A HEREFORDSHIRE castle has been named as one of the country's top hidden gems to visit. 

Goodrich Castle, near Ross-on-Wye, came sixth in a list created by digital marketing agency Tank, which ranked the best of England’s most obscure castles.

The agency analysed 155 castles across the country, ranking them according to visitor reviews and how often they appeared in social media posts, prioritising the less well-known.

Goodrich Castle is a Norman medieval castle ruin, controlling a key location between Monmouth and Ross-on-Wye. It was praised by William Wordsworth as the "noblest ruin in Herefordshire" and is considered by historian Adrian Pettifer to be the "most splendid in the county, and one of the best examples of English military architecture".

OTHER NEWS:

To create the list, Tank cross-referenced castles that have been tagged the fewest number of times on Instagram with how many of each historic sites’ visitor reviews on Tripadvisor and Google have five-star ratings. 

It means that the top five have each only been tagged between 100 and 5,000 times in the 12-year history of the platform, but all have been rated five stars in more than 70 per cent of reviews. 

The lost was topped by Hever Castle, in Edenbridge, Kent, followed by Arundel Castle in West Sussex. Bewcastle Castle (Cumbria), Berkeley Castle (Gloucestershire) and Elsdon Castle (Northumberland) completed the top five.

Elizabeth Rhodes, founding director of Swain Architecture, said: “Castles always bring various stages of history to life.

"Almost all have been changed or added to at various times, which gives them differing styles of architecture across the same building or the same site, as their purpose and fate evolved. 

“The most famous castles are often busy on bank holiday weekends but, by deliberately seeking out ones that most people are unaware of, you then have a chance to explore them properly and soak up their history.”