I'M AN OLD NORMAN CASTLE

written and performed by
Annette Mills (1940)



I'm a stately home of England and here I have to stand
In a little pink suburban twixt 'The Odeon' and 'The Grand'
And every man who's lived with me in this country of the free
Has left a little something of his personality.

I'm an old Norman castle with a ruined Tudor wing
Ten architects have had a hand in me
In the days of old Sir Roger, his wife took in a lodger
Who altered all my rooms to fit his key.

That awful man who ruined me in 1894
Did things to my interior I hope he's sorry for
He gave me fifteen little bastions and a Warsaw corridor
They've all had a hand in the castle.

I'm an old Norman castle with sandbags round my front
On which ancestral ghosts all bark their shins
So very little heracy committed on my terraces
This blackout hides a multitude of sins.

I've been entertaining soldiers since the year 1065
But concrete in my passages is something new to me
And this flunky with sandbags is a lot of A.R.P.
They all want a hand in the castle.

I'm an old Norman Castle with a very queer inside
In such a mess it simply isn't true
Sergeants in my basements, awful gun enplacements
But now I'm being used by G.H.Q.

The General told his aid-de-com to ask for voluteers
And when I heard the reason I was full of hope and fears
They wished to raise my drawbridge which had not been used for years
They all want a hand in the castle.

I'm an old Norman castle and I've put up with a lot
Of indignities not easy to forget
These very young platoons who blow up their balloons
Behind the vaulted walls that I'm to let.

They won't leave me alone and they're putting more and more
New sanitory arrangments on every floor
I know the army backwards as I never did before
They all had a hand in the castle.