Archaeologia Cambrensis.

FOURTH SERIES.-No. XXXI.

JULY, 1877.

LUDLOW CASTLE.

LUDLOW CASTLE is the glory of the middle marches of Wales, and first in place among the many military structures by which the great county of Salop has been adorned and defended. It is a noble specimen of military, palatial, and even ecclesiastical architecture, of high antiquity and of historic fame. It is probably without rival in Britain for the sylvan beauty of its position, in which wood and water, and meadows of wide expanse and rare fertility, are combined with rugged and lofty crags, of which the walls and towers seem to form a component part, so natural are the tints of their lichens, so thick the foliage, and so close the embrace of their ivy. Nor are its associations with the past unworthy of so bright a scene. Here, in the age of chivalry, the Lacys and the Mortimers achieved many of those feats of arms which filled the border counties with their renown. Here Stephen exercised his great personal strength on behalf of the heir of the Scottish throne, who was about to be hauled up into the beleaguered Castle by a somewhat uncouth and unusual engine of war; and against these formidable walls the wild tribes of Wales flung themselves for two centuries, only to fall back, like the surge of the sea, broken and scattered. The Castle of Ludlow was the early residence of Edward IV, and the cradle of his

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infant sons; and here died Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII. In rather later times, within these walls sat that celebrated Council of Wales of which Henry Sydney was long the President, and which the chambers of the building, ruined and roofless as they are, show to have been lodged so splendidly. Here, too, towards the close of that brilliant but vicious provincial court, the attractions of which were felt even by the austere Baxter, Butler wrote a part of his immortal satire, and the masque of Comus was first given to the world. The history of Ludlow, however, both Castle and Borough, has already been written, for its early period, with scrupulous accuracy by Mr. Eyton; and at greater length, and down to a later period, by Mr. Wright; and the object of the present paper is only to describe the particulars of the Castle, or at least of the military part of it, and thus to supply an admitted deficiency.

The Castle of Ludlow crowns a rocky promontory which projects at a height of above a hundred feet over the union of the Corve with the Teme. Eastwards, and in its immediate rear, and rather lower than the Castle, but much above the adjacent plain, stands the grand cruciform church with its lofty central tower, and about and below it the quaint old town. To the north, far below the walls, the Corve and the Teme are seen to wind across the meads which they fertilise, while to the west opens the deep and narrow ravine down which their combined waters flow to the distant Severn. Formerly, when the mead was a morass, and the ravine choked with fallen timber and the irregularities of an obstructed drainage, the defence on these two most exposed quarters must have been peculiarly strong, and an addition, by no means unnecessary, to the security of the March.

The promontory is in plan rather more than a right angle, and its two sides are protected by nature. From the angle, at a radius of about two hundred feet, a broad and deep ditch has been excavated from cliff to

cliff, and thus, as at Norham, encloses an area in plan a quadrant, though not of extreme regularity. This forms the middle ward of the Castle, and the inner ward is carved out of it in its south-western corner. The outer ward lies to the east and south, covering the middle ward on its townward side. To form it, the northern and western sides were projected along the cliffs about another two hundred feet, and were connected by a second ditch, now filled up, and which formed the outer defence of the place upon its weakest but least exposed sides. This ditch, the line of which may be inferred from its curtain-wall, was not exactly concentric with the inner ditch, but lay in two irregular lines nearly at right angles to each other, so that the whole area of the Castle is in form roughly rectangular, and about 130 yards east and west by 150 yards north and south; including, therefore, above four acres.

The town also was walled, and its walls abutted upon the Castle, which thus, as usual under such circumstances, though provided with its own defences, formed a part of the general enceinte. The town-wall may still be traced from the south-western angle of the Castle, above the river, to the south gatehouse, which, though encrusted with late building, and disfigured in the manner characteristic of the last and preceding centuries, still shows a portcullis-groove, and an archway which seems to be in the Early English style, and probably of the time of Henry III.

The Castle is composed of an inner, middle, and outer ward. The inner ward occupies the south-west angle of the middle ward, and is roughly rectangular, 32 yards east and west by 16 yards north and south. The south wall divides it from the outer ward, and its western is part of the general enceinte. Its two other walls divide it from the middle ward. This ward has three towers, the keep, the bakehouse, and the postern, at its southeast, south-west, and north-west, angles. In it is the well.

The middle ward contains a pile of Tudor buildings

over and about the gateway, built against the south curtain, which is of Norman date. They abut also upon the keep. Along the north curtain is the grand mass of the state and domestic buildings, composed of the buttery tower, the hall, the state and private rooms, and the square tower, which occupies the north-east angle of the ward. This group forms the grand feature of the Castle, being of mixed Norman and Decorated date, of great height, and of lordly dimensions. On one side of the ward is the kitchen, built against the inner ward wall; and opposite to it the well known Norman chapel, the circular nave of which stands detached, but which formerly had a chancel which abutted upon the curtain.

mer.

The outer ward contains at present but few buildings. Near the centre of its curtain is the outer gatehouse, and on its south side a range of Tudor buildings, probably stabling. One square tower, of early date, stands on the east wall, and indicates the boundary of the Norman Castle; and another, later and semicircular, on the west wall above the river, bears the name of MortiThere were some later buildings, including probably a chapel, at the south-west corner of this ward; but these are in part pulled down, and this quarter of the ward has been walled off, and a public footway made across it. This footway passes through two modern doorways in the outer curtain, the thickness of which is thus seen. The ditch covering the middle is, of course, actually within the outer ward. It is cut in the rock, 13 yards broad, 4 yards deep, 150 yards long, and in part revetted; the revetment being, no doubt, a long subsequent addition. It is crossed and closed at each end by the curtain, and must always have been dry or nearly so. The general position, and to some extent the plan, of Ludlow, suggest a comparison with Barnard Castle, the outline of which is also Norman.

Before considering the interior of the Castle, it will be convenient to bestow a few words upon the walls as