Goodrich Village and The Castle

On our visit to the Wye Valley Youth Hostel,we came across Goodrich and it’s Castle.Which is about 20 minutes from the Hostel.

We couldn’t book into the accommodation until 5pm and we hadn’t had any lunch ,so we stopped at Godric’s Cafe(attached to the castle) and parked the car in the Castle Car park,which is £3 for all day.

After refreshments,we decided to walk around the village.The buildings are pretty and well maintained. We followed the pedestrian path and turned towards the Church.

To get to the church, we passed by the school and took a fairly steep path up to the gates to the entrance to the graveyard.

When we arrived , we realised there was a church function on.It seemed pretty casual,so we didn’t feel we were intruding, and we walked around taking in the views and reading the odd gravestone that caught our attention.

We meandered back to the Car Park,we would have liked to have seen more of the village,but we were getting close to booking in at the hostel.We did however decide that the next day,before heading home,we would visit Goodrich Castle,which is  looked after by English Heritage.Pleased to say they welcome dogs.

The next day ,we parked up and bought two tickets to go to  the castle.

Firstly,I was surprised that the first part of the castle was called the Barbican. It was the area where visitors were met by the porter and basically depending on their status or if they were expected was where they would wait and see if they could enter the castle.It had open latrines into the moat,and I believe the porter would bring them refreshments.So it had some creature comforts.

The entrance to the actual castle was well fortified with various defence mechanisms.

The Castle itself changed hands a number of times in various seiges, so the defences didn’t achieve their aim.During the  English Civil War ,the Parliamentarians managed to steal 80 horses from the Castle in a raid,the remnants of the stable can be seen at the level of the moat,but no one is quite sure how they managed to get the horses their in the first place.

Surrounding the moat, there are areas of stone from which the stone was hewn to build and rebuild the castle. Some of the more recent walls are sandstone, and the earlier walls are a black local stone ,probably what the foundations of the castle were made out of.

Unusually, on entering the castle ,on the left, just pass the castle  entrance ,is a religious area ,due to lack of space within the main castle ,it was put here and was probably where the family would worship.

In the room, there is a stained glass window that catches the light from the sun beautifully. Well worth a picture(above).On the opposite side ,there is a more recent stained glass window commerating those who lost their lives while developing and testing radar systems for the R.A.F.

We omitted a visit to the dungeon,in fear that the steps may have been too steep.However,the Castle itself is forboding enough.We weren’t too keen on going up the Tower either, as initially there was a school trip on and they were going up there in threes.By the time they had finished we had lost interest.

Goodrich Castle was well worth a visit and certainly brought history to life.