bed breakfast north devon
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Barnstable Castle
About two-and-a-half miles from Totnes bridge, by a very uphill road, lies one of the best-known and quite the most picturesque of Devon's castles. Berry Pomeroy owes its name to one of the original Norman followers of the Conqueror, Ralph de Pomeroy, who appears in Domesday Book (1086) as lord of 106 manors in the county. Unlike his neighbour, Judhael of Totnes, Ralph did not establish himself on an old site, but went out into the woods and chose himself the most inaccessible spot that he could find, on a lonely knoll above a deep-sunk tributary-brook of the Dart. The ravine of this watercourse protects a good half of the enceinte: the exposed or southern side is covered by the main building of the old castle, a gatehouse of exceptional solidity, from which rise two high hexagonal towers. Above the portcullis-chamber is a fine carved shield with the lion rampant of Pomeroy - a bearing to be seen well displayed on the tombs of the parish church a mile outside the woods. This gatehouse certainly does not belong to Ralph de Pomeroy's original castle, which (presumably) was a scarped and palisaded shell-keep, whose outline would have followed the contour of the summit of the knoll in a somewhat quadrangular fashion. Complete reconstruction in stone no doubt followed in the twelfth century, though most of the present buildings are even later.
The Pomeroys were among the most powerful of the early Devonian feudal houses and had the unusual luck of continuing their lineal succession for nearly 500 years. During this time, they never lost their lands for a permanence, though they were more than once in danger of confiscation for treason. Henry de Pomeroy was a resolute supporter of King John Lackland in his rebellion against Richard I. When forced to fly from Berry, he seized the impregnable Cornish rock of Mount St. Michael and held it till all hope was lost. It would appear that he escaped forfeiture by committing suicide. Having assigned his lands to his sons, he had himself been bled to death by his surgeon, in the ancient Roman fashion. Since he had never been tried or condemned, Richard I allowed the Pomeroy lands to escape confiscation. The local legend at Berry - quite unauthentic - gives Henry a still more lurid end. He is said to have blindfolded his horse and then to have ridden him out of the postern straight down the precipitous north side of the castle, ending with a broken neck in the ravine below. Henry's grandson and namesake was deeply concerned in a more justifiable rebellion, having been a follower of Simon de Montfort in the Barons' War. He was lucky enough not to be present at the slaughter of Evesham, profited by the amnesty granted by the "Dictum of Kenilworth" to the surviving Montfortians, and got off with a fine instead of complete forfeiture.
The Pomeroys endured till the convulsions of religious war which marked the earlier years of the reign of King Edward VI. The then head of the house, Sir Thomas Pomeroy, was one of the chief supporters of the old Catholic party in the West. When, therefore, we find him selling his castle to Lord Protector Somerset in the second year of his Protectorate. We are suspicious of undue pressure, or blackmail, on the part of that champion among land-grabbers.