Leland, writing in the reign of Henry VIII., says, “The castle of Tamworth standeth on a meetly high ground, at the south part of the towne, hard upon the ripe of Anker, at the mouth of it. The base court and great ward of the castle is clean decayed, and the wall fallen down, and therein be now but houses of office of no notable building. The Dungeon hill yet standeth, and a great round tower of stone, wherein Mr. Ferrers dwelleth and now repaireth it.... The town of Tamworth is all builded of timber.”—[Itin. iv. 122.]
The base court evidently was the platform, and the great ward no doubt included all the ground south of the present curtain, and between the mound and the mill.
In the east window of the church was a painting, of which a copy is preserved by Dugdale. It represents the Conqueror enfeoffing Robert Marmion with the castle. The king stands in front of a considerable building, fronted by two drum towers of two stories, with conical roofs, and connected by a curtain. In one tower is a gateway, and behind the two are seen, in perspective, the stepped gable of a hall, and the chisel-pointed roof of a rectangular tower.
On the proper right of the king and of the building, in the distance, is the mound, crowned with a wall. This is, no doubt, a representation, rather exaggerated, of the castle, as it stood in the later Plantagenet times.
Dugdale, writing after the civil wars, says, “The Norman castle stood below, towards the mercate-place, where the stables now are.” The mercate-house, rebuilt in Queen Anne’s days, remains; the stables are removed to the other side, towards the bridge. The Norman castle means the domestic buildings.
13 Edward I., Philip Marmion had made a certain “pour presture,” or encroachment, to the injury of the king’s market, on either side of Tamworth Castle, containing a width of 8 feet and a length of 40 feet.
The Mr. Ferrers whom Leland mentions was probably Sir John Ferrers (died 1576), who married Barbara Cockaigne; and the domestic buildings now standing were his work, and, perhaps, the work of his son and grandson.
What originally stood within the shell is unknown, probably some lean-to houses of early English and Decorated date, which were removed, or nearly so, for the present structures. These latest works are mainly of brick, with freestone dressings and door casings.