Castle Camps was originally a Saxon manor, belonging to Wulfwin, a Thane of King Edward the Confessor.
After the Norman invasion, William the Conqueror gave the manor to Aubrey de Vere I, ancestor to the Earls of Oxford.
[1] On 2 August 1607, it was bought by Thomas Sutton, who endowed it to Charterhouse, who in turn sold all the estate except Castle Farm and Manor in 1919.
The Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, however, stated that there was land for 12 ploughs; 20 head of cattle, 134 sheep, 43 pigs, 50 goats, 2 horses; and that Norman holds ½ hide from Aubrey separate from the 2½ hides, making up part of a five-hide assessment.
In the later twelfth century it would have been the largest fortress in the county of Cambridgeshire and was notable for its small bailey and the size of its motte, whose flat top covered just over an acre.
No warfare was recorded here; though justices of the peace were driven away by force of arms in 1526, during quarrels between a dowager countess and the new earl.
The only remains of the Norman Castle which still exist above ground is a piece of rubble in the yard to the south of the present farmhouse and Earthworks.