Castle the first - Berry Pomeroy

Today we went to our very first castle. It was built by the Pomeroy family in the eleventh century.

Our tour of the castle included these handheld audio guides. Basically they looked like walkie-talkies from the eighties and played audio information clips about different areas of the castle. At first the audio tour was interesting, but quickly degenerated when the audio clips started to include skits involving "inhabitants" of the castle.

There was still a lot of interesting information though. Supposedly Pomeroy Castle is one of the most haunted castles in Britain, and two of the tour clips each talked about a ghost of the castle.

During the sixteenth century the Pomeroy family sold the castle to Edward Seymour the Duke of Somerset. At this time in English history being a duke actually meant something. Today being a lord or duke or earl or whatever, doesn't really afford you that much power.

Somerset's newphew was Edward VI, the only son of King Henry VIII. Apparently Edward became king when he was still a child and Seymour was Lord Protector of the Realm (meaning that Seymour ran the actual country) until Edward became old enough to rule on his own.

At one point this castle would have been fairly magnificent. When Seymour took possesion of the castle he started making all sorts of improvments and additions. He wanted to make the castle more suitable more entertaining aristocracy, like Queen Elizabeth I.

Seymour never finished though and the castle gradually decayed into it's present ruined state.