Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History Wirral's Castles

Yes BigBad I spotted that - unfortunately they have a LOT of history. I am suffering from information overload at the moment, as usual you start off looking at one thing and other "interesting" things pop up left, right and centre and before you know it you have forgotten what you started out to do.

Keep on digging !

Hopefully this will help in some way, it's not amazingly clear but you can see where the remains are, the roads are pretty well lined up as are the buildings so you can see exactly where the castle ruins are. Maybe some sort of archaeological dig wouldn't be amiss?

Here's a close-up too:

Hi just found this topic. I live on the poulton lancelyn estate and this intrested me. I have found a map saying that there was a castle in spital but from what i can make but it was a wooden castle and there are no remains. Go to this link and it shows where the castle was.

www.old-maps.co.uk/IndexMapPage2.aspx

This is an extract from The Gatehouse web site:

Supposed site of Medieval castle at Poulton Hall. There are no traces of earthworks or any evidence of a castle having existed here. This is a site which could have been of some slight strategic value since it overlooks a river crossing but does not appear to be a manorial centre and is unlikely in my view. King writes "some nondescript remains of masonry"

Hope this will help

oops sorry that link doesn't seem to work. Will try and do a page grab

Stuey, what makes you beleive that those lines are the remains mate ?

purely the curvature of the roads surrounding and the building layout, it's not a precise fit but it'd be within a few yards. If you try it yourself and compare DiggingDeeper's map as an overlay to the one Google Maps provides you can see how the road formations fit as well as a lot of the buildings, particularly in the top-left of the site. The line at the top is a pure guess but on the basis of there being an existing wall there and the features match up to the overlay I put on I thought it was a fit. The whole thing is a rough estimate but it's based on pretty solid evidence from above. The ruins look like they'd be the big black smudge in the cluster of trees in the top-middle of the lower picture.

Good work - U should be in C.I.D. Maybe then we would have some bad people in prison instead of harassing motorists !

Heh, had a rejection letter from the police when I applied a few weeks back. Also I'm for motorists being harassed if they're driving like tools, I'm a cyclist primarily! Hopefully they'll take on board my new initiative to tackle my pet peeve:

"Don't hesitate. Indicate."

God I hate those people who don't use them, really gets up my nose. Anyway, back to the topic in hand hopefully someone can use them to great effect, it'd be good to see a piece of history unearthed on our beloved little peninsula. Or possible former island if this thing I read about is to be presumed correct (evidence of a stream across the bottom by the Suttons a good long time ago).

That overlay is brillaint bigbad - it confirms the likelyhood that something exists/existed at the remains site.

I have almost given up on Poulton Castle, there is too much confusion.

There are too many Poultons, some off them have Forts/Castles associated with them not to mention Poulton halls. Unfortunately the Lancelyn-Greens have associations with quite a few of them as well.

POULTON-le-Fylde near Blackpool in Lancashire
POULTON-le-Sands, now part of Morecambe in Lancashire
POULTON-with-Fearnhead, on the east of Warrington. Lancashire
POULTON near Liverpool, Cheshire
POULTON cum Seacombe, now part of Wallasey in Cheshire
POULTON cum Spital, now part of Bromborough in Cheshire
POULTON Lancelyn, a hamlet in Poulton cum Spital
POULTON a hamlet in Pulford near Chester in Cheshire
POULTON a hamlet of Asterley in Shropshire
POULTON now part of Awre in Gloucestershire
POULTON near Cirencester in Gloucestershire
POULTON Priory in Gloucestershire
POULTON an ancient village, now part of Mildenhall near Marlborough in Wiltshire
POULTON Wood in Aldington, near Ashford in Kent
POULTON a village near Deal in Kent, which declined after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the early 16th Century
POLTON near Edinburgh in Midlothian in Scotland
There are also over 3000 villages in the UK, deserted by their medieval occupants due to Black Death or marginal farming- some of these may have been called POULTON

A typical question is Mortimer's History of the Hundred of Wirral where he is talking about Poulton Hall in Poulton-Spital (4 miles from Birkenhead, 13 from Chester) and immediately links to Dodleston Castle where there is another Poulton Hall (of Channel 4 fame), have the two got confused at some time?

Poulton-cum-Spital - I have seen maps of 1882, 1899, 1912, 1936 and 1956 all showing Castle remains next to Poulton Hall, most of these maps have definately been resurveys not just redraws because things like trees in the vicinity have changed - but still a mound of stones once labelled Remains of Castle may stay that way from map to map.

LISCARD CASTLE

I though I would pass on some dribs and drabs I have found about Lisard Castle - most are from hurridly scribbled notes and so there may be spelling errors etc....

Description from 1854 - 4 entertainment rooms, 8 good size bedrooms, Bath, WC, Coachhome and Stables, Conservatories extended gardens and pleasure gardens in 10 Acres.

Castle was rented out as furnished during much of the 1850-1884 (when it wasn't empty)

Rev G F Grundy was there, he was the Headmaster of Risley Grammer School, Shropshire.

1857 Mrs Marshall

1885 John Astley Marsden

1882-1883 Mr P de Lacy Garton (or Ganton)who died, seems he owned the Castle because the his Administrators sold of all the furniture by auction on 9/2/1884

good work, iv got some info i will post on Liscard castle but we must remember it was not a castle at all, infact it was just a large house.

I think a trip to Poulton Hall is in order to see if wecan get around the grounds and note any debris or land anomolies.

Anyone up for that?

If you go to http://www.old-maps.co.uk and put in CH63 9LN (the hall's postcode) then you can look at some old maps there, interestingly on the last one in the 1930's the words "Castle: Remains of" are shifted to the other side of the road...

Poulton Castle

I have some more information on this - it was sitting on my desk without me realising it!!!!

Permission was given to build a grange and cottage in 13th Century

Poulton Hall (or parts of the modern structure) was built mid 1600s probably on top of an older structure.

A former hall stood on a high knoll slightly north of the present hall in the fields known as the Marfords - this is presumed to be Poulton Castle.

So where is this cottage it refers to then ???

Hmmmmmm