The castle, which dates from the 14th and 15th centuries, belonged to the Croft family who had settled at the site by the time of Domesday Book. Prominent in national politics throughout the Middle Ages and up to the 18th century, the Crofts were forced to give up the estate in 1746 due to their declining fortunes. It passed to the ironmaster Richard Knight, whose son-in-law Thomas Johnes commissioned Thomas Farnolls Pritchard to remodel the interiors in 1765. The rugged grandeur of Croft’s massive external walls and battlemented towers contrast markedly with the lightness and delicacy of Pritchard’s interiors, in particular his spacious Gothic staircase hall. The interior features Jacobean panelling, 18th century Gothick plasterwork and woodwork, Rococo chimneypieces and fine neo-Georgian decoration. The Crofts returned to the Castle in 1923; on Major Owen Croft’s death in 1956 it passed to the National Trust.