Ludlow Castle was founded soon after the Norman Conquest by the de Lacy family, probably beginning in the late eleventh century. Its position above the River Teme controlled a crossing and supported Norman authority along the border with Wales. Earth and timber defenses were replaced by stone walls, towers, a gatehouse, and an unusual circular chapel. The castle became the center of a marcher lordship whose holders exercised broad judicial and military powers, maintained armed households, and drew income from estates on both sides of a culturally complex frontier.

During the twelfth-century civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda, Ludlow was besieged and changed hands. Later de Lacy lords enlarged the residential ranges, and the property eventually passed through marriage to the Mortimers. From Ludlow the Mortimers built a network of influence that reached the royal court. Roger Mortimer helped depose Edward II and ruled with Queen Isabella until Edward III seized power and executed him in 1330. The castle then moved between the Crown and great noble families as dynastic fortunes shifted.

Under the Yorkists and Tudors, Ludlow became a center of royal government in Wales and the Marches. The young Prince Arthur lived there with Catherine of Aragon after their marriage in 1501 and died at Ludlow in 1502. Henry VIII's daughter Mary later spent part of her youth in the region. The Council of Wales and the Marches used the castle for administration, justice, and ceremony, filling medieval apartments with clerks, judges, servants, petitioners, and visiting nobles rather than maintaining it solely as a fortress.

The English Civil War brought a royalist garrison and a parliamentary siege in 1646. Ludlow surrendered, but the greater long-term blow was administrative: the Council was finally abolished in 1689. Without its institutional household, buildings deteriorated and valuable materials were removed. The castle became a picturesque ruin within an estate associated with the earls of Powis. Visitors, artists, and antiquarians valued the dramatic walls even as the loss of roofs and floors erased evidence of how densely occupied the enclosure had once been.

Repair campaigns from the nineteenth century onward stabilized the ruins, and the castle remains in the stewardship of the Powis estate. Public access and events now share the site with continuing conservation. Ludlow's surviving fabric ranges from Norman defensive work to later halls, chambers, kitchens, and judicial spaces. This layered plan reflects its changing purpose: conquest stronghold, marcher lordship, Mortimer power base, residence of royal children, headquarters of a regional council, Civil War garrison, and historic monument. Few English castles show so clearly how government could be exercised through a great household on the Welsh border.