Foundation

Count Brian of Brittany, a leading supporter of King William I (William the Conqueror), established a castle here around 1068. The site was strategically important, overlooking a deep valley and close to a road crossing of the river Tamar, which forms the eastern border of Cornwall. Launceston and Trematon were the only two castles in Cornwall listed in Domesday Book (1086), when Count Robert of Mortain, the second most important man in England, held them both. This established a pattern in which Launceston Castle was held by some of England’s most powerful figures.

Before the castle’s foundation, settlement in the area was focused to the north at Lanstefan, across the river Kensey. In the 1090s Lanstefan’s market was transferred to the outer bailey of the castle, and additional settlement soon followed. By the 13th century the town, surrounded by a wall, had grown to the extent that it was regarded as the natural place from which Cornwall should be administered.

The mound at the north-east corner of the castle originated in the late 11th century. The buildings and defences were initially of timber, but later in the 12th century stone began to be used, including a ‘shell keep’ on the mound, which survives, though much altered. From the 1180s documents begin to mention other buildings inside the castle, including the ‘king’s chamber’ and a prison.

The Duchy of Cornwall in the Late Middle Ages

In 1337 Edward III made his eldest son (also named Edward) the Duke of Cornwall. The Duchy of Cornwall, which still exists today, has estates in Cornwall and Scilly but also in other parts of England; the title of duke is given at birth to the monarch’s first-born male child.

Officials surveyed the six-year-old Duke Edward’s new property for him in 1337. At Launceston, they found that the castle’s buildings had been badly neglected. Of the buildings on the motte, for example, they reported that

[There is a] passage leading from the castle up to the High Tower, newly covered with lead, but whose steps are defective. And there are in the same tower two chambers whose doors and windows are of no value. And the aforesaid tower has two stone curtain walls, of which one portion containing by estimation three perches has fallen to the ground.

It was the same story throughout the castle; even the gaol was ‘badly and inadequately covered with lead, and another prison called the “Larder”, weak and almost useless’.

Under Edward (later Prince of Wales, and better known as the Black Prince), Launceston and other castles in Cornwall were repaired. His correspondence with his officials occasionally mentions the deer park on the castle’s western side, an important recreational asset especially during the duke’s occasional visits. Rarely, he also gave orders for the castle’s fortifications to be strengthened: clearly in times of unrest and conflict, Launceston Castle might be called upon to uphold the duke’s control of the territory. And at all times it was used most intensively as a prison, holding people accused of crimes until they could be tried in the great hall.

‘Castle Terrible’

In the late 15th and 16th centuries, the relationship between Cornwall and the government of England was marked by successive rebellions, followed by oppressive responses. As the central place for the administration of Cornwall, the castle was the setting for the trial, imprisonment and execution of Cornish rebels. In 1577 the Roman Catholic priest Cuthbert Mayne was held in the castle, and after his brutal execution in the town’s market-place his head was displayed over the castle gate. Memory of such events probably lies behind the local nickname ‘Castle Terrible’, which was recorded by the Cornish antiquary Richard Carew in the early 17th century.

By the 17th century, the day-to-day running of the castle largely fell to the mayor of Launceston and the castle gaoler rather than a Duchy official. The dilapidated great hall was no longer adequate for court sessions and after the 1640s the courts moved to a building in the town, leaving the castle solely as a prison.

As well as local prisoners, captured foreign sailors were occasionally confined in the castle. At this time, many prisoners were kept in and around the north gatehouse, but at the end of the 17th century a new county gaol within the castle bailey replaced or supplemented this.

From Prison to Pleasure Garden

The castle became still more unkempt as the 18th century progressed. An engraving of 1734 shows the walls and towers with many gaps, covered with vegetation, and with only the small prison-house inside. Thirty years later the mayor of Launceston, Coryndon Carpenter, helped speed the ruination by demolishing the upper storey of the north gatehouse and part of the north curtain wall. This was to make room for a new house and garden for himself; Eagle House still stands today.

The prison building was extended in the late 18th century with the addition of an exercise yard, but conditions inside were still woeful – in a popular local saying, ‘like Lanson gaol’ meant something squalid and disorderly.

In the 1840s, nearly 800 years of the castle serving as the main prison of Cornwall came to an end with the closure of the prison in favour of the gaol at Bodmin. The prison was demolished and the castle courtyard landscaped. In the process the workmen discovered the remains of the prison cemetery.

From 1843 the Duke of Northumberland, who had leased the castle, laid out the eastern part of its grounds as a pleasure garden, with winding paths, trees and shrubs.