克罗夫特城堡
| 克罗夫特城堡 |
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本名 克罗夫特城堡 国家 英国 所在地区： 英格兰 / England 地理位置： 中部 / Midlands 赫里福德郡 / Herefordshire |
克罗夫特城堡 （英语：CROFT CASTLE）是17世纪后期修建的带有精美格鲁吉亚装饰的建筑。 [1]
目录
简介
克罗夫特城堡是17世纪后期修建的带有精美格鲁吉亚装饰的建筑，而在这之前，曾是一个家族的居住地，距今已有超过1000年的历史。特别值得一提的是这里的公园，这里生长有300多棵老树，其中还有一条西班牙栗子树组成的大道。
目前城堡和花园由英国国家信托基金管理，在每年的三月至十二月向公众开放。
Croft Castle is now a lavish country mansion but it started life as a Norman stronghold on the border of Wales. The original castle at this site was an earthern ringwork and has been shown by recent excavation to have been similar to Stokesay Castle. A circular ditch surrounded a curving earthern bank which was topped by a palisade of stout timbers. There were timber buildings within the enclosed area and the ramparts may have been strengthened by the addition of wooden watchtowers.
A larger stone castle was built to replace the earth and timber castle around 1400 AD. The new castle was of quadrangular plan and had high but relatively narrow round towers at each corner. It may also have had projecting square turrets at the mid points of each wall but only the turret on the north side now remains. The four round towers still exist to their original height and their battlements have been restored in later years.
The castle was involved in the battle of Mortimer's Cross in 1461 when Sir Richard Croft set forth from it with his soldiers towards the battleground a few miles away. A decendent of Sir Richard fought for King Charles at Stokesay in the 1640's during the English civil war and, following the eventual Royalist defeat, Croft Castle was slighted to render it incapable of further military service.
Restoration took place later in the 17th century when the castle was converted into a mansion but the Croft family sold the castle in 1746 due to financial presures. The castle was then further remodelled in the Gothic style by Richard Knight, the son of a mine owner from Shropsire.
Large ornamental windows now adorn the walls and the original entrance has been replaced by a grand hallway. The original stonework of the towers and lower parts of the high walls between them can be diffentiated from the later work by their distinctive stone blocks. There is no sign of the broad, deep ditch that surrounds similar castles built on flat ground.
The Crofts repurchased their ancestral home in 1923 and Croft Castle is currently maintained for public viewing by The National Trust. It contains rare furniture from the 17th to 19th centuries and has impressive plasterwork and gardens. The earthwork remains of the old ringwork castle can be seen amongst trees in the adjacent meadow.