Cylchgronau Cymru

rcftatffltfjgia €nmhnnm. FOURTH SERIES.—No. XXXI. JULY, 1877. LUDLOW CASTLE. Ludlow Castle is the glory of the middle marches of Wales, and first in place among the many military structures by which the great county of Salop has been adorned and defended. It is a noble specimen of mili¬ tary, palatial, and even ecclesiastical architecture, of high antiquity and of historic fame. It is probably without rival in Britain for the sylvan beauty of its position, in which wood and water, and meadows of wide expanse and rare fertility, are combined with rugged and lofty crags, of which the walls and towers seem to form a component part, so natural are the tints of their lichens, so thick the foliage, and so close the embrace of their ivy. Nor are its associations with the past unworthy of so bright a scene. Here, in the age of chivalry, the Lacys and the Mortimers achieved many of those feats of arms which filled the border counties with their renown. Here Stephen exercised his great personal strength on behalf of the heir of the Scottish throne, who was about to be hauled up into the beleaguered Castle by a somewhat uncouth and unusual engine of war; and against these formidable walls the wild tribes of Wales flung themselves for two centuries, only to fall back, like the surge of the sea, broken and scattered. The Castle of Ludlow was the early residence of Edward IV, and the cradle of his 4th ser., vol. viii. 12