Wattlesborough Tower is a ruined fortified 13th-century manor house or

Tower House A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strateg ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...

. It is situated close to the boundary with

Powys Powys (; ) is a Local government in Wales#Principal areas, county and Preserved counties of Wales, preserved county in Wales. It is named after the Kingdom of Powys which was a Welsh succession of states, successor state, petty kingdom and princi ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. Wattlesborough is a former township within the present parish of

Alberbury Alberbury is a village in Shropshire, England, west of Shrewsbury on the B4393 road which travels from Ford to Lake Vyrnwy. It is on to the England-Wales border, marked by Prince's Oak. The River Severn runs just north of the village, and most o ...

. The castle is a Grade 1 listed scheduled monument. The Tower comprises a square two-storey tower above an

undercroft An undercroft is traditionally a cellar or storage room, often brick-lined and vaulted, and used for storage in buildings since medieval times. In modern usage, an undercroft is generally a ground (street-level) area which is relatively open ...

surrounded by a moated enclosure with a fishpond. The Leighton family inherited Wattlesborough in 1471 and used it as their chief residence until circa 1711. At that time an adjoining farm building was constructed and named Wattlesborough Hall.

History

The manor of Wattlesborough was held by Edric before the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conque ...

and by the time of the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

in 1086 it had passed to Roger Fitz Corbet and subsequently held as one

Knight's fee In feudal Anglo-Norman England and Ireland, a knight's fee was a unit measure of land deemed sufficient to support a knight. Of necessity, it would not only provide sustenance for himself, his family, and servants, but also the means to furnish him ...

by the successors of Roger as Lords of Caus in Shropshire. Edward Blore gives the succession of Wattlesborough, from the Corbets, to the Mawdy from 1382–1414, to the De Burghs from 1414–1471 and from 1471 when it passed to the Leighton family. Blore thought that the Tower had been built by Roger Corbet in 1280, but this may be a little too early. A John Leighton was MP for

in 1468,”Blore”,102. and he was followed by other family members who also served as MP for Shropshire. The Leighton family lived at Wattlesborough until 1711, when they moved to nearby Loton. From then onwards Wattlesborough became a farmhouse.

Architectural history

The castle is a Grade I

listed Listed may refer to: * Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm * Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic * Endangered species in biology * Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...

scheduled monument. Only the roofless tower remains and its condition is officially classified as poor.

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked wit ...

are in discussions with the owners to decide the best way of preserving the building. Wattlesborough Hall - geograph

Literature

*Blore E., (1868), ''Wattlesborough Tower, Shropshire'', Archaeological Journal Vol XXV, 96–102. *Gaydon A.T. (ed.) ''A History of Shropshire.'' Vol. VIII, (Condover and Ford Hundreds). Victoria County History of England, OUP, Oxford. pp196– 198. *Mercer E., ''English Architecture to 1900: The Shropshire Experience'' Logaston Press, 2003. *J Newman and N Pevsner ''The Buildings of England: Shropshire'', Yale 2006. pg. 152

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References

External links