Leslie Brooks peeps over the battlements

OF ALL the lived-in British castles none retain the original uncouth and rough-hewn character of a fortress so markedly as Berkeley.
Yet the history of the family whose ancestral home it has been for 800 years has been peaceful enough, As Vita Sackville-West emphasizes in her guide to Berkeley and its family ". . . if we consider that they were respectively called Make-peace and The Wise and The Magnanimous and the Magnificent and (we are sorry to say) The Waste-all, we shall get the impression of surprisingly civilised people emerging in uncivilised centuries."
The concentration of the Berkeleys on living peaceably on their estates, improving and adding century-by-century to their fortress home, has produced the enormous and fascinating pile of multicoloured stone we see today.
It is possible that the site has been lived on since before the Norman Conquest when it was held by Earl Godwin, father of King Harold who was killed at Senlac.
William the Conqueror handed over Berkeley to William Fitzosbern, hereditary Steward of Normandy (died 1071) to be an outer defence of his new conquest against the Welsh across the Severn.
William Fitzosbern placed Roger, named Roger de Berkeley, in charge of the castle, and he was followed by two more Rogers until Henry II evicted the third Roger and granted the Castle to Robert FitzHarding.
From Robert FitzHarding, whose own family had AngloSaxon origins, the Berkeleys held the estate until today.
Most of the building is of the 14th century, the massive and extensive work of Thomas, 8th Baron by tenure, who died in 1361. The shell-keep with its 60 foot high retaining wall is midtwelfth century: of the buildings within the shell-keep none remain except one apse of the Chapel of St John where the body of the murdered King Edward II rested before burial in Gloucester Cathedral.
It was during the tenure of this Lord Thomas that Edward confined in a small room above a dungeon into which putrifying matter was deliberately thrown, was murdered in his bed by his gaolers Sir John Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gurney. Lord Thomas Berkeley was pardoned by Edward Ill for any part he might be thought to have played in the murder.
Visitors are shown the room, since enlarged, where the unhappy King was confined and murdered. The sensitive may feel that something unclean still lingers in its ambience.
As to the religious history of the Berkeleys it may be that through their overriding consideration for continuing a peaceful life the family slid into conformity when the new religion was forced upon the nation.
For the Catholic Berkeleys, whose home the Castle now is, the history of Spetchley park, near Worcester, must be looked into.
The elegant Regency house with its private chapel at Spetchley Park was built on an estate held by Berkeleys of a different branch. The original manor house, destroyed in the Civil War, had been occupied successively by the Catholic families Lyttleton and Sheldon through difficult times during the reign of Elizabeth.
But in the early years ot James I the property was bought by Rowland Berkeley from Gloucestershire who had established himself as a rich merchant and MP in the city of Worcester. His son Sir Robert rose to King's Bench as Judge. These achievements by the Gloucestershire Berkeleys mark them as conformists to the new religion. Indeed, when the Judge's only son Thomas was reconciled to the Church, eventually marrying Ann Darrell of the strongly Catholic family at Scotney Castle, Kent, he was disinherited and the property left to their/ eldest son, Robert, (aged six when his grandfather died) on condition that he was brought up Protestant and remained so until the age of 21.
The parents were allowed to live in the Manor house until the boy, wrested from them to be under the guardianship of Dr Fell at Oxford, returned on coming of age. Thomas and Ann then moved to a house on the estate.
The churchwarden's list of 1674 show Mrs Ann Berkeley and Mr Thomas Berkeley ,presented as Papists in the Iparish of Spetchley. Their brainwashed son continued to live in, and improve, the stable block which his grandfather, the Judge, had begun to convert to a residence after the manor house was destroyed.
He died without issue and Spetchley Park became Catholic once more when his younger brother succeeded and so it has remained ever since.
Berkeley Castle passed into the hands of the Catholic family at Spetchley in 1942 when the 8th Earl of Berkeley died without issue and left the Castle to the father of the present owner, John Berkeley, the nearest legitimate male, although a distant cousin: thus the Berkeley and Spetchley estates became one and united in the Faith of their common ancestor, James, 1st Baron by
writ (1394-1463).
The gardens only, at Spetchley Park, are open to the public. The large right-hand ground floor window of the house-front facing the lake is of the sacristy to the chapel used daily for Mass. It is part of the parish of St George's, Worcester, and any member of the public is entitled to attend Mass there.