Weoley Castle Ruins

With the same protection rights as Stonehenge– Weoley Castle Ruins are a real historical gem. You can view it from the railings at any time BUT your best bet is to visit on an event day. They hold Bat Walks, Falconry Days, a Knight School for kids, craft activities and lots more.
The site is certainly most interesting when you know what you’re looking at so take a tour and let one of the volunteers bring the site to life for you! Take a look on the website for details of events.

So, for some reason, people seem to find this place hard to find. I actually found it entirely by accident the other day when I got lost in Weoley Castle. Because I’m nosy, I thought I’d stick my head in to see where, in fact, the name ‘Weoley Castle’ came from — I pretty much assumed there had to be a castle knocking around somewhere.
As it happens, there isn’t a castle. But there is a series of small, 700 year old walls. That is pretty impressive in terms of longevity, although not that much to look at. You can’t walk amongst the ruins either, unless there’s an open day, or an event going on. But there is a viewing platform.
So its nice to know that various events and performances are held at this cite — I do like a bit of community participation — and it is pretty amazing to think that the remains are over 700 years old. Just don’t got there expecting a massive ancient castle or you’ll be rather disappointed.

There is nothing there! Seriously, you might be expecting some kind of ancient castle and rightly so, given the name… it is now basically a plot of land with a few bricks!
It’s not an easy place to find, I grew up 1 minute away but I can imagine if you were from out of town and looking for the place you would never find it, mainly because you wouldn’t expect a historical monument to be in the middle of a housing estate.
It does have some historical relevance but honestly it is not worth it if you are a tourist expecting to see some kind of Ancient Britain.

Weoley Castle ruins are really quite hard to find — you’ll need to head towards Northfield on a 29 bus and alight in the middle of the estate — even then it’s worth phoning ahead as due to repeated attacks of vandalism the site can only be accessed via one of their open days or by a pre-​booked guided tour (although you can peer over the fence and see a bit of the site).
The ruins themselves are at least 700 years old and are what’s left of a moated medieval manor house that formed the estate of William Fitz Ansculf — cool name eh? Weoley then changed hands several times between the centuries and fell into disrepair — stone from the castle was removed to build a nearby farm and the Dudley no.2 canal.
According to the council run website the site is a now deemed an Ancient Monument of national importance.
I have fond memories of visiting the site when I was a little girl — although I’ll be honest with you there isn’t a massive amount to see — recently they have started a programme of events which involve the local community and I’m actually rather excited by the upcoming ‘Witches Promise’ which is a co-​production with the Birmingham Rep and will feature the people of Weoley Castle.