Goodrich Castle
Goodrich castle is named after its founder, Godric Maplestone, an English thegn who survived until the reign of King Henry I
(1100-35). In the heart of the castle stands the ancient keep,
the oldest surviving masonry on the site. This consists of a fine
limestone tower with pilaster buttresses, the whole built in a grey
limestone, rather than the beautiful red of the Old Red Sandstone of
the rest of the later castle.
The castle later passed into the hands of the Ballons of Monmouth and around 1139 to the Clare earls of Chepstow.
On their extinction in 1176 the castle passed to the Crown who in
eventually passed it to William Marshall, the husband of the last Clare
heiress. There is much argument about whether the Marshalls
started the stone curtain walls on the east side of the fortress, but
certainly in the 1260's their heir, Earl William Valance of Pembroke
built the bulk of the surviving masonry. This is in a very
different style to White Castle, which stands
only twelve miles due west and was most likely finished over twenty
years earlier. The castle benefited from a second building phase
in the 1290's. The castle saw much action in the English Civil
War before finally being slighted and abandoned.
Copyright©2010
Paul Martin Remfry
