To my mind not technically a castle in the truest sense, by that i mean one that guards a valley or entry into a town or port. This giant hunting lodge was a safe place to bed down the night when the king (or queen) were in between the bigger castles of Winchester and Windsor. It makes some sense, as making overnight camp in the woods wouldn’t be the done thing for a medieval monarch, so a more substantial edifice was knocked up as a halfway house.
What we see today is the tired and shorn hulk of what was once a more intimidating and certainly luxurious (for its time) edifice, featuring the latest mod cons, such as a chimney. There are few worse things than the room filling up with smoke. The outer dressing stones pilfered for use elsewhere - more than likely Windsor Castle - when its need was radically reduced by the improvement of trackways and speed of passage between forest and town.
From Henry I to Edward I was this castles true heyday, but fashions slide and so do trade routes. It could even be that a new path was cut via Basingstoke, bypassing this backwater altogether? By the elizabethan age - a mighty 500 years from us now - this pile of stones was already in ruin. I find it a wonder that what we bear witness to today is still quite substantial.
It was a bright afternoon as i meandered across the common wetland of North Warnborough Greens, with its wildflowers, grazing Highland cattle and happy fords, to round a corner of brambles and suddenly glance up at its remains.
A chilly north easterly blew, the sky ablaze of blue, the thin air awash with the call of nesting birds and flaking blossom.
Plantagenet kings will surely bow as nature reclaims what was hers all along.