The remains of a 16th century mansion are encased inside the enclosure of an earlier castle that dates from the 12th century. The original castle was timber and earth and rebuilt by the second owners (the Corbet family), and part of the keep and tower can be seen today. The mansion and castle were damaged in the civil war but repaired, and it was completely abandoned by the 18th century. The Corbet family still own the castle, and the town is named after them. English Heritage manage the castle.
The mansion was designed from examples in Europe, and you can see the fine detail in the remaining stonework as to how luxurious this place would have been. It would have had a formal garden as well, which is now a field next to the castle. A bed made for the house in the 1500s is now in the Shrewsbury Museum.
I explored the mansion first. The ruins of the building can be entered through existing doorways at the front.
You can really get a sense of how grand the home would have looked with the decorative carvings. It's a pity that it was abandoned.
You can view outside of the missing walls to the older castle.
One area contains a basement level, but there's not much down here except a little room.
More carvings are located at the corner of the building when I walked around it to the castle.
You can see the full castle grounds here.
On the other side is the ruins of the gatehouse with the family's emblem above the doorway, similar to the one seen on the mansion.
The castle grounds would have had the working buildings, such as the kitcen.
I was able to have a really good look around the site between fifteen and thirty minutes. There is a little bit of parking at front, but the area is popular with visitors and dog-walkers, so it's not a very quiet place.
Leave a comment