England · Ruin

Weoley Castle

Weoley Castle is the earthwork and stone foundations of a medieval fortified manor in the Weoley Castle district of Birmingham, England. It is a scheduled monument and Grade II listed; only foundations and the drained moat survive today, interpreted and displayed as archaeological ruins and a small museum on site.

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Photograph via Wikimedia Commons

Its prime

1424

Today

Ruin

As it stood in 1424

What Weoley Castle looked like in its prime.

By 1424 Weoley Castle occupied an island platform within a water-filled moat fed by a branch of the Bourn Brook, surrounded by a continuous stone curtain wall with crenellated parapet. Behind the curtain rose a long stone great hall with a steeply pitched timber roof and separate stone chapel, while service ranges including a kitchen lay to the south. Buildings are of coursed medieval stone with narrow high windows and tiled roofs, enclosing an inner courtyard on the moated island.

Its story

The story of Weoley Castle.

Weoley Castle — historically the Manor of Welegh — was a fortified manor house in what is now a residential district of Birmingham. Between 1200 and 1260 it was a large timber, and later stone, hall surrounded by a ditch, with a kitchen added to the south; by 1424 a great curtain wall and a moat fed by the Bourn Brook enclosed a layout typical of the age, with great hall, kitchen and chapel.

William Berkeley owned Weoley in 1485, but King Henry VII gave the estate to Jasper Tudor in 1486, who sold it to John, Lord Dudley after just ten days. The Jervoise family abandoned the castle no later than 1603, and by 1631 it was noted as a "ruyned castell".

In the 19th century the estate belonged to the Ledsam family — Joseph Ledsam was a deputy chairman of the London and North Western Railway — and James Coddington Ledsam, the last private owner, sold it to the City of Birmingham in 1929. Owned by the city council and run as a community museum, only the foundations survive and the moat has been drained, though waterlogging preserved the foundations of the wooden kitchen demolished in 1260.

Step inside

8 places to explore in 1424.

The record describes 8 distinct spots at Weoley Castle — including 3 interiors: great hall interior, chapel interior with altar, kitchen range to the south. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.

Exterior approach across the deer parkMoat edge looking up at the curtainWall-walk on the curtain wallInner courtyardGreat hall interiorChapel interior with altarKitchen range to the southRaised earth platform of the earlier timber manor

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