English Heritage: Baconsthorpe Castle

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The extensive ruins of Baconsthorpe Castle, a moated and fortified 15th century manor house, are a testament to the rise and fall of a prominent Norfolk family. Over 200 years, successive generations of the ambitious Heydons family, built, then enlarged and finally abandoned this castle.

Sir John Heydon probably built the strong inner gatehouse during the turbulent Wars of the Roses period, and his son Sir Henry, whose memorial can be seen in Baconsthorpe Church, completed the fortified house.

In more peaceful times, their descendants converted part of the property into a textile factory, and then added the turreted Elizabethan outer gateway, inhabited until 1920.

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