On our recent trip to Hay on Wye, we made a detour to Clun Castle. This has long been on my "must see" list, mainly for its connections with Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine novels.
Clungford and Clunbury, Clunton and Clun,
Are the quietest places under the Sun.
A E Housman
Malcolm Saville's The Secret of Grey Walls is set in Clun, and the Castle is an important meeting place for the members of the Lone Pine Club.
Saville writes in his introduction to The Secret of Grey Walls:
"There seems to be no particular reason why Clun should exist to-day, but it does, and you can go there for yourself. You can stand on the narrow stone bridge where Penny and the others stood while Alan Denton dashed past them on his bicycle on his way to find Clun's only policeman. You can climb the grassy hill up which the twins led the two new members of the Club and stand beside the ruins of the mighty castle which was built soon after the Norman Conquest. From here, high above the crowded roofs of Clun town, while the sweet wind sings in your ears, you can look west, over wild and rolling country into Wales, which is only a few miles distant. All this land was once a forest....There is no other place in England quite like hidden, mysterious Clun."
Chris and I climbed the hill from the small town and explored as much as we could of the Castle. Since Malcolm Saville's days it has fallen into further disrepair and isn't very accessible, but I was so delighted to explore as much as we could of the ruins.
There are lots more literary connections with this quiet, small town. E M Forster visited Clun, which subsequently featured as Oniton in Howard's End, published in 1910. One of his key characters, Margaret Schlegel, is totally captivated by the romance and magic of this corner of the Marches. The Castle, with its great keep and commanding site, is said to have been the inspiration for Garde Doleureuse in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Betrothed, published jointly with The Talisman as Tales of the Crusaders in 1825. Scott is believed to have stayed at the Buffalo Inn while working on the book. More recently, playwright John Osborne lived near Clun and now lies buried in the churchyard.
We really enjoyed our visit and I'm so glad Malcolm Saville took me to Clun.