Qualla: Montacute Castle https://qualla.com/montacute-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Montacute Castle https://qualla.com/montacute-castle Montacute Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/montacute-castle/ Robert of Mortain built the castle to make a point. The hill above Bishopston was steep, conical, and conspicuous, the kind of natural feature any Norman commander would pick for a stronghold. But it carried something else as well. Before the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the Anglo-Saxons had reportedly discovered what they believed to be a holy cross on this hill, and treated the place as sacred. Robert, William the Conqueror's younger half-brother, watched the spiritual significance of the site and decided to plant his castle directly on top of it. The Saxon name disappeared. The hill became Mons Acutus, sharp hill, and the castle on its summit became the main seat of one of the most powerful men in post-Conquest England.

Read more: Montacute Castle on Qualla

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/1/montacute-castle-wp/gcn1-montacute-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Montacute Castle: An Expensive Exchange https://qualla.com/montacute-castle/ Acquiring the land took some negotiating. The site was within the Saxon settlement of Bishopston, and the abbot of Athelney Abbey had to be persuaded to give it up. Robert traded him the manor of Purse Caundle, which contemporaries described as an expensive exchange that did the ...

Read more: Montacute Castle on Qualla

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/1/montacute-castle-wp/gcn1-montacute-castle-an-expensive-exchange.mp3 0:06 2 full Montacute Castle: Built on the Fosseway https://qualla.com/montacute-castle/ The choice of hill was as much strategic as political. Montacute sits in southern Somerset where the old Roman Fosseway runs north-east toward Bath, and where the Somerset Levels open into a flat, easily controlled landscape. From his castle Robert could overlook and tax the traf...

Read more: Montacute Castle on Qualla

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/1/montacute-castle-wp/gcn1-montacute-castle-built-on-the-fosseway.mp3 0:06 3 full Montacute Castle: From Caput to Cluniac Priory https://qualla.com/montacute-castle/ Robert of Mortain made Montacute the caput, the head castle of his honour, which was the technical Norman term for a great lordship. He abandoned another Somerset castle he had begun at Castle Neroche, west of Taunton, to concentrate his authority here. But the family's importanc...

Read more: Montacute Castle on Qualla

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/1/montacute-castle-wp/gcn1-montacute-castle-from-caput-to-cluniac-priory.mp3 0:06 4 full Montacute Castle: What Stands There Now https://qualla.com/montacute-castle/ What stands on the summit today is not Robert's castle but a Georgian replacement. St. Michael's Hill Tower is an eighteenth-century folly built on part of the castle chapel's foundations, named for the same Saint Michael to whom the medieval chapel was dedicated. It is a small c...

Read more: Montacute Castle on Qualla

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/1/montacute-castle-wp/gcn1-montacute-castle-what-stands-there-now.mp3 0:06 5 full Montacute Castle: Sacred, Strategic, Erased https://qualla.com/montacute-castle/ It is rare to find a site that carried so many layers of meaning in so short a span of time. The Anglo-Saxons treated the hill as a place of relics and pilgrimage. The Normans treated it as a place of subjugation. The Cluniacs treated it as a place of prayer. The Georgian gentry ...

Read more: Montacute Castle on Qualla

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/1/montacute-castle-wp/gcn1-montacute-castle-sacred-strategic-erased.mp3 0:06 6 full