A castle of timber and stone
Stokesay Castle in the Shropshire Hills: England's best-preserved Mediaeval manor house.
After heading through the Shropshire Hills under skies full of glowering clouds, we arrived at Stokesay Castle. It’s a beautiful fortified Mediaeval manor house close to the Welsh border, sitting in a lush green valley, the slopes wooded with dark trees. You can see why wealthy wool merchant Laurence of Ludlow decided to build his manor house here in the 1200s - I wouldn’t mind living in a manor house here either. The Ludlow family stayed here until the late 1400s, when the house was inherited by Thomas Vernon, from the wealthy Derbyshire family.
Stokesay is quite unusual as it’s partly timber-framed, which I can’t say I’ve ever seen before; I’m used to towering walls of stone.
The castle remained in the Vernon family for a century, until one of them ended up in debt and had to sell his properties in Shropshire. Stokesay was bought by Sir George Mainwaring, who didn’t panic1, and sold it on - and by 1620, it was owned by Dame Elizabeth Craven and her son William. The nearby town of Craven Arms has one of the most British kinds of placenames possible - like Trumpet in Herefordshire, and Blue Anchor in Somerset, it’s named after its pub.
Many castles in England haven’t survived because they were either abandoned and left to fall apart, or couldn’t withstand the might of gunpowder during the English Civil War. The tottering keep at Bridgnorth shows just how precarious castles could be; it’s like Shropshire’s answer to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
During the Civil War, a Royalist garrison was installed at Stokesay, thanks to William Craven being a supporter of the king. In 1645, Shrewsbury fell to the Parliamentarians, which meant Stokesay, 20 miles south, was in danger. The Parliamentarians turned up and besieged the castle. Before a shot was fired, they gave the garrison a chance to surrender, and they did. The siege was bloodless, and the castle was undamaged. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the neighbouring church of St John the Baptist. The south side of it was mostly destroyed.
But because the castle was saved, this extraordinary timber framed gatehouse, with its ornate carvings, lived to tell its tale. And I felt quite at home when I saw it, as it reminded me of the wool towns in Suffolk with their surviving Mediaeval wattle and daub houses. This gatehouse, which dates from about 1640, is the legacy of William Craven, who went on a building spree at the castle.
Once the king’s head was offed at the Tower and the Commonwealth period began, Royalist William lost Stokesay, and the Baldwyn family lived here as tenants. William regained his estates at the restoration in 1660, but the Baldwyns continued to live here until the early 1700s. After they left, the castle was home to tenant farmers who used the Great Hall as a barn, and the South Tower’s basement was even turned into a smithy. The castle was gradually crumbling; antiquarians convinced the Cravens to tidy it up, but still the castle’s future hung in the balance. Then, in the 1860s, John Derby Allcroft bought Stokesay (it remained in his family until the early 1990s, when it came into English Heritage’s care) and he sympathetically restored it without turning it into a Victorian fantasy of the Middle Ages. We have him to thank for Stokesay Castle surviving into the present day.
We arrived on a humid summer’s day. After a very nice lunch at the tearooms (English Heritage and National Trust properties almost always have tearooms!) we were refreshed and ready to invade the castle, armed not with battering rams and canon, but an English Heritage guide book.
We headed through the beautiful, timber-framed gatehouse, which is an incredible survival. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like it before, and the fact it’s not an imposing structure of stone shows that the area was a fairly peaceful place to live, Civil Wars and bandits notwithstanding. And I loved its orangey-yellow colours, which look so vivid against the stone of the castle. There are rooms above the gatehouse, which Allcroft adapted for the castle’s caretaker to live in, but alas, visitors aren’t allowed in.
Through the gatehouse, we were in the courtyard. It’s been filled with lots of pollinator-friendly plants, in the style of an Edwardian cottage garden. We took a break from wandering about and sat down to watch the bees bumbling from flower to flower. There weren’t many visitors on the day we went, so it was lovely and peaceful.
The Great Hall is huge and on such a humid day, it was nice and cool; breezes from the hills came through the slit windows and cut through the close air. I imagine it wouldn’t be too fun in the winter, but at least back in the days when the castle was inhabited, a huge fire would be roaring away to keep everyone warm. It’s extraordinary that it went from being the venue of Mediaeval banquets to being used as a barn.
I followed the stairs that lead up from the Great Hall to the top of the North Tower, with its timber-framed rooms, then we went off to investigate the Solar, which didn’t feel castle-like at all. It’d been updated in Jacobean times - presumably by the Cravens - with huge stone fireplaces and wooden panelling, and it looks no different from rooms at houses like Aston Hall or Audley End. It felt very cosy compared to the cavernous Great Hall, and I think it shows the way domestic life was evolving; people wanted privacy and their own space. There’s even a wooden cradle in the room, which serves as a reminder that Stokesay was home to various families over hundreds of years. Babies were born here, as incredible as it seems to begin life in a castle.
The South Tower is the most traditionally castle-like part of Stokesay, although in the days when there was a smithy in the basement, a fire once tore its way through all the tower’s floors. It has round rooms on each floor - repaired following the fire - and a narrow staircase took us up to the roof. The views up and down the valley are astonishing — views which were handy in the days when bands of thieves roamed the area.
Stokesay’s moat is dry these days, and I took a walk around it. Looking up from the bottom of the moat, I marvelled at just how well-fortified it was, even though during the Middle Ages, the castle wasn’t seen as too flashy and fortified. Lawrence of Ludlow didn’t want to annoy the Marcher lords in Wales; his tall walls and moat provided him with enough security without looking like a threat.
When I looked up at the timber framed rooms at the top of the North Tower, I couldn’t help but think of the sorts of castle you’d be more likely to see in Eastern Europe; it made me think of the scene from Dracula, when Jonathan Harker sees his rather strange host scuttling up the vertical wall.
It’s not unusual to find manor houses (even fortified ones like Stokesay) and churches built next to each other — after all, the lord of the manor funded the church, so he didn’t want to get his feet too muddy. Stokesay is no exception. In the photo just above, you can see the church tower poking out on the left. The church’s opening hours are usually the same as the castle’s so you can visit two historic buildings for the price of one. It’s a lovely, quiet church, and you can get brilliant views of the castle next door from the churchyard. After it was damaged during the Civil War, the church was rebuilt during the Puritan period, which is rare. I love box pews, and St John the Baptist’s doesn’t disappoint — I know simple wooden or plastic chairs are more the thing these days in churches, what with them being easy to move and stack, but that makes our surviving box pews all the more special and a precious connection with the past.
Over to you!
Have you ever been to Stokesay Castle? Do you have a favourite castle - one you’ve visited or that’s on your bucket list?
I co-write WW2 saga fiction with my excellent friend Catherine Curzon under our joint pen name, Ellie Curzon.
I’ve written two books on Victorian crime and forensics, and I’ve written articles for Fortean Times and Family Tree magazine. I appeared on BBC1’s Murder, Mystery and My Family, and BBC Radio 4’s Punt PI. I live in the West Midlands with a cat who looks like a Viking.
For those of you who weren’t brought upon on classic British sitcoms, “Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring!” is a catchphrase from the BBC’s Dad’s Army, a series set during WW2 about the Home Guard.
I've never been Helen, but next time I"m over that way I'll make a visit. It's a really interesting looking building.
Fascinating article!