Clifford Castle

Clifford Castle is a ruined castle in the village of Clifford which lies four miles to the north of Hay-on-Wye in the Wye Valley in Herefordshire, England. It was the caput of the feudal barony of Clifford, a Marcher Lordship (owing allegiance directly to the King, but separate from the rest of the kingdom).HistoryThe early motte and bailey castle was built on a cliff overlooking a ford on the River Wye in 1070 by William FitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford, on a wasteland formerly occupied by Browning. The castle was intended to provide protection for a planned Norman settlement above the River Wye of quite a substantial size, with c. 200 plots being intended, running uphill for half a mile towards Llanfair, where the church was sited on the hilltop. St Mary's church remains today, much altered in the Victorian era. The position of the castle as adjacent to the River Wye enabled the seasonal flooding of the river to fill the flood plain around the castle, forming a shallow lake or marsh with the assistance of a dam on the western or upstream side of the site, acting as a further form of defence.