Chartley Castle
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Chartley Castle is to the north of the village of Stowe-by-Chartley in Staffordshire, between Stafford and Uttoxeter (grid reference SK010285).
The motte and bailey castle was built by one of the early Earls of Chester circa 1100CE as a safe stop over for their journeys to places like Tutbury. The present Chartley castle was built on the site of one of the first wooden castles to be built in United Kingdom circa 900CE, and was rebuilt in 1220 by Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester, who died in 1232. It then passed by marriage to William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby. It remained in the Ferrers family for more than 200 years and in 1453 passed to Walter Devereux through his wife Elizabeth, the Ferrers heiress. Walter was created Baron Ferrers in 1461 and was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The castle was then abandoned as a residence and Chartley Manor, a moated and battlemented timber mansion, was built nearby. What is now known as Chartley Manor was in fact known as Chartley Manor Farm until the 1980s
Substantial remains are still present today, including a rare cylindrical keep, a curtain wall flanked by two half-round towers, a twin-towered gatehouse and an angled tower.
[edit] References
- Description of the castle on the Bramhall family genealogy page
- Entry at Castles UK
- Entry at GENUKI
- Fry, Plantagenet Somerset (1980). The David & Charles Book of Castles. Newton Abbott, UK: David & Charles. ISBN 0-7153-7976-3.
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