Corfe Castle is today a thousand-year-old royal castle, shaped by warfare and for some, the castle will forever be associated with dark deeds, miraculous events and the murder of a king who became a saint The West Bailey contains the earliest surviving building in the castle, the Norman Old Hall, thought to occupy the site of an even older Saxon hall-it is here that the drama of a murder is said to have unfolded on 18 March 978 The teenage King Edward was visiting his stepmother Elfryda and his half-brother Ethelred at Corfe Castle; some say Edward was murdered on the orders of his stepmother and quickly buried, with little pomp at nearby Wareham--see his note