As a castle of the Welsh Marches, it was built on the border of Wales and England very close to the historic fort of Old Oswestry.

This discovery was significant in that it proved the advanced state (as compared to those of the French or Flemish) of English gardening habits.

[3][4] Whittington lies on the English side of Offa's Dyke, which in this area was the Norman boundary between England and Wales.

[8] For the next forty years, the castle remained in English possession, but was ceded to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd by treaty.

[10] However, after the death of Fulk VII in 1349, the castle went through a long period when the lords were almost always under age and usually absentees, though some repairs were carried out in about 1402.

[11] It had been occupied during the minority of Fulk XI by his mother and her new husband William Lord Clinton, during whose time there was a dispute with the people of Oswestry who had cut down oak trees in his woods.

When the FitzWarin line died out in 1420, the lordship passed to Fulk XI's sister Elizabeth, who married Richard Hankeford.

It passed through various hands to William Albany, a London merchant taylor, but he and his descendants (from 1750 the Lloyd family of Aston near Oswestry, who still own the castle) lived at Great Fernhill.

William's grandson, Francis Albany, fell into debt and sold his wood in Babbinswood to Arthur Kynaston of Shrewsbury, who built a forge at Fernhill, using stone from the castle.

According to this legend, Sir Fulk FitzWarin, the great grandson of Payne Peveril and one in the line of guardians of the Grail and King Arthur.