Castle Frome

In 1066 Brictmer (son of Queneva), under the overlordship of the earl Harold Godwinson, held the lordship, which passed in 1086 to Roger de Lacy who was also the manor's tenant-in-chief to king William I.

[3] In 1645, during the English Civil War, the manor house under the command of Sir John Barnard was attacked by Scottish Covenanter forces under the Earl of Leven on their way to besiege Hereford.

[4] In 1909 the parish is described as being on the road from Ledbury to Bromyard, and 5 miles north-east from Ashperton station on the Hereford and Worcester section of the Great Western Railway.

St Michael's Church was described as a "small building of stone" in the Norman and Perpendicular style, comprising a nave, chancel, a south porch and a "low wooden" turret at the west with three bells.

The living was a rectory which was valued at £220 a year net income, and also included 59 acres (24 ha) of glebe—an area of land used to support a parish priest—and a residence.

Parish soil of 1,566 acres (634 ha) is described as mixed and heavy, with a subsoil of clay and "water rock", on which were grown wheat, beans and hops.

The parish is rural, of farms, fields, managed woodland and coppices, water courses, isolated and dispersed businesses, and residential properties.

[6] Castle Frome is represented in the UK parliament as part of the North Herefordshire constituency, held by the Conservative Party since 2010 by Bill Wiggin.

In 1974 Castle Frome became part of the Malvern Hills District of the now defunct county of Hereford and Worcester, instituted under the 1972 Local Government Act.

[13] The closest National Rail connection is at Hereford railway station, 11 miles (18 km) to the south-west on the Crewe to Newport Welsh Marches Line.

[20] The Grade I Church of St Michael dates to the 12th century, and was restored in 1878 by Malvern architect B. Martin Buckle, who also added a bell turret at the west of the nave.

Built of sandstone and dressed with ashlar, it has a tiled roof on which sits at the west the timber-framed bell tower with a shingled broach spire.

The listing states the font to be "one of the outstanding works of the Herefordshire school of sculpture with a mixture of local and French and Italian elements".

Within the chancel is a tomb chest memorial, dating to c.1630-40, to members of the Unett family, of sandstone with recumbent alabaster effigies of a male and female in civil costume.

Castle Frome in 1887
Castle Frome in 1960
St Michael's Church font
17th-century chest tomb