Corfe Castle is a fortification standing above the village of the same name on the Isle of Purbeck peninsula in the English county of Dorset.

Built by William the Conqueror, the castle dates to the 11th century and commands a gap in the Purbeck Hills on the route between Wareham and Swanage.

We know from contemporary writing that Anglo-Saxon nobility treated it as a residence, such as Queen Ælfthryth, wife of Edgar, and there are postholes belonging to a Saxon hall on the site.

[6] This hall may be where the boy-king Edward the Martyr was assassinated in 978; contemporaries tell us that he went to the castle at Corfe to visit Ælfthryth and his brother.

[11] Unusually for castles built in the 11th century, Corfe was partially constructed from stone indicating it was of particularly high status.

[8] At the time, the vast majority of castles in England were built using earth and timber, and it was not until the 12th century that many began to be rebuilt in stone.

The chalk of the hill Corfe Castle was built on was an unsuitable building material, and instead Purbeck limestone quarried a few miles away was used.

[18] In contrast, extensive construction of other towers, halls and walls occurred during the reigns of John and Henry III, both of whom kept Eleanor, rightful Duchess of Brittany who posed a potential threat to their crowns, in confinement at Corfe until 1222.

[18] The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England noted the link between periods of unrest and building at Corfe.

[21] R. Allen Brown noted that in John's reign "it would seem that though a fortress of the first order might cost more than £7,000, a medium castle of reasonable strength might be built for less than £2,000".

[27] Michael de la Pole, 1st Earl of Suffolk, was kept imprisoned at Corfe for a few weeks in November 1386 after being impeached by the Wonderful Parliament.

[29] In December 1460, during the Wars of the Roses Henry Beaufort and his army marched from the castle destined for the Battle of Wakefield.

During the march the army split at Exeter so the cavalry could reach the north quicker, and on 16 December 1460 some of his men became embroiled in the Battle of Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

The castle remained a royal fortress until sold by Elizabeth I in 1572 to her Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton.

Pitman proposed that he should go to Somerset and bring back a hundred men as reinforcements; however the troops he returned with were Parliamentarians in disguise.

In March that year, the town of Poole petitioned Parliament to demolish the Castle and to allocate the proceeds and any fines levied on Lady Bankes for the "relief and Maintenance of the Soldiers and poor Inhabitants of the said Town of Poole, and other Garrisons of that County", that had been loyal to Parliament.

Corfe Castle provided a ready supply of building material, and its stones were reused by the villagers.

Rather than rebuild or replace the ruined castle they chose to build a new house at Kingston Lacy on their other Dorset estate near Wimborne Minster.

The National Trust undertook an extensive conservation project on the castle, and the keep was re-opened to visitors in 2008, and the work completed the following year.

[44] It is also a Scheduled Monument,[45] a "nationally important" historic building and archaeological site which has been given protection against unauthorised change.

[48] In 2024, following a wider £2 million conservation project led by the National Trust, the castle's keep was opened to the public for the first time since its destruction in 1646.

[50] Enclosed in the 11th century, the inner ward contained the castle's keep, also known as a donjon or great tower, which was built partly on the enclosure's curtain wall.