From The Daily Telegraph, 9th October 1999

A Cool Million to Keep it Ruined

At great cost, English Heritage is to maintain Wigmore Castle as it was. Giles Worsley applauds a revolution in conservation.
To visit Wigmore Castle is to rediscover the true romantic castle: jagged walls of stone breaking through thick banks of trees, the entrance gate half buried under mound of spoil so high that you almost have to stoop to get in; hard edges lost under a profusion of grass, bracken and scrub. This is a ruined castle as John Aubrey, Horace Walpole and generations of romantic poets would have known it. It is also, though hard to believe, a castle that has seen nearly £1 million spent on it by English Heritage. That is hard to believe because those who knew the site before it was taken into guardianship will find it barely changed, and yet elsewhere English Heritage is notorious for the scrubbed walls and neatly mown lawns of its ruins. In conservation this amounts to a revolution.
Wigmore Castle, whose original foundations date from 1068, resonates across medieval history as the seat of the Mortimers, the archetype of the overmighty marcher baron. Set proudly on a hill about 20 miles north of Hereford, it has everything a castle should have – an outer bailey, ditch, barbican, towers, keep. It even has two smaller earthwork castles to the east and west, probably remnants of the time the castle was besieged in 1155. In the Civil War its walls were slighted to prevent it being defended and since then it has slowly crumbled, the victim of locals quarrying it for easily accessible stone.
The collapse of part of the curtain wall stimulated English Heritage to take the castle into guardianship. A generation ago its fate would have been inevitable. The vegetation would have been removed, the site carefully excavated, the structure repaired, a car park, interpretation centre and ticket office created and the stripped ruins proudly revealed to the public. In short the magical atmosphere would have been destroyed.
But though experts may have liked the didactic clarity of a building laid out like a plan in an archaeological textbook, and administrators appreciated its tidiness, there was always a groundswell of public opinion that disagreed. For many, the ruin in all its lush decay was something to be treasured, a symbol of human fragility, an evocative link with past generations or quite simply a place of beauty. Trees, ivy and wildflowers were not barriers to understanding that had to be ruthlessly removed but an intrinsic part of the ruin.
“This was a site where the public told us volubly what they wanted,” explains Glyn Copack, the English Heritage inspector responsible for the restoration. “When I was first surveying the site people used to come up and say, ‘You’re not going to wreck it like your other castles are you?’ I don’t think we have. Apart from the stonework repairs the site is how we found it.”
For once popular and scholarly opinion coincided. Two powerful trends in conservation are transforming the way we look after our historic monuments. Wigmore Castle has never been excavated and most of the buildings are buried under two or three metres of debris. For archaeologists this is tantalising, but physical excavation is now being treated with great caution. Realising how destructive it is, archaeologists prefer to leave sites untouched for future generations with less invasive and damaging techniques.
Equally important, archaeologists have come to realise how disastrous the classic approach to restoring and displaying ruins has proved. When the ivy was removed from Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire in the 18880s, the archaeologist William Hope noted that the walls were covered with paint. A century later that paint has almost entirely disappeared, and so has much of the surface of the stone, including the masons’ marks. Wind and rain, particularly water running off walls capped with hard cement, has caused enormous and irreparable damage. Faced with this problem, archaeologists have come to wonder whether it would not make more sense to treat nature as an ally, not an enemy.
“Nature is actually very good at stablising ruins,” explains Coppack. “The only place where this castle was at risk was where people had started undermining the masonry to quarry stone.” This seems to go against logic. Surely the roots of those trees were digging down through the foundations of the castle and the ivy was eating away at the walls? Not according to Coppack: “Vegetation was responsible for preserving the site, rather than encouraging its decay. When we took the grass off the top of the walls the masonry was in excellent condition.”
Even the ivy was not a problem, or would not have been had someone not cut through it about 10 years ago causing it to root into the top third of the wall. “When the wind was blowing hard it was like a ship under sail,” commented Coppack. So, sadly it had to come down. But Coppack would be happy to see it grow back. “It can do no harm and it’ll give it some protection.”
At Wigmore the problems were not caused by vegetation but by structural movement and quarrying. Repairs were stitched in, cracks filled and buttresses built under ominously protruding walls, all with the minimum of visual intervention. As Coppack explains, “We got to the point where only the fact that the mortar hasn’t greened down tells where the contractors have been.”
A similar approach has been taken to displaying the castle. Paths will be cut, but otherwise vegetation will be allowed to grow up during the summer as it would on an unmanaged site. Indeed, nature is being subtly used to control visitors. Instead of fences and barriers, blackthorn has been planted to dissuade the adventurous. As Coppack says, “If you make it hard you won’t prevent anyone who needs to look, but it’ll stop kids hurting themselves.”
Wigmore Castle is fortunate. It will be free to visitors, but large numbers are not expected. As a result, it can avoid the full panoply of car parks, shops and tearooms. Visitors will be encouraged to park in Wigmore and walk to the castle, in the hope that any money they spend will benefit the village.
But it is also setting a long-overdue trend which may even have an impact on English Heritage’s existing sites. Nature is the ancient monument’s new ally. So next time you see ivy on a castle wall, think twice before cutting it.

and some photos I took of the place.

One by the Buck Brothers around 1740

... and another old print of around 1807.

and an excellent website with heaps of info.
http://www.castlewales.com/wigmore.html

I felt the following article merited inclusion here. The mention of Samuel Buck attracted my eye to it.

From the Daily Telegraph Property Section, 1st June 2007

Village voice

In Herefordshire, a colourful history puts a tepid modernity to shame. By Clive Aslet

I gave a talk at Holme Lacy, the great Herefordshire country house that is now a hotel, the other day. My theme was architecture, and what makes the Welsh Marches different from other parts of the country. To which the answer, for a start, is castles. This took me to Wigmore, nothing more than a village now but quite a place in the 14th century. Its chief feature (though you have to look for it) is a castle that served as a stronghold of the Mortimer family.

During the Middle Ages, power over the Welsh Marches was effectively franchised to a number of Marcher lords, who could do more or less anything they liked in return for subduing the Welsh. The Mortimers entertained several kings. In Edward II's reign, the Roger Mortimer of the day (they were unimaginative in their choice of names) went one further. Created Earl of March, he took up with Queen Isabella, the she-wolf of France, and organised her husband's very unpleasant murder in Berkeley Castle. Mortimer got his comeuppance from Edward III, but until then Wigmore was his power base.

You get an impression of it from the 18th-century engraving by Samuel Buck. But even then the walls had become ruinous. Now, the castle is so spectacularly overgrown that you hardly know it is there until you march into a thicket of trees.

English Heritage has decided to keep Wigmore as a romantic ruin - something of a departure for its conservationists. However, you can still appreciate its site, looking out proudly over a broad plain that was once a glacial lake. It is productive farmland now, patterned with trees; in Mortimer's day, it was a swamp.

During the late 14th century, a Mortimer daughter, Anne, married the Earl of Cambridge, from whom Edward IV was descended. On his way to the throne, he won "an obstinate, bloody and decisive battle'' nearby at Mortimer's Cross, commemorated by an 18th-century stone. But the male line of the Mortimers died out and, once the Tudors had amalgamated Wales with England, Border castles went out of style.

Often, villages cluster around castle walls. In this case, the village is quite a way off, at the bottom of the hill. You descend past dappled grey horses, glimpsing a farmyard and ancient tractors below you. Halfway down, almost hidden among yews, is St James's church. It was founded by the Mortimers, although they were buried in Wigmore Abbey, which used to stand in the valley until its destruction under Henry VIII.

A framed article of 1907, displayed in the church, solicits readers to send four penny stamps each towards the cost of replacing the roof. It mentions glove-making and straw-plaiting as having once been the Wigmore industries; there is not much sign of them now.

Nor would you have much idea that, in 1066, the place was Herefordshire's only borough. But it still has a primary school, a high school, a shop, post office (for the time being) and a couple of pubs, as well as a farmyard selling plants.

This is black-and-white country, with Weobley, Eardisland and Pembridge nearby. McCartneys of Ludlow has Yew Trees, a half-timbered cottage in a large garden, on its books for £299,950, though it is now under offer (01568 610222). Gotherment House is a "country house'' of five bedrooms and 1.7 acres, going for £495,000 (Lane Fox, Ludlow; 01584 873711). The Old Post Office has an ominous sound; it is a name we shall be hearing more often. John Amos, of Leominster (01568 610310), is offering this listed, albeit plain, home for £250,000.

Quite a lot of new houses have sprung up in recent years. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the ones on the market. They are anywhere dwellings, which could have come from any executive estate in the country; it's Wigmore's misfortune that they just happen to have been plonked down there. One (with two Mercedes in the drive) has an asking price of £565,000, so they're not cheap.

There are a few old buildings of red brick in Wigmore, but the vernacular is a simple compound of whitewashed walls and slate roof, perhaps with a porch. Don't developers have eyes? They have one of Britain's finest builders of timber homes, Border Oak, on the doorstep. Why don't they use it? McCartneys has a three-bedroom terrace house at Shobdon by Border Oak on the market for £192,000. It looks delightful.

From the Hereford Times, 22nd November 2007

Chance to buy slice of history

The sale of the century in the new year will give someone the opportunity to own an important slice of local, and national, history. Wigmore Castle, eight miles west of Ludlow, is to be sold by tender next spring.

The castle is nowadays a spectacular ruin on a promontory overlooking a wide stretch of countryside where there is another historic building,Wigmore Abbey, the home of Boycie actor John Challis.

Present owner John Gaunt bought the castle in 1987 and placed it in the guardianship of English Heritage eight years later. Now he has asked estate agents Humberts to sell the castle and other properties in three lots. The agents described it as "an extremely rare opportunity".

Mr. Gaunt said that ideally he would like to see a partnership between English Heritage, the local planning authorities and the new owner to provide facilities for visitors and accommodation for a custodian.
"It's about management and it is to ensure that the castle is more fully enjoyed by the public in years to come," he explained.

Lot one is the castle itself, including woodland and a jousting field in 15 acres of land. Lot two is a separate 15 acre plot, on which Mr. Gaunt will give the buyer of the castle first refusal at valuation. The third lot is a listed Dame School, which could be used as a museum, a tea room, a craft centre or a home. Offers in excess of £300,000 will be sought for the castle while the Dame School will carry a guide price of £280,000.

The castle is steeped in history. The earliest surviving sections date from the 13th and 14th centuries but there has been a fortress on the site since 921AD, a century before the Norman Conquest.
Wigmore was the power base of the Mortimer family, which controlled large areas of central Wales. It was almost certainly from Wigmore that 19-year-old Edward Mortimer marched in 1461 to defeat Owen Tudor two miles away at Mortimer's Cross. He became King Edward IV a few months later.
The castle was a Royal possession until 1601 when Elizabeth I sold it to a member of the Harley family. In 1643 the Harleys dismantled the walls to stop it being used by rival Royalist forces.

An English Heritage survey in 1993 identified Wigmore as "perhaps the most important unconserved castle on the English side of the (Welsh) border." There was a major conservation exercise to consolidate the remains.
The sale particulars will say that the combination of the Castle and the Dame School will offer "an interesting business opportunity, an historian's paradise or simply may fulfil the dreams of someone wishing to own a fairytale castle".