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SNODHILL CASTLE. 



[By the Rev. Thomas Prosser Powell.] 



"Hereford, Herefordshire, and the Wye," a book by this title published 

 a few years ago, was presented to me, and as a Herefordshire man I hoped to 

 obtain some information and instruction from it, more especially about my own 

 locality, the Golden Valley. What was my dismay when under the heading, 

 "Golden Valley," I came across the following observation: — "This from an 

 artist's view does not fulfil the promise held out by its name, the scenery being 

 below the average." "The remains of Snodhill are devoid of artistic merit." 

 " Peterchurch is utterly uninteresting." The old story it seemed, "Dan to 

 Beersheba, all is barren. " The man must indeed be of a mind void of imagina- 

 tion, handmaid of art, who can stand here on the ruin of this old Border Castle, 

 where Lords of the Marches fought and sported, and loved, and say such a spot 

 is utterly uninteresting. If such a place is devoid of interest, it can only be 

 because we know so little about it. How difficult it is to sweep aside the cobwebs 

 of ages and look into the dark corners of the story of these border chiefs ! How 

 seldom do we come across the record of the death of any one of them ; how seldom 

 do we find a stone to mark the jolace of their burial ! Only here and there in a 

 history of 500 years do we light upon a name out of all those that " when their 

 time was come were not loth to give their bodies to the family mould ; " and of the 

 castles that they kept so bravely nothing but a few crumbling walls remain. 



Now from its very situation, commanding the entrance to the Golden 

 Valley, a district once far more iwpulous and important than it is now, this 

 Castle of Snodhill, Snothill, or Snodhull must have held no mean position 

 amongst the fortresses of the Marches. It is thus described by Leland as he saw 

 it somewhere about 1540. "There is a castell a mile and more benethe Dorston 

 upon the right Ripe of Dour. It is called SnothUl and there is a parke wallyd 

 and a castle in it on an hill." Look on that stretch of land lying opposite to us 

 and south of the castle, woods, and rough land, here and there interspersed with ' 

 pasture and plough and farm buildinga, and you see what in Leland's time was 

 "a Parke wallyd." That wood below you with its luxuriant foliage, and divided 

 by deep dingles and running streams, some 40 acres in extent, is still called 

 Snodhill Park, and to this day the legend exists, passed on from generation to 

 generation, that in that wood lies buried a vast treasure not deeper than a hen 

 could scratch. That whitewashed house upon the hill is called the New Lodge, a 

 cottage to the right Old Lodge, again to the right the Park Farm, — names which 

 all tell of the situation of '" The Wallyd Parke." On the top of yonder hill there 

 is a stretch some two miles long of dilapidated walling, no doubt the remains of 

 of the south boundary of the Park. 



Return to the extract from Leland, and I find this remarkable statement — 

 " And thereby is under the castle a Quarrey of Marble." The meaning of these 

 words I am quite unable to explain. There are no traces of any extensive 

 quarrying in the neighbourhood, and certainly to-day the existence of marble is 



