Castle Rising's name is of Norman and Anglo-Saxon origin, deriving from a mix of the Old English and Norman French for a castle close to the settlement of Risa's people. In the Domesday Book, Rising is listed as a settlement of fourteen households in the hundred of Grimshoe. The village was owned by William de Warenne.
The castle was built in the 1140s on the orders of William d'Aubigny and was most famously the residence of Queen Isabella after her role in the murder of King Edward II.
The River Babingley skirts the north of the village separating Castle Rising from the site of the lost village of Babingley