded by Henry III and Edward I into England’s largest concentric castle, and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988. Famous prisoners held there include the future Elizabeth I, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Guy Fawkes, and it is the burial place of Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Jane Grey in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula.

Can you visit castles in London for free?

The Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, and Eltham Palace are ticketed visitor attractions, so check the official sites for current admission arrangements before traveling. Severndroog Castle and Bruce Castle are smaller sites with their own visiting arrangements, and the lost castles of Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet’s Tower survive only as buried remains and street names, which can be visited freely as part of a walk around the City.

What happened to Baynard’s Castle?

The first Baynard’s Castle was a Norman fortification built by Ralph Baynard, a follower of William the Conqueror, and it was demolished by King John in 1213. A second building, a medieval palace, was built on the site and was mostly destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Its buried remains are a scheduled monument, and the site is commemorated in Castle Baynard Street and the Castle Baynard ward of the City of London.

Is Severndroog Castle a real castle?

No. Severndroog Castle is an 18th century folly, a decorative Gothic tower built as a memorial. The first stone was laid on 2 April 1784, and it was built by Lady James of Eltham to commemorate her husband, Commodore Sir William James, who had captured the Indian fortress of Suvarnadurg in 1755. It is 63 feet (19 meters) high, triangular in section, and Grade II* listed.

Sources & references

• Historic Royal Palaces, "The story of the Tower of London", https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/the-story-of-the-tower-of-london/ (Tower built in the 1070s by William the Conqueror, around 20 years to build, stone from Caen; Henry III and Edward I expansion, concentric castle, White Tower painted white in 1240; palace use for 500 years; Mint coins from Edward I until 1810; defenses failed once in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; Henry VI murdered 1471, Princes in the Tower vanished 1483, skeletons found 1674 and re-examined 1933; Yeoman Warders and Henry VIII decree; Ceremony of the Keys; prison for over 800 years, Elizabeth I, Lady Jane Grey, Walter Raleigh, Guy Fawkes; Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, three queens, Jane Grey executed 1554 aged 17, Anne Boleyn executed by sword on Tower Green, Henry VIII modernized rooms for her coronation in 1533; ravens and Ravenmaster; menagerie until the 19th century; over three million visitors a year; updated 15 June 2026)
• Historic Royal Palaces, "Tower of London World Heritage Site Management Plan 2025-2030", https://media.hrp.org.uk/media/nvdk13jm/tower-of-london-world-heritage-site-management-plan-2025-2030.pdf (Tower inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988; most complete example of an 11th century fortress palace remaining in Europe; criteria (ii) and (iv))
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre, "Tower of London", https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/488 (inscribed 1988, criteria (ii) and (iv), reference 488; founded by William the Conqueror in 1066)
• Historic Royal Palaces, "The story of Hampton Court Palace", https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/the-story-of-hampton-court-palace/ (Wolsey began the Tudor palace in the early 16th century; Henry VIII took it, six wives visited; Great Kitchens served 1,600 meals a day, up to 800 courtiers; Jane Seymour died giving birth to Edward; Catherine Howard arrested here; Shakespeare's King's Men performed Hamlet and Macbeth in 1603; Hampton Court Conference 1604, King James Bible 1611; Charles I house arrest 1647 and escape through the Privy Garden; Cromwell saved the palace; William III and Mary II commissioned Wren in 1689, Fountain Court; royals left 1737; Victoria opened the palace to the public in 1838, over ten million visitors recorded by 1881; Maze thought created at the end of the 17th century, replanted in the 1960s with yew; updated 2 October 2026)
• English Heritage, "History of Eltham Palace and Gardens", https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/eltham-palace-and-gardens/history/ (Domesday survey 1086, Odo Bishop of Bayeux; Anthony Bek acquired 1295, defensive perimeter wall within the moat; presented to the future Edward II in 1305; Edward III youth and 1364 reception of John II of France; Edward IV great hall built in the 1470s, feast for 2,000 people at Christmas 1482; Henry VIII boyhood, Ordinances of Eltham 1525; Parliament sold the palace to Colonel Nathaniel Rich in 1651; John Evelyn lament 1656; Courtaulds 99 year lease 1933, Seely and Paget, great hall retained; English Heritage took the great hall in 1984 and the whole site in 1995; parkland almost 1,300 acres)
• Historic England, "Ruislip motte and bailey, Non Civil Parish - 1002045", https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1002045 (motte and bailey castle, remains of a Benedictine priory and curvilinear earthwork; scheduled monument, first listed 2 August 1934; built shortly after the Norman Conquest; Manor of Ruislip in the possession of Ernulf de Hesdin at the Domesday survey; granted to the Abbey of Bec in about 1087; cell established in the 12th century; motte about 45 meters long east to west by 32 meters wide north to south)
• Historic England, "Bruce Castle, Non Civil Parish - 1358861", https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1358861 (Grade I listed building, first listed 22 July 1949; house of about 1600, red brick, with additions of 1684 and the 18th century; Lordship Lane, Tottenham, London Borough of Haringey)
• Severndroog Castle Building Preservation Trust, "About The Castle", https://severndroogcastle.org.uk/about/ (18th century Gothic tower on Shooter's Hill, southeast London; built as a memorial to Commodore Sir William James in 1784 by his wife Lady Anne James after his death in 1783; commemorates his naval victory over the Indian fortress of Suvarnadurg; Grade II* listed building)
• Royal Collection Trust, "Windsor Castle", https://www.rct.uk/visit/windsor-castle (oldest and largest occupied castle in the world; founded by William the Conqueror in the 11th century; home of 40 monarchs)
• Heritage Daily, "London's Lost Castles and Fortifications", https://www.heritagedaily.com/2018/07/londons-lost-castles-and-fortifications/118944 (London Wall built between 190 and 225 CE and modified in the medieval period, forming a defensive line with the Tower of London, Baynard's Castle and Montfichet's Tower; Montfichet's Tower on Ludgate Hill, late 11th century, in ruins by 1278; Baynard's Castle built by Ralph Baynard, Norman castle demolished by King John in 1213, left in ruins after the Great Fire of London in 1666, fragments survived into the 19th century; Ruislip Castle, 11th century motte and bailey in Greater London)