Into the Dean, Goodrich and The Speech House: Forest of Dean Part 1

A Border Castle, then into the Heart of the Forest of Dean

Our many (very many) journeys from the Midlands to visit friends and relatives in South Wales have taken us around the Forest of Dean, but we have not previously ventured away from the main road and into the woods. With Lynne’s birthday as an excuse and armed with a Travelzoo hotel deal it was time to put that right.

Goodrich Castle

Herefordshire

The Dean, as the locals call it, is in Gloucestershire but our first stop, beside the River Wye at Goodrich, was still (just) in Herefordshire

A rocky outcrop surrounded by a natural ditch (it was never a moat) overlooking an important river crossing was an obvious place for a castle. A wooden keep was constructed on an earth mound in the 10th or 11th century to create one of a line of Saxon forts along the Welsh border. Godric of Mappestone held it in the years after the Norman conquest, bequeathing his name to both castle and village.

The wooden fort was replaced by a rectangular, grey sandstone keep sometime between 1120 and 1176, possibly in connection with the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud (1135-1153) or maybe in response to Henry II’s hard line against the Welsh. During much of that time the Castle was in the possession of Gilbert de Clare and then his son Richard, who have previously graced this blog as constructors of Castell Coch, and the castles at Llantrisant and Caerphilly.

Goodrich Castle, the rectangular, grey sandstone keep surrounded by a later curtain wall

A curtain wall was built early in the 13th century. In 1247 Henry III gave the castle to his half-brother William de Valence who rebuilt the walls in the 1280s at the time his nephew, Edward I, was building the great castles of North Wales. Goodrich is thus closer in design to Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech than to other castles in England.

The gatehouse is approached across a drawbridge (now stone footbridge) from a later barbican.

Gatehouse, Goodrich Castle

It was designed to make uninvited visitors feel very unwelcome. If the drawbridge was down there was still a massive wooden gate and two heavy iron portcullises to negotiate, not to mention a murder hole above through which noxious or fatal substances could be thrown or tipped, and arrow slits on either side (off-set so defenders did not shoot each other).

Into the gatehouse, Goodrich Castle

Fearsome as this might have been, medieval Goodrich probably saw little action. The gatehouse even has a window, an obvious weak point, suggesting the inhabitants were confident – supremely confident as the masonry shows the window was once larger than it is now.

Window on the gatehouse wall, Goodrich Castle

It is actually the window to a chapel inside the gatehouse.

Chapel in the gatehouse, Goodrich Castle

Direct sunlight has taken the colour from the window in my photo, so I have borrowed the picture below from Wikipedia. Made using 15th century glass, the window was a millennium project designed by Hay-on-Wye based stained-glass artist Nicola Hopwood and financed by the parishioners of Goodrich, Marston and Welsh Bicknor. It shows the rock on which Goodrich stands, the River Wye and three faces representing the three parishes.

Goodrich Millennium Window, photo by Hchc2009, reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

At the other end of the chapel a memorial window commemorates the scientists, engineers and servicemen involved in the development of radar, particularly those who died when a Halifax testing radar equipment crashed near here in June 1942. Among the dead was electronics expert Alan Blumlein, who in peacetime had invented the concept of stereophonic sound and much of the hardware that makes it work. The flight had originated in RAF Defford, some 30 miles away in the grounds of Croome Court (we visited in July) where much of the development of radar took place.

Memorial window to the pioneers of radar, Goodrich Castle

This is an odd location for a chapel, but space on the rocky outcrop was limited. When the main gate is open the draw bar that secures it comes across in front of the altar (the socket can be seen on the left in the top picture)while upstairs was the mechanism to raise and lower the portcullises.

Housing for the wheels that raised one of the portcullises, Goodrich Castle

Apart from security and religion, William de Valence was concerned with comfort and inside the castle he aimed for the highest standings of 13th century gracious living. He built a solarium with delicate Gothic arches for use of his family,…

The interior of Goodrich castle with the solarium in the opposite corner

…he installed indoor toilets (though without running water so some poor sap still had to shovel the excrement from the ditch) and wash basins in the solarium and the great hall.

Great Hall, Goodrich Castle

The Norman Keep

But over it all looms the Norman keep.

Norman Keep, Goodrich Castle

The upper window is as decorated as they could manage at the time, the middle window was originally the entrance and there was a dungeon in the basement.

The decorated upper window of the Norman keep, Goodrich Castle

The top gives commanding views across the countryside, particularly over the River Wye now largely hidden by trees, but surely kept clear when it was of strategic importance.

The River Wye hidden in the trees - there is still a glimpse of the river, just over half way up, three quarters left

In the 14th century the Talbot family held the castle, repelling incursions by Owain Glyndŵr’s supporters in 1404. The Talbots became Earls of Shrewsbury in 1442 and played a significant part in the Wars of the Roses, but from their Castle in Sheffield not from Goodrich which they rarely visited. Goodrich was in decline and as castles ceased to be the residence of choice of the wealthy nobility in the 16th century, the decline looked terminal.

Roaring Meg

The Civil War dragged Goodrich back into service. Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities (August 1642) the castle was garrisoned by the Earl of Stamford for Parliament. Royalist pressure led him to withdraw to Gloucester in December 1643 and Sir Henry Lingen took the castle for the King. By 1646 the Royalist cause was in disarray and in June Goodrich was besieged by Parliamentary forces under Colonel John Birch. Despite having little more than its medieval defences, taking the castle proved difficult so Birch had local craftsmen build an enormous mortar capable of lobbing 90Kg gunpowder filled shells over the walls. This tipped the balance and when the west tower was reduced to rubble Sir Henry Lingen surrendered. ‘Roaring Meg’, as the mortar was dubbed, still sits at the base of the tower she demolished.

Roaring Meg, Goodrich Castle

Like most English castles Goodrich was slighted at the end of the war so that it could never be used again.

The 18th and 19th centuries saw the beginnings of ‘tourism’. William Gilpin introduced the concept of ‘the picturesque’ and in his snappily entitled book Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year of 1770 he cited Goodrich as an example of the ‘correctly picturesque,’. William Wordsworth called it the " noblest ruin in Herefordshire" while early Victorian painter, engraver and author Theodore Fielding wrote of the "castle's situation, far from human dwellings, and the stillness which that solitude insures to its precinct, leads contemplation to all the solemnity that is inspired by the sight of grandeur sinking in dignity, into decay"

In 1820 the visitor to Goodrich could pay 6d for a guidebook, but nobody thought of doing anything to arrest the ‘grandeur sinking into decay.’ In 1919 the collapse of parts of the curtain wall and north west tower persuaded the owner to give the castle to the Office of Works who set about repair and stabilisation of the ruin. Goodrich Castle is now in the care of English Heritage and is a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Monument.

The Speech House, Forest of Dean

Gloucestershire

Forest of Dean

Goodrich Castle stands just outside the Forest of Dean; the Speech House Hotel, where we spent the next two nights, is right in the middle – the monument marking the alleged exact point stands on the road opposite the hotel. Getting there from Goodrich took 15 minutes along the sort of roads that only sat navs know.

Allegedly the exact centre of the Forest of Dean

In 1660, 14 years after the destruction of Goodrich Castle and only 11 after the execution of Charles I, the monarchy was restored. Nine years later The Speech House was built as a hunting lodge for Charles II. Part of the building is original, but part dates from an 1881 rebuilding. It was not obvious to me which is which, but the various extensions and outbuildings at the back – essential parts of the modern hospitality industry - looked more recent.

The Speech House Hotel, Forest of Dean

Since 1676 The Speech House has housed the Verderers’ Court of the Forest of Dean. Verderers are a vestige of the medieval forest administration who survive here and in the New Forest and Epping Forest. Since at least 1281 the Verderers of the Forest of Dean have protected the ‘vert and venison’ (vegetation and habitat) and formerly acted as magistrates. Although they only dealt with minor crimes, the punishments they could hand out were major; gallows once stood outside the Speech House and the whipping beam can still be seen in one of the bedrooms.

There are four verderers each elected to the unpaid position for life by an ancient and arcane procedure. They meet quarterly in their courtroom in the Speech House - which otherwise serves as the hotel’s breakfast room – to discuss forest matters, but no longer get to hang or flog anybody.

The carved oak chairs were donated by the Crawshay family in 1820. The Crawshays were ‘Iron Barons’ owning the Cyfarthfa Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil among other assets. Richard Crawshay, the founder of the dynasty (died 1810) was known as ‘The Tyrant’ and the Crawshay name is still remembered – and without fondness – in industrial Monmouthshire.

The Breakfast room and Verderers Court with carved oak chairs, Speech House Hotel, Forest of Dean

18 years ago, the chairs were stolen and after travelling through Spain and Portugal found their way to a London auction house. The auctioneer saw their quality, checked with the police stolen arts squad and they were subsequently returned to their proper home.

We dined in the Orangery, the ‘pub’ restaurant of the Speech House, leaving their ‘fine dining’ restaurant for tomorrow. It was reasonably priced pub food, washed down with the ‘free’ bottle of house red from our Travelzoo deal. Lynne’s faggots were particularly good, the product of a local artisan butcher, not a factory. A commendation, too, for Wye Vale Gin, distilled by the Silver Circle distillery just across the Wye in rural Monmouthshire. The mushroom growth of artisan gins has led to some mixed quality, but Silver Circle seems to have got it right.

Forest of Dean

Part 1: Into the Dean, Goodrich and The Speech House

Part 2: Coleford and Around

Part 3: Puzzlewood and The Kymin