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LUDLOW , perched on a hill nearly thirty miles south of Shrewsbury, is one of the most picturesque towns in the Midlands - a cluster of beautifully preserved black-and-white half-timbered buildings packed around a craggy stone castle, with rural Shropshire forming a dreamy backdrop. Close to the Welsh border, the Saxons were the first to recognize the site's defensive qualities, but it was the Normans who got down to business when Roger Montgomery turned up here with his men in 1085. Over the next few decades, Montgomery's fortifications were elaborated into an immense Castle (Jan Sat & Sun 10am-4pm; Feb, March & Oct-Dec daily 10am-4pm; April-July & Sept daily 10am-5pm; Aug daily 10am-7pm; £3), strong enough to keep the Welsh at bay and the seat of the Lord President of the Council of the Marches, as the borders were then known. Surviving the attentions of the Parliamentary troops in the Civil War, the rambling and imposing ruins that remain today include towers and turrets, gatehouses and concentric walls as well as the remains of the 110-foot Norman keep and an unusual Round Chapel built in 1120. With its spectacular setting above the rivers Teme and Corve, the castle also makes a fine open-air auditorium during the Ludlow Festival (tel 01584/872150), two weeks of assorted musical and theatrical fun at the end of June.
The castle entrance opens out onto the Market Place , home to the intriguing Castle Lodge (daily 10am-5pm; £3), predominantly Elizabethan in style. In the oak-panelled rooms of the ground floor, stained-glass windows depict the coats of arms of Germans summoned by Henry VIII to help sack England's monasteries. In low-beamed chambers upstairs, there's a display on Ludlow's chequered history, which omits the popular rumour that Mary, Queen of Scots hid from Elizabeth's henchmen in the lodge's basement.
At its east end, the Market Place pushes into the Buttercross, off which the magnificently proportioned, fifteenth-century interior of the church of St Laurence (daily 10am-5pm; free) boasts vast stained-glass windows and some of the country's finest misericords. In its turn the Buttercross nudges King Street, which intersects with the Bull Ring , home of the Feathers Hotel , an extraordinary Jacobean building with the fanciest wooden facade imaginable.
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