The sun had not yet dispelled the chill of the early morning, and the birds were still chorusing their welcome to a new day from their roosts in the trees around Berry Pomeroy castle.         There is a clatter of hooves on stone. A horse snorts, followed by a jingling of harness. A man leads his mount onto the castle battlements. He is quickly followed by a second. A bird flutters from St. Margaret's tower, out over the precipitous west wall and up into the pale blue sky. The horses are restless with a certain nervous tension transmitted from their youthful owners, who - turning to face one another - doff their wide-brimmed hats, revealing the same sad faces and features. Brothers, perhaps even twins. Both with the same grim determination straining their boyish good looks.

They wind broad strips of cloth around the horses' eyes, tying them over the animals' necks. Then they embrace each other, cross themselves and commend their souls to God. The birds have finished their morning chorus, and there is a deep and respectful silence. Only the lichen-encrusted walls of the old castle bear witness as the brothers mount their steeds and spur them forwards. They gallop along the battlements at full speed and spring over the western edge, falling through the crisp morning air to their deaths a hundred feet below.

         This legendary story is associated with the rambling and ruined castle of Berry Pomeroy, Devon. It stands on a craggy bluff near Totnes and about one mile from the village of the same name.
        It is said that because of the Pomeroys' part in the religious rebellion of 1549, Edward VI ordered that the castle's fortifications should be reduced. The family refused to obey, and the castle was besieged by royal troops who had been sent to enforce the order. The last of the Pomeroys were two brothers, twins it is said, who defended the castle for many months. Finding at length that they could hold out no longer, rather than submit to the king's men and have their property taken from them, they chose to ride to their deaths off the castle battlements.
      The castle itself has a history going back a thousand years, having been owned by two families, the Pomeroys and Seymours. The Pomeroys lived here for about 500 years after the family's founder, Ralph de la Pomerai from Caen in France, acquired the property following the Norman Conquest. In 1548 it was sold to the Seymour family, in whose hands it remained until the 1970s, when it passed from the eighteenth Duke of Somerset to the Department of the Environment.
      Largely destroyed in the Civil War, the castle nowadays presents visitors to Devon with picturesque ruins on an impressive scale. The massive and forbidding gatehouse is the most dominant feature that one sees on arrival. The remains of a Tudor mansion, built by a Seymour in the early 17th-century, stand in the courtyard. Solitary stone stacks in the north wing of the mansion point like accusing fingers up into the sky.

       As well as the legend of the Pomeroy brothers, there are other stories which justify the castle's claim to be one of the most haunted in Britain. One is about two medieval Pomeroy sisters, Eleanor and Margaret, who both loved the same man. Eleanor, being insanely jealous of her beautiful sister, imprisoned Margaret and starved her to death. Margaret's ghost is said to walk the ramparts and anyone who sees her will die shortly after. Another ghost who is supposed to presage death is that of a 13th-century woman, another Pomeroy, who had an incestuous relationship with her father. It is said that because she smothered her child, her troubled spirit can find no rest.
       In the castle grounds is a wishing tree. It is supposed to have the reputation of granting a visitor's desires provided he walks round it three times backwards.
      A green mantle of moss and ivy crowns much of the castle remains nowadays. There are sightless windows and doorways leading nowhere. A variety of birds and other small creatures inhabit the crumbling masonry, which provides them with shelter and support. They peacefully settle back down and no doubt breathe a sigh of relief once the last visitors have departed.
     The castle's romantic image is enhanced by the picturesque dereliction and decay of its ruins. And it is not hard to imagine ghostly apparitions here, nor can one ever forget the Pomeroy brothers leaping out from the battlements on their horses.

Copyright © Peter Bayliss

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