Clun Castle

Before the Conquest the manor of Clun belonged to Eadric the Wild. The Norman baron Robert de Say, known as Picot, seized the territory and raised a substantial motte castle with two baileys, holding it from the Earl of Shrewsbury until the Shrewsbury rebellion of 1102, after which he and his descendants held directly from the Crown. Picot's son Henry de Say inherited in 1098, and Henry's son Helias held the castle until his death in 1165.

Henry I gave Clun a castle-guard system, probably answering the Welsh attacks that followed Gruffudd ap Cynan's rebellion of 1094: knights from a group of fiefs running eastwards from the frontier each owed forty days' service a year, and twenty-five Welsh settlements owed the castle military duty as well. Henry II spent heavily here between 1160 and 1164. The surrounding lands became a Marcher barony, known in the 13th century as the Honour of Clun and governed by its own law rather than English law: its lord could execute criminals in his own name rather than the king's, and men were brought from as far as Shrewsbury for it.

Under Helias the barony of Say was divided in two, his daughter Isabella receiving an enlarged estate centred on Clun. She married William Fitz Alan, lord of Oswestry and High Sheriff of Shropshire, who in the Anarchy declared for the Empress Maud, held Shrewsbury Castle for four weeks against Stephen in 1138, escaped before the city fell, and spent fifteen years in exile until Henry II's return in 1153.

Isabella married twice more, but at her death in 1199 the castle went to her son by her first husband, the second William Fitz Alan, joining Oswestry and Clun into a single lordship. This William built the tall off-centre keep on the motte; he had been with Richard I while Château Gaillard was going up in Normandy, and the round towers he raised to defend the new keep appear to have been modelled on those there.

William died in 1210, and King John demanded 10,000 marks before his eldest son, another William, could inherit; unable to pay, the family lost Clun, which was assigned instead to Thomas de Eardington. William died at Easter 1215, and his brother John Fitz Alan, a close friend of Llywelyn the Great, took up arms against the king and seized Clun and Oswestry back from royal control. The king answered in 1216, burning the town of Oswestry before besieging Clun and taking it by surprise attack. John Fitz Alan came to terms with Henry III in 1217, having finally paid the 10,000 marks.

Suspicion fell on him again during the fighting of 1233-34 between Henry III, the Earl Marshal and Llywelyn the Great, and royal troops were put into Clun in 1233 to guarantee it. The castle held out when Llywelyn attacked that year, though the town was destroyed. When another John Fitzalan died in 1272 leaving a young son, Richard, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore held the castle through the minority; the commissioners who inspected it called it small but strongly built, though needing repair to the bridge and to the roof of one of the towers.

Edward I's invasion of North Wales in the 1280s took much of the danger out of the border, and with it the need for a strong fortress at Clun. The FitzAlans had acquired Arundel Castle by marriage in 1243, which proved a far more amenable seat. By the 14th century Clun had become a hunting lodge with pleasure gardens, and the family kept a large horse stud there. Richard II set out to break Arundel power in the region, taking Clun when Richard FitzAlan was executed in 1397 and granting it to the Duke of York with the intention that it join the Earldom of Chester; the king's own fall restored Thomas FitzAlan to favour, and the castle to his family.

Interest in Clun revived during the Glyndŵr Rising of 1400-15. Thomas FitzAlan played a key part in suppressing the revolt, and the castle was refortified and saw some service against Owain Glyndŵr's rebels. By the 16th century the antiquary John Leland was noting how ruinous it had become. Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel, died under attainder in 1595, and James I granted Clun to Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton.

The castle was already abandoned when civil war came in 1642 and saw no military action at all, but Parliament had it slighted in 1646 to prevent any possible use as a fortress. It passed through several hands afterwards, Clive of India among them, and in 1894 the Duke of Norfolk, a descendant of the FitzAlans, bought the site and began the conservation that stabilised what was left.