Lord of this Castle, I do claim… One Horseshoe?
How to burnish one’s status in gilded iron.
Oakham, a market town in the English county of Rutland, boasts a well-preserved Great Hall within its dilapidated castle walls, and an amazing collection of oversized horseshoes, some gilded and bearing coronets.
After the successful conquest of England by the Norman-French in 1066, the existing manorial lands were redistributed to the new King William’s subordinate nobility and knights. These gifts for loyal military service provided both a living and ensured control of a belligerent British population. Using forced labour, a net of earthen motte and bailey castles sprang up every ten miles so one would never be far from reinforcements.
Oakham Manor, once part of the dowry of Anglo-Saxon Queens, was gifted to the de Ferrières family (now written as de Ferrers). By 1180 the family had the financial resources to build in stone, and felt so secure that the usual towers and castellated battlements were left for the curtain wall. The rectangular Great Hall was built free-standing in the centre of the two-acre inner bailey, surrounded by its ancillary service buildings which have not survived. The Hall, however, remains one of the best examples of Norman domestic architecture in England, mostly due to its horseshoes and its role as a court of…
