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Clun Castle started life as a Norman motte-and-bailey
 around the year 1090 when "Picot" de Say held the lands. Castle
building was not a Norman invention, nor was the idea of creating a mound
or high place from which to fight but the Normans developed the technique.
The illustration shows a typical motte-and-bailey where the mound has been
created by digging a ring ditch and throwing the resultant spoil into a
mound in the middle. A fighting tower with a palisade would be
erected on the top of the mound and a bailey (a secure area) would be
surrounded with a heavy wooden fence to protect the living quarters.
Access to the motte would be from the bailey via a protected bridge, or in
some cases a drawbridge.
The border area, known as The Marches, was troublesome.
Welsh incursions were frequent and the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of the area
were not happy to be subjugated by these overlords from across the
Channel. The Normans therefore wished to assert their military
power. King William the Conqueror and his successors created a
militarised buffer zone in the Marches by rewarding his loyal Fren ch
supporters with gifts of land and titles in this area. Castles
clearly showed the invader's strength and their intention to control the
inhabitants' tendency to brigandage and revolt with military force if
necessary. The castle also provided secure living quarters for the
soldiers and their lords. Throughout the Welsh Marches, numerous
castles were constructed, some great (like Ludlow or Goodrich) some small
(Clun, Longtown, Hopton, Bishop's Castle) but all symbolizing the Norman
domination of Britain
Clun was chosen as the site of a castle
in order to control access to the rich Midland plains through the Clun
Valley. It could also control the movement on the Clun-Clee
Ridgeway, an historic drove road where flocks and herds were driven from
Wales to the markets in the Midlands and even to London. Such
controls also proved lucrative in extracting tolls.
The rocky mounds overlaid with morainic
deposit from the last ice age existing east of the curve of the river Clun
were easy to fashion into steep-sided defensive areas for a motte-and-bailey.
It is not certain when the castle was re-constructed in stone. It
would seem likely that the process started after its
 sacking by Price Rhys
of South Wales in 1196. After a long and bitter siege the castle was
reduced to "ashes". While this may have been a victor's exaggeration
it is not impossible since at that time the castle was probably still a
wooden structure. The Welsh had not finished raiding. Prince Llewelyn ap Iorwerth (Llewelyn the Great) captured and burnt the castle in
1214 but when he came again in 1234 was unable to take the castle and
contented himself with burning the town. By the time Edward I had
conquered Wales in wars between 1277 and 1282 the castle had lost its
significance. Although Owain Glyndwr attacked the castle in the
early 1400's it was no longer the formidable foe it would have been two
centuries earlier. After Glyndwr's assault, the castle vanishes from
historical records.
For fuller information and good
descriptive illustrations go to
Castles
of Wales - Clun
For more details of the various owners
of the castle go to Picot
de Say and his heirs
For a chronology of
castle events
Potted History
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