Frampton Castle

Description

A castle is documented at Frampton in 1216. The site is unknown. (PastScape 1391207 ref. King)

TA 327391 (sic). Square moat south of village, perhaps the site of the castle mentioned in 1216. (Renn)

FRAMPTON, a small well-built village, 3 miles S. of Boston, ... The manors and their lords are,— Stone Hall, Lord Willoughby de Broke; Earls Hall, the heirs of Samuel Tunnard, Esq., and Multon Hall, the President and Scholars of St. Mary Magdalen College. Oxford. The other principal owner is Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Thomas John Moore, late high sheriff of Lincolnshire, whose family seat is Frampton Hall, a fine old mansion erected about 1720, near the site of the old moated Hall, by one of his ancestors, Coney Tunnard, Esq., and having a large park and pleasure grounds, which have lately been much improved.
The knightly family of Coppledyke were seated in this parish from 1250 to 1637. The site of their moated mansion is now in possession of Lieutenant-Colonel Moore, but all memorials in the Church of this and other ancient families, have been obliterated by the ill-advised renovations of the last century. A member of the old Norman family of Coney, which came over to England with Isabell, queen of Edward II., circa 1300, having married a daughter of William Coppledyke, the Coneys held possession m this parish till they passed by marriage, in 1669, to the Tunnards, who are said to have settled herein the reign of Edward the Confessor, and who have long possessed considerable property and the advowson of the living. (White 1872)

There are no surface remains of the Hall. The moat has been ploughed out is now under high crop. In the garden are two rebuilt arches with Normal shafts and scalloped capitals. They are believed to be from the earlier phase of St. Mary's Church (F1 JB 07-MAY-65). (PastScape 353812)

Comments

King also suggests Wybert's Castle as an alternative identification of the site mentioned in 1216 but David Roffe dismisses this suggestion.
The moated site Renn identified is probably that of Stone Hall, a rather later manor than 1215. The manor house of 1215, called a castle, was more probably that sited near Frampton Hall although a third, rather dubious soil mark at TF32273883 is identified as Coupledyke Hall. The form of the 'castra de Frampton' is unknown but, given it is mentioned, as a castle, only once it is unlikely this was a major earthwork or masonry building. A simple enclosed site (a ditch and/or bank) around a mainly timber set of buildings readily converted into a fashionable moated site later in the C13.