castles

In The Beginning There Was A Castle…

Some three years ago we began our shift from one ancient Shropshire town and into another: out of Much Wenlock and into Bishop’s Castle. The first was a settlement that grew up outside the walls of Wenlock Priory, its inhabitants subject to rule by Prior until the Dissolution in 1542. The second evolved, or rather descended from a hillside motte and bailey castle, built around the 1080s by the Bishops of Hereford, owners of the surrounding manor lands of Lydbury North.

Notional reconstruction of the earth and timber motte and bailey of 1080s CE

The castle was deemed essential for the defence of the manor, given its location close to the Welsh border and potential raiding parties. It also served as an administrative centre for running the estate, gathering taxes and holding courts to maintain law and order. The Bishops had pastoral duties too, but for the ordinary souls who lived and worked on their lands, their worldly purpose was to produce good crops and profits for their landlords, who in turn had their own obligations to the Crown. It was big business then; a feudal corporation.

It is not clear how the bishops of a town nearly 40 miles away came to own Lydbury North, a highly profitable farming domain. But, as often happened in medieval times, there was a handy legend to lend authority to claims of possession. (In Much Wenlock it was the apparent 11th century discovery of St. Milburga’s shining seventh century bones that helped turn the town into a busy pilgrim centre).

In similar vein, the Bishop’s Castle legend has it that around the 790s CE, the original Lydbury North owner, Saxon lord, Egwin Shakehead, was so grateful to have his tremors cured at St. Ethelbert’s tomb in Hereford Cathedral, he gave the 18,000 acre estate to the bishops in perpetuity. It is a compelling blend of antique ‘authority’ and saintly miracle, probably politically expedient in the immediate post-Conquest era of the Norman regime change.

The Bishops’ motte and bailey was thus built in line with the prevailing Norman subjugation plan to establish fortifications across England and Wales. The earth and timber mottes were fairly quick to construct. Later they would be rebuilt in stone, depending on strategic need. But in any event, they were highly visible structures to remind the Saxons and Celtic Welsh of who was in charge.

It was also Norman policy to develop civilian settlements next to their castles, this to secure the site and to ensure neighbouring land was cultivated. And so began the ‘planted’ town of Bishop’s Castle with the provision of dwellings for rent. These were established either side the castle’s main access road, running down from the outer bailey walls and towards the church.

Now you need to look at the High Street with fresh eyes: strip away all those slate roofs and hugger-mugger back-lot buildings. See, not the tall eighteenth and nineteenth century facades, but low, timber-framed, thatched dwellings fronting the road. Behind each cottage would be a long narrow garden or burgage plot for the tenant’s use. At the foot of these, on both sides and running parallel to the main street, were ‘back lanes’. And beyond the lanes, to the east and west, were the town fields.

You can get the gist from this rather blurry photo from one of the town’s information boards.

By 1167 there were 47 burgages, and the town was on the up. At that time, too, the castle was rebuilt in stone, and grand enough to host both bishops’ and royal visitations.

This following reconstruction is again notional, but it suggests there was both an outer bailey with service buildings such as stables, stores, brewery and bakehouse, and a defended inner bailey surrounding the main castle keep.

Over the following centuries the ‘new town’ prospered. Weekly markets and annual fairs were well supported, and local trades, servicing both castle and general populace, likewise flourished. The bishops continued to reap the benefit of course, and it wasn’t until 1559 that they lost control. Queen Elizabeth 1 forced the then Bishop Scory to surrender his four richest manors to the Crown in return for less wealthy ones. (The Bishop had been implicated in a domestic financial scandal). The exchange included Bishop’s Castle.

At this time, too, there was a Crown survey of the castle. It recorded the presence of thirteen habitable rooms, the roofs leaded. There was a tower containing stables on the east wall, a prison tower, dovecote and other buildings. The castle had its own garden, forest and park.*

There are few signs of the castle today, apart from the Castle Green (cared for by Old Castle Land Trust), a small grassy segment of the original bailey.

The castle played no role in the Civil War of the mid 1600s. In fact by then it was reported derelict, with its roofs stripped of lead, and its stone and timbers used in developing the town’s housing. The recycling of materials probably became a matter of course. One beneficiary was The Castle Hotel, built in 1719 within the outer bailey.

Around this time, too, the site of the castle keep, which was further up the steep hill behind the hotel, was levelled to make a fine octagonal bowling green. Both the green and the restored octagonal pavilion are still in use today.

The Bowling Green Pavilion

So here we are at the bowling green at the top of the town. But for the best view we need to drop down a level to the garden above The Castle Hotel (its rooftops in the foreground).

I’m guessing I was standing near or within the site of the inner bailey when I took this photo. And am I sorry there’s no castle rampart left to clamber up and take more dramatic photos? No, not really. Castles can be exciting structures, but I’m thinking our response to them often has more to do with romance than reality.

I’ve anyway learned that the born-and-bred locals call their castle-less town ‘the Castle’, its utterance conveying a strong sense of community and long rootedness, yet with fellow-feeling enough to absorb generations of blow-ins; people like us. And so it seems that although the castle fabric may be long gone, what remains feels a better kind of stronghold.

Sources:

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

Bishop’s Castle: A Timeline of Governance Bishop’s Castle Heritage Resource Centre

Hopton Castle, Shropshire

I’m quoting some text from an earlier post:

“Here we have the remains of Hopton Castle, an enigmatic ruin in the Shropshire borderland, eleven miles northwest of of Ludlow. It is called a castle, but it might be better described as an upscale medieval tower-house. That it survives at all, in this accessible state, is down to the creative efforts of the Hopton Castle Preservation Trust whose members toiled for 11 years to raise funds to consolidate the main structure, and then spent a further five years overseeing the work.

The ruin is full of puzzles. The preservation work revealed hints of 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th century construction, but with no clear evidence for the date of the main surviving structure. It’s been suggested that the Hopton family, who owned it between the 11th and 15th centuries, at some stage deliberately set out to create a faux antique country residence much as the Victorians did with their mock Tudor ‘cottages’. In other words, the Hoptons went in for some creative intervention of their own.

One theory is that it was a hunting lodge. The interior work of all three floors appears to have been very grand, and definitely of ‘lordly’ quality.

Restored entrance

Also, the tower was clearly not intended as a defensive structure. As you can see from the first photo, any besieger could simply walk up to the front door. Yet the building it replaced, the first ‘castle’ on the mound was indeed a functioning fortification – a motte and bailey castle typical of the Normans’ early conquest of Britain after 1066. Made of timber, they could be constructed swiftly, and as the need arose, later re-built and expanded into domineering stone fortresses.

But this did not happen at Hopton. The stone walls that replaced the 11th century motte and bailey appear to have been built of poor quality stone, unsuited to withstanding a siege. Meanwhile, the interior fittings and design suggest considerable expense.

So it’s a pretend castle then?”

You can read more about this (pictorial reconstruction included) at my earlier post: Creative Intervention Rescues A Ruin

This week at Leanne Cole’s Monochrome Madness the guest host is Sarah from Travel With Me. Sarah’s theme is RUINS.

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:

Ludlow Castle In Its Autumn Glory

I recently posted a dramatic black & white photo of this thousand-year old castle – one of Shropshire’s finest. Here are the perimeter walls from a different angle, on their clifftop eyrie above the River Teme. It must have been a daunting sight for any peasant foot soldier commanded by his lord to get on and besiege the place. It might explain why so much of the castle is still standing.

Traces of the past is the theme over at Paula’s Thursday’s Special.

The Leaning Tower of…er…Bridgnorth?

At 15 degrees this castle has ‘more lean’ than the leaning Tower of Pisa, although all that remains of this 900-year-old Norman castle is this blown up tower. It is now now a feature in the sedate Castle Gardens in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, my nearest market town.

The ruins have been in this state since Britain’s Civil War in the 1640s, when Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces laid siege to this key Royalist stronghold. The Royalists meanwhile had set fire to the town before retreating into the castle. The fire then reached the Roundheads’ gunpowder store just outside the castle wall. This duly exploded, and the upshot of all the firing and blasting was that the Royalists surrendered, and Oliver Cromwell ordered the complete destruction of the castle. As you can see, the tower defeated the demolition gang, and so there it stands, apparently defying gravity for the last 368 years.

Below is the view over the River Severn that you might once have had from the castle keep. When Charles I first visited the place, he is reputed to have pronounced it “the finest view in all my Kingdom.” Sadly for him, he did not live too much longer to enjoy either the view or the kingdom.

This week at Paula’s Thursday’s Special, she is inviting us to share Traces of the Past. She has a truly impressive castle to show us, one that was being built at much the same time as the Bridgnorth stronghold.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge