Qualla: Orford Castle https://qualla.com/orford-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:40:44 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/3/0/orford-castle-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Orford Castle https://qualla.com/orford-castle Orford Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/orford-castle/ Photo credit Amanda Slater from Coventry, West Midlands, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. The wild man was naked, covered in hair, and said nothing when the fishermen brought him to the castle keep. Six months he stayed in Henry II's new tower at Orford, questioned and possibly tortured, and then he slipped back into the sea. The chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall recorded the story around 1167, just two years after construction started on this remarkable polygonal keep on the Suffolk coast. The castle was barely finished when its legend began.

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Image: Amanda Slater from Coventry, West Midlands, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/3/0/orford-castle-wp/u130-orford-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Orford Castle: Henry's Answer to the Bigods https://qualla.com/orford-castle/ Photo credit Ashley Dace, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1165, Henry II had a Bigod problem. Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, had picked the wrong side during the Anarchy under King Stephen, and the family's four Suffolk castles at Framlingham, Bungay, Walton and Thetford gave them a stranglehold on East Anglia that no king could comfor...

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Image: Ashley Dace | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/3/0/orford-castle-wp/u130-orford-castle-henrys-answer-to-the-bigods.mp3 0:06 2 full Orford Castle: A Keep Like No Other https://qualla.com/orford-castle/ Photo credit Chris Gunns, CC BY-SA 2.0. The historian R. Allen Brown called it one of the most remarkable keeps in England, and the design is genuinely strange. A 90-foot central tower, circular in cross-section, with three rectangular clasping towers projecting from a 49-foot core. The proportions follow a one-to-the-...

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Image: Chris Gunns | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/3/0/orford-castle-wp/u130-orford-castle-a-keep-like-no-other.mp3 0:06 3 full Orford Castle: Slow Centuries by the Sea https://qualla.com/orford-castle/ Photo credit Meria Geoian, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Bigods rose in revolt in 1173-74 and were crushed. Framlingham was confiscated for good, and Orford settled into the long quiet that follows a successful piece of statecraft. Prince Louis of France took the castle in 1216, invited in by barons fed up with King John. The de Va...

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Image: Meria Geoian | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/3/0/orford-castle-wp/u130-orford-castle-slow-centuries-by-the-sea.mp3 0:06 4 full Orford Castle: Radar and Restoration https://qualla.com/orford-castle/ Photo credit Adrian Cable, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sir Arthur Churchman bought the castle in 1928 and gave it to the Orford Town Trust, which opened it to the public in 1930. During the Second World War the keep was wrapped in barbed wire and Nissen huts, originally for anti-aircraft work but eventually as a radar station with a ...

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Image: Adrian Cable | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/3/0/orford-castle-wp/u130-orford-castle-radar-and-restoration.mp3 0:06 5 full