From Henry to James, Christchurch remained in the Crown. The latter sovereign granted it to trustees for the benefit of Prince Charles, whence it passed by sale through various hands, and finally was purchased by Sir George Rose in 1790. It is now the property of Lord Strathnairn.
The Priory buildings stood to the south of the church, and but scanty traces of them remain. There are considerable fragments of the containing wall to the south and east, and the fragments of two mural towers and the gateway. On the low ground on the Stour to the south-west, on the edge of the wet land called “QUOMPS,” are traces of a large fish-pond. Beyond the mill are the “convent meadows.” On the corbel shields terminating the drip-stone of the west door of the tower, are, dexter, what appears to be a “cross patonce” for de Fortibus; and, sinister, Montacute quartering Monthermer.
CLIFFORD CASTLE, HEREFORDSHIRE.
CLIFFORD CASTLE is the most westward of the fortresses by which the line of the Wye is protected in its passage across the county of Hereford, and which appear to have been constructed, some long before, some shortly before, and others shortly after, the Norman Conquest, for the defence of that fertile acquisition against the ever-aggressive Welsh of Brecknock and Radnor.
As early as the first quarter of the ninth century, the Saxons, under Egbert, had reduced Wales to a nominal subjection. And that great prince, having conquered Mercia, and exercising power over all England, is not unlikely to have strengthened the Mercian frontier and the Saxon acquisitions generally on the Welsh side; and to this period may be due, not improbably, such earthworks as those at Cardiff, Caerleon, Shrewsbury, Old Radnor, and Builth, and, now partially destroyed, at Hereford, and wholly so at Worcester: earthworks which, in their main features, resemble those thrown up early in the tenth century at Tutbury, Tamworth, and Leicester by Eadward the elder and his sister, Æthelflæd.
But, whatever may then have been done, it is very certain that during the reign of the Confessor several of his Norman favourites settled in England, and that, among them, Richard Fitz-Scrob had lands in the north of Herefordshire, and there set up and gave name to Richard’s Castle. As this castle was a great cause of offence, it probably was something different from the fortified timber houses of the English Thanes, and may well have been of stone, after the rising Norman fashion. It was certainly a place of considerable strength, and was useful during the invasion of Prince Griffith, in 1052. The fashion, probably, did not extend among the English, for when the same prince invaded Archenfield, and burned Hereford city, in 1055, he entered, apparently without much difficulty, the strong place, or Gaer, by which it was defended, and of which no doubt the banks and ditches, yet remaining, and the mound, known to have been removed, were parts. Harold retook and fortified the city in 1056.
Herefordshire was at that time, and long afterwards, one of the most valuable and most threatened of the English acquisitions on the Welsh border. Before the Norman Conquest, it was under the vigorous sway of Earl Harold, who beat back the Welsh from Rhuddlan to Gloucester and Chepstow, although he was unable to prevent Caradoc ap Griffith from destroying the hunting-seat in course of construction for the Confessor at Portskewet. That Harold encouraged fortified places on these marches is pretty certain, seeing that of the small number of castles recorded in the Domesday Survey no less than ten are named as standing in the marches of Monmouth and Hereford: namely, Wigmore, Clifford, and Chepstow, of which Wigmore is reputed one of the oldest Honours in the kingdom; Monmouth; Ewyas, founded before the Conquest, and repaired before Domesday, by Alured de Marleburgh; Avretone; Caerleon, famous for its Roman walls and its mount; Ferrars Castle; Herdeslie; Waterleye. These and several others not mentioned in the Survey, but existing at the time, were strengthened and held by the Norman invaders.
Clifford Castle stands on the right bank of the Wye, at the bottom of one of those short, sharp bends so frequent along the course of this river, and which add so much to its beauty. It crowns a red sandstone cliff about 150 feet above the stream, and close to it. The scarp, naturally steep, has been recently made steeper by art, to allow of the passage of the Brecon and Hereford Railway between the castle and the river. The cliff is part of a knoll of high ground, about half a mile long, and cut by the long-continued action of the river into a semilunar figure. The highest part of this knoll is converted into a narrow tongue by a broad and deep ravine, which descends from the north nearly parallel to the Wye, and terminates in the river bank. A long, tapering ridge is thus isolated between the ravine and the river, and upon this stands the fortress. The ravine bounds the ridge on the south and east, and a natural depression of no great depth crosses the latter at the broad north end. The intermediate part is traversed by two artificial cross ditches, which run from the river to the ravine, about 100 feet deep, but still considerably above the level of either.
The central and highest part thus isolated contains the inner ward; south of this a very small but strong division constitutes the outwork; and on the north is the lower but broader expanse of the outer ward, the three being thus in a line.