Description: Engraved for Walpoole's New and Complete British Traveller. Looking north from the Meadows with Nottingham Castle on the left and St Mary's Church on the right. The original castle at Nottingham was a wooden structure built in the earliest Norman times, on the high crag above the town. In 1068 William the Conqueror, on his way to suppress a revolt in York, passed through Nottingham where he ordered his son William Peveril to build a motte and bailey castle. The rock's location provided an easily defensible site commanding the crossing of the River Trent that linked the main road between London and the north. Nottingham Castle became the principal royal fortress for the next five centuries. Despite being defended on the south side by the River Leen, King Henry I felt it prudent to replace the curtain wall with stone in 1170. The whole structure followed this same route under Henry II and by the 13th century it was a powerful midland stronghold. Prince (later King) John spent a lot of time here while his brother, Richard I, was away on Crusade. From the battlements, he hanged two Welsh boys whom he was holding as hostages and a curse has hung over the building ever since. Richard I, on returning from Crusade, turned up here unannounced, only to be sent away by the disbelieving garrison. He laid siege to the castle but soon gained entry and hanged most of those who had opposed him. Edward II also stayed there during his Northern perambulation. It is not however, the King, whom Robin Hood usually encountered at the Castle, but the Sheriff of Nottingham. Despite being engrained in the modern legend, the Constable of Nottingham Castle may be meant here, for the castle was not the domain of the Sheriff. Legend has it that it was also here that Robin was taken after his capture at St. Mary's Church, but Little John & Much the Miller's Son tricked their way into the Castle and rescued him. Little John also spent some much time here serving the Sheriff in the guise of one Reynold Greenleaf. He made friends with the Cook and they plotted together, emptied the Sheriff's treasury and ran off into Sherwood. The only ancient part of the castle still standing today is the, mostly 14th century, gatehouse. It was extensively restored in Victorian times and now houses the castle shop. There are also excavated foundations of the Round Tower (1270), middle bailey curtain wall and King Richard's Tower of Care (15th century). By the time of the Civil War, the buildings were already in a ruinous state due to their being built of poor local sandstone. After the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, title to Nottingham Castle passed to the Duke of Newcastle whose ambition was to erect a new and modern building. Although over 70 years-of-age he began the project with enthusiasm. Every remaining stone of the old Castle was removed and several feet of rock itself cut away as a platform for the new house. The Duke only lived long enough to see the start of his mansion though his son carried it on to completion in 1679. Built in the form of an elongated oblong, the mansion had two wings running westwards. The principal rooms on the first floor were the State Rooms for royalty, a hall, drawing room, library, dining room and gallery and so the regal splendour of the old Castle returned for a time, providing residence for Queen Anne and successive Dukes of Newcastle, one of whom became Prime Minister twice. With the industrialisation of the town the mansion's attraction gradually diminished and by 1750 the Duke's visits had come to an end. Converting the building into apartments, the Duke rented them off to wealthy tenants. This is the state of the 17th century palladian mansion which is seen here. It was gutted by fire (see NTGM002805 for an illustration of this and details of the circumstances which caused it to happen) in the 1830s, burnt by a rioting mob and was not rebuilt until 1877. It now houses the Nottingham City Museum & Art Gallery. St Mary's church is not geographically, but remains spiritually the very heart of the ancient city of Nottingham. The reason for its present situation, somewhat off the beaten track, is that in the early middle ages there were two boroughs - the original Saxon borough, around St. Mary's, and the Norman-French borough, centred on the castle. Eventually the centre of the city became the Old Market Square, situated between the two. The old parish church, sitting on its dominating hill, as it can be seen in artists' 'Prospects' of the city in eighteenth century prints, was eventually hidden among the tall commercial buildings of the 'Lace Market'. Although it is no longer on a fashionable main road, so that visitors and passers-by cannot fail to notice its beauty, it is a splendid building, one of the most glorious edifices in the midlands. There has been a church on the site since Saxon times. Probably the first St. Mary's here was erected by the middle of the tenth century. Paulinus baptised men into the Christian faith in the River Trent in 627, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of those early Christians lived in Nottingham and that these men would have built a church in which they could worship. In the year 930, in what had been the Danish borough of Nottingham, a council was held, attended by an archbishop and sixteen bishops. Plainly the town was sufficiently important at that time for such a meeting to have been held; equally plainly these bishops must have worshipped in the parish church. After the Norman conquest, in 1066, settlement began around the new castle. Certainly Domesday Book, in 1086, stated that there was a church, with a priest named Aitard, who received a stipend of five pounds a year. There can have been little money available for the conquered Saxons to improve or to modernise the old Saxon church, which probably survived, unaltered, until 1140. In that year Nottingham was pillaged and set on fire by a raiding army commanded by the Earl of Gloucester, the half brother of Maud, who contested King Stephen's right to the throne. If the church survived this devastation, which is unlikely, it was certainly destroyed in 1171, when the town was sacked and burned again, this time by rebels fighting against Henry II. Plainly it was necessary to rebuild the parish church. Work was begun in the new style which is now called Early English. However, by this time, the responsibility was not entirely in the hands of the townsmen. William Peveril, the first governor of Nottingham Castle, had established a reformed Benedictine, or Cluniac monastery nearby, at Lenton, and had given the monks endowments which included the 'temporalities' of St. Mary's (c.1102-8). In fact, he had given them the incomes of the churches of St. Peter and St. Nicholas as well, but as these were small, the Cluniacs left their rectors in possession. The old parish church was more prosperous, however, and so the tithes were taken over and a substitute, or vicar, was appointed, with a fixed annual stipend. Probably three quarters of the church's income was diverted for the benefit of the monks. How the new church was paid for, or by whom, is unknown. Evidence exists as to its style. Built into a factory wall in Broadway is the stone frame of a two-light church window. There is no doubt that it is from the old church. Under the tower piers restored in the mid-nineteenth century are buried Norman capitals; and under the north aisle floor are the foundations and stump of a twelfth or thireteenth century pier. The end of the thirteenth century was a period of great activity in church building in the country, and a great advance in the civic life in Nottingham was marked by the grant of a Mayor and a further charter in 1283. It can be deduced that the church was considerably shorter than it is today. Its west end was probably near the existing south porch. There may have been improvements in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. If there were, nothing is known about them. (information from www.stmarysnottingham.org)