Castle review thread.

[Montegriffo]

Right, I've put off my homework for long enough...

Stokesay castle, technically a fortified manor house.





This place is older than the Tudor gatehouse suggests. Granted its license to crenellate by King Edward I himself in the late 13th century the manor house was fortified with a curtain wall (destroyed by parliaments forces after the castle surrended in the civil war) and a heart shaped tower was built.
Heavily restored in the 17th century when the beautiful timber framed gatehouse and the solar were added.





Still in remarkable condition you could move into it tomorrow if it were not for the fact several families of swallows and 4 or 5 species of bat now see it as home.

The great hall with its large single span roof is complete


and the 17th century wooden panelling and carved oak fireplace still remains in the families main room





In my top three castles visited for sure.

[Montegriffo]

Ludlow castle was recommended by the lovely, pink haired singer from one of the bands at the fairy fayre who I spent Sunday evening with.


One of the first stone castles to be built in England possibly as early as 1080.
This is a big castle, very oppulent for its time and owned by the powerful Mortimer family from 1301 when it was extended and enlarged with extra defences added.

Lots of rooms and staircases to explore, the range (domestic buildings built against the inner bailey walls) was more complete than any other I've seen yet in a castle this age.Usually there is only a single course of stones marking out where the buildings stood but Ludlow has many of the walls and even windows with complete stone mullions still standing.







A round tower in the centre of the inner ward was the chapel and had some fancy stone carvings inside and out.







There was access to the top of the keep which had been the original entrance complete with barrel roofed corridor with murder holes above. Now bricked up after a new entrance was built beside it, originally reached by crossing a draw bridge.


Ludlow is a real tourist destination so the castle was a bit too crowded for me. Still privately owned by the current Earl of Powis the castle could do with having some work done to remove the foliage and their damaging roots. Must take a lot of money in entrance fees and I was disappointed by the apparent lack of maintenance.

[Montegriffo]

Guess what I'm stood in front of?
Clue, it's about 60 foot tall and fucking awesome.

[Montegriffo]

Firing in about 15 minutes. I got chatting with the trebuchet master and have been given permission to stand nearby when they fire it. Everyone else is the other side of the river about 100 yds away.
I did volunteer to get in the hamster wheel to help cock it but health and safety won't allow it.
You have no idea how exited I am right now.

[Montegriffo]

Interesting the trebuchet master is a girl and so are half her crew.
I may be in love.

[SuburbanFarmer]

TAKE A VIDEO DUMBASS

[Speaker to Animals]

So he takes a video with his phone oriented vertically.

[Montegriffo]

TAKE A VIDEO DUMBASS

I DID SMARTARSE.

[Montegriffo]

Tried emailing it to you Grumps but my phone can't attach anything over 5mb.
Will have to wait till I get home and get the laptop out.

I knew this treb' was a replica of Warwolf but what I didn't know until today was that Warwolf was two and a half times bigger.
That would have made it around 150' tall.

[Montegriffo]

Chatting to the team I found out about the missfires. One flaming ball went straight up in the air and came down inside the frame missing it by inches. They left the ball where it landed buried into the ground.
The treb' is 13 years old and already on its fifth arm. The current arm is cracked and may not last the season. Really hard to find replacements as most ash trees large enough have preservation orders on them. The cost of a replacement is around £50k.
The frame is holding up well but only has a finite life due to the weathering and the stresses involved.
The counterweight box is only half full and is about 6 tons.
The balls are around 40lbs which is the lightest they can be without missfiring.
Current record is 240m but they have calculated that with a full counterweight box of around 12 tons plus a larger ball of around 170lbs it could reach 650m. The trebuchet would not last many firings at that level.
It is fired twice a day during the season which means around 400 times a year or about 5000 times in total. More than any other treb' in history.