Hedingham Castle wedding map print

The de Vere family, later Earls of Oxford, began building here in the late 11th century, and the great stone keep went up in the 1130s and 1140s. It is often called the best preserved Norman keep in England, with walls up to eleven feet thick, faced with stone hauled from Barnack in Northamptonshire, and rising more than seventy feet.

The keep has known both royalty and siege. Matilda, wife of King Stephen, died here in 1152, and the castle was besieged twice, in 1216 and 1217, during King John's struggle with his barons. A red brick bridge of four spans, built around 1500, still crosses into the inner bailey, and a Queen Anne mansion stands in the outer bailey.

Below the castle, Castle Hedingham keeps many timber-framed medieval buildings and the church of St Nicholas, begun around 1180. On the artwork the village lanes run down into the valley, with Sible Hedingham off the map across it to the south-west, while the castle grounds hold the high ground above them all.