Bronsil Castle lies 2 miles to the East of Ledbury and 1 mile to the east of the parish church.. It was built around the mid 15^th century and is Grade II listed. It has been built incorporating the ruins of an earlier building, possibly a manor house of the Beauchamp family.

Today only the foundations and fragments remain. The site is surrounded by a moat 20yds wide and still wet. A modern bridge crosses the moat on the West Side opposite the gatehouse. Another bank and remains of what was probably an outer ditch surround the moat itself.

The gatehouse ruin is 50 foot high and perhaps 15 foot in width, a rectangular window and stringcourse are still visible. Ruins remain of the curtain wall and angle towers, which stand 1-2 foot high in places.

The castle lay on an almost square island with sides of around 36m in length. It was originally enclosed on all four sides by a curtain wall, with angle towers at each corner. On the North, South and East sides there were intermediate towers, whilst on the West there was an entrance passage with octagonal gatehouse towers on both side and a possible drawbridge. A large part of the gatehouse tower ruin survived until 1991 when a major collapse occurred prior to consolidation work being undertaken

The ruin had survived up until this point to a height of 10m, and three moulded stringcourses could be distinguished. The lowest stage was featureless apart from a circular hole at the bottom, which may have been for drainage. The stage contained two almost complete chamfered arrow –slit shaped openings at different levels – one to the right and the other high in the left-hand face. Not a great deal of the 3^rd stage survived but in drawings from 1731 by the Buck’s brothers, another arrow slit is seen.

Undergrowth and a lack of surviving buildings makes it hard to interpret the arrangement of internal buildings, but it most likely to have been a series of buildings arranged against the curtain wall.

The first record of Bronsil Castle is c1240, when it is linked to St Katherines Hospital in Ledbury; no description of the structure is given.

1449: Richard Beauchamp, Treasurer to Henry VI is given license to crenellate a manse and enclose 300 acres of land in Eastnor as a park.

1460: The license to crenellate and enclose is repeated.

1496: Possession passes through a Beauchamp heiress to the Reede family.

1600’s: The inhabitants of Bronsil Castle are ‘driven out’ by a restless spirit, a talisman of Lord Beauchamps bones are made and the spirit becomes calm. Mr Reede moves to another of his seats at Lugwardine.

1644: Roundheads take the castle under the younger son of Richard Hopton, after some firing and a brief show of resistance by Thomas Cocks. Days later Royalists from Hereford besieged the castle for 24hrs before Hopton surrendered and the castle was burnt.

1731: From illustrations by the Buck brothers it is clear that some of the outside walls and towers are still standing. The castle is by now unoccupied and partly ruined.

1779: Kennion visited to find only one tower remaining.

1840: The moat is partly cleaned out, it yields weapons, buckles, irregularly shaped spoons and cannonballs.

1931: Most of the North tower is still standing, the double ditches have become degraded.

1932: Consolidation work is carried out by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments and 2 distinct build periods of the wall were discovered. The inner side of the wall is bonded with yellowy-white mortar of 13^th century date while the outer octagonal face of the wall is bonded with pink mortar probably from the 15^th century when the existing castle was founded.

1967: Ordnance Survey provides a plan of the earthworks and measurements, less than ½ the tower survives.

1990: The tower is now in a precarious position.

1991: A large crack in the southwestern tower causes concern and consolidation work is begun, however before the scaffolding was completely erected a large part of the tower ruin collapses into the moat. It is not clear whether Bronsil Castle was designed to be a substantial fortress, or little more than a fortified manor. The double moat and size and scale suggest extravagance and pride whilst history tells us of no great part played by the castle or its various owners. Richard Beauchamp was a member of the privileged coterie associated with Yorkist ascendancy of Edward IV, which was fond of the precociousness of chivalric culture. Richard’s status would have warranted and indeed demanded a flamboyant structure and this is certainly what appears to have existed at this site.