Castle Grounds
Walk into the Castle Grounds - here you can see where the Castle used to lie. Feel free to wonder round.

Jill Eyers talks about the Mammoths that roamed in the grounds

Prehistoric: Stand at the top of the Motte at Wallingford Castle. Look to the top of the far Chalk hills, and try to imagine the river valley beneath you being 'filled-in' 65 million years ago. The top of the Chalk hill would have stretched far and wide as very flat land. Gradually vegetated and occasionally criss-crossed by rivers, it would have begun to be eroded gently.

Ice Age: If you looked across here 2 million years ago you would still not see the Thames of today, but you will have seen a massive braided river that spread with numerous channels for miles.

Mammoths walking over Wallingford

But it was the Ice Age that created the river between Wallingford and Goring, when a massive ice sheet cut through the land half a million years ago.

By the end of the Ice Age you would have been able to pick some flowers amongst what had become quite rich vegetation. All this lovely greenery attracted the Mammoth.

Stand here 12,000 years ago and you'd see a family of mammoths strolling along the hilltop, along with bison, munching their way through the tundra vegetation.


Island Britain: Ten thousand years ago, and the climate has warmed up enough to cause a big change in plant life here in Wallingford. Scrubland appears, followed by birch and pine, then mixed deciduous woodland with oak, elm and lime trees.

Flint Axe

Animals are now making their home here such as the red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wolves, foxes, the auroch, elk, and a mass of small rodents, as well as - well, YOU! Yes humans finally arrived in Wallingford a mere 10,000 years ago. Neanderthal people may well have walked on the very ground you're standing on. Could this flint axe have belonged to one of your ancestors?

Judy Dewey talks about the history of the Castle

Stone Age to Medieval: The people living here in the Mesolithic period, 10,000 years ago, would have been attracted to the river and so would have started fishing to supplement their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. By the Neolithic period, 6,5000 years ago, the first farmers settled here.

While if you were around in the Bronze and Iron Age you'd have been fighting a lot more with your neighbours and moving into hillfort settlements. Wallingford becomes extremely important when we reach the Anglo-Saxon period.

In fact "Wallingford" derives its name from this period of time. Named after their leader, and derived from ingas meaning "people of", the name translates as "Wealh's peoples ford". Underneath part of the grass banks are hidden 12th century cob houses (made of mud and straw). Wallingford castle was built after Norman Conquest in 1066, as ordered by William the Conqueror. It became one of the strongest in country. Cromwell destroyed it stone by stone after his victory in the civil war, so all you can see today are the earthworks on which walls once stood.