 The restoration of Hopton Castle Posted by Conservation Building Services Ltd on 22nd March 2011. Difficult access, sensitive archaeology, auto-destructing building material, and an unusually sophisticated loo! Hopton Castle reveals its secrets.
Hidden amongst the rolling hills of the Shropshire countryside stands the romantic ruin of Hopton Castle. For centuries the once grandiose fortified tower house has stood still, a medieval monument in genteel decay, its noble scars barely hinting at its most bloody past. In March 1644 Prince Rupert’s forces under the command of the Sir Michael Woodhouse arrived in numbers at Hopton Castle; inside, the thirty strong parliamentarian garrison of Colonel Samuel Moore had already declined to acknowledge Prince Rupert’s terms of surrender, delivered during a previous visit in January. Moore again refused a further request to surrender and so began the now infamous month long siege, ending in the sacking of the building and the merciless slaughter of the surrendered garrison. Despite the castle having changed hands on numerous occasions, the civil war siege was to be its final chapter and it was never lived in again. Since then the building has only served as a shelter for sheep and cattle, or the occasional source of building material, robbed out for local homes. Some repair work was undertaken during the 19th century, and minor repairs carried out in the 1950s and '60s to keep the monument standing, but it is not until the mid 1990’s that the cause of Hopton Castle would be taken up again, this time by a handful of dedicated local people now represented by the Hopton Castle Preservation Trust. It has taken the trust over ten years to finally turn their vision into a reality and, with the help of project manager Sula Rayska of Rayska Heritage, the Trust has raised in excess of a million pounds to help preserve this important historical landmark. Generous funding from the likes of The Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage have allowed the trust to purchase the building, and with the help of a dedicated and multi-disciplinary team the ambitious conservation project is finally underway.
As an experienced specialist contractor, Oswestry based Conservation Building Services Ltd (Cbs) have faced a great many building conservation and restoration challenges, and this particular scheduled ancient monument wasn’t about to disappoint.
Although the site has always been of very significant archaeological interest, it wasn’t until a recent visit by channel 4’s Time Team that the programme's archeological experts, including buildings specialist Richard Morriss, also the project archaeologist, established important archaeology literally millimeters below the surface of the site. With an estimated three hundred cubic metres of debris to be cleared from the interior, and a scaffold to be erected, this looked to be quite a problem. The challenge was to establish a means of transporting materials over the site without impacting in any way on the sensitive landscape. To achieve this, Cbs director Charles Mangles introduced the innovative Hopton light ‘mono’railway. A series of conveyor belts brought material from the building and into tipping rail trucks, drawn by an unmanned diesel powered engine over a lightweight and versatile monorail. The operation was a huge success and despite moving hundreds of tons of material, the ground remained entirely undisturbed.
As the Castle is built on top of a steep motte, providing a secure and fully enclosed access scaffold was another difficulty to overcome. Under adverse weather conditions, such a huge independent structure could generate considerable forces and after much consideration a series of ground anchors where installed to provide stability whilst avoiding any load transfer to the buildings vulnerable historic fabric.
The Cbs team has also designed an access bridge to link the scaffold to the site compound, a simple means of conserving the motte's sensitive topography from what could be almost a year of construction site traffic to and from the building.
Trials and tribulations aside, the castle is already beginning to yield up its secrets. Exploratory excavations of the motte led to the discovery of a small lintel at low level over a blocked up opening in the south elevation. Further investigation revealed a large chamber filled with debris, amongst which were floor joists and boards. This was a very significant find, as no other timber has been found on the site and it presents an exciting opportunity to date the fabric using Dendrochronology. As the debris may have been deposited during or very shortly after the siege, great care was taken to clear the chamber with almost twenty cubic metres of material sieved for important archaeological finds. The chamber is a collection point for the castles garderobes, (loo’s) and the construction and workmanship of this unusual feature, possibly the only example of its kind, is quite outstanding. It includes a sophisticated series of carved stone drainage chutes, presumably taking rainwater from the roof to help flush the chamber clear. One can easily imagine how such innovative design might well have impressed the neighbours, but this luxury feature harbored a fatal floor, and Hopton Castle was to pay a heavy price for its creature comforts! Combined with diary entries from the besieged Colonel Moore, we have established that it is through this chamber that the attackers broke into the castle; a hole made in one of the garderobe chutes enabling an unlucky Royalist to climb up it into the building.
As the debris and the ivy are peeled away, Hopton Castle draws new breath. Its intriguing features are gradually emerging and its architecture takes on its form once again. Its those subtle changes that allow us, without a huge leap of our imagination to fill in the gaps, and as we do so, the ruin becomes a castle once more, and its fascinating history, dark and menacing as it may have been, also begins to emerge. Cbs and the Hopton team are well placed to conserve the fabric of this important historic building, but the projects true success should not be measured by its technical achievements alone. For it to really stand out, the opening of the site in 2010 should mark the beginning of a new chapter for Hopton Castle, and the return of its brooding soul!
Conservation Building Services have delivered works of outstanding quality, building a reputation that they believe is second to none. CBS has experience in Masonry, Lime work, Cleaning, Decoration, Carpentry & Joinery, Earth Work, Roofing, Fine Conservation, Consulting Contractor Service, New Build and Outreach. Deliberately maintaining a small company profile with company directors regularly in attendance on projects, and often running our sites; means their considerable expertise and experience is precisely where its needed most, on site.
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