This is a general history of the area concentrating on the interesting stories and snippets

The first theme is the influence of the Castle, or more strictly of all the defences and fortifications that have occupied this site for the last 3000 years or so.  As we shall see the history of Tutbury is inextricably bound up with the superb natural defensive position of that hill on which the ruined Castle now stands.

My first point was about the influence on the town of the Castle and this is well illustrated by the name TUTBURY itself.  A large proportion of English place-names derive from Anglo-Saxon times (say 1000 to 1500 years ago), that's not to say that the places themselves began then, just that the names we use today stem from that time.  The most common Saxon place name ending was '-tun' or '-ton' which means simply "a settlement - a place where people live".  And in most parts of England, you’ll find dozens of '-tons' ; we have many around us as shown them on this map.

Of all these settlements the Anglo-Saxons singled out those with the special and useful feature of being easily defended, and to these they gave a special name '-bury' which means "a fortified place".  The 'TUT-' bit comes from the personal name TOTTA of the local chieftain of the time.  So TUTBURY means "Tutta's Castle" and Tutta is therefore Tutbury's first recorded resident - our spiritual ancestor.  There are one or two other '-burys' nearby HANBURY for example there are some minor defensive works at Hanbury and it is certainly a good site being on a steep hill.  There's also SUDBURY and NORBURY - the "South Castle" and "North Castle" respectively.  I don't know much about them but they're both in Derbyshire.

So let's get on with the history and start right at the beginning with the Stone Age - say up to 2500 BC.  There is no direct evidence of habitation here but it seems highly likely for two reasons.  

The forest was famous for holly and oak in particular and it was the home of deer, wild cattle, wild boar, wolves and even bears which were later transported to the Roman amphitheatres.  The forest  was greatly reduced in the late Middle Ages when the oaks were used for shipbuilding as England's Navy was being built up.  To protect all these desirable things there is the defensive potential which we have mentioned already.

So the nature of the site and the evidence from other parts of Staffordshire and Derbyshire suggest that human settlement here was very probable.

Let's move on to the Iron Age, about 500-600 BC, the time of the ancient Greek civilization.  Here there is definite evidence of a village and a hillfort.  I won't say much now, except to show this picture, because I'll cover this period more fully when we get on to the section on the Castle.

On again to Saxon times, after the Romans had withdrawn from Britain to defend their crumbling empire, and the written evidence starts to appear.  Tutbury was becoming quite important by now, as the Iron Age fort was adapted, improved and strengthened.  In the early part of this period England was still a number of separate kingdom.  Tthis part of the country came under Mercia and in about 500 AD Offa (of the dyke between England and Wales) was King of Mercia and he had his residence at Tutbury.

So now Tutbury is what we would call the capital of Mercia and here is the first royal connection of which we'll hear much more in a little while.  In 700 AD Ethelred I was king of Mercia and he also resided in Tutbury.  The kings in between tended to move around quite a lot to fight wars and so on.

Around here was right on the border of Saxon and Viking territories and the Tutbury residents of the time would have seen a lot of excitement.  Again place names illustrate this very nicely.  The Viking equivalent of the Saxon 'ton' was 'by' - "a settlement"  and to the East of here you find Bretby, Derby, Oadby, Smisby and dozens in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.  In 874 for instance the Vikings sailed up the Trent, wintered at Repton (which also has a lot of Anglo-Saxon history), and ravaged the surrounding countryside including the nunnery at Hanbury that King Ethelred had established with his sister St Werburgh in charge.

Being the seat of a Saxon King, Tutbury would have been a prime target and some of the Tutbury field names, particularly those near the River Dove, are of Viking origin.  The Vikings remained in this area until about 920 when a lady called Aethelflaed, a daughter of King Alfred the Great and a sort of Boadicea or Margaret Thatcher figure, drove the Vikings from the area as part of a cross country running battle from her bases in Tamworth and Tutbury, where she strengthened the fortifications.

Later the Vikings returned and remained until 1002 when King Ethelred the Unready got fed up with all this.  Some of the Vikings had tried to settle down but Ethelred conceived of a plan to drive them out once and for all.  He tried to take them by surprise and on 13 Nov 1002 began his campaign by attacking them at Houndhill near Marchington in what was called 'The massacre of the Danes' - it sounds very bloodthirsty and probably was.

King William gave him a good deal more than just Tutbury - altogether he held 200 Lordships throughout the Midlands, mostly in Derbyshire but also in Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire.  Of all these possessions he chose Tutbury as his headquarters and strengthened it both politically and militarily.

One of the first things King William did, quite reasonably, was to have a map made of his new kingdom.  A quick survey to identify for him the most important places, so there are only 20 towns marked such as London, Winchester, York, Chester, Bristol, Lincoln, Durham, Rochester …. and Tutbury is one of them. The next thing he did, having got the lie of the land, was to find out how much it was worth – so he commissioned the Domesday Book, just about the first economic survey of the country.   It was called the Domesday Book because people thought it would take until doomsday to complete, it was such an enormous task - nothing on this scale had been tackled before.  Henry de Ferrers was one of the Commissioners.

Tutbury’s entry in the Domesday Book is surprisingly brief but then so are most entries in it - the King was simply interested in where is it?  Even though it’s short we can learn quite a lot.  It reads:

“Henry de Ferrers has the Castle at Toteberie. (this would be a wooden one put up swiftly after the invasion).  In the town about the castle are forty-two men who live only by merchandise (this suggests quite a sizable and prosperous population - these 42 were full-time professional shopkeepers, not farmers who sold their produce - there must have been a fair population to keep them all in business).  They pay, together with the market, four pounds, ten shillings.  This is the first reference to Tutbury Market.

The next bit has confused scholars.  It reads: 

“In Burton he has half a hide (a hide is a measure of land, between 60 and 120 acres - they weren’t very precise in measurement in those days) in which is seated his castle, with which, in the time of Edward the Confessor, there were twelve cerucates; there are now four cerucates in demesne.  It is worth 24 shillings a year.”

• Carucate is the Danish equivalent of a hide.  The land ploughed by eight oxen; the actual area varied locally and like the hide could be reassessed.

• Demesne is land devoted to the Lord's profit, whether a manor, or a portion of land within a manor, worked by peasants as part of their obligations.

This doesn’t tally with the other known facts - there wasn’t a castle at Burton for example.  It is thought that the clerk transcribing the details has confused Burgo (meaning town) with Burton and that this entry really applies to Tutbury.

Reading this in conjunction with the other entries for Staffordshire, we can learn some more.  Tutbury is one of only three ‘burghs’ in the county (a burgh was a particularly important town); it is the only place in Staffordshire with a market and one of four in the Midlands - a critical element of the medieval economy.  It is one of only three places in Staffordshire with a castle and the population was probably 200 or so.  So we get a fairly good picture of Tutbury at the end of the 11^th century.  It has been the seat of Saxon Kings and is now held by one of the chief Norman noblemen who has chosen it as his headquarters.  It has a fair sized, prosperous population, a castle and a market.  It also had a church and a Cornmill.  (The church isn’t entered in the book as it paid no rent and the mill is in the Rolleston entry because the Parish boundary was on this side of it - soon after, the boundary moved so that the mill came directly under his control).