SET on the edge of the Fens within distant sight of Lincoln Cathedral, Somerton Castle today appears to be a handsome 17th-century house with a tower most surprisingly stuck on the end. In its mixture of the defensive and the domestic, it recalls the pele towers of the border counties of England and Scotland, but they are far away in wilder country. This little-known castle has recently undergone a transformative restoration at the hands of Hoare, Ridge & Morris architects that has not only reinvented it as a comfortable, modern family home, but rescued it from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register.
On May 23, 1281, a royal clerk called Anthony Bek received a royal licence to fortify his house at Somerton with walls and battlements of stone. Bek came from a local gentry family, stewards to the Earls of Lincoln, and the conversion of his house into a castle was as much an act of social advancement as architectural aggrandisement. He had entered the service of Henry III in the 1260s, before accompanying the King’s son, the Lord Edward, on Crusade. There, he became a close confidant of the future King, Edward I, and, on his return to England in 1274, began to amass rewarding
