Powis Castle

Stand still for a moment and listen. Somewhere above you, a peacock calls, a sharp cry that carries across the terraces. Under your feet, gravel shifts and crunches. And ahead, rising from a long ridge of rock, the castle walls glow a deep, rusty red. The colour changes with the weather. On a grey Welsh morning it looks almost brown. When the sun breaks through, it turns warm, like brick fresh from the kiln.

This is Powis Castle, on the edge of the market town of Welshpool, in mid Wales. The name of the castle and the name of the county are close cousins. Powys was once a Welsh kingdom. Its princes ruled these hills and river valleys long before the English crown held power here. The fortress you see grew from their stronghold, raised on this ridge in the medieval period to watch over the land below.

The castle began as a Welsh fortress, not an English one. That surprises many visitors. Across much of Wales, castles were built by English kings to control the Welsh. Powis is different. Its early lords were Welsh princes of Powys, who often balanced carefully between Welsh rivals and the English crown. Survival here meant shrewd politics as much as thick walls. The site has been rebuilt and reshaped many times since, but its medieval core is still there under the later layers.

In the late sixteenth century, the castle passed into the hands of the Herbert family. They changed its character. A defensive fortress slowly became a grand family home. Large windows replaced narrow slits. Panelled rooms and decorated ceilings filled the interior. The Herberts were ambitious and well connected, and they wanted a house that showed their status to every guest who climbed the hill.

The seventeenth century brought danger. During the English Civil War, the Herberts supported the king. Parliamentary forces captured the castle, and the family lost control of it for a time. Later, the Herberts held to the Catholic faith and stayed loyal to the Stuart kings. When King James the Second fled into exile at the end of the 1680s, members of the family followed him. Loyalty, in that age, could cost you your home.

Now turn your attention to the gardens, because for many people they are the real reason to come. The terraces drop down the slope below the castle in great steps, one level after another. They were laid out in the late seventeenth century, in a formal style shaped by Italian and French ideas. In that tradition, gardens were built like architecture, with balustrades, stairs and strict lines carved into the hillside.

The remarkable thing is that these terraces survived. Across Britain, the following century brought a new fashion for natural landscapes. Many owners ripped out their formal gardens and replaced them with open lawns and gentle lakes. At Powis, the terraces stayed. So today you walk through a garden design that has vanished from most of the country. That is rare, and easy to miss if you do not know it.

Look at the yew trees along the terraces. Some of them are enormous, clipped into huge rounded shapes that bulge out over the paths like green clouds. Gardeners trim them by hand, and the work takes many weeks. Up close, the dark needles smell faintly resinous, especially after rain. Stand beneath one and you feel how much time it took to grow something so large and so dense.

Along the balustrades, you will also find lead statues. Shepherds, shepherdesses and other figures stand on the edges of the terraces, looking out over the valley. They were made to give the garden a sense of theatre, as if the hillside were a stage. Lead weathers to a soft grey, and some of the figures have been painted at different times in their history. Look closely at their faces and poses.

Inside, the castle holds one more chapter, and it is a complicated one. In the eighteenth century, the Herbert line joined with the Clive family through marriage. Robert Clive, known in Britain as Clive of India, was a commander of the East India Company. That was a British trading company that used armies to take control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent. His son married into the Herbert family.

Because of that marriage, the castle now holds the Clive Museum. It contains many objects brought back from South Asia, including textiles, weapons, carvings and items linked to Tipu Sultan, a ruler in southern India who fought against the Company. These are beautiful things. They are also the result of war and colonial power, and many visitors today read them with that history in mind. The museum asks you to look at both sides.

The castle has been in the care of the National Trust since the middle of the twentieth century. The Trust is a British charity that looks after historic houses, gardens and landscapes. The family kept close links with the place, and its rooms still feel lived in rather than empty. As you walk through, look for painted ceilings, dark carved wood, family portraits, and the long views from the windows over the Severn valley towards England.

Before you leave, find a spot on the terraces where you can look back up at the castle. Notice how the red stone sits directly on the bare rock of the ridge, as if it grew there. Listen again for the peacocks. Feel the slope under your feet, the same slope that gardeners and soldiers and servants climbed for centuries. Then, as you walk down towards Welshpool, glance back once more. The walls will look a little different in the changing light.