Moreton Corbet Castle

Two Anglo-Saxon thegns, Hunning and Wulfgeat, were living at Moreton Corbet in 1086. By the early thirteenth century that structure had been replaced by another, built by Toret, an Englishman; his descendant Peter Toret was lord of Moreton Corbet by 1166, and was likely living in the castle. In February 1216 William Marshall stormed the place on behalf of King John against Bartholomew Toret, when it was still known as Moreton Toret Castle. Bartholomew died in 1235 and his son-in-law Richard de Corbet inherited the castle, changing its name to Moreton Corbet.

The keep or great tower to the west was joined to the gatehouse by a curtain wall, which curved south and looped round to encircle the site as a bailey. The rectangular keep at the western end of the surviving curtain wall has two storeys and a basement and dates from between the eleventh and early thirteenth centuries; it was entered through an elevated doorway, and the fireplaces of its lower residential floor are still visible. The gatehouse roof is gone, though the corbel work that carried the roof and the tower battlements survives.

In the 16th century Sir Andrew Corbet filled the courtyard east of the keep with a new house running south and west of the medieval work, and adapted the medieval gatehouse with a gothic arch. In 1579, a year after Corbet had died, a carving of his monogram and the year were added, set above a rectangular stone bearing the family crest of an elephant and castle in relief.

Corbet had a large domestic range built against the curtain wall, kitchens below and accommodation above. East and south of the gatehouse those ranges opened into a great hall, with a large fireplace on the first floor and a smaller one below; doorways were cut through the curtain wall to the latrines. The keep was turned into a storehouse.

South of the castle, Andrew's son Robert had a wide but shallow house built in a more modern style, which the antiquarian William Camden (1551-1623) called "a most gorgeous and stately house after the Italian model". It seems to have been influenced by the classical architecture Robert saw on his diplomatic travels, including Palladio's Basilica Palladiana at Vicenza. The building was faced with stone but built internally of brick, and though Italian in inspiration and elaborately decorated, much of the carving was of a rustic finish. Robert died of the plague in 1583, and his brothers Richard and Vincent Corbet carried on with the new manor, leaving what was left of the old fortification.

In the English Civil War the castle was used as part of Royalist Shrewsbury's defence. It was besieged on more than one occasion and badly damaged in the fighting, and the surviving walls are pock-marked from musket shot. In September 1644 a small Parliamentarian force took it in a night attack, deceiving the Royalist garrison into surrender by convincing them the attacking force was much larger.

Moreton Corbet has been out of use since the 18th century and is still the property of the Corbet family. The ruin was designated a Grade I listed building in October 1960 and is a scheduled monument; it is in the care of English Heritage and can be visited free of charge during daylight hours, in Moreton Corbet and Lee Brockhurst, Shropshire.