History Stories

Worcestershire author Terry Wardle says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that, in early September 1051, "the French had built a castle", the first Norman castle in England.

The circumstances behind the construction of this castle and its actual location have remained a mystery.

However, Terry suggests a location for this castle to be near Burghill in Herefordshire.

Book written by Terry Wardle

His investigations look at the history behind the building of the castle and the man who built it, a Norman soldier named Osbern, and Terry's written a book about the subject.

Pre-Norman Conquest

The book looks at the troubled history of eleventh-century England, with the growing threat from Scandinavian raiders, and the civil conflict within England between the monarchy and a powerful Anglo-Saxon family.

It traces the events which allowed a relatively unknown Norman soldier to snatch his place in history with the building of the first Norman castle in England, fifteen years before the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Terry Wardle, co-author with daughter Claire of The History of Barbourne, became interested in this subject when planning a book on the castles of Herefordshire, the county of his birth, where the first Norman castle was built.