A castle of two halves
Aug. 10th, 2024 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe might have spent the Sunday of our trip to Shropshire visiting Ludlow Castle; we half planned to do just that. But on Saturday evening, I was poking about the internet, and looking at the English Heritage website, when I came across Stokesay Castle: a short drive from Ludlow, and very impressive:
Surely I had seen this before somewhere? Didn'tpoliphilo post some photos, long, long ago? Indeed he did, and I noted it then as a place to visit. Well, there's no time like the present...
They call it a castle, but it's more accurately a fortified manor house, built in the late thirteenth century for a wealthy wool merchant (Laurence of Ludlow).
You approach past the church, with the North Tower looming over the hedge of the graveyard, and over the moat, though you can't see that from here:
Tower, moat: that's all very "castle". But the half-timbering is very domestic - and within it is a light, bright sitting room, extended beyond the footprint of the castle by that overhang, and buzzed by swallows who didn't seem bothered by the visitors. But that comes later. First, you enter through the gatehouse, the yellow building in that first picture:
Bright yellow and richly carved, but imposing too, and the narrowness of the entry passage must have a defensive function. Inside, though, you might be in a cottage garden:
- provided, that is, you look back towards the gatehouse. Turn the other way, and across the lawn is the castle proper, not a fortified keep but a stone built great hall with a tower at either end. Even the gatehouse is on a grander scale than that 'cottage garden' label suggests, and the hall is grander still: too big for my camera to frame. But I liked this glimpse of it through the flowers:
Inside lives up to that promise:
Laurence of Ludlow got his money's worth in timber: the roof and staircase are original, and the same carpenters worked (and left their marks) on both. A couple of details. First, standing on that staircase, looking at a shuttered window in the outer wall:
Finally, the least showy picture of the set, but one my favourites. Halfway up the stairs, the first floor of the tower was originally one large room, but is now divided. You can look through into the half where you don't tread, at the original floor tiles:
These may have come from Laurence's home in Ludlow, where excavations have found very similar tiles - but they made me rejoice again at the tile museum we had visited only days before in the Ironbridge gorge.
We spent the evening with K., who cooked a classic spaghetti bolognese for us, and we told her where we had been - and admired her late partner's photos of Stokesay, which was a pleasant thing to do.
Surely I had seen this before somewhere? Didn't
poliphilo post some photos, long, long ago? Indeed he did, and I noted it then as a place to visit. Well, there's no time like the present...They call it a castle, but it's more accurately a fortified manor house, built in the late thirteenth century for a wealthy wool merchant (Laurence of Ludlow).
You approach past the church, with the North Tower looming over the hedge of the graveyard, and over the moat, though you can't see that from here:
Tower, moat: that's all very "castle". But the half-timbering is very domestic - and within it is a light, bright sitting room, extended beyond the footprint of the castle by that overhang, and buzzed by swallows who didn't seem bothered by the visitors. But that comes later. First, you enter through the gatehouse, the yellow building in that first picture:
Bright yellow and richly carved, but imposing too, and the narrowness of the entry passage must have a defensive function. Inside, though, you might be in a cottage garden:
- provided, that is, you look back towards the gatehouse. Turn the other way, and across the lawn is the castle proper, not a fortified keep but a stone built great hall with a tower at either end. Even the gatehouse is on a grander scale than that 'cottage garden' label suggests, and the hall is grander still: too big for my camera to frame. But I liked this glimpse of it through the flowers:
Inside lives up to that promise:
Laurence of Ludlow got his money's worth in timber: the roof and staircase are original, and the same carpenters worked (and left their marks) on both. A couple of details. First, standing on that staircase, looking at a shuttered window in the outer wall:
Finally, the least showy picture of the set, but one my favourites. Halfway up the stairs, the first floor of the tower was originally one large room, but is now divided. You can look through into the half where you don't tread, at the original floor tiles:
These may have come from Laurence's home in Ludlow, where excavations have found very similar tiles - but they made me rejoice again at the tile museum we had visited only days before in the Ironbridge gorge.
We spent the evening with K., who cooked a classic spaghetti bolognese for us, and we told her where we had been - and admired her late partner's photos of Stokesay, which was a pleasant thing to do.
