Castle Toot

Michael Billings wrote - on  I Survived Wyre Farm School -

" Who remembers Castle Toot?
Castle Toot was the site of Mortimer's Castle from where the village gets it's name Mortimer's Cleobury now of course Cleobury Mortimer. Castle Toot is now a private house just down from Cherry Orchard towards Cleobury."

Castle Toot Nr  Cleobury Mortimer

Close up of Castle Toot

Castle Toot, a motte castle situated on a small promontory on the east bank of the River Rea. The position has been chosen to overlook and control a crossing point on the River Rea and uses the natural defensive strength of the topography to maximum strategic effect. Around the west, south and east sides of the promontory the natural hillslope has been cut back to form a steep scarp up to 5m high. At the foot of the scarp around the south, east and north east sides is a ditch averaging 4m wide and 2m deep; the spoil from the ditch has been thrown outwards to form a low outer bank 0.5m high. Both the scarp and ditch terminate in the north west and south west on the precipitous valley side which forms the north west side of the defences. The original entrance appears to have been in the north east quarter of the castle where a causeway crosses the ditch and passes through a simple entrance gap in the perimeter scarp. Fragments of walling and the remains of a gatehouse were visible in this area at the end of 19th Century and in 1911 stones forming the base of a causeway or bridge were observed. Today none of the original stonework remains visible though slight surface irregularities in the vicinity suggest that buried foundations remain close to the surface. A substantial house was built in the centre of the castle in the 1950s.
Quote from Gatehouse, Shropshire."
http://www.discovershropshire.org.uk/html/search/verb/GetRecord/theme:20070204210159

Castle Toot across the fields