Qualla: Whittington Castle

Whittington Castle: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy and Hilary, CC BY-SA 2.0. Most of the great castles of the Welsh Marches are in the hands of English Heritage or Cadw. Whittington Castle is different. In 2002, the local community took out a 99-year lease and has been running it ever since. They had to: nobody else would. The castle had been a working farmhouse converted from the gatehouse, occupied as a private dwelling into the 1990s. Two of the towers had collapsed into the moat over the centuries; stone had been carted away to build the turnpike road to Ellesmere in 1776. What the Whittington Castle Preservation Trust inherited in 1998 was a ruin with a moat full of ducks - and a story that runs from Empress Matilda to the Holy Grail.

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Image: Andy and Hilary | CC BY-SA 2.0

Whittington Castle: Built for a Civil War

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Firth, CC BY-SA 2.0. The castle was first fortified in 1138, during the civil war between Empress Matilda and her cousin Stephen of England known as the Anarchy. William Peverel held it for Matilda, the daughter of Henry I, against Stephen's nominal lordship. In 1149 Madog ap Maredudd, the last king ...

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Image: John Firth | CC BY-SA 2.0

Whittington Castle: Llywelyn's Stones

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eirian Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1223 Llywelyn ab Iorwerth of Gwynedd - 'Llywelyn the Great,' who united most of Wales under his rule - captured Whittington and destroyed it. Under the peace treaty that followed, it was returned to its English owners, but the rebuild took it from a wooden motte-and-bailey to ...

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Image: Eirian Evans | CC BY-SA 2.0

Whittington Castle: Inheritance and Decay

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AtticTapestry, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the FitzWarin line ended with Fulk XI in 1420, Whittington passed by marriage to Elizabeth FitzWarin and her husband Richard Hankeford. Their daughter married into the Bourchier family, carrying the FitzWarin peerage with them. Their grandson became the Earl of Bath. In 1545...

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Image: AtticTapestry | CC BY-SA 4.0

Whittington Castle: The Grail and the Romance

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Jasonjsmith assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Whittington has one of the more elaborate legends in the Marches. Sir Fulk FitzWarin - the rebel who fought King John - is named in a 13th-century French romance, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, that mixes his real political career with chivalric adventure. A later tradition holds that the ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Jasonjsmith assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Whittington Castle: Owned by the Village

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AtticTapestry, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the late 1990s, the gatehouse-farmhouse had been empty for years and the rest of the site was in advanced ruin. The owners, the Lloyd family, no longer had a use for it. In December 1998 a group of local residents formed the Whittington Castle Preservation Trust, a rural commu...

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Image: AtticTapestry | CC BY-SA 4.0