Farleigh Hungerford is 3 miles west of Trowbridge. This is a
14th century double courtyard castle protected by a moat, walls and
towers. Sir Thomas Hungerford, John of Gaunt's steward and Speaker of
the House of Commons, and who was a fantastically wealthy man built the
present castle; there had been an earlier smaller one on the site. Sir
Thomas was granted a pardon in 1383 after he failed to apply for a
license to crenellate.
The site is one of strength, backing at the north on a steep dyke, with
natural scarps to east and west. The castle began as a quadrangular
enclosure with cylindrical towers on the corners and a substantial
gateway of D-ended towers flanking an entrance. Inside an extensive
range of buildings of a domestic character was erected - indeed there
was a greater area devoted to buildings than to open courtyard. It is
suggested that these were grafted onto the earlier castle that had been
destroyed in the mid-fourteenth century, which was connected with the
chapel of St Leonard outside (and which Hungerford rebuilt).
Hungerfords son, Walter, enlarged the castle to take in the chapel and
did do by building a polygonal enclosure curtain with a flanking
cylindrical tower and two gateways (east and west). Walter Hungerford
surrounded the newer works with a moat extension along the southern end.
He also put a masonry dam and sluice in the original western ditch to
control the water flow from a large pond, thus creating a kind of
'water-castle'.
Although it escaped destruction in the Civil War, violence and
evil intent never seem to have been far away from Farleigh Hungerford.
Lady Agnes Hungerford was hanged with one of her servants for poisoning
her husband in 1522 (another version of the story says that she had him
strangled and burnt his body in the kitchen furnace).
The next owner was her step son and he believed so firmly that his
(third) wife was having an affair with a local man that he imprisoned
her in the tower for four years and tried to starve her as well as
poison her. However, he himself was executed by Henry VIII for Catholic
sympathies and unnatural vice. His wife, after release, remarried and
bore her next husband six children. Final disaster came for the
Hungerfords when Edward Hungerford in the seventeenth century, gambled
away twenty-eight manors, and died in poverty. His last effort to raise
money for another flutter was to make his London house and garden into a
market. This became Hungerford Market. |
