Historic Description of Broncroft Castle

Broncroft Castle

This little red castle, under Wenlock Edge, in the long valley of Corvedale, is not a ruin like Acton Burnell or Clun, but has suffered the other lot to which mediaeval strongholds are subject, that of frequent reconstruction. It is now a modern residence, but as one half of its original front remains, with the most prominent buildings of the old house intact, and the new section only juxtaposed, it may (like Upton in Pembrokeshire, an exactly similar case) be admitted into a list of castles worth visiting.

It lies well within the English border, and is not one of the earlier line of strongholds reared to keep out Welsh raids, but is, like Stokesay and Acton Burnell, an Edwardian castle, built by a family desirous of asserting its right to stand high among its neighbours. The manor was held under the lords of Corfham by Tyrrells throughout the thirteenth century, and well into the fourteenth. But they parted with it late in the time of Edward III or early in that of Richard II to the Burleys. Sir Simon Burley, the well known companion of the Black Prince, and the tutor of his son, the young Richard, was a great getter of lands, and (like Bishop Burnell at Acton) had only a nephew to be his heir. He appears to have settled Broncroft on this nephew, Sir Roger Burley, before his death, for when he was judicially murdered by the Lords Appellant, in 1388, and his estates forfeited, Roger was not disturbed, and his son and grandson were sheriffs of Shropshire under the early Lancastrians. They ultimately had all Simon’s estates re-granted to them.

The first Burley owner was probably the man who built the castle, in the days of his kinsman’s great prosperity under Richard II. He designed a small square castle, with a great battlemented tower at its south-eastern angle, a somewhat smaller one at its south-western, and a hall between them. All these survive, but the other buildings and offices on the west and north sides of the square have disappeared, or are buried under the modern house. The hall has a good fireplace of fourteenth century style, and two rooms above it, with Tudor dormer windows.

The Burleys endured until 1470, when their heiress, Joan, took the castle to her husband, Sir Thomas Littleton, a lawyer of fame, the author of the Treatise on Tenures, better known by its commentary “Coke upon Littleton.” By Leland’s day Broncroft had passed to the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury, but they cannot have held it long, as by the time of Elizabeth it was owned by a family named Lutley, who kept it till 1805. In the time of the third and fourth Lutley owners, both ardent royalists of the great Civil War period, Broncroft went through many troubles. It was garrisoned for the king in 1642-1644, but in 1645, when the royalists had taken up the policy of abandoning small garrisons, they evacuated Broncroft after “slighting” its town wall – presumably by blowing in part of the curtain, or destroying the gate-house. The Parliamentarians then inspected it, and judging it still tenable, threw in a garrison under “the Lord Calvin,” i.e., Lord Colvill of Culross, a Scottish peer then serving with the Shrewsbury local forces. By him it was repaired, and held against the royalists of Ludlow, till the war flickered out in the following year, by the surrender of all the king’s strongholds in the Marches.

Broncroft must have been left in a somewhat battered condition, but was not “slighted,” and remained inhabited by the Lutleys, who restored the ruined parts in the time of Charles II. This reconstruction and a second and more drastic one by an owner named Johnstone (circ. 1840-1850) left the place in its present condition – one half almost undisturbed until Richard II architecture – the other showing a front of obvious Victorian type.

It is curious that no traces seem to survive of an outer ditch, which one would have supposed that a castle of 1380 would have been certain to possess. But Broncroft does not display one, even on its most exposed side. In the garden are the remains of a circular dovecote of red sandstone.

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