Woolbope Naturalists’ Field Club. 
JUNE 17TH, 1881. 
WIGMORE CASTLE AND THE MORTIMERS. 
Tue following paper on ‘‘ Wigmore Castle and the Mortimers,” was read by the 
Rey. James Davies, of Moor Court, Kington, at the meeting of the Woolhope 
Field Club, held on June 17th. The paper was read at the Castle, and was 
listened to with much interest by the members :— 
One of the grand and vaunting stories of historic and heroic Herefordshire, is 
that of Wigmore and her lords. ‘From my boyhood I remember how, at a country 
theatre on the border, I used to listen, attracted and entranced, to ‘‘ Mortimer of 
Wigmore, a legend of Herefordshire,” performed nightly by a company of strollers, 
from no visible manuscript, but a hazy transcript which was, I suppose, somewhere 
in existence lying ‘“‘ perdu.” I recollect that the young Prince, who whilom made 
the wonderful escape from durance at Hereford, was nightly precipitated from the 
heights of Wigmore Castle by the powerful Baron of Wigmore, but my connection 
of history is insufficient to serve me in point of date or particulars. I conclude 
that the battle of Evesham must have come after and settled matters satisfactorily 
for the powerful family which occupies so distinguished a place in the annals of 
English history, and ultimately obtained the Crown in the person of Edward IV. 
One thing I cannot doubt that this theatrical reminiscence, which must have been 
kept alive in many memories besides mine, may even yet cling to many, and that 
we are all the more fascinated to hunt up kindred stories of old memorial, and to 
revive fondly the vestiges of the past (the footsteps of the Mortimers, whether 
across the border in Radnorshire, where the name of Mortimer was powerful and 
predominant, or in this their central home and source-place of power, wherein we 
are this morning met). I purpose to gather from the help afforded by such 
authorities as the Castles of Herefordshire, by Mr. C. J. Robinson, a former presi- 
dent; ‘‘a learned paper” of Mr. G. T. Clark, of Dowlais, the eminent exponent 
of English castle building; and such notes as have been stored up in the Quarterly 
Review's ‘‘ Article on Herefordshire ” in 1879, and its complement, Mr. Murray’s 
Handbook to Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire, for an (I hope) in- 
telligible account of Wigmore Castle’s early history and superstructures, a passing 
sketch of the chief Mortimers of history with whom we are concerned, and such 
other general remarks as are perhaps not out of keeping with the “‘ genius loci.” I 
am duly mindful that a little further on—at the Chapel Farm and the Mistletoe 
Oak—I am to divest myself of the teacher’s office, and listen once more to the 
Archdruid himself of our Club, as he shears the mystic branch of the mistletoe, 
