The Gatehouse website record for Bourn Hall Ringwork

In the civil parish of Bourn . In the historic county of Cambridgeshire (Modern Authority of Cambridgeshire, 1974 county of Cambridgeshire).

Bourn was the seat of the barony of Picot de Cambridge who has a castle at this place, of which the moat and other vestiges remain. The castle is said to have been burnt down in the Baron's Wars during the reign of Henry III by Robert de Lisle'. John Layer (1640) says 'Alan de Turre seemeth to be of the castle there, for aunciently there was a high castell ye ruines and monuments remaining their this day'. There is little doubt that Picot, the Domesday tenant, himself was the builder of the keep and bailey castle whose faint traces are now to be see round Bourn Hall, as he gave to the canons of Cambridge (afterwards Barnwell) 'the church of Brune with the chapel of the castle'. Whatever structure once stood here, all trace of it has disappeared, and even the earthwork has been so far obliterated that any exact description of the site is impossible. Its original form seems to have comprised a large banked and ditched inclosure of about 3 acres with a smaller horseshoe bailey down the gentle slope of the NE. There are signs of an original entrance to the bailey at the NE extremity. The British Museum Stowe MS (1025, 25) written before 1760 probably by Dr Charles Mason, Fellow of Trinity College, describes the castle as 'circular, about 160 yards in diameter'. It had a parapet walk 'between the ditch and inner vallum'. A plan on the same MS shows the inner ring nearly complete with a gap less than one sixth of the circumference in front of the house. The plan (in VCH) does not include the bailey but shows its point of junction with the keep. (VCH 1948)

The Ordnance Survey Map Grid Reference is TL32305619

Sources of information, references and further reading

This site's English Heritage (PastScape) Defra or Monument number is 368849
This site's County Historic Environment Record (formerly Sites and Monuments Record) number is 01096 'grey' literature, such as watching brief reports, held by H.E.R.s is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded in this website.

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.
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*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.