The Competition
Before the involvement of the Landmark Trust, a charity dedicated to saving important orphaned buildings by making them habitable for holiday lettings, the future of Astley Castle had been very bleak. The castle was not so much the ruin of a small medieval fortification, but more the ravaged and derelict survivor of six centuries of changing use and abuse. Against this unpromising background, in 2006 the Trust launched an invited competition for the stabilisation and re-inhabitation of the site.