Castle Custodianship
This weekend we bought a castle and set about some home improvements. There were no trips to DIY stores or kitchen showrooms as no such stores exist for the faint remains of a 900 year old registered ancient monument. Instead we sharpened up the scythes and placed orders for industrial quantities of wildflower seed mix to liven up the bailey and add a daube of summer colour to the battlements.
It’s not a Disneyland castle festooned with towers and turrets nor is it a Harlech or a Conwy. But it is a little piece of heaven situated on our doorstep in deliciously rural mid Wales. Four acres of grassland spiced with oak, ash, hazel, holly and littered with lots and lots of brambles. We celebrated being the latest owners with a blackberry crumble made from the fruits of those very brambles on the day we handed over the money.
It doesn’t come with a set of ancient deeds as a 1950’s farmer owner managed to lose the paperwork meaning we don’t have the document signed by Henry III gifting it to William de Bowles in 1233. Nor do we have the seal of Simon de Parcio who garrisoned his troops here during the construction of Montgomery’s, altogether more impressive, edifice.
The rubble that was the great hall bulges up through the brambles of the bailey and the mound that forms the foundations of the ancient tower stands proudly at the northern extremity with an oak framed view along the Vale of Kerry. Stunnng!
Our mission is not to restore the palisades but to preserve and enhance this precious rural gem. Being a conical and steep sided, wooded motte set in pastureland it has plenty of different habitats. Thorny scrub, closed canopy woodland and open pasture peppered by oak. Raptors soar in the updrafts whilst badgers, foxes and rabbits tunnel into the ancient rocky ruins. A little wetland, a swathe of meadow with harebells basking in the August sunshine and ancient hedges guarding the perimeters. The hedges will be thickened, the meadow flora enriched and paths cut through the thorny scrub to make blackberrying that bit easier.
What’s for sure we will have a lifetimes supply of fallen timber to keep us warm through the winters. Tomorrow a named storm will rip through the ancient bows scattering acorns and breaking branches as it passes. How many storms have lashed this ancient mound since it’s Norman occupiers first carved out their home and fortress?
So Sally and Simon are the the latest custodians of this little old treasure and thank Simon de Parcio for putting our bit of Montgomeryshire on the 13th century military map.
