Hemyock Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

In the heart of the village of Hemyock, in the Culm valley at the foot of the Blackdown Hills, stand the remains of a late 14th-century quadrangular castle. Behind a moat still partly filled with water, two round towers frame the former eastern entrance, while stretches of curtain wall and stumps of corner towers trace the perimeter of the enclosure. The site was already occupied in the Middle Ages by a fortified manor house. In November 1380, Richard II licensed Sir William Asthorpe, a courtier and future sheriff of Devon, and his wife Margaret Dynham to fortify it with a wall of stone and lime. In the 17th century the estate belonged to the family of the judge Sir John Popham; his descendants held the place for Parliament during the Civil War and imprisoned Royalist prisoners there. Taken and then retaken, it was dismantled after the Restoration. At the end of the 18th century, General John Graves Simcoe, first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, acquired the ruins but was unable to restore them. Now privately owned, the castle, attached to a dwelling house, opens its doors occasionally for visits on bank holiday Mondays in the summer season.