Above: village in the south west of the county where there are the remains of a medieval castle. Motte and bailey in construction, you can see the earthwork fortifications. An excavation in the 1890s revealed a stone tower on the summit (where you can see the English flag flying). On the opposite side of the river you can see the village with the Norman church on top of the hill. Very mild day. There were various "keep out" notices but I ignored them and went up onto the mound to have a look.
Above: the Castle pub in the village. Seventeenth-century building on medieval foundations. Folk music played on Sunday evenings.
Above: the church was also worth looking around. Norman foundation, but most of what you can see is 14th century. Interesting endowment of a chantry chapel, which should be investigated further.
Above: inside the church were these stones, presumably excavated from the castle. Some of them have inscriptions. The light was beginning to fade.
Above: eighteenth-century tithe map which gave a good overview of the topography of the village and the distribution of land.
A leaflet in the church gave a very sketchy history of the castle but many of the assumptions were outdated. For instance, the idea that the castle was built by feudal overlords to exploit the surrounding area is a quasi-marxist historical view that is no longer really valid. The medieval obsession with nobility was a practical ideology that aimed to reinforce the cohesive nature of society. True nobility was based on virtue, and the idea that all men were equal. Medieval society was divided into twelve social orders, all of which aimed at nobility through virtue. The over-riding idea was that the good of mankind came directly from the virtue of the population.
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