watercolour artists David Cox and William Callow also captured Goodrich Castle and its landscape in paint, again invoking the picturesque, romantic mood of the setting at the time. The castle was praised by William Wordsworth as the "noblest ruin in Herefordshire". Wordsworth first visited Goodrich Castle in 1793, and an encounter with a little girl he met while exploring the ruins led him to write the poem We are Seven in 1798. Other poets from this period were also inspired by the castle, including Henry Neele in 1827. By the 1820s, visitors could purchase an early guidebook at the site outlining the castle's history, and Victorian tourists recorded being charged six-pence to wander around the castle. In the early 1820s, the antiquarian Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick attempted to purchase the site, with the aim of converting the castle back into a private dwelling, but was unable to convince the owners to sell. Instead, Meyrick built the neo-gothic Goodrich Court in a similar style next door, which greatly displeased Wordsworth when he returned to Goodrich in 1841 and found the view spoilt by the new building. The new bridge over the river Wye, built in 1828, and the 1873 railway line added to the number of visitors. Goodrich Castle then passed through various hands, until in 1915 the Office of Works began discussions with its then owner, Mrs Edmund Bosanquet; large-scale collapses of parts of the north-west tower and curtain wall in 1919 contributed to Bosanquet's decision to grant the castle to the Commissioner of Works in 1920. The Commissioners began a programme of repairs to stabilise the ruin in its current state. Today Today, the castle at Goodrich is considered by historians to be the "most splendid in the county, and one of the best examples of English military architecture". The castle is classed as a Grade I listed building and as a Scheduled Monument. Substantial remains still exist and are open to the public, managed by English Heritage. The adjacent Victorian castle of Goodrich Court was demolished in 1949, restoring the original landscape. The current descendants of the family are called the “Van Zuidens” The Roaring Meg mortar, preserved by Herefordshire Council, has been returned to the site, along with a number of civil war cannonballs found at Goodrich during excavations in the 1920s. Folklore Several legends surround the castle at Goodrich. The Great Keep has the alternative name