[2] The castle was remodelled in the early 19th century by the Jerningham family[2] in the Gothic Revival style, on the foundations of the medieval structure, and incorporates much of the original stonework.

Today the A518 Stafford-to-Newport Road passes next to it and it is a prominent local landmark visible from the M6 motorway and from the West Coast inter-city mainline.

The early historian of Staffordshire Robert Plot cited the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (104) for evidence that Æthelflæd, the Saxon warrior-princess and ruler of the Mercians, built a castle at Stafford in the year 913, along with an adjacent burg (meaning a fortified town).

)[5] who arrived in England during or shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and was awarded by King William the Conqueror 131 manors in his newly conquered kingdom, predominantly in the county of Staffordshire.

[8] The stone castle reached its heyday during the time of Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1402–1460), who was killed at the Battle of Northampton in 1460.

His son Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (1478–1521) escaped and was later restored to his lands by a grateful King Henry VII.

His royal blood made him a threat to Henry VIII, who had him executed in 1521,[7] when the family's estates, including Stafford Castle and its deer parks, escheated to the Crown.

Lady Stafford was eventually persuaded to leave, a small garrison remaining to defend the castle against a renewed siege.

"[14] When the traveller and diarist, Celia Fiennes passed through the town of Stafford in 1698, she noted: "...the castle which is now ruinated and there only remains on a hill the fortified trenches that are grown over green.

The excavations continued for many years, becoming one of the area's biggest employers of young people during the severe economic depression of the early 1980s.