page_title: Baynard's Castle
section_title: After the Great Fire
hierarchical_section_title: Baynard's Castle / After the Great Fire
context_page_description: Baynard's Castle refers to buildings on two neighbouring sites in the City of London, between where Blackfriars Station and St Paul's Cathedral now stand. The first was a Norman fortification constructed by Ralph Baynard, 1st feudal baron of Little Dunmow in Essex, and was demolished by King John in 1213. The second was a medieval palace built a short distance to the southeast and destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. According to Sir Walter Besant, "There was no house in [London] more interesting than this".
  The original castle was built at the point where the old Roman walls and River Fleet met the River Thames, just east of what is now Blackfriars Station. The Norman castle stood for over a century before being demolished by King John in 1213. It appears to have been rebuilt after the Barons' Revolt, but the site was sold in 1276 to form the precinct of the great Blackfriars’ Monastery.
  About a century later, a new mansion was constructed on land that had been reclaimed from the Thames, southeast of the first castle. The house was rebuilt after 1428, and became the London headquarters of the House of York during the Wars of the Roses.
context_section_description: Baynard Castle was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666. The engraver Wenceslaus Hollar depicted considerable ruins standing after the fire, including the stone facade on the river side, but only a round tower was left when Strype was writing in 1720. This tower had been converted into a dwelling, whilst the rest of the site became timber yards and wood wharves with Dunghill Lane running through the site from Thames Street. Richard Horwood's map of c. 1813 shows a wharf which in 1878 belonged to the Castle Baynard Copper Company. The remaining tower (some sources say two survived) was pulled down in the 19th century to make way for warehouses of the Carron Company.
  In the 1970s the area was redeveloped, with the construction of the Blackfriars underpass and a Brutalist office block named "Baynard House", occupied by the telephone company BT Group. Most of the site under Baynard House is a scheduled monument.
caption: Baynard's Castle, from a view published in 1790
exif: {"Image Copyright": "Public Domain, from the British Library's collections, 2013"}