Bronsil Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

About a mile east of Eastnor church, in the park of the Eastnor Castle estate, the ruins of Bronsil Castle rise from a wide moat that still holds water. The site, already occupied in the 13th century, was transformed in the mid-15th century by Richard Beauchamp, treasurer to Henry VI and later Lord Beauchamp of Powick, who obtained in 1449 and again in 1460 the right to fortify his residence and to enclose a park of 300 acres. The castle formed a square enclosure with octagonal towers at the corners, an entrance gatehouse on the west and intermediate towers on the other sides, around a central courtyard. Having passed to the Reed family in 1496 through a Beauchamp heiress, it was taken and burned during the Civil War in 1644, and then gradually fell into ruin. Today only foundations remain, along with fragments of curtain wall and part of the gatehouse tower, which partly collapsed into the moat in 1991. A 17th-century legend tells of a tormented spirit said to have driven away the occupants until Lord Beauchamp's bones were brought back from Italy.