Lydford Castle is a solid block of a building on the northwest edge of Dartmoor.
Lydford is not an important town today, it is little more than a village now, but a thousand years ago it was recognised as being significant enough to be given the responsibility and honour of minting coins for the king.
The Normans began the building of the castle, digging a ditch, throwing up a mound and building a square tower on it. They set out open ground around it to deter attackers. The local church was a couple of hundred yards to the west.
Throughout the middle ages, the castle was inhabited and used as an administrative centre for the locality. Over time, though, the forbidding structure developed a reputation as a fearsome place to be locked up in. The basement was a dungeon with no way out. At this time a saying developed “Lydford justice”, suggesting the habit of the authorities passing sentences on defendants and hanging them before all the facts had been collected or a defence could be presented.
During my first visit to Lydford I was able to climb down into the dungeon and to imagine it as a prison. The last time I was there, the metal staircase to the basement was locked, so I’m glad that I spent some time rattling around in the dungeon on the earlier trip.
It is bad news for Tom and Effra that they get tangled up with the place in my novel A Bag of Blood and Bone, which is due out next month.
