Qualla: Oakham Castle and Its Forfeited Horseshoes

Oakham Castle and Its Forfeited Horseshoes: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC0. Pay your horseshoe at the door. Two hundred and thirty of them already hang on the walls inside, surrendered over the centuries by visiting peers of the realm under a tradition so peculiar it survives mostly because nobody has ever managed to stop it. The oldest of these horseshoes was given by King Edward IV in 1470, after his victory at the Battle of Losecoat Field. The newest were presented by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh in 2024. Between those two dates stretches an unbroken chain of nobility paying tribute, in the form of an iron shoe of varying size and craftsmanship, to the Lord of the Manor of Oakham in the smallest county in England.

Image: Unknown author | CC0

Oakham Castle and Its Forfeited Horseshoes: The Great Hall That Survived

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Njjh201 at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.5. What is called Oakham Castle today is not really a castle, although it once was. The surviving stone hall is the inner chamber of a much larger fortified manor house built in the late twelfth century, complete with curtain wall, gatehouse, drawbridge with iron chains, towers at s...

Image: The original uploader was Njjh201 at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Oakham Castle and Its Forfeited Horseshoes: Eight Hundred Years of Crown Court

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Oakham Castle has been a seat of justice in England since 1229. A Crown Court has been held in the hall every two years for almost eight hundred years, an institutional continuity that survives transitions of monarchy, civil war, the abolition of the monarchy in 1649, its restora...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oakham Castle and Its Forfeited Horseshoes: The Horseshoe Tradition

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Garbutt. SiGarb 23:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0. The horseshoes started, as best historians can reconstruct it, with the de Ferrers family. Henry de Ferrers came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066, and his family name derives from the Norman French word ferrier, meaning farrier or horseshoer. A horseshoe became their...

Image: Simon Garbutt. SiGarb 23:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oakham Castle and Its Forfeited Horseshoes: Time Team and the Lottery Restoration

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0. In June 2012 the Channel 4 archaeology series Time Team spent three days excavating at Oakham, and what they found turned out to be unexpectedly substantial. Tony Robinson, the show's presenter, and the team's archaeologists uncovered a previously unmapped horseshoe and traced se...

Image: Philip Halling | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oakham Castle and Its Forfeited Horseshoes: A Castle in the Smallest County

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Hallam-Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Rutland is the smallest historic county in England, eighteen miles across at its widest point, with a population of around 41,000 people. Oakham, its county town, sits at the centre, on flat ground south of the Vale of Catmose and a few miles east of the artificial reservoir of R...

Image: David Hallam-Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0