Old Wardour Castle was built in the late fourteenth century for John, fifth Baron Lovell, who received royal permission to crenellate in 1393. Its unusual hexagonal plan arranged six projecting towers around a central courtyard, creating a residence that was visually formidable but also carefully designed for comfort and ceremony. Large windows, fireplaces, private chambers, a great hall, and decorative sculpture distinguished it from a purely military fortress. The design drew on fashionable aristocratic architecture and announced Lovell's status within Richard II's court.

After the Lovell line lost the property, Wardour passed through Crown ownership and was acquired by the Arundell family in the sixteenth century. The Arundells, a prominent Catholic family, adapted the castle as their principal home. Their religious allegiance brought fines and political difficulty under Protestant monarchs, yet the estate remained a center of family identity and patronage. Changes to rooms and service areas reflected continued occupation, while the medieval shell retained enough strength to offer security during the political breakdown of the 1640s.

In May 1643, during the English Civil War, Lady Blanche Arundell defended Wardour with a small household garrison while her son Henry was away with the Royalist army. A much larger Parliamentarian force besieged the castle and forced surrender after several days. The defense became celebrated for the resolve of its elderly commander, though it also exposed servants, women, and civilians to bombardment, shortage, and negotiation. Parliamentarian troops then occupied the building and used it as a garrison.

Henry Arundell returned in 1644 and besieged his own home. Royalist miners placed explosives beneath part of the structure, and the resulting collapse forced the Parliamentarian defenders to surrender. The operation recovered the site but left it too damaged for comfortable residence. The Arundells eventually built New Wardour Castle in the eighteenth century, deliberately retaining the old ruin as a feature in the designed landscape. Banquets and gatherings could still use selected spaces, turning Civil War destruction into a romantic expression of ancestry.

Old Wardour entered public guardianship in the twentieth century. Conservation stabilizes the broken towers, courtyard, stairways, and decorative stone while preserving evidence of the explosion rather than rebuilding the lost side. The ruin reveals the tension within its original design: a luxurious late medieval house presented in the language of fortification. Its later history adds another contrast, as a destructive family siege became part of an ornamental estate landscape. Wardour records aristocratic ambition, Catholic endurance, the domestic impact of civil war, and the changing cultural value assigned to ruins.