Lost Houses of Derbyshire – Melbourne Castle
Some castles grew from purely Norman military motte-and-bailey castles, constructed by William the Conqueror’s knights to keep a firm hold on England. Others are later affairs, fortified houses built later in the middle ages or even in the Tudor Age more as symbolic castles than effective defensive buildings. Later still, houses like Elvaston or Bretby had ‘castle’ added in lieu of ‘hall’ for effect. If one was a member of the medieval elite, with a largish house built around one or even two courtyards, adding defensive works was sometimes felt advisable, as during the barons’ wars in the mid-13th century, or during the wars of the Roses in the mid-fifteenth century. In that case one applied to the King for a licence to crenellate, or to put it simply, to adapt one’s house to make it to some extent defensible. Such houses are usually termed defended manor houses rather than pure castles, and locally included Codnor, Bretby and Melbourne. There never was a Norman castle at Melbourne. The King had granted Melbourne to the Bishops of Carlisle, a place often made too hot for comfort by marauding Scots, hence the epic scale of the Norman church there. Yet it was not until 1246/1248 that we have evidence for a manor house at Melbourne. In the very beginning of the fourteenth century Sir Robert de Holand, held a manor house there under the ambitious Thomas, Duke of Lancaster of whom he was a leading confidant. He duly obtained a licence to crenellate in 1311 and in 1314 the mason Peter de Bagworth is recorded and undertaking extensive works there, ‘there’ being the area on the SE side of Castle Square at Melbourne, although this work was being done for Lancaster, not Holand himself, that year created a peer by writ of summons. Indeed, whatever arrangement there was between Lord Holand and the Duke, it was clearly intended to enable the former to reap the fiscal benefits of ownership whilst his master retained control of the site. Indeed, this was the year of the disaster at Bannockburn and for the next four years Lancaster was effectively in control of the government. In 1322, however, the King had his revenge, defeating the Duke at Boroughbridge, although, strangely enough, Holand had deserted to the King just prior to the encounter, thus saving his neck. What Holand created was a fortified manor house and he was later confirmed in his possession of the manor of Melbourne, held this time from his former mentor’s younger brother, Henry, Earl of Lancaster, again raised to a dukedom in 1351. The Castle is specifically referred to as such in the documentation generated by his death ten years later. The manor and castle passed by marriage to John of Gaunt, also created Duke of Lancaster, and when his son became Henry IV, his possessions were made into a separate principality, called the Duchy of Lancaster which still owns much land in England and especially in Derbyshire. By this time there was an extensive park, now attached to the Melbourne Hall estate, surrounded by a pale – an earthen bank designed to stop the deer jumping out – still extant in several sections, and equipped with two lodges, one (moated) situated at SK392241 and recorded as in existence from c. 1262 until the late 15th century. There was also a moat and bridge. After Agincourt the castle was developed into a palace-like residence and became the very luxurious PoW camp of the captured Jean, Duc de Bourbon and other notable French prisoners. Poor Duke Jean was there for no less than nineteen years; clearly no one at home was in any hurry to raise his ransom! Their gaoler and the Constable of the Castle was local landed magnate Nicholas Montgomery of Cubley, the younger. It was later granted to Henry V’s French queen after his death in 1422. A drawing of 1602 in the PRO (subsequently rather well engraved in 1733 for the Society of Antiquaries) shows it to have been embowered with something like a dozen round and square section towers, all embattled, the external walls having plentiful slit windows but high up, one or two elaborately traceried Gothic ones too. A pedimented lantern visible in the midst of the pinnacles seems to indicate the position of the great hall and there was an impressive elaborate door with a crocketed ogee moulding above it in the outer wall, compared by Anthony Emery with that at Mackworth (see last month) and presumably the main entrance, reached by the bridge over the moat. Emery also suggests that it must have been built, like Haddon and Wingfield Manor, around two courtyards and points out that the original drawing (rather than the engravings taken from it) clearly suggests this. In its time it must have been most impressive. Yet its apogee was brief and, with the French wars at an end, it swiftly became a white elephant although exactly what it was used for in the later fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries is not at all clear, but it was still in good repair when the itinerarist John Leland saw it in the early1540s, writing that it was ‘Prety [pretty] and yn meately [very] good reparation.’ Yet under Elizabeth it appears to have become completely redundant. Hence it was referred to in 1576 when it was reported that the castle was in a fair state of decay though the stonework was good. In 1583, it was recommended by the Privy Council that the queen move her cousin, the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, to Melbourne, and a description of the castle was provided which throws interesting light on its appearance at the time in that it was said to be constructed of lead-covered ashlar, had large spacious rooms that would need to be partitioned, floors of earth and plaster, walls that appear to have needed repointing and rendering since they were described as being too easily scaleable, and no paths or wall about
