Croft Castle
Croft Castle and Parkland is a National Trust property comprising a country house, park, church and garden, in Croft, Herefordshire, England. Location. The site is in the civil parish of Croft and Yarpole, north-west of Leominster,in Herefordshire, England. It is surrounded by 1,500 acres of woodland, farmland and parkland. It is at . The Mortimer Trail, a long-distance footpath, passes by. Castle. A building has been on the site from the 11th century and it has from this time been the home of the Croft family and Croft baronets. The Croft family were closely linked to  their neighbours the Mortimers of Wigmore and Ludlow. The Battle of Mortimer's Cross took place on Croft land nearby in 1461. It was the home of Sir John de Croft who married Janet, one of Owain Glyndŵr's daughters. In the 15th century the Croft family adopted the Welsh Wyvern crest, a wounded black dragon, seen as an allusion to their Glyndwr heritage. The first member of the Croft family to have owned the estate was Bernard de Croft, who is mentioned in Domesday Book. The present building dates from the 1660s during the time when Herbert Croft was  Bishop of Hereford, replacing an earlier house some thirty yards to the west which was excavated by Herefordshire County Archaeologist Prof. Keith Ray and volunteers in 2002. The manor house is a quadrangular stone structure around a central courtyard with round corner towers and a square bay on the north elevation. Some stone mullion windows remain on all elevations. The castle is one of the first examples of medieval revival and has affinities to Ruperra Castle, Caerphilly, and Lulworth Castle, Wareham, Dorset. The Croft family suffered financially following the South Sea Bubble and in 1746 sold the estate to Richard  Knight (1693–1765), the eldest son and heir of Richard Knight (1659-1745), of Downton Hall, in the parish of Downton on the Rock in Herefordshire, a wealthy ironmaster who operated the Bringewood Ironworks and founded a large fortune and family dynasty. He married Elizabeth Powell of Stanage Park in Radnorshire by whom he had a sole daughter Elizabeth Knight, who married Thomas Johnes (died 1780) of Llanfair Clydogau, MP for Radnorshire (1777–80). In the 1760s, Johnes remodelled the Castle in the Rococo-Gothic style to the designs of the Shrewsbury architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard (d.1777), designer of the world's  first iron bridge spanning the Severn near Coalbrookdale. Georgian sash windows replaced mullion windows. Pritchard designed the plasterwork ceilings, the gothic staircase and employed master craftsmen to undertake his designs for the chimneypieces. Thomas Johnes II (1748–1816) inherited thousands of acres in mid Wales where he built at Hafod Uchtryd, Ceredigion, a striking gothic house with its library designed by Thomas Baldwin of Bath. The estate was planted with three million trees in the picturesque style as advocated by Johnes's cousin the aesthete Richard Payne Knight. The artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) visited and painted a romantic view  of Hafod in 1789. Hafod suffered a serious fire in 1807 and Johnes's priceless library was destroyed. The house was rebuilt by Thomas Baldwin but it was demolished in 1958 by the Forestry Commission. Croft Castle was put up for sale in 1799 by Thomas Johnes and was bought by Somerset Davies (c.1754–1817), MP for Ludlow, whose descendants, the Kevill-Davies, sold Croft back to Katherine, Lady Croft, in 1923. The castle had undergone further alterations in 1913 to the designs of the architect Walter Sarel (1863–1941) who removed the central section of the eighteenth-century gothic entrance front  replacing it with a battlemented porch and mullioned bay window above; the entrance hall was lined with oak panelling. Also removed were most of Pritchard's crenellations along the parapets. Walter Sarel redesigned the dining room. In 1937, the seventeenth-century service wing to the north-west was demolished to make the house more compact. In 1957, Croft was threatened with demolition following the destruction of eighteen other great houses in the county; the destruction of country houses in 20th-century Britain was gathering pace across the country, and continued through the 1960s. Diana Uhlman (née Croft), was determined that  Croft would not suffer the same fate. An endowment was raised by some members of the family before the National Trust would agree to take on the house and remaining estate. The castle opened to the public in 1960 after Michael, Lord Croft, had acquired paintings and furniture for display in the showrooms and his sister Diana established and funded the Croft Trust. The house is still occupied by members of the family. Chapel. Croft Church dates from around the thirteenth century. The box pews are seventeenth-century, there are some medieval floor tiles made at Malvern and the fine  tomb for Sir Richard and Eleanor Croft bears a resemblance to that of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. The celure above the altar is seventeenth-century and is painted with clouds and gilded stars. Garden and Parkland. The property has a three-acre walled garden. It also has a Georgian stable block. The estate has an avenue of Spanish Chestnut trees which were planted over four hundred years ago. Beech and oak trees line the main drive. The Fishpool Valley was landscaped in the eighteenth century with descending ponds, a grotto, gothic pump-house, an ice house and a lime  kiln, and has undergone major restoration to bring it back to its scenic origins. Hill fort. The parkland includes an Iron Age hill fort, known as Croft Ambrey. Family. Members of the Croft family include;