Richards Castle

"RICHARD'S-CASTLE, a parish partly in the hundred of WOLPHY, county of HEREFORD, and partly in the hundred of MUNSLOW, county of SALOP, 4 miles (S. S. W.) from Ludlow, containing, with the townships of Moor with Batchcott, Overton, and Woolferton, 490 inhabitants. The living is a rectory, in the archdeaconry of Salop, and diocese of Hereford, rated in the king's books at £15. 1. 3., and in the patronage of the Bishop of Worcester. The church, dedicated to St. Bartholomew, is situated in the county of Hereford: it is a fine old structure, exhibiting some beautiful remains of stained glass, and had formerly a spire, which several years ago was burned down. The Kington canal passes to the south-east of the parish, and coal is obtained in the neighbourhood. A charter for a market and a fair was granted by King John, but both have been long disused. A National school, established about eight years since, is supported, and the children occasionally clothed, by voluntary subscriptions. There are some remains of the keep and walls of the castle, built by Richard Scrope, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, but they are so embosomed in wood as to be scarcely perceptible; on the declivity of its mount, two thousand royalists under Sir Thomas Dundesford were defeated in the civil war, by an inferior force headed by Colonel Birch. A spring in this parish, called Boney well, is remarkable for casting up small fish or frog bones in spring and autumn." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England  (1831) ©Mel Lockie]