The Gatehouse website record for Lower Down Castle, Lydbury North

In the civil parish of Lydbury North. In the historic county of Shropshire (Modern Authority of Shropshire, 1974 county of Shropshire).

Small mutilated motte surviving as an earthwork and fragments of a shell keep surviving as buried foundations. The motte has a base diameter of 34m and is 4.7m high on the west side, with a summit diameter of about 18m. Quarrying for stone has removed most of the east side above 1.8m. The surrounding ditch is 6.5m in width and from 2.1m in depth on the west side and 0.6m on the east side. There is a counterscarp bank 0.3m high except on the south east. There were no traces of a bailey.
I did a site visit on 26-3-06. To my untrained but experienced eyes the partly buried foundations were of a short run of a 1.7m wide straight wall. To me the remains look more those of a collapsed and robbed square tower, possibly with a fore-building, rather than a shell keep on a motte. Modern brick rubble suggest a later building on the site which adds additional confusion to interpreting the site.

The Ordnance Survey Map Grid Reference is SO33648460

Sources of information, references and further reading

This site's English Heritage (PastScape) Defra or Monument number is 107278
This site's County Historic Environment Record (formerly Sites and Monuments Record) number is 00148 'grey' literature, such as watching brief reports, held by H.E.R.s is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded in this website.

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.
Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.

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