Castle Idris

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Castle Idris
Castle Idris, confusingly, is not a castle at all, but the name given to a hill overlooking the Clun valley in Shropshire. This hill is on the northern banks of the river, not many miles distant from Duffryn and perhaps two or three from Offa's Dyke. It is apparently in the near vicinity of Ashfair, as it is on the bare slopes of Castle Idris that Mr Hyde last sees Arabella Strange before she vanishes into Faerie. [43]

There are remains of some ramparts and earthworks on the hill, which no doubt is why the local inhabitants give it the honorary title of 'castle'. If such in truth it ever was however, alas, even the very names of its former lords are lost in antiquity. In fact it bears all the signs of being one of those strange enclosures that go back beyond even the time of Caesar and the arrival of the Romans in Britain, built by people of whom nothing is, or can, now be known.

(Castle Idris is not to be confused with the far more famous and far more distant Cader Idris, which lies over the border in Wales).