Things to do in Herefordshire

Croft Castle and its 1500 acre estate and ancient woodland is situated four miles north of Leominster between the villages of Mortimer's Cross and Orleton in the heart of the Herefordshire countryside. The castle is approached along a tree lined avenue which reaches a gothic arched curtain wall, through the arch the roadway leads down the castle. The castellated manor house dating back to the 15th century comprises of a three story quadrangled main building built around a central courtyard with round towers at each corner and a small square tower on the north side added in the 16th century, adjacent to the front of the castle is a 13th century church. Facilities Guided tours of the house are available between 11 am and 1pm (during the open season) with visitors being able to tour much of the house without a guide between 1 and 5pm. The castle also has its own shop and tea room and two self catering cottages sleeping 5 to 6 people. A popular alternative or addition to a visit here is a hike along the Mortimer trail which passes through parts of the estate and a very important Iron Age Hill Fort. The parkland is open year round from dawn until dusk and the castle Wednesday through to Sunday between 1 and 5pm March until November (everyday during August) with visits to the gardens and guided tours available from 11am, the castle is also open at weekends during November and December. The original building on the site was built in the 11th century. The castle does not have a history of sieges and battles but the Croft family were extremely influential within the area. Herbert Croft was the Dean and Bishop of nearby Hereford Cathedral and Sir Richard Croft the Sheriff of Herefordshire. Most of the family members were involved in battles both locally at Mortimers Cross; on land they also owned, and also further a field. It was Sir Richard Croft who captured Prince Edward at the battle of Tewksbury in 1471 and was made a knight by Henry VI. By the end of the civil war the Croft family were in deep financial difficulty and were forced to mortgage the property and leave. The castle changed hands several times before being sold to the new sheriff of Herefordshire, Davies of Wigmore. Finally in 1923 Sir James Croft's trustees were able to buy back the castle and the whole estate was once again reunited. In 1956 the estate was in trouble again after the death of Major Owen Croft. Death duties and escalating costs involved in its upkeep forced the family got together with the National Trust to raise funds for repairs and the continuing maintenance the property. Today although run by the National Trust the castle still has members of the family in residence.

Eastnor Castle is set in a 5,000 acre estate in the Malvern Hills, about two miles from the market town of Ledbury in the village of Eastnor. From a distance the 19th century rectangular castle gives the impression of a medieval fortress, it is built over two floors with tall circular turrets at each corner and square towers at the centre. The Norman revival style castle is built of sandstone and sits above the lake with views over the deer park and arboretum below. Facilities The castle is home to the Hervey-Bathurst family but is open to the public during the Easter and the May Bank Holiday weekends, Sunday's from June until October and from Sunday to Thursday from the middle of July until the end of August. During the summer months the castle organizes evens such as battle reconstructions, the Land Rover Challenge and children's theatre as well as a maze and assault course, adventure playground and walks around the woodland and lake and even offers camping and caravanning in the deer park. The kitchen cafe serves homemade locally produced food and the gift shop is open for souvenirs. Eastnor also operates as a wedding venue both for civil ceremonies and receptions. During the winter the Great Hall with its roaring log fire is a grand reception area and during the summer months the French windows are opened onto the patio overlooking the lake where drinks receptions are held. Ceremonies are held in the Gothic Drawing Room licensed for up to 80 guests, with dining taking place in the State Dining Room. Following the wedding the newly weds and their guests can choose to stay in some of the castle's bedrooms, all decorated in individual styles. The Cocks family purchased the land in the 16th century, their children married into the wealthy Sommers and Nash families and by 1810 the family was able to build a castle on the site as a defense against the Welsh. The castle was left uninhabited from 1926 until 1945 when the family lived in Australia and after their return whilst it was made available to the government for use in the Second World War; although it was never used. In 1945 Lady Sommers returned to live in the servant's wing until 1949 when Elizabeth Sommers Cocks and Benjamin Hervey Bathurst moved in and started renovating and repairing the castle after years of neglect. The current family members arrived in 1998 and received grants from English Heritage for external repairs and now operate tourism and wedding ventures to help with the upkeep of the castle. The Arts Each year in August the Deer park plays host to the 'Big Chill' Festival specializing in Indie, Dance, Reggae, Folk and Chillout music. As well as music the castle has been used for many TV productions and was also the setting for the 1969 film 'One More Time' starring Sammy Davis Jr. and an adaptation of Oscar Wildes 'The Canterville Ghost' in 1986.

Set on top a wooded hillside overlooking the river Wye, Goodrich castle sits between Ross on Wye 4 miles away and Monmouth, and is one of the gateways between England and Wales The ruined Norman medieval castle is built of red sandstone. The keep today is 60 feet in height; although originally it would have been taller and topped with battlements. The castles' barbican or outer protective fortification is very well preserved with two bridges passing at right angles to one another. Facilities The castle is open to the public daily between April and October from 10am and from November to March Wednesdays though to Sundays. There is also a cafe offering a range of snacks and drinks. Visitors to the castle can explore alone, with the help of an audio guide or take part in a guided tour (advance booking of one month required). The tours are conducted by one of the castle's keen enthusiasts who gives visitors a glimpse into how the site was developed, the history and information on the architecture and conservation work on the site. At the time of the Doomsday survey the original manor was owned by Godric Marolestone and it was called 'Godric's Castle. Between 1148 and1176 the square keep was added and under King John the castle and title Earl of Pembroke was granted to William Marshall a great builder who made additions to the inner ward. Marshal's sons inherited the castle on his death, but the last of them died childless, so at the end on the 13th century William de Valence, half bother to Henry III, was granted the castle. He was responsible for transforming the tower building by adding four huge walls around the keep with circular towers at three corners and at the fourth corner a gatehouse and a semi circular barbican. Following the death of his son Aymer in 1323 the castle passed by marriage to Richard, 2nd Baron Talbot the family were made Earls of Shrewsbury during the 15th century. In 1616 the 7th Earl of Shrewsbury died without leaving a male heir and so the castle was granted to the Earl of Kent, Henry Gray, but it was left unoccupied. The castle was used as a garrison during the civil war in 1643 and was subject to one of Herefordshire's most desperate sieges where the castle was virtually ruined. The castle was sold and passed through many hands until finally coming into the care of the commissioner of Works and is now managed by English Heritage who have returned the only surviving Civil War mortar 'roaring Meg' back to the castle.

Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh-English border in Powys is the international capital of second-hand books, a small town that has developed since the 1960s under the inspiration of the eccentric Richard Booth from a declining market town into the most celebrated literary destination in Britain, its streets lined with dozens of independent bookshops containing millions of volumes that attract bibliophiles from across the world throughout the year and host the internationally celebrated Hay Festival each May and June. The combination of the bookshops, the festival and the beautiful landscape of the Wye Valley and Black Mountains provides a destination of extraordinary cultural and natural richness. Richard Booth's declaration of Hay as an independent kingdom in 1977, with himself as King, was the most extravagant of the many provocations with which he promoted the town's book trade, but the underlying commercial vision was entirely serious and the bookshop town concept he pioneered has been replicated in communities across Europe and beyond. The original Booth's Bookshop and the many independent bookshops of various specialisms provide the framework for days of browsing and purchasing that attract visitors who regard the bookshops as the primary destination. The Hay Festival, founded in 1988 and now one of the most important literary festivals in the world, brings the world's finest writers, journalists, scientists and public figures to Hay for ten days each year in a programme of talks, discussions and performances that consistently attracts global media attention and the description from Bill Clinton of the Woodstock of the mind.

Hereford Cathedral is one of the finest and most completely realised medieval cathedrals in England, a building of great architectural variety reflecting ten centuries of continuous construction and modification that houses two of the most extraordinary medieval objects in existence: the Mappa Mundi of approximately 1300, the largest surviving medieval map of the world, and the Chained Library, one of the finest collections of chained books in the world. The combination of the architectural quality, the Mappa Mundi and the Chained Library makes Hereford one of the most intellectually rewarding cathedral visits available in the English Midlands. The Mappa Mundi is the most remarkable single object in the cathedral collection, a circular map of the world drawn on a single sheet of calf skin approximately 1.5 metres in diameter that places Jerusalem at the centre and encompasses the known world of the medieval European imagination in a complex integration of geography, theology, classical learning and imagination. The map combines real geographical features with legendary beasts, biblical events and classical references in a synthesis of medieval knowledge that provides the most comprehensive single visual document of how educated Europeans understood the world in 1300. The Chained Library of approximately 1,500 books, each secured to its shelf by a chain attached to the front edge of the binding, is the largest surviving chained library in the world. The library occupies its original oak presses in a condition of remarkable completeness.

Kilpeck Castle is located about eight miles south west of Hereford.. The earthworks consist of a motte with a base diameter of about 50m at the base and about 8m at the top. The motte is surrounded by a ditch. The inner bailey has remains of a wall along the north and south sides. There are fragments of wall from the 12th century or 13th century keep on the motte summit. The keep is thought to have been polygonal in shape. A deep well has also been discovered within the keep. The remains of chimney flues are also visible within the wall fragments. The ruins are in very poor condition. Kilpeck Castle is thought to have been built first around 1090. King John stayed in the castle in 1211,1212 and 1214. The castle was abandoned in the late 14th Century and it was falling into ruin by the 16th century. During the Civil War it was garrisoned between 1635-1645. The Parliamentarians destroyed it at the end of the war.

Longtown Castle near Longtown in Herefordshire is a ruined twelfth-century castle of early Norman date, notable for its rare cylindrical keep, one of the earliest round keeps in England built around 1210 when this form was being developed as an alternative to the square tower. The castle was associated with the de Lacy family, who were among the most powerful of the Anglo-Norman marcher lords controlling the frontier between England and Wales. The cylindrical keep at Longtown is an unusually early example of the round tower form that became fashionable in castle design in the early thirteenth century. The castle is managed by English Heritage and is freely accessible in the Black Mountains foothills close to the English-Welsh border. The surrounding Golden Valley of Herefordshire provides one of the most scenically attractive rural landscapes on the Welsh Marches.

Symonds Yat Rock is one of the finest viewpoints in England, a limestone crag towering 150 metres above the River Wye on the border between Herefordshire and Gloucestershire at a point where the river makes an extraordinary horseshoe meander around a thickly wooded peninsula below. The viewpoint has been famous for the quality of its panorama since at least the eighteenth century when the Wye Tour, an early form of organised scenic tourism, established the Wye Valley as one of the great picturesque landscapes of Britain. The view from the rock encompasses one of the most dramatic river landscapes in England. The Wye curves below in a great loop, its green-brown water reflecting the sky and the dense woodland that clothes the valley sides. The cliffs and hanging woods of the Forest of Dean rise on the Gloucestershire side while the rolling Herefordshire farmland extends on the other, and the sheer scale of the valley as seen from this height makes the effort of the walk up from the car park entirely worthwhile. On clear days the Brecon Beacons and the mountains of mid-Wales are visible on the horizon. The rock and surrounding area are managed by Forestry England within the Forest of Dean, and the viewpoint is accessible via several walking routes from the two car parks in the valley below. The approach through the mature mixed woodland of the Forest of Dean is pleasant and the ascent, while steep in places, is well-managed with steps and handrails on the most difficult sections. Perhaps the most significant wildlife spectacle at Symonds Yat is the pair of peregrine falcons that has nested on the cliff face here every year since 1982. During the spring and early summer breeding season, the RSPB maintains a staffed observation point near the viewpoint with telescopes trained on the nest site, allowing visitors to watch the fastest bird in the world rearing its chicks at close quarters. The observation point is one of the most visited peregrine watching sites in Britain. The Wye Valley Walk and the Offa's Dyke Path both pass near the rock, providing opportunities for longer walking in this exceptional landscape.

Wigmore Castle near Wigmore in Herefordshire is a ruined medieval castle that was one of the most powerful fortresses of the Welsh Marches, the ancestral stronghold of the Mortimer family who were among the greatest of all the Anglo-Norman marcher lords. The Mortimers controlled vast territories on both sides of the English-Welsh border and played central roles in many of the most dramatic events of medieval English history, including the overthrow of Edward II and the regency of the young Edward III. The ruined castle occupies a prominent ridge with commanding views across the rolling hills of the Welsh Marches. The site is managed by English Heritage and freely accessible. The surrounding landscape of north Herefordshire and the Marches provides some of the most attractive and historically layered countryside in England.

The Wye Valley is one of the finest river landscapes in Britain, a scenic corridor following the course of the River Wye along the border between England and Wales from Hay-on-Wye in the north to Chepstow in the south, where the river meets the Severn Estuary. The entire valley has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the combination of dramatic limestone gorges, ancient oak woodland, medieval ruins and historic market towns makes it one of the most varied and rewarding landscape journeys in the country. The valley became famous in the late eighteenth century through the Wye Tour, an early form of organised scenic tourism that brought visitors by boat from Ross-on-Wye to Chepstow to observe the picturesque scenery from the water. William Gilpin's 1782 account of the tour established the vocabulary of the picturesque that proved enormously influential on both landscape aesthetics and garden design, and the Wye Valley's combination of wooded cliffs, rocky outcrops and ruined abbeys provided the perfect material for his theoretical framework. Wordsworth and Coleridge both made the tour and drew on the experience in their poetry. The ruins of Tintern Abbey near the valley's southern end, a Cistercian monastery founded in 1131 and dissolved by Henry VIII in 1536, are among the most beautiful and best-preserved monastic ruins in Britain. The roofless nave and elegant Gothic arches of the abbey church stand in the valley floor beside the river, framed by the wooded hillsides above, in a setting that moved Wordsworth to write Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey in 1798, one of the most important poems in the Romantic tradition. The abbey is managed by Cadw and is freely accessible to visitors. Symonds Yat Rock provides the finest viewpoint over the valley's dramatic limestone gorge section, while the market towns of Monmouth and Ross-on-Wye provide historical depth and visitor facilities. The Wye Valley Walk, a 136-mile long-distance footpath, follows the river for its entire length and provides access to the valley's landscapes at a pace that allows full appreciation of its variety.