The history of Berry Pomeroy
Berry Pomeroy, in South Devon, grew from a manor named 'Berri' in the Domesday Book of 1086 into a castle raised by the Pomeroy family in the late fifteenth century, then an Elizabethan mansion built by the Seymours within its walls, left to ruin after 1688.
Berry Pomeroy Castle, in South Devon, is a ruined Tudor mansion built inside the walls of a late fifteenth-century castle raised by the Pomeroy family. The Domesday Book of 1086 records the manor as 'Berri' with no fortress present. The Seymour family later built a four-storey Elizabethan house there before it fell into ruin after 1688.
A manor with no fortress became a late private castle
Berry Pomeroy Castle is a ruined Tudor mansion, standing inside the walls of an older castle, now run as a visitor site by English Heritage. Its gray walls rise from a limestone ridge above the wooded valley of the Gatcombe Brook.
The ground belonged to the Pomeroy family family long before the castle existed. He built a plain manor house, not a castle, and his family lived there for four hundred years. The Domesday Book of 1086 lists the manor as "Berri" with no fortress on it at all.
A castle only appears in the records in 1496, when a document split the estate between a castle and the older manor house, showing they stood on separate sites. Archaeologists now think Henry Pomeroy or his heir Sir Richard Pomeroy built the castle sometime after 1461, maybe in response to the lawlessness of the Wars of the Roses. Its gun ports and thick curtain wall were built for real defense, not show. It was one of the last private castles built in England.
Local legend adds a darker scene to this stretch of wall. The story goes that two Pomeroy brothers, fully armored, rode blindfolded horses off these ramparts rather than surrender during a siege in 1549, when King Edward VI ordered the castle seized during a religious rebellion. But the tale still gets told to visitors standing where the leap supposedly happened.
A Lord Protector bought the castle and then lost his head
Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, bought Berry Pomeroy Castle from Sir Thomas Pomeroy in 1547. Seymour was Lord Protector of England, ruling for the boy king Edward VI. Seymour had little time for Devon. Historians say he was buying property the way a rich man collects land, not looking for a home.
The purchase did Seymour no good. In 1552, he was beheaded for treason, and the Crown seized everything he owned, including this castle. His son, also named Edward, spent years in complicated legal battles before finally winning back the title in 1558.
The Seymours built a grand house never finished
Once he had the castle, the younger Edward Seymour tore down the old Pomeroy buildings inside the walls. In their place he built a four-story Elizabethan house, meant to be the finest in Devon. His own son added an east range around 1590, closing the courtyard on all four sides.
Sir Edward Seymour, 1st Baronet, the son's heir, was not satisfied even then. Around 1600, he started a huge north range, aiming to rival great houses like Longleat. The work was never finished. For generations, archaeologists believed this whole Tudor mansion was Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset's own project, built in a rush between 1547 and his execution in 1552. Digs carried out here between 1980 and 1996 overturned that idea completely. The mansion was his son's and grandson's work, built slowly over fifty years, long after the duke was dead.
Civil war seizure gave way to a royal visit
The Seymours backed the king during the Civil War, and it cost them. Sir Edward Seymour, 2nd Baronet, was captured at Plymouth and his castle was raided by Parliament's soldiers. Sir Edward Seymour, 2nd Baronet's estates were taken by Oliver Cromwell's government, though he was allowed to go on living here until he died in 1659.
The family's fortunes turned again in 1688. Sir Edward Seymour, 3rd Baronet, is reported to have entertained William of Orange at the castle, after William landed at nearby Brixham to claim the English throne. It was one of the castle's last great moments as a lived-in house.
The Seymours left and the castle became a ruin
Sir Edward Seymour, 4th Baronet, inherited the castle in 1688 but preferred his other house in Wiltshire. By 1701, a visitor already described Berry Pomeroy as a ruin. Nobody rebuilt it. By the late 1700s, painters and sightseers had started coming instead, drawn to its broken towers as a picture of romantic decay.
The ghost stories took hold after the castle fell into ruin. Guides on the audio tour still tell visitors about the White Lady, said to be Margaret Pomeroy, starved to death in the dungeons by a jealous sister. The guides tell of the Blue Lady too, a Norman knight's daughter said to haunt the tower after a tragedy with her own child. None of it is documented history, but English Heritage still markets Berry Pomeroy as one of the most haunted castles in Britain, and recent reviews on Tripadvisor keep ranking it among the spookiest in the country.
Excavations rewrote the castle's construction history
Archaeologists spent sixteen years here, from 1980 to 1996, digging across half the castle's grounds under Stewart Brown. Their work rewrote the building's story, dating the first castle to the late 1400s and separating the Seymours' building work into three distinct, decades-long phases. In 1978, workers also found a painting hidden behind vegetation in the gatehouse, an Adoration of the Magi from around 1490, one of the earliest English images to include a Black Wise Man.
English Heritage has managed the site since 1977. The ruins stand open to visitors year-round, walked through with an audio guide rather than a tour leader. In January 2024, police investigated a group who used metal detectors on the protected ground overnight, digging up patches of turf without permission, an act English Heritage's curators called irreversible damage to a scheduled monument.
The shell of the Seymours' unfinished Tudor mansion still stands open to the sky above the Gatcombe valley.
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.