You can’t go wrong with a castle, and Old Wardour Castle in Wiltshire is a vast, towering ruin of a castle.

Built in the 1390s by Baron Lovell, the castle has a hexagonal structure internally, which was apparently all the rage on the continent at the time. The castle was confiscated after the War of the Roses in 1461, and changing hands a few times, fell into the possession of one Sir Thomas Arundell in 1544.

During the English Civil War in 1643, the castle was defended against Parliamentarian forces by Lady Blanche Arundell, wife of Thomas Arundell, who was away at the time. Blanche had 25 men, the Parliamentarian army 1300. Blanche sensibly surrendered, but Henry, Thomas’ son recaptured the castle later that year for the Royalists by setting mines and blowing half of it up.

This somewhat heavy handed approach left the castle uninhabitable, and a hundred years or so later, Henry’s descendants built the imaginatively-named New Wardour Castle under a mile away across the valley.

For the piece, I got very into the twin ideas of medieval musical modes and the idea of the hexagonal castle interior. D Dorian mode it is then, with the natural B shifted to the Bb for the descending runs. Some of the main elements have 6 note patterns, but it’s not as rigorous as I’d have liked. So be it.

Here’s the piece:

And the trailer film…