Berkhamsted Castle

Berkhamsted Castle is not just a visitor attraction – its rich history offers a superb resource for educational activities, enabling young people to discover the past and find new ways of bringing history to life.

We’ve found a wonderful story of Mika, a Year 7 pupil who has built a scale model of Berkhamsted Castle for her school history project. She was inspired by her sister, whose school project in 2019 involved building a model of the former Lütjenburg Castle in Northern Germany. Last year, young Mika turned her attention to our Norman motte-and-bailey castle here in Hertfordshire, and set to work researching the history of its construction.

The stone ruins we see today in Berkhamsted date from the 12th century onwards, but when the castle was first built in the 1060s by Robert of Mortain – the half-brother of William the Conqueror – it was fortified with wooden defences. Mika, our 21st-century model builder, decided to recreate the castle as it appeared in Norman times. Ably assisted by her history enthusiast Dad, Mika has created the most fantastic reconstruction of Berkhamsted Castle as it appeared around 1086 AD, 20 years after the initial build but before the rebuild in stone, complete with moats, fortifications and tiny houses. It really is superb!

You can read about the details of Mika’s model construction and see photos on her Dad’s blog: