Clun Castle is a ruined medieval fortification in the town of Clun, Shropshire, England. Probably built in the second half of the 11th century by the Norman lord Picot De Say, the castle was initially a timber motte-and-bailey design, strategically located along the River Clun.
The castle came to form the centre of the Honour of Clun, an important lordship along the turbulent Welsh borders, and within a few decades was defended by a system called a “castle-guard”, with knights given lands around the castle in exchange for defending it in times of war. The original castle was burnt down in 1196 by the Welsh prince Rhys during the numerous conflicts in the region.
The castle passed into the FitzAlan family at the end of the 12th century and remained with them until 1572. During the second half of the 13th century, the FitzAlans became rich from the proceeds of the local wool trade, and the Welsh borders became increasingly stable. The family rebuilt much of the castle in stone, including creating a Great Tower on the motte, probably intended to act as a hunting lodge for the adjacent deer park. Formal gardens were laid out on the opposite side of the river. Although the FitzAlans moved to Arundel, they continued to maintain Clun for many years for hunting and entertaining.
In the 15th century, however, the family lost interest in the property. The town of Clun also declined with the diminishing wool trade, and by 1539 the castle was described as “ruinous”. The last reference to the castle being occupied was in 1654, and it remained in ruins for the next three centuries. The Duke of Norfolk purchased Clun Castle in 1894 and carried out repairs, before renting out the property to the local town council. English Heritage took the ruins into guardianship in 1991 and conducted surveying and repair work. The earthworks of the castle remain mostly intact, along with the Great Tower and parts of the towers around the motte, and the remnants of the formal gardens.
History
11th-12th centuries
Clun Castle was probably built in the second half of the 11th century in Shropshire, along the Welsh border. There may have been a settlement there during the Roman period, and there was certainly a substantial, prosperous Anglo-Saxon estate at Clun, which formed part of the administrative area known as the Purslow Hundred. At the time of the Norman invasion of England, these lands were held by Edric Silvaticus, who then rebelled against the Normans in 1068; in response, the Normans devastated the region.
After the rebellion, the Norman lord Picot De Say was given the Clun manor by Roger de Montgomery, the lord of Shropshire. Picot went on to acquire 27 manors in total, and later declared himself the Baron of Clun. Picot was probably built Clun Castle in the decades after the 1068 rebellion. The original fortification was a timber motte and bailey design, positioned on top of scarped earthworks overlooking the river. The Clun river valley and the old Roman road that ran along it formed a key route through the heavily-wooded Clun Forest.
The castle and the surrounding lands formed part of the contested border region. Like other Norman lords at this time, the de Says family tried to expand further into Wales. Helias de Say inherited the castle from his father around 1130, and said to have fought and killed the Welsh princes Howell and Cadogan. Under Helias, the barony of Say was divided in two, with Helias’ daughter, Isabella de Say, receiving an expanded estate centred on Clun, and the more easterly elements of the de Say land being given to Theodoric de Say. Further up the valley, the small castles of Acton, Bicton, Colebatch, Lower Down, and Newcastle were established, probably to shield Clun from direct attack by Welsh forces advancing over the ridgeways to the north.
At around this time, the de Says created the Honour of Clun, an administrative grouping of manors centred on the castle, initially beginning with the manors of Clun and Obley. The Clun settlement was probably expanded to form a town around the same time; a planned extension to the existing settlement was built alongside the castle, with the streets laid out along a grid pattern. The Honour of Clan expanded over time, and – despite Clun itself being in England – came to act rather like a Marcher lordship, with its lord having almost absolute independence in the region, and applying a mixture of English and Welsh law to the inhabitants. In particular, the lord of Clun had the right to sentence criminals to death his own behalf, rather than as the representative of the Crown; felons would be taken there from as far away as Shrewsbury to enable them to be easily executed in this way.
Meanwhile, a new system of defence was established at Clun, probably in response to the succession of Welsh attacks during the early 12th century. Under this “castle-guard” approach, the protection of the castle was undertaken by knights from a group of fiefs stretching away from Clun and the Welsh frontier, linked in many cases by the old Roman road. Each knight had to conduct forty days of military service each year in exchange for their estates, probably being called up in a crisis rather than maintaining a constant guard at the castle, and were supplemented when required by additional mounted or infantry sergeants. The castle could also draw on Welsh feudal service, with twenty- five local Welsh settlements owing the castle military duty. This arrangement would persist in Clun much longer than elsewhere in England.
As noted above, Helias’ daughter, Isabella, inherited the de Say lands around Clun. She first married William FitzAlan, a powerful Marcher Lord from Oswestry, who soon died, leaving the widow a young son, also called William. Isabella then married Geoffrey de Vere and, after his death, finally William Botterel. Isabella probably lived with Botterel at Clun, with her husband exercising authority as lord of the castle.
There were continued tensions between the Normans and the Welsh. Henry II regarded Clun as the regional centre for protecting the border, and invested heavily in the castle during 1160-1164. In 1196, the Welsh prince Rhys attacked the settlement, as part of the campaign leading up to the Battle of Radnor. Rhys burnt the castle the ground, and Isabella herself died three years later.
13th-14th centuries
After his mother’s death, William FitzAlan managed Clun from his caput at Oswestry until his death in 1210. In the 1200s, Shropshire was in the front line of attempts by Prince Llywelyn the Great to reassert the power of the Welsh principality, aided by the difficult relations that King John enjoyed with the local barons
William’s young son died in 1215, and William’s brother, John FitzAlan, inherited the estate. John was involved in the Welsh revolt against King John, and in response, royalist forces under the command of the Bishop of Hereford may have taken Clun Castle in 1216. John’s FitzAlan’s loyalty remained questionable, and in response to the Llywelyn threat in 1233, Henry III garrisoned it with royal forces. Although the town was burnt in 1234, the castle remained intact.
John FitzAlan’s son, also called John, inherited the castle in 1240, acquiring the title of the Earl of Arundel from his maternal grandfather. The region became prosperous from the growing English wool trade, and by 1272 Clun had 183 burgages, a regular market and held two fairs a year. In a survey from the same year, the castle and the surrounding estate were described as comprising:
“a little castle competently built,… outside the castle is a bailey enclosed in a ditch. And there is a gate there, begun with a wall…. And there are houses in that bailey, viz., a grange, a stable and a bakery in poor condition. There are two gardens there, containing two acres… There is a dovecot there, valued at 12d. yearly” (1272 survey)
In turn, the FitzAlans became extremely rich and their priorities began to change. Along with wealth had come relative peace, as Edward I’s invasion of North Wales in the 1280s significantly reduced the threat of Welsh incursions, Strong military fortifications such as Clun Castle were no longer required, and instead the site became used as a high status hunting lodge. The castle was surrounded by deer parks in Clun Forest to the north and west, and a large stud farm for hunting horses was established. Around this time, the Great Tower and other parts of the castle were built by the FitzAlans; the historical dating is imprecise, but the Tower may have been built around 1300 or a few years before, and the curtain wall on the motte perhaps slightly earlier than that. A formal garden for recreation was built just across the river. Edward I visited the FitzAlans’ at the castle in 1295.
Richard FitzAlan had inherited the castle in 1272, but the property was initially managed by his grandfather, Roger de Mortimer of Wigmore, due to his young age. In 1301, the castle passed to Richard’s son, Edmund, but English politics was now becoming increasingly unstable. Roger de Mortimer, the Earl of March, rebelled against Edward II in 1321: Edmund supported the King, and Roger seized Clun. The rebellion failed, Roger fled the country, and the property was returned to Edmund, who was richly rewarded for his loyalty.
Roger then made an alliance with Isabella, Edward’s estranged wife, and returned to England, establishing a puppet government headed up by the young Edward III. Edmund was promptly executed, and Roger took over Clun Castle once again. Edward seized back power in a coup in 1330, executing Roger, and he restored Edmund’s lands to his surviving son, another Richard FitzAlan.
Richard FitzAlan became the Earl of Surrey in 1347, and moved to Arundel Castle in Sussex. Clun Castle remained in use as a hunting lodge, and in 1362, Edward III came to hunt there. As English Heritage suggest, the castle was now very much considered “the family’s country retreat”.
At the end of the 14th century, King Richard II attempted to break the power of the family in the Marches. In 1397 he executed Richard’s heir, also called Richard FitzAlan, and removed Clun Castle from the family, granting it instead to Edward, the Duke of York, with the intent that it became part of the Earldom of Chester. Richard II was removed from power in 1400, and the castle was restored to the new Earl of Arundel, Thomas FitzAlan.
15th-21st centuries
During the 15th century, both the town and castle of Clun felt the impact of the declining English wool trade. There was a resurgence of interest in the castle during the Glyndŵr Rising of 1400-15: the castle was refortified and Thomas FitzAlan played a key role in suppressing the revolt. The conflict accelerated the decline of the settlement and the castle was used less and less during the second half of the century; by 1539, the visiting antiquarian John Leland described it as “somewhat ruinous”.
Clun was forfeited to the Crown after FitzAlan’s involvement in the 1571 plot against Queen Elizabeth, led by Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. Around this time, a court house was built in the east bailey. The property was returned to his descendants by James I in 1603. By the English Civil War in 1642, the castle was ruinous and had no military value, although it was still occupied as late as 1654.
In 1677, the castle and estates were sold off by the Howards. A new town hall was built in 1780, and the court house in the castle was subsequently demolished. The town of Clun steadily declined, however, and by the 19th century it had effectively ceased to operate as a borough. In 1843 the pleasure gardens, then known as “the Parks”, were drained and possibly excavated by local antiquarians.
By the end of the century, Henry Fitzalan-Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, decided to try to acquire and restore the castle, possibly motivated by his family’s links to the property. He bought a 174-acre (70 hectare) estate in Clun in 1894, which included the castle, and then sold off the majority of the lands, leaving only the ruins and around 20 acres of associated properties. The duke carried out repairs to the stonework and installed iron palisades to prevent visitors from entering into the keep. In 1897, local residents petitioned him to lay out the grounds of the castle in “walks and terraces”, which they argued would encourage visitors, but the duke does not appear to have followed their recommendations.
Henry’s son, Bernard, inherited Clun Castle in 1917, but resources for maintaining the property became scarce. In 1935, the Ministry of Works were informed that the council, who were renting the castle from the duke for £30 per annum, had cut through one of the earthwork banks to make an access road in order to hold a fair in the castle, dumping the medieval remains in the bailey ditch. Wider structural problems with the property were also highlighted. In reply, the duke complained that neither he nor the council had the resources to manage the ruins – particularly since it was now protected under recently introduced heritage laws.
In 1991, the heritage agency English Heritage took over the guardianship of the castle. The agency then carried out extensive – and expensive – repairs to the site, with the City of Hereford Archaeology Unit carrying out a survey of the castle. Clun Castle remains open to the public, and the grounds are used to host local festivals and carnivals. The castle and the neighbouring Pleasance are protected under UK law as a Grade I listed building and as Scheduled Ancient Monuments.
Architecture
Clun Castle is situated on a raised spur of land along the River Clun. The castle comprises a central motte – which supports the remains of the stone buildings – and two baileys, with a remains of a complex of gardens and fishponds on the far side of the river. Only ruins and traces of the castle’s buildings and walls survive above ground today – there would originally have been many more buildings on the motte and in the baileys, including the great hall and the chapel on the motte, and various service buildings in the baileys.
The oval motte is 80 m by 76 m (262 ft by 249 ft) in size at its base, and 50 m by 40 m (164 ft by 131 ft) across the top; although the motte is natural, it has been scarped to make it steeper. There is a raised mound on the south-east side of the motte that may have formed the base of the original, 11th-century timber keep.
On the north side of the motte is the Great Tower, a substantial stone building also sometimes described as a keep. The tower is rectangular and built in a faux 12th-century Norman style, with pilaster buttresses at each corner. The tower is four storeys tall, with the floors linked by a stair tower in the south-west corner, since lost. The tower’s walls survive to 28 m (91 ft) in height, but it was built into the side of the motte, giving the building an illusion of additional size. At the base, the tower is 19 m by 12 m (62 ft by 39 ft) across, with walls up to 3 m (9 ft) thick. It was constructed from local rubble siltstone, with features picked out in a green-yellow sandstone, also probably locally sourced.
Basement had two rooms, used for storage and accommodation – possibly the castle steward. Ground floor had a lobby, a larger chamber – possibly divided by a screen. Corners were designed to give the impression of having corner towers and additional size. First and second floors were both grander, with mural chambers in each of the corners, and large windows with seats and fireplaces. The upper two floors probably provided two separate apartments, rather than forming a set of a hall and solar; these were not conveniently placed for access to the service buildings in the castle, and might have been used when hunting parties stayed at the castle.
The Great Tower would have been weak militarily; ideally, it would have been built entirely on top of the motte, but although the motte could have supported its weight, it was occupied by other buildings at the time. The side of the motte chosen was also not ideal, making it vulnerable to attack from the north, but it did make it appear dramatic, especially when seen by visitors entering the castle. Some of the arrow-slits were only for show, and were in fact blank. The Great Tower was deliberately built in an anachronistic, Norman style, either to reinforce the noble lineage and credentials of the FitzAlan family, or to send a colonial message to the local Welsh in what was still a border territory.
Fragments of the thin curtain wall and two semi-circular towers survive to the south-west of the keep, again made from local rubble stone, 1.4 m (4 ft) thick. The towers were solid – effectively making them bastions, rather than true towers – and a high-status building was built between them, using the backs of the towers as part of their structures, since lost. Other fragments of wall remain in the south-east and north-east corners of the site.
A gateway on the southern side of the motte originally led to the south bailey. The south bailey is 80 m by 40 m (262 ft by 131 ft) across, and appears to have had an earth rampart and timber palisade and a protective ditch; it was linked to the town over a bridge. The east bailey was smaller in size, 42 m by 40 m (137 ft by 131 ft), and positioned on more low lying ground. It was separated from the rest of the castle complex by ditches, and in the medieval period bridges providing access to the interior. The east bailey is now mostly occupied by a bowling green.
West of the castle on the opposite side of the river to the castle are the remains of the fishponds and pleasuance. These enclose roughly 3 hectares (7 acres) of low-lying water meadows, with a rectangular area within a square moat in the middle, 25 m by 15 m (82 ft by 49 ft), fed by the river. When first created, these would have formed a formal garden with pavilions and other ornamental features, similar to those at Kenilworth in the same period. Orchards and dovecots would probably have been laid out around the outside of the garden. The garden might have formed an entrance path to the castle for high status visitors, and the site is considered by the archaeologists Craddock-Bennett, Morris, Boucher and Smith to be a “very rare survival of a high status medieval garden”.
Visiting the castle
Bibliography
- Buteux, Victoria. (2005) Archaeological Assessment of Clun, Shropshire. Worcester, UK: Worcester County Council and English Heritage.
- Craddock-Bennett, Luke; Richard K. Morris; Andy Boucher; Hilary Smith. (2012) Clun Castle, Clun, Shropshire: Conservation Plan for English Heritage. Hereford: UK, Headland Archaeology.
- Guy, Neil. (2016-17) “CSG Annual Conference: Hereford, April 2016: Clun Castle”. The Castle Studies Group Journal. 30: 95-107.
- Lierberman, Max. (2010) The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception of a Frontier, 1066-1283. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139486897.
- Morriss, R. (1993) Clun Castle, Shropshire: An Interim Report. Hereford, UK: City of Hereford Archaeology Unit.
- Summerson, H. (1993) Clun Castle and Borough: Documentary Sources. Hereford, UK: Clun Castle Archive Project.
- Suppe, Frederick C. (2001) “The Persistence of Castle Guard in the Welsh Marches and Wales: Suggestions for a Research Agenda and Methodology,” in Abels, Richard Philip and Bernard S. Bachrach. (eds) 2001 The Normans and their Adversaries at War. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell.
- Suppe, Frederick C. (2003) “Castle guard and the Castlery of Clun,” in Liddiard, Robert. (ed) (2003) Anglo Norman Castles. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press.
Attribution
The text of this page is licensed under under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Photographs on this page include those drawn from the Wikimedia, Geograph, the British Museum, and Flickr websites, as of 9 August 2018, and attributed and licensed as follows: “Clun Castle 02“, author Philip Halling, released under CC BY-SA 2.0; “Looking west from Clun Castle“, author Penny Mayes, released under CC BY-SA 2.0; “Clun Castle“, author Bluedotcreations, released under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0; “Clun Castle, 1792“, photograph copyright Trustees of the British Museum, released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; “Fields and houses in Clun — photo 3“, author Dunnock D, released under CC BY-NC 2.0; “Clun Castle“, author John Clift, released under CC BY-NC 2.0; “Clun Castle — photo 7“, author Dunnock D, released under CC BY-NC 2.0; “Clun Castle access path“, author Peter Evans, released under CC BY-SA 2.0.
