The standing remains are a Grade I listed building consisting of local sandstone rubble and ashlar that represent several phases of construction.

Landscaping for the later house and gardens have obscured the full extent of the castle buildings but it is thought that the steep slope to the north of the hall range wall represents the northern edge of the original motte.

[1] During the previous year the owner Bryan de Brampton had died and Robert Harley inherited the castle through marriage to his daughter Margaret.

[a] Before this, Fitzwilliam Coningsby, the Royalist High Sheriff of Herefordshire, had restricted himself to ordering the Harley tenants to pay their rents directly to him and those that refused were sent to jail.

"[4][5] On 26 July 1643 Sir William Vavasour, the newly appointed governor of Hereford, surrounded Brampton Bryan with a mixed force of cavalry and infantrymen of about 700 soldiers.

Cattle, sheep and horses were plundered, all the buildings in the village were burnt to the ground and the castle was attacked with cannon and shot.

[6] Following her death, the command of the garrison was put in the hands of the family doctor Nathaniel Wright and the Royalist forces began a second siege of the castle in the spring of the following year.

This second siege lasted only three weeks and the Royalists, reinforced by additional weaponry, inflicted much more substantial damage upon the castle with mines and more powerful artillery.

[10] Brampton Bryan Hall is a large 17th and 18th-century brick built rectangular house which now stands near to the ruined castle, replacing earlier buildings.