Kilvert's Easter Diary 1870

Easter 1870 – Mouse Castle

At 2 o’clock set off for Mouse Castle. By the fields to Hay, then to Llydiart-y-Wain. It is years since I have seen this house and I had quite forgotten how prettily it is situated. At least it looked very pretty today bosomed among its white blossoming fruit trees, the grey fruitful homestead with its two large gleaming ponds. Thence up a steep meadow to the left and by some quarries, over a stile in a wire fence and up a lovely winding path through the woods spangled with primroses and starred with wood anemones among trees and bushes thickening green. The winding path led us round to the back of the hill at last emerged into a bold green brow in the middle of which stood a square steep rampart of grey crumbling sandstone rock with a flat top covered with grass, bushes and trees, a sort of small wood. This rampart is about 15 feet high. The top of the hill round the base of the rampart undulated in uneven swell and knolls with little hillocks covered with short downy grass.