Qualla: Burgh Castle

Burgh Castle: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hel-hama, CC BY-SA 3.0. The walls are still there. Not ruins exactly - the Roman engineers built them too well for that. Three sides of a Roman fort, still rising 4.6 metres above the Norfolk turf, three metres thick at the base, with six bastions punctuating the perimeter. Walk up to them today and you can put your hand on stone that the Romans laid in the third century to hold back the Saxons. The Saxons came anyway. The walls remained.

Read more: Burgh Castle on Qualla

Image: Hel-hama | CC BY-SA 3.0

Burgh Castle: Gariannonum

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernd Jatzwauk Pommes104, CC BY-SA 3.0. Archaeologists believe this is Gariannonum, one of the Saxon Shore forts the Romans built along the southeast coast to defend Britain from sea-raiders. The choice of site made perfect sense in the third century, even if it looks strange now. Today Burgh Castle sits on a slope ove...

Read more: Burgh Castle on Qualla

Image: Bernd Jatzwauk Pommes104 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Burgh Castle: St Fursey's Monastery

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pierre Terre, CC BY-SA 2.0. When the Romans left, the walls stayed. Anglo-Saxons used the fort. Then, in the early 630s, an Irish missionary called St Fursey may have founded a monastery within the walls - the Cnobheresburg recorded by Bede. The evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive: mid-twentieth c...

Read more: Burgh Castle on Qualla

Image: Pierre Terre | CC BY-SA 2.0

Burgh Castle: Norman Castle Within a Roman Fort

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hel-hama, CC BY-SA 3.0. After 1066, the Normans found the same walls still useful. They built a motte-and-bailey castle inside the Roman fort, raising an earthen mound and timber stockade in the corner of a structure already a thousand years old. The medieval castle is gone now, dismantled by the mid-ni...

Read more: Burgh Castle on Qualla

Image: Hel-hama | CC BY-SA 3.0

Burgh Castle: What You See Now

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Evelyn Simak, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Norfolk Archaeological Trust has owned the site since 1996, with English Heritage caring for the walls themselves. A footpath leads up to them across open ground. The view from the fort looks west over the River Waveney and Breydon Water to where the Roman ships once sailed -...

Read more: Burgh Castle on Qualla

Image: Evelyn Simak | CC BY-SA 2.0