Richards Castle is a border-fortress situated in a position of natural strength and protected by hill slopes and deep water-courses on three sides.
Views of the countryside can be seen from the keep, 300 feet above the base. The keep at Richards Castle was built after the castle was constructed, in about 1175, and was octagonal in shape.
The castle stood on a 60 foot mound with a summit 30 feet in diameter, and extremely steep wooded sides - the eastern slope of the Vinnall Hill. A broad, deep fosse ran around the outside of the base.
The bailey was kidney shaped with a perimeter wall and several D-shaped towers and a rectangular tower probably used as a residence and attached to a hall.
Some parts of the keep and outerwalls still exists on the wooded hillside, however there are few extant remains.
The castle was built in approximately 1050 by Richard Fitz-Scrob, who was one of the Normans who came to England during the reign of Edward the Confessor. It acheived its height of importance during the 13th c. when attempts were made to turn the village into a town.
It belonged for a time to the de Say family and then passed to a branch of the Mortimer family. By 1304 the estates of the castle had been drastically reduced. It later passed on to the Talbot family through marriage in the mid 14th c. Eventually the castle ended up in the hands of the Salway family but by the middle of the 15th c. it had already fallen into disuse.
The castle was still defensible during the Civil War, however it suffered great damage in 1645 during a royalist defeat on the property.
