With tales of ghosts, an empress under siege, imprisoned 7-year-olds and a chance to throw fluffy rats at your family, a visit to Oxford Castle with kids is one of the most unusual and entertaining days out in the city.
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Oxford Castle & Prison, to give it its full name, dates back to just after the Norman Conquest – but the site, which was used as a prison for centuries, only finally stopped operating as a jail in 1996. Since 2006, you can explore inside, discovering some of the oldest corners and the most unexpected stories.
You can even stay in part of the old castle prison, now the Malmaison hotel, or simply book in for a tour and a look around, as we did. So if you’re exploring Oxford with kids, here’s why the castle should be on your list.
Your visit begins with a guided tour, taking you to the top of St George’s Tower – one of the oldest parts of the castle still standing, before leading you through history in some of the other old rooms.
The tour takes around 50 minutes, after which you’re free to continue exploring, revisiting the rooms from the tour (except the tower), as well as those which the guided section doesn’t visit, plus an exhibition featuring some interactive fun.
It’s a great way to do it as your guide – Eli, in our case – helped bring the stone tower to life with some thrilling stories, as well as answering questions.
The first stop is half-way up the tower – a nice break as you climb the 101 steps to the top. A fairly bare stone room, looking out to the skyline of Oxford, there’s a more dramatic history hidden here than you might expect.
Back in the 12th century, during the period known as the Anarchy, the Empress Matilda – daughter of Henry I – and her cousin, Stephen I were at war, as both claimed the throne. Matilda had made her base in Oxford, staying in that very same room in the castle, when Stephen besieged the building.
According to legends, as his troops waited out the long cold winter, the Empress and her knights let themselves down out of the tower, and disguised under white sheets against the snow, fled across the fields before skating off along the frozen Thames.
Whether it’s true, or whether she sneaked out of a gate, she certainly escaped to fight another day. And why spoil a good story?
The tower itself is one of the oldest buildings in Oxford, and one of the first parts built by Robert D’Oilly (or D’Oyly) in 1071 after William the Conqueror granted him the land and told him to build a castle to subdue the Saxons.
The views from the top are rather different than the Saxon market town which the Normans would have seen, but it’s a great chance to look out over the dreaming spires.
Incidentally, if you don’t want to climb the 101 steps to the top, or can’t, there’s a video to watch on the ground floor. Under-fives aren’t allowed to attempt the climb.
Don’t be put off by the fact that the steps were designed to kill invaders – slightly uneven, they increased the chance of attackers falling into their own swords, or the man behind them in a faintly lethal version of knocking over dominoes. They’re easy enough for kids to climb, so the biggest danger is the low ceilings!
From here, the tour moves on to another of the oldest parts of the castle, the crypt under St George’s chapel, founded after Robert D’Oilly had a nightmare of the Virgin Mary warning him about his sinful ways.
And while the chapel was later destroyed, the crypt and its carved stone columns survived, eventually excavated by an 18th century prison governor, who held the radical beliefs that prisoners should use their time in jail productively to become better members of society in future – and happened to be a bit of an amateur archaeologist on the side.
That’s not the only story associated with the crypt: as a cool underground space, it was ideal for storing bodies and it’s said today that the area is haunted – one corner in particular which often seems colder. The ghosts weren’t making an appearance, or even dropping the temperature when we were there though.
Right from its earliest days, the castle was probably used as a prison – firstly, rebellious Saxons, and before too long, any students who were caught misbehaving (which given that they were often 14-year-old boys with no parents on hand, lots of beer and swords, was frequently).
By the 16th century, in Elizabeth’s England, it was Catholics who often found themselves in front of a judge – including an infamous bookseller called Rowland Jenkes, who was sentenced to time in the pillory, nailed to the wood by his ears… and who called down a curse upon all those in the courtroom as a result.
Almost straight away, men started to drop dead (although apparently no women, children or servants) – some believed it was black magic, others that it was God’s divine punishment, while modern historians think a particularly virulent bout of typhus might be to blame.
Either way, it’s gone down in history as the Black Assizes… and if you’re brave enough, you can take your own chances in the pillory. Although no-one gets nailed by the ears these days, the worst you’ve got to endure is your family throwing fluffy rats at you. (Perhaps that’s just my family!)
By the Civil War, Charles I had made Oxford his capital, and while he chose the more luxurious accommodation of Christ Church college over the castle, it became briefly one of the most important in the country – and with one of the worst reputations for prison conditions.
When Parliament triumphed, they razed most of the castle to the ground: only the tower was saved as there was a useful mill at the bottom, the mound (or old motte) as the earth was too hard-packed to destroy, and the crypt as it was long buried.
From this point on, the castle was firmly a prison rather than a fortress, and the tour introduces you to a few of the more surprising stories – such as middle-class Mary Blandy, charged with the murder of her father to marry the dashing Captain Cranbourn.
It turned out the Captain already had one wife in Scotland so her father had cancelled their planned wedding; Mary’s defence was that her former fiance had sent her a love tonic to soften her father’s heart towards their match, but after giving him the white powder, her father sickened and died.
An autopsy revealed arsenic poisoning – and the letters which Mary insisted proved her innocence had been burned. The jury were not convinced… and she paid the price.
Or how about one of the prison’s youngest inmates? Julia Ann Crumpling ‘borrowed’ her neighbour’s toy pram, but forgot to give it back. As the theft had been reported, there was nothing for it but to sentence her to time inside – seven days hard labour.
The short sentence wasn’t out of mercy for her youth either, but to spare her father the shame of having a jailbird daughter!
Released, on the proviso that she was sent to school, Julia never did reoffend, something which would have convinced the Victorians that the pointless punishments they inflicted on prisoners actually worked.
In the exhibition, there’s a chance to try out examples of hard labour yourself. One punishment was moving cannonballs from one side of the yard to the other – and then back again – over and over again. One of the original balls is on display, but there’s a 22kg weight to try to lift if you want to experience what it would have been like.
Or there’s the crank, a handle which prisoners had to turn thousands of times a day, and the capstan – which you can see in St George’s Tower – where prisoners turned a huge wheel to pump water up into a tank on the upper floor of the tower. Which was then all released back down to the river.
The treadwheel could be straight out of a modern gym though, a device where you tread on the steps endlessly turning the wheel but getting nowhere – not a million miles away from a modern step machine.
Although you can at least get off those when you’re tired: apparently some prisoners climbed the equivalent of Mount Kilimanjaro every day.
Conditions had improved by the 20th century (although not as much as perhaps they should) and the final part of the exhibition gives more details about modern law and punishment, as well as some of the more notorious prisoners – watch out for the jump scare at the start of the video if you venture into the cell designed for Donald Neilson, known as the Black Panther!
After tales of royalty, rats and radical reformers, all bundled into a whirlwind gallop through over 1000 years of history, there’s just one thing left to do before you leave (apart from trying to resist buying a fluffy rat/wooden sword in the gift shop) – climb the mound.
Part of the original motte and bailey castle built back in 1071, the grassy hill was too tough for the Parliamentarians to destroy when they emerged victorious after the civil war, so it sits a stone’s throw from St George’s tower to this day.
A curving path leads to flat area at the top for more views over to Oxford and back down onto the old prison.
If you want one final taste of jail life, head into the Malmaison hotel to check out the cell they’ve left intact (if you’re splashing out, it’s a great place for lunch too) – or the castle quarter has a string of restaurants of its own, plus you can escape to central Oxford and the Westgate centre a short walk away.
Which gives you chance to reflect on this highly entertaining journey through history as you go – and for my 11-year-old to count her lucky stars that she doesn’t live in a time when you could be jailed for borrowing a toy pram.
Visiting Oxford Castle with kids: Need to know
Tickets cost from £15.50 for standard entry, if you book up to two days in advance, and £9.95 for children. You can also buy flexi-tickets for £17.50. Under-fives are free but need a ticket.
You can also buy tickets with free cancellation via tiqets – get a discount if you book through my link using the code MUMMYTRAVELS6.
Tours run every day from 10am, although timings may change around the school holidays. Each tour has a maximum of 20 people and run every 20 minutes on Fridays and weekends until 5pm, every 30 minutes from Monday to Thursday until 4.30pm.
You need to prebook a timed entry slot for the guided tour, as there’s no access otherwise, although you can continue exploring afterwards (with the exception of the tower). You’re asked to arrive 10 minutes before your tour starts.
There are also extra activities and events taking place during the year, such as Knight School during the summer holidays, birds of prey handling and flying sessions on select dates.
If you want to climb the mound, anyone booking tickets to the castle is given a code to the gate included in your ticket. If you don’t want to do the full castle tour but fancy climbing the mound, you can do so for a small fee (which goes towards preserving the structure).
Some areas of the castle are not accessible to wheelchairs, and prams/pushchairs aren’t allowed because of the narrow corridors, so these need to be left with staff in the gift shop.
There are 101 steps in St George’s Tower: under-fives aren’t allowed to climb the tower, but it’s doable for older kids. Anyone who can’t (or doesn’t want) to climb can stay downstairs and watch a video with a virtual view – an adult must stay with children.
There’s no parking at Oxford Castle, although you’re only a few minutes walk from the Westgate Centre, which has paid parking in the shopping centre car park. Otherwise, there are five Park and Rides around Oxford: Seacourt Park and Ride is closest.
There are various places to eat and drink in the Oxford Castle Quarter or Oxford town centre is walking distance away.
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