Bishop’s Castle

Roots Of The Matter ~ As In Too Much Burgeoning

I may have mentioned once or several times that we’ve inherited a garden full of promiscuous weedy invaders. Top of the list is ground elder, closely followed by Spanish bluebells, but topping the top is Phygelius (kindly identified by Jude who described it as a thug that had to be dug up and contained in a pot). It is a semi-evergreen shrubby entity from South Africa, also known as Cape Figwort and Cape Fuchsia. And yes, it does look pretty when it’s cascading in bright red tubular flowers.

But just see where its roots are off to. These are growing under and in what was lawn.They extend at least two metres from the mother plant at the top of the garden. And the thing you most need to know about this vigorous pesky plant is that the smallest broken fragment of root has the capacity to make a new plant and root system in the blink of an eye.

The ground in the photo had been covered by a sheet of black plastic for around three months. This killed the grass, but only encouraged the Phygelius to sprout potential plants at regular intervals along the length of its root system. The good news is I can now see it and so unravel it (carefully) with a fork, and also extract any intertwining ground elder.

A tedious job, but then I do have company.

This male blackbird spent all of Monday with me, scoffing worms and growing ever bolder. By the time I’m done, he will be one very fat bird, because the garden is also blessed with masses of worms.

And then this week there was another happy find, this time under a fallen roof slate…

…one large toad. What a gift. Perhaps he/she is the reason why I’ve seen so few slugs. (So far anyway).

And finally, a pleasing plant discovery, rescued from behind the compost bin where it was being nibbled by snails:

Cranesbill: Geranium Phaeum ‘Album’

And so the garden moves forward – renewed, reconstructed and (in several quarters), burgeoning.

#SquaresRenew Becky’s May photo squares each day feature moving forward, reconstruction, renewal and burgeoning. Still time to join in.

Leading You Up The Garden Path

Each day For the month of May Becky is hosting a square format photo featuring one or more of the following themes: move forward, burgeoning, reconstruct, renew. And so here, on all those fronts, is the kitchen-window-to-be with a view on another ‘work in progress’ – the garden. The hawthorn tree over the hedge is doing the burgeoning.

The house extension has been forging ahead too, and while super-builder Alan has been putting up the inner timber frame, I have been digging up the lawn. I started doing this last summer, soon after we’d moved into The Gables, but got no further than two beds along the garden path. Even so, they are already looking promising, bursting with spinach, Swiss chard, coriander, various kales and cauliflowers. (Everything has to be netted against pigeon plunder).

But then came the wet and frigid winter, and so the digging mostly had to stop until March.

Our garden ends at the fence behind the greenhouse, and I’m now expanding an existing narrow bed along the entire fence-line. First on my list has been rooting out the ground elder and phygelius seedlings, followed by making a well composted trench for runner and butter beans. The trench is done and the bean row will run parallel to the greenhouse, but with space enough for some outdoor tomatoes beside the greenhouse.

Against the back fence are a few field bean plants (mini broad beans), now busy flowering, and next to them is a small plot of sprouting broccoli and green Romanesco cauliflowers for late summer cropping.

It’s a pity everything has to be netted, but the pigeons are remorseless foragers, including testing things they don’t really like and leaving lots of shredded leaves – the rotters.

Meanwhile the kitchen is looking like this:

A brick-skin with parapet is next on the agenda. There will then be double doors filling the open space, and a roof lantern illuminating the cooking department. The further half of the back house wall will then be knocked through to the main sitting room to create an open L-shaped living space on a roughly east-west axis.

But for now it’s all blue-sky thinking, and not least some serious musings on how the new roof lantern will affect the interior light. Hmmm:

#SquaresRenew

Operation House Renewal: Moving Forward

I’ve not said much about the house renovations. For one obvious reason, it’s been a touch stress-inducing. But the roof has been restored (re-battened, felted and insulated), the chimneys re-pointed and leaking elements fixed, the bedroom gables made secure, and the rear conservatory demolished and removed, and so we’re on the upward trajectory. Or so Graham assures me.

We’re pleased with the roof. On the house front the original Welsh slates have been re-used wherever possible, with reclaimed vintage ones making up the shortfall. The back-of-the-house tiles were all asbestos and had to be removed by a specialist company. They’ve been replaced with Spanish slate, new Welsh slate now being too expensive to contemplate, which is a great pity. But then back in 1922 when local builder George Nicholas was roofing the house, he likewise thought Welsh slate was too expensive to use on the rear elevation. The house then backed onto fields, with only cows to know the difference.

With the roof done, super-builder Alan Morris has been forging ahead, even as he shivered in biting winds and rainstorms re-pointing the chimneys. On top of that, it’s not an easy site: street access is problematic (narrow road), and the new rear kitchen extension, mostly on the footprint of a conservatory, is hemmed in by house, hedge boundary and a terrace wall.

New tiled roof and old conservatory

Demolition begins:

Bricks from the inner skin of the conservatory to be re-used on new exterior walls.

Shifting the debris and digging out new foundations

We filled three skips which required some nifty delivery and retrieval. Large vehicles can only reverse into the street. There’s not enough road width to exit at the top of the hill.

Builder Alan explaining some finer points of construction to Graham

And this is where we are now: waiting for the floor to be insulated and the concrete laid (Tuesday)

#squares-renew

For the month of May, Becky is hosting the daily posting of a square format header photo. The themes are renewal, burgeoning, moving forward, reconstruction. I’m thinking our renovation works are pretty much covering the lot. And finally, most importantly, we have a moving forward with the weather: sunshine and some warmth. I think we can now say (fingers crossed) it is actually spring here in Shropshire.

Welcome To My World ~ A Late-Day Walk Above Bishop’s Castle

On Sunday I did a lot of complaining about the cold and lack of sunshine. Perhaps the weather gods took pity. At five o’ clock the clouds lifted and the sun came out, and although it was still chilly, we thought a walk was called for. There was a path I had my eye on back in the winter when it was too muddy underfoot to attempt it. But after a couple of downpour-free days and lots of drying wind, I thought it should be passable.

First, though, a spot of orientation by way of some archive photos. Above is Bishop’s Castle High Street as viewed from the Town Hall window. Our street runs parallel to it, behind the ancient timber-framed house in the right hand foreground (the Porch House).

Next is an autumnal view of said street, named Union Street after the Clun Union Workhouse that once occupied the site next door to us, now a care home with a community hospital behind.

Our walk took us uphill, and left between cottages into Laburnum Alley, a shadowy path that runs between old stone walls and gardens. I imagine much of the stonework along this ginnel came from the demolished castle.

The path exits onto Welsh Street near the top of the town. There’s a handy kiosk here selling eggs and garden plants and sundry items that need a good home. I noted the tray of chunky broad bean seedlings, and pots of strawberry plants. There was also a notice advertising baby rabbits for sale.

Just beyond the kiosk are a couple of striking looking barns – a case of scenic dilapidation…

And across the road is The Wintles, an upmarket community of eco-homes, built in the days before eco-homes were quite invented:

We’re on the edge of town now, and this is the green lane path that had caught my eye. It borders The Wintles’ communal ground of allotment and vineyard.

The verges were bright with stitchwort, wild garlic flowers, cuckoo pint, violets, cranesbill, unfurling ferns and cow parsley just opening, Jack by the Hedge aka Garlic Mustard. The lane was sheltered, but even so, I wished I’d put a hat on. It was easy, then, to promise Graham that this was not a major expedition; simply a brief foray to see where the path led.

It led us to a gate and wobbly stile into a sheep field. We struggled over. Ahead the pasture rose steeply, and I could tell G’s enthusiasm was waning. Just as far as the horizon, I said, in winning tones.

But once we were in the field, we found ourselves looking at marvellous hill country. On our right stretched the Long Mynd, its westerly flanks bathed in sunshine…

The sight of the hills all around had us striding on and up, now and then stopping to look back on the town. You can see the parish church of St. John the Baptist, dating from the late 1200s, in the second photo. It stands at the foot of the town.

We were watched of course…

At the top of the sheep pasture there was another stile and beyond it an increasingly uncommon sight – a ploughed field (no-till farming becoming the norm these days).

But beyond the plough, what a fabulous scene, the hills of the Shropshire-Wales borderland. A hint of The Lost Continent somehow miraculously manifested on our almost doorstep? It was too exciting. And anyway it was at this point we lost sight of where the path actually went. The way marker arrow suggested straight ahead, but tramping on wind-dried plough is v. bad for the ankles.

A retreat was declared. But we’ll be back to discover more.

Heading for home down Union Street.

Jo’s Monday Walk Go here for some stunning Portuguese walking.

So Where Is The Castle In Bishop’s Castle?

This is a very good question. Where indeed is Bishop’s Castle’s castle? In its last years (during the early 1600s) the stone towers of keep and bailey would have loomed high above the town. Given the steepness of the hillside approach, it could not be a more dramatic setting. It must have looked very much like our vision of a fairy tale castle from a children’s picture book.

The outer bailey walls extended to the top of today’sHigh Street. See the next photo. If you home in on the on-coming red car below the brown building facing downhill, you’ll be in roughly the right spot.

Of the actual castle, there is little left to see. The Old Castle Land Trust has secured a portion ground that lay outside the inner bailey, and here you can see a surviving portion of bailey wall. It’s also a pleasing place to sit and stare at the top of the town.

The original castle keep would have been much further back and up, on the hill’s summit in fact. The site is now occupied by the town’s bowling green which was created over the keep’s footprint some time in the 18th century. A pleasing feature here is the octagonal pavilion, presumably built when the green was constructed. It is oak framed and, during restoration, the centre post was found to be octagonal in section. No expense spared then.

So why was there a castle here at all?

The answer is law enforcement and taxes.

The earliest version was constructed not long after the Norman Conquest, put up between 1085 and 1154, at the behest of the Bishops of Hereford, they who ruled the local roost – spiritual and temporal. As with most early Norman castles, it would have comprised an earth mound or motte, topped by a wood framed keep, and the surrounding inner and outer baileys defended by timber palisades. The lower flanks were then surrounded by a defensive ditch or moat, complete with drawbridge.

The stone-built phase began around 1167 – including stone keep, curtain walls with towers and gatehouses to both bailey perimeters. Further fortifications and likely refurbishment of living quarters took place around a century later, following on the brutal attack by a bellicose neighbour, the Earl of Arundel, Lord of Clun in 1281.

The castle premises at this time were equipped to provide accommodation for the visiting Bishops of Hereford plus their retinues of some 30 horses and men. The outer bailey would have included stables, stores, smithy and brewhouse.

The bishop came at regular intervals to hold court, impose fines on wrong doers and infringers of local laws and regulations, and to exact taxes from the local populace. By this time, there was a well-established town on the hillside between castle at the top and parish church at the bottom.

The bishops’ authority was finally overruled by Elizabeth 1, who simply took Bishop’s Castle for the Crown and then in 1573 issued a royal charter (see earlier post HERE) that handed executive control of the town’s affairs to an elected bailiff and 15 burgesses.

From this time on it seems the castle was left to its own devices, apparently ruinous by the 1600s. And so it is obvious what happened next: there was a general repurposing of the castle fabric as the market town grew in scale and prosperity.

One beneficiary was the Castle Hotel, built in the 18th century inside the former outer bailey:

If you stand in the hotel gardens, as I did in sunny interval this week, you are treated to the kind of sweeping vista that castle-dwellers-past might have enjoyed from their bastions, though I’m guessing there would have been rather more forest than the wide-open fields of this next photo.

If you then turn through 180 degrees and look up the garden, you are now facing the spot where the inner bailey gatehouse would have stood. I’m thinking the huge ash tree makes a handy simulacrum for a castle tower:

The bowling green is just beyond the tree. It used to belong to the hotel, and there’s a path through the garden to reach it. (Closed now for the winter season).

The late 17th and 18th centuries were a time when many townscapes had their ancient timber-framed houses clad and/or replaced in stone or brick. This certainly happened in Bishop’s Castle. Many of the 1700s and 1800s stone and rendered frontages will contain remnants of earlier wattle and daub dwellings. It was all part of growing urban show and gentrification.

And so the castle fabric has doubtless found its way into many a house and garden wall. The Moat House on Welsh Street seems a particularly obvious candidate, both by name and siting on the original castle defences.

A plaque on the wall also names it as no.41 of Bishop’s Castle’s town trail of lost inns, having been known variously as The George or The White Swan from around 1700. (Surprising to note that the town has hosted some 46 public houses over the last 400 years, but that’s a story for another day.)

I do know for certain that our house wasn’t built from castle remains. It’s all red brick, locally made, I think, and put up around 1922 by local builder George Nicholas. It stands in a corner of land formerly owned by the smithy and then by the Hit or Miss public house, which is three doors up from us. What a great name for a tavern. Now a private house, its plaque lists it as no. 38 in the lost pub trail, 1832-1915. These days it’s rather nicely ‘draped’ in laburnum fronds since it stands next to Laburnum Alley, one of the town’s intriguing shuts and pathways. Again, more of these in a future post.

For now, a view of our street and the former Hit or Miss public house. (You can just glimpse our red brick side elevation and chimneys furthest left).

And another view from the Castle Hotel garden, this time looking up motte, across the inner bailey, to where the castle keep would have once dominated the entire background. Interesting how things change:

From The Grave Of The Good Burgess ~ Speaking Truth To Power

My last post featured a recent visit to Bishop’s Castle’s parish churchyard and the mystery surrounding the grave of an unnamed African who died in the town in September 1801. This week I returned to the visit another intriguing grave. It stands in sight of the great Norman tower of 1291, and marks a death that occurred in May 1802, a few months after I.D.’s burial, and also the year of a general election.

And what an epitaph it is. What a swingeing ticking off of the town’s ‘worthies’; very much in the vein of ‘you know who you are’. (And doubtless everyone else in the town knew too).

Here’s what the headstone says:

To the memory of Matthew Marston. He departed this life May 29th 1802 aged 81, the oldest Burgess of the Borough.

His steady and uncorrupt conduct presents an examples to his brother Burgesses for perpetual imitation and a useful lesson to the Parliamentary Representatives of the Borough that Opulence and Power cannot alone secure universal suffrage.

And to what particular corrupt practice is the Marston stone referring?

Bribes for votes, that’s what, and the fact the town’s burgesses controlled the electoral roll. Only they could vote in elections, and only they had the power to admit new burgesses to the roll. And these were the men who managed all aspects of the town’s affairs, from market trading to judicial and coroner’s courts.

In 1802, when there were around 170 burgesses on the roll, the going rate for a vote was 25 guineas – well over a thousand pounds by today’s values, and enough then to buy 2 horses or 5 cows or employ a skilled tradesman for 173 days (National Archives currency converter).

For a small rural town, Bishop’s Castle seems to have earned itself a big reputation for shady political dealings: a ‘rotten borough’ from 1690-1763, and a ‘pocket borough’ from 1763 – 1832. During these years the town returned two parliamentary representatives, all members of the landowning class, or in the case of the pocket borough, all relatives or favoured associates of Robert Clive. (He had returned from India, where he had risen from lowly agent in the East India Company to Governor of the Bengal Presidency, amassing a fortune equivalent to 48 million pounds). Only with the Reform Act of 1832, did the parliamentary borough of Bishop’s Castle meet its end. We now have 5 regional county representatives.

During the rotten and pocket eras, parliamentary representatives were obviously intent only on furthering their own and sponsors’ interests and causes. This situation was compounded by the fact that several times the entire manor of Bishop’s Castle changed hands with the new owners seeking to secure a seat for their own man. In 1683 it featured in a marriage settlement between one Anne Mason and the Earl of Macclesfield. It was Anne’s ne’er-do-well cousin Richard Mason, seemingly the Earl’s ‘placeman’, who then bribed and bullied his way to Parliament, standing as M.P. for 30 years.

In 1718 the new Bishop’s Castle owners, the Harleys, appalled that their own candidate had failed to win a seat, roundly condemned the town’s burgesses (‘profligate wretches’) for their ‘villainous roguery’ and ‘perfidy’ in voting for Mason. They sold the manor on to the Earl of Carnarvon (Duke of Chandos) who then, after considerable expense, secured his own placeman at the next by-election. His purposes doubtless served, he then sold the manor to his nephew, local landowner, John Walcot of Walcot Hall, who then found the means to further his interests through favoured candidates. And so it went on. On and on.

But what of Bishop‘s Castle’s ordinary folk? Over all these centuries of political vested-interest, one might well wonder how did life go for the ploughman, dairymaid, tavern keeper, clerk, cowhand and stonemason, or for the cooper, brewer, carpenter, apothecary, farmwife, cook, curate and chamber maid? How indeed?

You can well see that the Marston family had a point when they erected this headstone to their kinsman, the good burgess: a lone voice of integrity?

previous post The Man from Africa: I.D. unknown

source: The Story of Bishop’s Castle eds David Preshous, George Baugh, John Leonard, Gavin Watson, Andrew Wigley 2018 Logaston Press

The Man From Africa ~ I.D. Unknown

Last week I went to pay my respects to I.D. He is one of Bishop’s Castle’s mysteries – the man from Africa, who was laid to rest in the parish churchyard of St John the Baptist on the 9th September 1801. Origins and life story unknown.

Here lieth the Body of I.D.

A Native of Africa who died in this Town Sept 9th 1801

God hath made of one Blood all nations of Men Acts 17 verse 26

I’ve written about him before, but the mystery continues to niggle, and especially now that I’ve come to live in the town. Who was this man? Where did he come from, and how had he arrived in the isolated small farming town of Bishop’s Castle? What led to his death? Was he slave, originally from West Africa or the Congo, and a possession of some Shropshire plantation-owning grandee. Or was he a free man; or employed as a servant?

The headstone, if sparse in details, is a fine one; it suggests a certain status; someone must have paid for it. There’s also a presumption that the deceased was a baptised Christian since the grave is sited in a prominent spot beside a well used path.

If the man had been a well regarded servant, then one might expect more personal details; a name at least; the years of his service and the name of his employer. (Slaves were usually given their owner’s names.) If he were merely a passing traveller who happened to die in the town, then who took it upon themselves to give him a decent burial? The parish records throw no light on the matter, and only repeat the text on the stone.

But there is a clue in the biblical quotation: God hath made of one blood all nations of men. This was a trademark text used by campaigners for the abolition of slavery.

At the time, Shropshire had its own fierce anti-slavery movement, driven by the dogged determination of one Archdeacon Joseph Plymley who lived not far away at Longnor. From 1791 until abolition in 1807 he worked tirelessly, alongside his sister, Katherine Plymley, travelling the county, raising petitions, urging Salopians to boycott sugar. So perhaps a local abolitionist sympathiser paid for the funeral. And perhaps, too, that well-wisher had the sensibility not to bury the man with his full slave name, but not knowing his birth name, chose to identify him solely by the initials I.D.

So many questions about a man, identity unknown, cut off from family, culture and community, lying in this quiet, but alien burial ground at the foot of the town, late summer cyclamen under the trees, the drift of cool air in from the hills and fields. Africa far far away.

Bishop’s Castle Here We Come

The flags were flying yesterday in Bishop’s Castle, though not for us. They were marking a recent festival, celebrating the town’s 450 years of self-rule, granted in a royal charter by Elizabeth 1 in July 1573. This fabulous document, bearing the queen’s portrait, freed the town from the bishops’ control and instead gave executive authority to a Bailiff and fifteen Capital Burgesses to administer the community’s affairs; a first bold step towards democracy then.

Photo: Bishop’s Castle Town Council

But if the flags weren’t for us, it felt as if they were. Yesterday we at last picked up the keys to our new home: a small red-bricked villa built by one George Nicholas in 1922 on a corner of land bought back then from a local brewery. The house sits above a narrow lane running parallel to the High Street, and is in walking distance of pretty much everything in the town.

And so begins the next stage: preparing for the actual move, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. Phew and double phew. I think the nerves are holding up – just.

So watch this space for some new tales from another ancient Shropshire town.

In the meantime here’s a couple of photos also taken yesterday. As you can see- not the best of days, but proof that our cool and lacklustre July continues. And yes, that is an elephant you see performing on a vacant wall near the Town Hall.

And this is the Town Hall. We can hear the graceful chimes of its clock in our new garden. Yesterday it was hosting a wedding as we walked by. It also provides a regular venue for farmers’ markets and craft fairs, and of course council meetings are also held in its very handsome chamber on the upper floor.

To be continued…

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge