Lydford Castle

Lydford Castle is a medieval castle in the town of Lydford, Devon, England. The first castle in Lydford, sometimes termed the Norman fort, was a small ringwork built in a corner of the Anglo-Saxon fortified burh in the years after the Norman conquest of England. It was intended to help control Devon following the widespread revolt against Norman rule in 1068. The Norman fort had been abandoned by the middle of the 12th century.

The second castle in Lydford was constructed in 1195 following a wave of law and order problems across England. It included a stone tower with a surrounding bailey, and rapidly became used as a prison and court to administer the laws in the Forest of Dartmoor and the Devon stannaries. The tower was rebuilt in the middle of the 13th century, probably in the 1260s by Richard, the Earl of Cornwall. It was redesigned to resemble a motte and bailey castle, an antiquated design for the period but one that was heavily symbolic of authority and power. In 1342 the castle, still being used as a prison and courtroom, passed to the Duchy of Cornwall, who owned it until the 20th century.

The castle was repeatedly renovated and then left to deteriorate, so its condition varied considerably over time. Nonetheless, other than a period during the English Civil War and the Restoration in the 17th century,

Texto adaptado de «Lydford Castle» en la Wikipedia en inglés, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lydford Castle ranks #2279 of 5793 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #165 of the 182 mapped in Inglaterra. Fundado en 1195, más antiguo que el 83% de los monumentos datados del atlas — one of 303 atlas entries founded in the siglo XII. Compara el dato en las estadísticas de castillos.

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