Collapsing Castle

 I was very sad to hear that one of the towers at Clifford Castle has collapsed, due to the heavy rain we've been having.

The owner of the castle had been opening it to the public for twenty eight days a year (I went up there with a group a few years ago, and had a good look round).  But now he says he's closing the site, because he can't take the risk of anyone getting hurt.  He's working with Historic England now to see how the site can be stabilised and made safe. 

Wassail!

 It's traditionally Wassail time - when the apple trees are blessed so that they will produce good cider later in the year, with morris dancing and fire and loud noises to scare the evil spirits away.

Artistraw Cider are having their Wassail on Saturday 11th January - no morris dancers, but there will be a Green Man, folk music, flaming torches, a bonfire and mulled cider.  

It starts at 6pm at Bryntirion, Clifford.  Tickets are £3 each, available from the Artistraw website, and under 18s are free - they've had to introduce tickets because there is limited space.  The parking is also very limited.  They are not allowing dogs, and there will be no food available, but people are welcome to bring their own snacks.  As the walk from the parking at Clifford church to the farm is unlit, people are also advised to bring a torch, and wrap up warm with good boots!

Boozy Weekend

 Two alcohol-related events are on this weekend.

The big one is Beer on the Wye at the Rowing Club in Hereford.  It starts this afternoon (Friday) at 2pm and runs until Sunday afternoon.  On offer are 135 real ales, 130 ciders and a variety of world beers.  Food is available on site, and there is live music on Saturday and Sunday - Sunday is also the family friendly day.

It was thought that last year would be the last Beer on the Wye, because Hereford Rowing Club were planning changes to the field where the marquee is pitched, but the Rowing Club and the local CAMRA group got together and worked out a solution so that Beer on the Wye can continue - with the marquee moved at 90 degrees to its previous position.  The organisers think that this might actually be an improvement, and it means the beer festival is safe for years to come.

More locally, Artistraw Cider are having a Midsummer celebration on Saturday 13th July, at their orchard on Priory Lane in Clifford.  The event runs from 3pm to 11pm, and as well as the cider, Lucky 7 beer and Black Mountains Vineyard wine will be available, and gin and tonic from Hay Distillery, plus a variety of non-alcoholic options.  The Origin Pizza van will be there as well.  Parking is limited, so car sharing is encouraged - or even walking!  The Wye Valley Walk runs close to the orchard.

Artistraw Cider Harvest Celebration

 Also on Saturday, but being without transport I won't be able to get to this one:

Artistraw Cider are holding a Harvest Celebration from 3pm to 10pm, in Clifford.  They will have Indian street food from Lockdown Dhaba, and a Lammas Ceremony, plus live music, a cider bar and a fire.

Artistraw Cider

I was in the Wholefood Shop the other week, where a local cider producer was offering samples from a table by the door. He and his wife have a farm in Clifford where they produce perry and cider from traditional, unsprayed orchards. The name "Artistraw" comes from a local dialect word for a shrew.
They have a website at www.artistraw.co.uk, and are also on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Fair Rosamund, the Musical

Fair Rosamund of Clifford Castle was famous as the mistress of Henry II - "that tart Rosie" according to Gerald of Wales, who did not approve (and also wanted to make an elegant pun in Latin). Henry II's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine didn't approve either, but couldn't do much about it as he had imprisoned her!
Tonight, the Monday Choir are staging a musical about her life at Clifford Hall at 7pm. Tickets are £7.50, and include a buffet, and there will also be a raffle and a Rosamund exhibition.
Proceeds of the concert are going to Dial-a-Ride.

Clifford Castle

What a wonderful evening!
Cusop History Group organised a trip to Clifford Castle, which is privately owned, yesterday. The present owners have been there for 7 years, and have just completed extensive renovation of the castle with the help of Historic England. As part of the agreement with Historic England, they have to open the castle to the public for 20 days a year. The castle is also open today and Sunday morning, though they do ask on their website for any group larger than 5 people to contact them in advance. The website is http://cliffordcastle.org
Parking is limited in Clifford, so the group met up in the Co-op's car park for car sharing. Signs are now up in the Co-op car park restricting parking to one and a half hours for customers only, but permission was granted for the History Group to park there.
I've been to Clifford Castle before, many years ago, as the guest of Mrs Parkinson, who used to own it. The people who owned the castle after her were not well liked in the area - there were stories of them stopping local people from walking their dogs and so on - but the present owners seem both enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the castle.
We were taken round by the owner, who had prepared laminated sheets with details of the castle's history and features, and a rather good reconstruction drawing. One of the group is an expert on Fair Rosamund, who was the daughter of Sir Walter de Clifford and mistress of Henry II. Henry was known to have visited the castle, and the owner commented that he couldn't see the king being entertained in the Great Hall of the keep, because it's really quite small. There is a possibility that there was a larger, wooden great hall in the outer bailey, though there would need to be more excavation to find out.

As part of the renovation work, several trenches were dug around the site, and the soil taken out of the tops of the walls was sieved, yielding mostly Victorian pottery. They think that Dr. Trumper, who owned the castle in the 19th century, and built the present house there, deliberately planted ivy in the walls to make the keep look more like a "romantic ruin". All that ivy, and the several trees that had burrowed their roots into the walls, have had to be removed to save the stonework from further damage. They also had to remove masses of brambles. The owner said that he only found one of the five towers by accident, when he fell into it while strimming - it was completely covered in brambles, and he went into them up to his waist.
The trench in the middle of the shell keep revealed, somewhat disappointingly, that the present ground level is about a metre above the original ground level - and across the courtyard stones from the castle walls had been neatly stacked on end. They assume that this was done by Dr Trumper, who probably intended to use the stone to rebuild some of the walls. When he came to sell the castle, not having used the stone he collected, he just covered them with earth. The owner said he wished he'd known the stone was there - they wouldn't have needed to buy in new supplies!
Other walls have primitive repairs, with little columns of stones holding up walls where there are gaps or the facing stones have disappeared. One wall, overlooking the river, has a solid buttress at one end, provided by the railway engineers who were building the railway down below, between the castle and the river, presumably so stones from the castle didn't fall down onto the tracks!

View of the entrance to the keep

And here's the reason that the castle was built on that spot in the first place - the ford across the river Wye, as seen from the walls of the castle. You can see how high above the ford the castle is, hence the "Cliff" part of the name.

There is a lot of potential for more work to be done to discover the secrets of the castle - they still don't know where the kitchen was for sure, and they don't really know the purpose of the hornwork behind the keep either - but the work that has been done has ensured the castle's survival for perhaps another hundred years.

Fairtrade Event at Tomatitos

Over on the Fairtrade Hay blog, I've written a report of the film and speakers who were at Tomatitos on Monday night. It was a great night, and I learned a lot about Malawi and Nicaragua. There have been serious floods in Malawi this year, and £109.60 was raised for the flood relief fund. This will be doubled to 219.20 by Shared Interest, the Fairtrade loans organisation.

Tomorrow night at Fairfields, Clifford, (up from the school, opposite Green Lane Farm) there will be soup and bread from 12 noon to 2.30pm, and Palestinian olive oil tasting. There will also be a collection for the Lady of Grace Convent, who help families in Bethlehem. I use Zaytoun Palestinian olive oil when I can, and it's very nice indeed.

See the side bar for the link to the Fairtrade Hay blog.

Textile Market

Some of my friends from Stitch and Bitch are sharing a table at the Clifford Textile Fair, up at Clifford Community Centre on Saturday (I wimped out because I didn't have anything much ready to sell this time). There will be scarves and hats and mittens and crocheted bunting and all sorts of other things - I don't know what the other stalls will be selling!
We got together earlier this evening - First Thursday of the month is always Stitch and Bitch night at the Swan (from 6pm to 8pm, or thereabouts), and final preparations were being made. Meanwhile, Emanation was teaching a new member who lives in Talgarth how to make crocheted hearts and leaves - they met at the Feminist group at the Globe one Sunday morning. I was finishing off the embroidery on my new medieval dress, having panicked slightly when I realised there's only a month to go before my first show of the season (at Droitwich), and another lady was starting a lacy purple cardigan.

Clifford Christmas Fair

It's a long time since I last went to Clifford Community Centre - it's not on a bus route - so it was lovely to be able to get a lift up there with other ladies of the Stitch and Bitch group (and one long-suffering husband!). We had decided to share a stall and try to sell some of the things we'd made.
Clifford doesn't really have a village centre, so this sort of thing brings the locals out in force to mingle and socialise, as well as to buy things.

One of the lovely things about the Fair was how someone went out and bought all the morning papers and laid them out on the tables where teas and cakes were being served!
The hall and the side room were both full. Apart from us and our crochet and knitting and other crafts (and art):

there was chocolate and bread and sausages, and cakes from Lucretia who bakes for the WI stall in Hay market. There were other crafts, too, including a lovely young couple who painted little wooden plaques with messages and pictures. I bought a fridge magnet from them which says "Shine Your Light" and he bought a hat from our stall. One of the lovely things about the day was looking round the hall and spotting all the hats we'd just sold being worn instantly!
There was a lady selling Palestinian cross stitch items and Palestinian Fairtrade olive oil, too. I now have a new purse in blue geometric patterns. Having seen recent reports from Gaza, I wanted to take the opportunity to do something, even if it was only to buy a couple of Christmas presents from the stall. The women doing the cross stitch are in Bethlehem, rather than Gaza, but the population there needs help too.
We all had fun doing the stall, and sold more than we really expected to - a couple of commissions might have come out of it, too, as well as a possible new member of the Stitch and Bitch group.
(Edited to add: Thanks to Ros for the photos!)