Trev's travails: Ashby Castle

During our recent stay in Leicestershire, I visited Ashby de la Zouch and its Castle

The Castle has been run by English Heritage since 1983.

The manor of Aschebie is first documented in the Domesday survey of 1086 and for the next century formed part of the estates of the Earls of Leicester. They granted it to a family of Breton descent with the name ‘le Zouch’ (meaning ‘a stock’ or ‘stem’) in return for military service. Their apparently modest manor house probably stood on the site of the present castle; fragments of it may be preserved in the hall range.

Following the death of the last direct heir to the Zouch inheritance in 1399 and disputes over its ownership, Ashby was eventually granted in 1462 to William, Lord Hastings (c 1430–1483), as part of a much larger grant of land in the Midlands. Hastings had acquired immense power and wealth in the service of Edward IV

William Hastings (1st Baron Hastings) enhanced its fortifications from 1473.

It is clear that Hastings intended Ashby Castle to serve as his principal seat. He transformed the existing manor house with a series of vastly ambitious buildings and enclosed 3,000 acres to create a park for hunting

The death of Edward IV in 1483 brought Hastings’s career to a dramatic close. He was an obstacle to the royal ambitions of the Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III, and was summarily executed on 13 June 1483

The castle remained in use as the main family seat of his descendants, playing a prominent part in the Civil War, when it was held for the king.

The castle buildings were initially used to imprison prominent Royalists, but later in 1646 it was directed that the defences be demolished. The earl subsequently complained that the demolition squad had far exceeded its orders and entirely ruined his ‘only convenient mansion’

In 1819 the novelist Sir Walter Scott published a medieval romance, Ivanhoe. A tournament scene in the novel was set at Ashby and visitors flocked to see the castle ruins.