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How Long Did It Take to Build Rochester Castle?
Short answer: about 9 years, from 1127 to 1136. This period is our own estimate of the main building phase; the sources do not give one clear start and end.
In 1215 the king's men burned the fat of forty pigs to bring down a tower of the keep. It is documented.
What the sources say about the building period
Stone castle by Gundulf in the 1080s; great keep built about 1127 (William of Corbeil); siege 1215; rebuilt under Henry III and Edward I. English Heritage Official source
Stone and crew in numbers
- Country and type
- England, castle
- Stone in the walls
- 14,000 to 22,000 m³ Estimate
- For comparison
- about 7 Olympic pools of stone, or 1,800 truckloads
- Average crew
- about 239 workers (model value: the crew that would need exactly this long, working without a break)
Volume basis: keep 38 m high, walls 3–3.7 m thick; curtain wall 1.4 m thick, 6.7 m high. Checked against measurements. Our estimates come from published dimensions and are shown as a range. The result is a simple model, not a measured fact.
Where the stone came from
The keep's walling is irregular Kentish ragstone. The corners and arched windows are finely cut Caen stone from Normandy. The source does not say where the ragstone was quarried. English Heritage: description of Rochester Castle Official source
Plan
Legend: tradition, not evidence
It sounds like a tall tale: in 1215 the king's men burned the fat of forty pigs to bring down a tower of the keep.
What we know: It is documented. A royal writ of 25 November 1215 asks for forty of the fattest pigs, and the south-east corner of the keep fell.
Magna Carta Project: the siege of Rochester, English Heritage: history of Rochester Castle Documented, not a legend
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