BOOK OF DOVECOTES 



English dovecotes, still more frequeijtly in 

 Scottish specimens. We shall, however, be 

 justified, and not disappointed, in looking for 

 one in the example next upon our list; that at 

 Richard's Castle, a village close to the Shrop- 

 shire border and best reached from Woofferton 

 Junction, on the Hereford and Shrewsbury- 

 line. The westernmost and least frequented 

 of the two roads running between Leominster 

 and Ludlow must be crossed, a turn uphill be- 

 ing taken at the village inn. 



Nearly at the top of the hill we should come 

 to the church, with yet another of Hereford- 

 shire's detached towers ; and then, still higher, 

 find the castle after which the place is named; 

 a wooded mound, knee-deep in nettles, over- 

 grown with brambles, but still showing traces 

 of a ditch and walls. This Border fortress was 

 erected by, and took its name from, Richard 

 Fitz Scrob, a Norman of the days of Edward 

 the Confessor; and it shares with Ewyas, far in 

 the south-west of the county, the distinction 

 of being a pre-Conquest stronghold. 



But to discover the dovecote we need climb 

 the hill as far as neither church nor castle. On 

 58 



