page_title: Colchester Castle
section_title: Construction of the bailey
hierarchical_section_title: Colchester Castle / Construction / Construction of the bailey
caption_attribution_description: English: Sunken garden north of Colchester Castle. Was this once a moat? Now it's full of flowers, not water!
context_page_description: Colchester Castle is a Norman castle in Colchester, Essex, England, dating from the second half of the eleventh century. The keep of the castle is mostly intact and is the largest example of its kind anywhere in Europe, due to its being built on the foundations of a Roman temple. The castle endured a three-month siege in 1216, but had fallen into disrepair by the seventeenth century when the curtain walls and some of the keep's upper parts were demolished; its original height is debated. The remaining structure was used as a prison and was partially restored as a large garden pavilion, but was purchased by Colchester Borough Council in 1922. The castle has since 1860 housed Colchester Museum, which has an important collection of Roman exhibits. It is a scheduled monument and a Grade I listed building.
context_section_description: The defences of the bailey consisted principally of a large earthen rampart and ditch surrounding the keep, the northern section of which survives but was heavily landscaped in the 19th century. Archaeological evidence has found that these embankments were thrown up over the remains of the Roman wall of the temple precinct and on the northern side were probably constructed at the same time as the first phase of the keep. The rampart to the north-east was 28.5 metres (94 ft) wide by 4 metres (13 ft) high. The southern embankment seems to have been completed during the second phase of keep construction around 1100. Inside the bailey, a late Anglo-Saxon chapel stood close to the southern edge of the keep and a domestic hall to the southeast of, and aligned with the chapel, were both retained during the first phase of keep construction.
  The chapel was rebuilt during the second phase and the hall had a large fireplace added at around the same time. A weak lower or "nether" bailey was formed by two less substantial bank-and-ditch barriers which extended northwards as far as the town walls. This may be the "new bailey" mentioned in 1173, or perhaps the masonry walls of the main or "upper" bailey which were in place by 1182. No trace of the stone walls has been found, which suggests that were located at the top of the rampart. A twin-towered gatehouse gave access to the bailey in its southwest corner, probably built at the same time as the bailey walls, although there is no mention of it until the 1240s; it was approached by a bridge over the ditch. A pallisade, presumably part of the nether bailey defences, blew down in 1218 and again in 1237, and further repairs to it were needed in 1275–76.
caption: The northern ditch and rampart of the upper bailey, which were heavily landscaped in the 18th and 19th centuries.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon DIGITAL IXUS 50", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2007:09:03 22:29:58", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1138", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7974", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:09:03 13:25:57", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:09:03 13:25:57", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "133/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "640", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "480", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "2592", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1944", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "988", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "11520", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "81000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}