Castle House Hotel, Hereford

Castle House stands in a tranquil corner of the beautiful city of Hereford but eight or nine hundred years ago the site was a busy crossroads in the the old Saxon City, and St Ethelbert Street continued across the bridge over the Castle Pool to the main gatehouse of Hereford Castle.

Hereford Castle held a strong strategic position in the 12th and 13th century but once the Edwardian conquest of Wales took place between 1272 and 1284, it lost its strategic position and fell into ruin. After the Civil War in the 17th century, the castle was demolished completely and the area landscaped for use by local people. The Castle Green now forms the heart of the city, and the old Castle Moat is overlooked by our garden.

In the early 18th century, a local entrepreneur, recognising a good piece of real estate when he saw one, built a pair of fine Georgian villas in what was then the middle of the road facing along Castle Street. The rear of the building was added in the second half of the 19th century when the then-owner Frederick Boulton (you can see an F and B interwined in a blocked up window from the garden) obtained permission to join the two houses together. The spine wall was simply removed and what was once two staircases for each house became the impressively wide one we have now!

From the 1920s Castle House was a boarding house then in the1940s, it became a genteel hotel, the finest in the city - a reputation it still retains. The hotel is still privately-owned by local farmer David Watkins, whose produce features on the hotel menu.