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The castle was built by King John between 1207 and 1214. It cost over £1000. It was built at the bend of the River Whitewater probably as a defensive strategy but also because it is a halfway point between Windsor and Winchester, which until the 12th century was the capital of England and which was still very important in the 13th century especially ecclesiastically. In 1216 the French laid siege to it. Thereafter it became the home of the very powerful de Montfort family and Simon de Montfort married King John's daughter Eleanor.However de Montfort rebelled against King Henry and was killed in battle and his wife exiled. "In the 14th century the castle played a part in the Despenser's rebellion, was host to a sitting of Parliament, and for eleven years was prison to a Scottish king. By the 15th century, however, it was used only as a hunting-lodge, and in 1605 was described as a ruin."
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andika[Beer Dispenser Set}
*andika[Beer-Fuckin'A]Despenser
*andika[Beer-Lit Up]Despenser
*andika[Beer-Gotch]Despenser
****each 2bento animation
******touching lemon → Resizer
□FaQ
[I stopped posing.]
*Touching the bottle brings up a dialog*
For Her
For Him
****Left arm left shoulder left wrist Left finger is fixed with bento animation.
Even if you use it with your own AO, there is probably no problem.
andika[Beer-Fuckin'A]decor-1Li
andika[Beer-Lit Up]decor-1Li
andika[Beer-Gotch]-decor-1Li
andika[Beer Bowl]-decor-2Li
andika[cut lemon plate]decor-1Li
andika[Lemon plate]decor-2Li
**Copy/Resizer for each
Thank you and best regard,
andika,
Linda
*** Please refer to our main store for redelivery issues. The terminal is at the front desk
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Thank you so much
Odiham Castle (also known locally as King John's Castle) is a ruined castle situated near Odiham in Hampshire, United Kingdom.
It is one of only three fortresses built by King John during his reign. The site was possibly chosen by King John because he had visited the area in 1204 and it lay halfway between Windsor and Winchester.
In 1215 it was from Odiham that King John rode out to Runnymede, where he met the barons and attached his seal to the Magna Carta. A year later Odiham Castle was captured by the French after a two-week siege during the First Barons' War in 1216. The garrison of just 13 surrendered on 9 July 1216. At some point over the next nine years the keep was completely rebuilt, possibly to remedy the damage done to it by the French forces. At the same time the mound on which the keep sat was raised by 5 metres and an inner moat surrounding the keep was added to the defences.
In 1238 Simon de Montfort married King John's daughter Eleanor just two years after she had been granted Odiham by her brother, King Henry III. In the following year a kitchen was added on a bridge over the inner moat and a new hall was added on the outside of the keep. During the same period a second building was constructed over the moat, this time on the south eastern side of the keep, to provide extra living space.
In 1263 De Montfort rebelled against Henry and died at the Battle of Evesham in 1265; Eleanor was exiled. Odiham Castle was again retained by the Crown.
The castle was also involved in the rebellion led by the powerful Despenser family against Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella of France, the wife of Edward II.
Odiham Castle hosted Parliament at least once, in 1303. King David II of Scotland, after his capture at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, was imprisoned here for 11 years. He was held under a light guard and was allowed to keep a household. Using the castle as a prison seems to have been common practice during the 13th and 14th centuries; the nearby Manor of Greywell was required to provide guards one night in three.
By the 15th century Odiham was used only as a hunting lodge, and in 1605 it was described as a ruin.
In 1792 the Basingstoke Canal was built through the southern corner of the bailey.
No. 1 - 6: Exploring - the Abbey Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire .
Today's 'offering' will be taking us up from the west end of the Nave through the Rood Screen and up to the Choir Stalls, being the western part of the Presbytery.
The Choir
- It is a choir of great beauty, and though at first sight small and low, its proportions are admirable in every way, the length being almost exactly twice the breadth.
From the centre of the eastern tower-piers to the back of the altar the choir measures 63 feet, but the total length from the present oak-screen to the altar is 103 feet. The breadth in its widest part is 33 feet.
The upper part of the choir was reconstructed in the early part of the fourteenth century in its present polygonal form, the Norman pillars being carried up three feet, and fitted on the choir side with Decorated capitals.
The curious effect of the carrying up of the columns will be seen from the fact that the arches which spring from the Decorated capitals do not correspond in pitch with the vaulting in the ambulatory. Thelatter springs from the original Norman capitals on the columns in the choir.
The moulding of these arches of the choir is exceedingly rich, and the outer ones on the north side contain a double moulding of quatrefoil flower ornament.
The easternmost arch is somewhat stilted; the bare wall thus left exposed having originally been concealed by the reredos, or at any rate decorated in some way.
In these alterations to the choir here the Norman triforium had to be sacrificed; and those who wish to see on a larger scale what the original triforium was like must study that at Gloucester. In fact the two choirs alone will form the basis of much interesting study, the Gloucester choir having been left comparatively intact below the clerestory, and veiled over with richly wrought Perpendicular stonework.
The windows and the roof are of about the same date, _i.e._, early fourteenth century; the roof is anticipatively Perpendicular. A great feature of the choir is the skilful way in which the work of different times has been so effectively combined, and brought into a harmonious
whole.
The choir at Tewkesbury has lost its distinctively Norman character, as nearly all the original outside wall of the church to the east of the tower was removed, but it has retained its apsidal formation.
Beautiful as the choir is, it owes much of its effect to its vaulted roof, which is a fine specimen of early Decorated work. The vaulting ribs spring from small engaged shafts, which are carried up the face of the wall from the main piers, and then radiate from very ornate capitals over the vault. A fine colour effect must have been presented by the original ceiling painted and frescoed.
The bosses are less elaborate and less varied than those in the choir at Gloucester, but are well carved, consisting for the most part of vine-leaves delicately treated. All this roof was colour-washed in 1828, when so much restoration was done in the church.
The suns in the centre are supposed to have been put up by command of Edward IV. after the battle of Tewkesbury. The suns were a device which was appropriated by the Yorkists after the downfall of the Lancastrian party. Those in the tower vaulting are modern copies of these original suns. The modern painting of the vaulting is subdued in tone.
The vault of the tower is a lierne vault, and from the occurrence of the arms of Sir Guy de Brien, once quartered with those of Montacute
(ie, of his wife), the vaulting has been credited to hisexertions. The Despenser fret is to be found twice.
In front of the altar-rails is the large boss from which used to hang the sanctuary lamp, the sacred flame of which was kept ever trimmed and bright, as a sign that "the house was evermore watching to God."
The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury by H. J. L. J. Massé 1906
Larger size:-
farm3.static.flickr.com/2436/3976916437_a51820b676_b.jpg
Taken on:-
August 29, 2007 at 11:39 BST
No. 5 - 5: Exploring - the Abbey Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire .
Choir Stalls and Sanctuary.
Some of the more important aspects of this photograph are, from left to right:-
Screen gate:
The gates were made by Clarke, of Brackley, and were designed by Mr. J.O. Scott for the donor, Rev. W.R.F. Hepworth. Intricate in their design, and cleverly wrought as they are, they seem slightly incongruous in this wooden screen. The shields bear the correct arms of the Abbey, and round the shields are intertwining iron rods. Scrolls with leaves and other devices are also introduced. Across the top of the gates is a band of square panels with varied design in pierced work, and on the top is an elaborate cresting.
On the inside of the gates, on the shields are the texts, "Serve the Lord with fear."; and "Rejoice unto Him with reverence."
Choir stalls
- with misericords under the seating = which we will be studying later.
Founders chantry
the Founder's Chapel. Fitz-Hamon, was buried in the Chapter House, but Abbot Forthington removed his body to this site in 1241.
The open screen-work, which was erected in 1397 by Abbot Parker, is an excellent specimen of early Perpendicular work. It is extremely light and graceful. The cresting of oak-leaves is finely wrought; below it is a frieze ornamented with roses.
It is unfortunate that the brass has disappeared from the marble top of the tomb.
On the cornice there used to be the following inscription:
"In ista capella jacet Dñus Robertus,
Filius Hamonis hujus loci Fundator."
The fan-tracery of the ceiling is a beautiful piece of work, and shows traces of its former decoration with colour and gold. There is fan-tracery at Gloucester, where it is thought to have originated, which is essentially the same as this. This specimen is one of the most beautiful in every way.
Brackets to support an altar remain in part, and there are faint traces of a fresco painting on the east wall, which is said to have represented scenes in the life of St. Thomas à Becket.
The easternmost panel of the chapel on the south side has been restored; the rest has been very little touched. Restoration was necessary because no access to the chapel could be obtained when the choir was all pewed, and the eastern end was ruthlessly cut away. Some of the cresting on the north side is also new.
The Dispenser Monument
The Despenser Monument.—Still further to the east is the tomb [C] of Sir Hugh Despenser, who died in 1349, and his widow, who died ten years later, having in the interval married Sir Guy de Brien, the tomb to whose memory is close at hand. This tomb is full of interest, and consists of a richly panelled base with trefoil arches (each of which must once have contained a statuette), in three sets of two each to correspond with the open tracery in the tier above.
On the tomb is a slab on which are two recumbent figures, carved in white alabaster. The knight is clad in armour, viz., a spherical bascinet, with a camail of chain-mail. His jupon is charged with his arms. The shirt is also of chain-mail, while the arms and legs are protected by plate armour. His head is resting upon a tilting helmet, his feet upon a lion. The Lady Elizabeth, who was a daughter of William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, has a dog at her feet, and is robed in a long flowing dress, which, with the square head-dress, is characteristic of the time of Edward III.
The Decorated canopy is in two parts, viz., the arched portion which covers the two figures, and the tabernacle work in four tiers above. Three arches of marvellously delicate work support the arched roof, which is like fan-vaulting on a diminutive scale; the ribs have been indicated by colour.
The tabernacle work tapers very gradually, and forms a charming finish to one of the finest tombs to be seen anywhere. Trefoil-headed arches are used throughout the design, but with such consummate skill that no feeling of sameness is aroused. Of straight lines there are many, but of stiffness there is none. Formerly the whole work was painted with red, green, and gold, traces of which are to be seen on the side next to the choir and underneath the canopy.
The tomb is more perfect on the choir side than on the other.
Of the statues that formerly formed part of the canopy or canopies, no traces are left, but it is evident that they were removed with unusual care.
This tomb was formerly ascribed to George, Duke of Clarence, and also to Thomas Despenser. The arms on the tabard, however, settle the question definitely. If further confirmation be required apart from the style of the architecture and the arms, Leland writes: "Hugo le Despenser tertius ... sepultus est apud Theokesbury juxta summum altare in dextera parte." Of the Lady Elizabeth he says: "Sepulta est juxta Hugonem maritum apud Theokesbury."
It is interesting to note that the Dispenser's body has been found in an archaeological dig this year in London (2009). Identified by the anatomical details of one being 'hung, drawn and quartered' and certain parts said to have been sent to his widow.
Altar. —The Purbeck marble altar is supposed by some to have been the altar mentioned in the Abbey Chronicles of 1239, but any Early English features have been destroyed beyond recognition. It is reputed to be the largest altar in England, but, at any rate, it may be said to be the longest. Originally set up in its present situation, it seems to have been buried in the choir by the monks, perhaps by some who were not so mercenary as the rest. Sixty-eight years afterwards it was found, and its purpose being recognised, it was set up in the middle of the choir as a Communion table. In 1730 it was transferred to the aisle, the churchwardens' accounts stating that 12s. was paid for so doing, and that 2s. 6d. was given "to the men that did it for working all night." The "large entire blue stone" was then cut into two lengthwise, and was further desecrated by being converted into seats for the north porch. Earl Beauchamp, at his own expense, had the two slabs restored to their original use. Considering what the marble has gone through, its size has been well maintained. In 1607 it was 13 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 6 inches by 7 inches; and now it is 13 feet 6 inches by 3 feet 5 inches by 5 inches. It is supported by a massive framing of oak.
The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury ...... by H.J.L.J. Masse, M.A.
London George Bell & Sons 1906
To see Larger:
farm4.static.flickr.com/3526/3973481401_5c97e46eb2_b.jpg
Taken on:-
August 29, 2007 at 11:39 BST
No. 5 - 6: Exploring - the Abbey Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire .
The Dispenser Monument
- Still further to the east is the tomb of Sir Hugh Despenser, who died in 1349, and his widow, who died ten years later, having in the interval married Sir Guy de Brien, the tomb to whose memory is close at hand. This tomb is full of interest, and consists of a richly panelled base with trefoil arches (each of which must once have contained a statuette), in three sets of two each to correspond with the open tracery in the tier above.
On the tomb is a slab on which are two recumbent figures, carved in white alabaster. The knight is clad in armour, viz., a spherical bascinet, with a camail of chain-mail. His jupon is charged with his arms. The shirt is also of chain-mail, while the arms and legs are protected by plate armour. His head is resting upon a tilting helmet, his feet upon a lion. The Lady Elizabeth, who was a daughter of William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, has a dog at her feet, and is robed in a long flowing dress, which, with the square head-dress, is characteristic of the time of Edward III.
The Decorated canopy is in two parts, viz., the arched portion which covers the two figures, and the tabernacle work in four tiers above. Three arches of marvellously delicate work support the arched roof, which is like fan-vaulting on a diminutive scale; the ribs have been indicated by colour.
The tabernacle work tapers very gradually, and forms a charming finish to one of the finest tombs to be seen anywhere. Trefoil-headed arches are used throughout the design, but with such consummate skill that no feeling of sameness is aroused. Of straight lines there are many, but of stiffness there is none. Formerly the whole work was painted with red, green, and gold, traces of which are to be seen on the side next to the choir and underneath the canopy.
The tomb is more perfect on the choir side than on the other.
Of the statues that formerly formed part of the canopy or canopies, no traces are left, but it is evident that they were removed with unusual care.
This tomb was formerly ascribed to George, Duke of Clarence, and also to Thomas Despenser. The arms on the tabard, however, settle the question definitely. If further confirmation be required apart from the style of the architecture and the arms, Leland writes: "Hugo le Despenser tertius ... sepultus est apud Theokesbury juxta summum altare in dextera parte." Of the Lady Elizabeth he says: "Sepulta est juxta Hugonem maritum apud Theokesbury."
It is interesting to note that the Dispenser's body has been found in an archaeological dig this year in London (2009). Identified by the anatomical details of one being 'hung, drawn and quartered' and certain parts said to have been sent to his widow.
Altar. —The Purbeck marble altar is supposed by some to have been the altar mentioned in the Abbey Chronicles of 1239, but any Early English features have been destroyed beyond recognition. It is reputed to be the largest altar in England, but, at any rate, it may be said to be the longest. Originally set up in its present situation, it seems to have been buried in the choir by the monks, perhaps by some who were not so mercenary as the rest. Sixty-eight years afterwards it was found, and its purpose being recognised, it was set up in the middle of the choir as a Communion table. In 1730 it was transferred to the aisle, the churchwardens' accounts stating that 12s. was paid for so doing, and that 2s. 6d. was given "to the men that did it for working all night." The "large entire blue stone" was then cut into two lengthwise, and was further desecrated by being converted into seats for the north porch. Earl Beauchamp, at his own expense, had the two slabs restored to their original use. Considering what the marble has gone through, its size has been well maintained. In 1607 it was 13 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 6 inches by 7 inches; and now it is 13 feet 6 inches by 3 feet 5 inches by 5 inches. It is supported by a massive framing of oak.
The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury ...... by H.J.L.J. Masse, M.A.
London George Bell & Sons 1906
Larger size:-
farm3.static.flickr.com/2642/3985867117_85d9f63aa5_b.jpg
Taken on:-
August 29, 2007 at 11:50 BST
No. 1 - 4: Exploring - the Abbey Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire .
Trinity Chapel
.—On the south side of the choir in the bay opposite to the Founder's Chapel is the Trinity Chapel [K], the building of which is ascribed to Elizabeth, Lady de Burghersh, the widow of Edward, Lord Despenser. Lord ]Despenser died at Cardiff in 1375, and was buried before the door of the vestry, near the presbytery. His widow, who died many years later (1409), was buried beside her chapel in the choir.
The tomb has many beauties, of which the chief is the fan-tracery. Much damage has ruthlessly been done to the niches and canopies at the side.
A curious feature in the chapel is the figure of Lord Despenser under a canopy on the top of the chapel, kneeling in prayer, with his face turned towards the high altar. The canopy is very rich, supported by four slender shafts, and further enriched with carved pinnacles. The figure is probably unique, in such a position. It is represented as wearing the martial equipment that was usual towards the end of the fourteenth century.
This chapel may have been built by the same builders as the Founder's Chapel on the opposite side of the choir, but some variety of treatment is very noticeable. The cresting is different in scale on the two sides (portions of it are modern insertions). Owing to the non-correspondence of the panelling in the lowest portion with the open work in the next tier, it has been thought that the upper portion is slightly later in point of date than that upon which it is built.
The chapel derives its name from its dedication to the Trinity as well as to St. Mary. At the east end of the chapel are traces of mural painting. Some of these represent the symbols of the Trinity, others the coronation of the Virgin Mary.
The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury ...... by H.J.L.J. Masse, M.A.
London George Bell & Sons 1906
Larger size:-
farm4.static.flickr.com/3491/3988919283_1d034062ed_b.jpg
Taken on:-
August 29, 2007 at 11:53 BST
No. 2 - 5: Exploring - the Abbey Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire .
The Founder's Chantry
This chapel contains the tomb of Robert Fitz-Hamon, a second cousin of William the Conqueror. He founded the Abbey Church in 1102. He was wounded at the siege of Falaise, and died in 1107, fourteen years before the church was completed. He was originally buried in the Chapter House, but his remains were removed to this position in 1241. The present chantry chapel was erected over his tomb about 1397, by Abbot Parker.
The fan tracery of the ceiling has traces of colour and is an early example of the style.
Notice
Trinity Chapel
.—On the south side of the choir in the bay opposite to the Founder's Chapel is the Trinity Chapel [K], the building of which is ascribed to Elizabeth, Lady de Burghersh, the widow of Edward, Lord Despenser. Lord ]Despenser died at Cardiff in 1375, and was buried before the door of the vestry, near the presbytery. His widow, who died many years later (1409), was buried beside her chapel in the choir.
The tomb has many beauties, of which the chief is the fan-tracery. Much damage has ruthlessly been done to the niches and canopies at the side.
A curious feature in the chapel is the figure of Lord Despenser under a canopy on the top of the chapel, kneeling in prayer, with his face turned towards the high altar. The canopy is very rich, supported by four slender shafts, and further enriched with carved pinnacles. The figure is probably unique, in such a position. It is represented as wearing the martial equipment that was usual towards the end of the fourteenth century.
This chapel may have been built by the same builders as the Founder's Chapel on the opposite side of the choir, but some variety of treatment is very noticeable. The cresting is different in scale on the two sides (portions of it are modern insertions). Owing to the non-correspondence of the panelling in the lowest portion with the open work in the next tier, it has been thought that the upper portion is slightly later in point of date than that upon which it is built.
The chapel derives its name from its dedication to the Trinity as well as to St. Mary. At the east end of the chapel are traces of mural painting. Some of these represent the symbols of the Trinity, others the coronation of the Virgin Mary.
The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury ...... by H.J.L.J. Masse, M.A.
London George Bell & Sons 1906
Larger size:-
farm3.static.flickr.com/2534/3991857095_4301d6c2a7_b.jpg
Taken on:-
August 29, 2007 at 12:02 BST
The Despenser reredos was an altarpiece commissioned in 1382 by the military bishop of Norwich cathedral Hugh Despenser to celebrate his victory over the peasants in the Battle of North Walsham (Peasants' Revolt 1381) The five panels depict five stages of the passion of Christ : flagellation, procession, the crucifixion, burial and resurrection. Remarkably the art work was lost and hidden for many years from the 1600s to the Victorian age as a plumber's work table ! The retable is now on display in St Luke's chapel in Norwich cathedral.
No. 1 - 6: Exploring - the Abbey Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire .
Windows of the Choir
- another view, showing the windows in relation to the vault on the north side
- these fourteenth century windows are the chief glory of the choir. There are seven in all, and though they have suffered much from wilful damage and neglect, there are perhaps no others in England containing quite so much glass of the same date, and in such good condition as a whole. Every one must rejoice that in 1828 lack of funds prevented these windows from being thoroughly restored.
The windows nearest to the tower have four lights each, and the tracery is comparatively simple though flowing and free.
In the north-west window seen on the left here (i.e., immediately over the Warwick Chapel) are—
1. Fitz-Hamon;
2. Robert Fitzroy;
3. Hugh le Despenser;
4. Gilbert de Clare (third), the tenth Earl of Gloucester.
In the south-west window, i.e., the one exactly opposite to the last mentioned, are—
1. Gilbert de Clare (the first of the name);
2. Lord de la Zouch;
3. Richard de Clare;
4. Gilbert de Clare (the second).
These knights are all in armour, and are valuable as giving accurate representation of the armour and knightly gear of their time. Above the knights are represented canopies, and in the heads of the windows are scrolls of vine-leaves.
The bodies of the De Clares lie below the choir pavement, almost in a line with these two windows.
The other windows on either side contain Scripture subjects, many of them very fragmentary: Daniel, David, Abraham, Jeremiah, Solomon, and Joel are, however, easily to be found.
The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury ...... by H.J.L.J. Masse, M.A.
London George Bell & Sons 1906
Larger size:-
farm3.static.flickr.com/2525/3987277961_8954908b54_b.jpg
Taken on:-
August 29, 2007 at 11:48 BST
The Banqueting Hall is a 1870s recreation of what it was thought a Medieval Great Hall would appear.
Click here for more photographs of Cardiff Castle: www.jhluxton.com/Wales/Cardiff-Caerdydd/Cardiff-Castle
Cardiff Castle (Welsh: Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city centre of Cardiff.. The original motte and bailey castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort. The castle was commissioned either by William the Conqueror or by Robert Fitzhamon, and formed the heart of the medieval town of Cardiff and the Marcher Lord territory of Glamorgan. In the 12th century the castle began to be rebuilt in stone, probably by Robert of Gloucester, with a shell keep and substantial defensive walls being erected. Further work was conducted by the 6th Earl of Gloucester in the second half of the 13th century. Cardiff Castle was repeatedly involved in the conflicts between the Anglo-Normans and the Welsh, being attacked several times in the 12th century, and stormed in 1404 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr.
After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries, the castle was acquired by The 13th Earl of Warwick and Comte de Aumale in 1423. Lord Warwick conducted extensive work on the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses, the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War Cardiff Castle was initially taken by a Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the Battle of St Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned, probably to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.
In the mid-18th century, Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Stuart dynasty, Marquesses of Bute. John, 1st Marquess of Bute, employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to renovate the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion, and to landscape the castle grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls. During the first half of the 19th century the family became extremely wealthy as a result of the growth of the coal industry in Glamorgan. However, it was the 3rd Marquess of Bute who truly transformed the castle, using his vast wealth to back an extensive programme of renovations under William Burges. Burges remodelled the castle in a Gothic revival style, lavishing money and attention on the main range. The resulting interior designs are considered to be amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved". The grounds were re-landscaped and, following the discovery of the old Roman remains, reconstructed walls and a gatehouse in a Roman style were incorporated into the castle design. Extensive landscaped parks were built around the outside of the castle.
In the early 20th century, the 4th Marquess of Bute inherited the castle and construction work continued into the 1920s. The Bute lands and commercial interests around Cardiff were sold off or nationalised until, by the time of the Second World War, little was left except the castle. During the war, extensive air raid shelters were built in the castle walls; they could hold up to 1,800 people. When the 4th Marquess died in 1947, the castle was given to the City of Cardiff.
Today the castle is run as a tourist attraction, with the grounds housing the "Firing Line" regimental museum and interpretation centre. The castle has also served as a venue for events, including musical performances and festivals.
Caerphilly Castle is one of the great medieval castles of western Europe. Several factors give it this pre-eminence - its immense size (1.2h), making it the largest in Britain after Windsor, its large-scale use of water for defence and the fact that it is the first truly concentric castle in Britain. Of the time of its building in the late 13th century, it was a revolutionary masterpiece of military planning.
One of Henry III's most powerful and ambitious barons, Gilbert de Clare, Lord of Glamorgan, built this castle. His purpose was to secure the area and prevent lowland South Wales from falling into the hands of the Welsh leader Llywelyn the Last, who controlled most of Mid and North Wales. De Clare built other castles on the northern fringes of his territory for the same purpose, such as Castell Coch. He had seized the upland district of Senghenydd, in which Caerphilly lies, from the Welsh in 1266 to act as a buffer against Llywelyn's southward ambitions. Llywelyn realised the threat and tried but failed to prevent the castle from being built; it was begun on 11 April 1268, was attacked by Llywelyn in 1270, and was begun again in 1271. This time it was completed without hindrance. Its message was not lost on Llywelyn, who retreated northwards. Apart from the remodelling of the great hall and other domestic works in 1322-6 for Hugh le Despenser, no more alterations were carried out, making it a very pure example of late 13th-century military architecture.
WALES, CARDIFF- Wikipidia: After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries the castle was acquired by Richard de Beauchamp in 1423. Richard conducted extensive work at the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall, octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War Cardiff Castle was initially taken by Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the battle of St Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.
No. 3 - 5: Exploring - the Abbey Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire .
Trinity Chapel
A curious feature in the chapel is the figure of Lord Despenser under a canopy on the top of the chapel, kneeling in prayer, with his face turned towards the high altar. The canopy is very rich, supported by four slender shafts, and further enriched with carved pinnacles. The figure is probably unique, in such a position. It is represented as wearing the martial equipment that was usual towards the end of the fourteenth century.
The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury ...... by H.J.L.J. Masse, M.A.
London George Bell & Sons 1906
Larger size:-
farm4.static.flickr.com/3296/3991853249_61ffcbf8cd_b.jpg
Taken on:-
August 29, 2007 at 12:26 BST
Cardiff Castle (Welsh: Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city centre of Cardiff.
For more photographs of Cardiff Castle please click here: www.jhluxton.com/Wales/Cardiff-Caerdydd/Cardiff-Castle/
The original motte and bailey castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort. The castle was commissioned either by William the Conqueror or by Robert Fitzhamon, and formed the heart of the medieval town of Cardiff and the Marcher Lord territory of Glamorgan. In the 12th century the castle began to be rebuilt in stone, probably by Robert of Gloucester, with a shell keep and substantial defensive walls being erected. Further work was conducted by the 6th Earl of Gloucester in the second half of the 13th century. Cardiff Castle was repeatedly involved in the conflicts between the Anglo-Normans and the Welsh, being attacked several times in the 12th century, and stormed in 1404 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr.
After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries, the castle was acquired by The 13th Earl of Warwick and Comte de Aumale in 1423. Lord Warwick conducted extensive work on the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses, the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War Cardiff Castle was initially taken by a Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the Battle of St Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned, probably to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.
In the mid-18th century, Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Stuart dynasty, Marquesses of Bute. John, 1st Marquess of Bute, employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to renovate the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion, and to landscape the castle grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls. During the first half of the 19th century the family became extremely wealthy as a result of the growth of the coal industry in Glamorgan. However, it was the 3rd Marquess of Bute who truly transformed the castle, using his vast wealth to back an extensive programme of renovations under William Burges. Burges remodelled the castle in a Gothic revival style, lavishing money and attention on the main range. The resulting interior designs are considered to be amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved". The grounds were re-landscaped and, following the discovery of the old Roman remains, reconstructed walls and a gatehouse in a Roman style were incorporated into the castle design. Extensive landscaped parks were built around the outside of the castle.
In the early 20th century, the 4th Marquess of Bute inherited the castle and construction work continued into the 1920s. The Bute lands and commercial interests around Cardiff were sold off or nationalised until, by the time of the Second World War, little was left except the castle. During the war, extensive air raid shelters were built in the castle walls; they could hold up to 1,800 people. When the 4th Marquess died in 1947, the castle was given to the City of Cardiff.
Today the castle is run as a tourist attraction, with the grounds housing the "Firing Line" regimental museum and interpretation centre. The castle has also served as a venue for events, including musical performances and festivals.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
Caerphilly Castle in South Wales boasts the most extensive water defences in the UK and is second, after Windsor, in being the largest castle by area. It is also somewhere I have been wanting to visit for more than 45 years, ever since I first read about it.
It is one of the first flowerings of the theory of concentric defence’ where high inner walls are surrounded by but also dominate some much lower outer walls, a concept also seen in Edward I’s great castles in North Wales especially at Harlech and Beaumaris. The castle features two separate moats and were thus protected by elaborate water management including a huge dam which function as an outer ward. CADW has rebuilt some of the castle's wooden brattices or hoardings which once overhung the massive inner walls and allowed for vertical fire on attackers at the very foot of the walls.
Essentially a single development by Gilbert De Clare from 1268 onwards, he appears to have built in three phases with some additions by Hugh Despenser the younger in the early 14th century. Edward II fled from here in 1326 to escape his vengeful French queen Isabella.
Damaged in the English Civil War it was restored by the Marquesses of Bute in the 19th and 20th centuries before being taken into public ownership. It is now run by the Welsh organisation CADW.
This is my first video and still photography shoot with a 20-minute accompanying documentary to be found here:
Caerphilly Castle in South Wales boasts the most extensive water defences in the UK and is second, after Windsor, in being the largest castle by area. It is also somewhere I have been wanting to visit for more than 45 years, ever since I first read about it.
It is one of the first flowerings of the theory of concentric defence’ where high inner walls are surrounded by but also dominate some much lower outer walls, a concept also seen in Edward I’s great castles in North Wales especially at Harlech and Beaumaris. The castle features two separate moats and were thus protected by elaborate water management including a huge dam which function as an outer ward. CADW has rebuilt some of the castle's wooden brattices or hoardings which once overhung the massive inner walls and allowed for vertical fire on attackers at the very foot of the walls.
Essentially a single development by Gilbert De Clare from 1268 onwards, he appears to have built in three phases with some additions by Hugh Despenser the younger in the early 14th century. Edward II fled from here in 1326 to escape his vengeful French queen Isabella.
Damaged in the English Civil War it was restored by the Marquesses of Bute in the 19th and 20th centuries before being taken into public ownership. It is now run by the Welsh organisation CADW.
This is my first video and still photography shoot with a 20-minute accompanying documentary to be found here:
Neath Castle in South Wales was a minor Norman castle in the lordship of Glamorgan. Positioned to guard the river crossing, the first castle here was built in the 12th century by Robert, Earl of Gloucester. It was much harried by the Welsh and by enemies of the unpopular Lord of Glamorgan, Hugh Despenser. It was the 14th-century rebuilding after this last attack that gave it a splendid gatehouse which is just visible to the left here.
Caerphilly Castle in South Wales boasts the most extensive water defences in the UK and is second, after Windsor, in being the largest castle by area. It is also somewhere I have been wanting to visit for more than 45 years, ever since I first read about it.
It is one of the first flowerings of the theory of concentric defence’ where high inner walls are surrounded by but also dominate some much lower outer walls, a concept also seen in Edward I’s great castles in North Wales especially at Harlech and Beaumaris. The castle features two separate moats and were thus protected by elaborate water management including a huge dam which function as an outer ward. CADW has rebuilt some of the castle's wooden brattices or hoardings which once overhung the massive inner walls and allowed for vertical fire on attackers at the very foot of the walls.
Essentially a single development by Gilbert De Clare from 1268 onwards, he appears to have built in three phases with some additions by Hugh Despenser the younger in the early 14th century. Edward II fled from here in 1326 to escape his vengeful French queen Isabella.
Damaged in the English Civil War it was restored by the Marquesses of Bute in the 19th and 20th centuries before being taken into public ownership. It is now run by the Welsh organisation CADW.
This is my first video and still photography shoot with a 20-minute accompanying documentary to be found here:
The Despenser Reredos or Despenser Retable is a medieval altarpiece now in St Luke's Chapel, Norwich Cathedral. It is the cathedral's most important work of art. The altarpiece shows five scenes from the end of Christ's life—his flagellation, his journey to the cross, his crucifixion, events that follow his burial, and the Ascension. The scenes, which are painted on wood in vivid colours, are surrounded by a rectangular frame. The original reredos may originally have been positioned at the cathedral's high altar.
Cardiff City Transport 741 (CN59 CKV), Scania N270UB fitted with Scania OmniCity B41F body, new 9/09.
Smartly turned out in a new paint scheme, 741 in Despenser Street, Cardiff on Tuesday 5 July 2022.
Should I really be contemplating a day trip to Norfolk just 24 hours after being laid so low?
I felt I recovered well on Friday, though not hungry still. After getting up and having a coffee, all was set.
I had to catch the ten to six train out of Dover, as I had a cheap ticket. I was going to have something from the buffet, or Pumpkin as its now called.
But was closed.
So, I sat on the station waiting for the train to pull in.
I got on and sat on my favourite side, the carriage was quiet, which suits me. Sadly, at Folkestone West, ten ladies got on and sat in the seats in front clearly on a weekend taking in the bright lights of London. They spent all the journey to Stafford talking about foundation cream and this season's colours.
But who am I to judge?
At Stratford I went up to the concourse then along to the DLY, hopping on a train that was about to depart for the stop to Stratford (Regional).
Where I found I had a fifty (50) minute wait, so went to the Middle Eastern kiosk on the underpass for lamb samosas and a coke.
The overnight rain had cleared, so I took my breakfast to the platform and found a dry seat under the footbridge and spent a fine half hour people and train watching.
As you do.
The train arrived at 08:37, it was three quarters full, but still plenty of seats.
So I took a seat on the right hand so I could watch the suburban stations flash by and then out into the Essex badlands.
No stopping at Chelmsford, onwards to the delights of Colchester and into Suffolk.
Train toilets can now be flushed in stations, so that joy is taken away. Not that I would have, anyway.
Unusually, both Ipswich and Norwich were playing at home on the same day at the same time, as were Colchester. Loads of fans got off at Ipswich, so the quarter full train continued to Stowmarket and Diss.
Then to Norwich.
Norwich is my old stamping ground, a city I know so well, apart from the usual suspects hard to enter churches, there wasn't a lot I could think off to fill in the two hours before opening time.
I looked at Simon's album of roof bosses from the Cathedral cloister, and decided I would photograph those. I didn't have a long enough lens, but what the hell.
Into Norfolk just before arriving in Diss, then through the rolling countryside peppered with sentinel-like church towers. Some close, some distant.
And then we were on the edge of the city, round to the single track bridge and into Thorpe Station, as was.
Back home.
If anywhere feels like home now.
I walked up the once vibrant Prince of Wales road, still with nightclubs and lap dancing bars, but most looking down at heel. The lights and paint not so bright, and the pub after which the road is named, is no more and is a gaming hub. Closed.
Through the Erpingham Gate into the precinct and to the modern entrance. I paid a tenner, and went straight to the cloisters, having declined a map.
I spent nearly an hour photographing and then talking to an American gentleman before a figure came to my shoulder.
It my my friend, Cam, and I was here to meet him and others for beers, chats and laughs.
We shook hands and chatted. I took a few more shots before we went back into the Nave and did one grand loop of the Sanctuary before leaving and getting his cycle.
A five minute walk down Wensum Street, over the bridge and onto Magdalen Street to the Kings Head, five past opening time.
I had a fine cherry-chocolate porter to start, and we met John and Stephen in the rear bar.
Hands shook, update on Simon's journey, and we got down to chit chat.
The pub was lively, with lots of scarf bedecked fans coming in for a pint or two before heading off to the home of football.
At some point, Simon arrived having had to get a rail replacement bus from Diss to Norwich, he was soon catching up.
We left for the Ribs at three, our number already down to the hardcore three, and Cameron left at four to meet with his family.
We took our beers to the decking just over the river surface, and leisured in the warm later afternoon breeze and low sun, it was warm.
Nearly.
I ended up having an argument with the two racist Brexit supports beside me, thankfully they left, leaving Simon and myself to empty our glasses and at five, walk down towards the station.
Norwich had won 4-2 against Stoke, while Ipswich lost 4-1 to local rivals Spurs.
At the Compleat Angler, it was full with happy fans. Simon got a round in, and I sat outside, though with dusk falling it was no longer warm.
We walk across the rad to the station, climbed on board the train waiting, quite full. But we found seats round a table, so spread out and chatted some more.
The train moved out, and into the blackness of the moonless night, illuminated only by the villages and stations on the line.
Simon got out at Norwich, the train continued south. I got a sandwich from the refreshment trolley.
The train entered Essex, speeding towards the capitol.
At Stratford, back on the DLR to the International station where I had a twenty minute wait for my train, which when it arrived was busy, but with seats free.
So, just an hour down to Dover, where Jools was waiting for me to take me home for one last brew before going to bed.
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Norwich has everything. Thus, the normally dry and undemonstrative Nikolaus Pevsner began his survey of the capital of Norfolk in his 1962 volume Buildings of England: Norwich and north-east Norfolk. And there is no doubt that this is one of the best cities of its size in northern Europe. Living in Ipswich as I do, I hear plenty of grumbles about Norwich; but really, although the two places have roughly the same population, Ipswich cannot even begin to compare with regard to its townscape. The only features which the capital of Suffolk can claim to hold above its beautiful northern neighbour are a large central park (Norwich's Chapelfield gardens is not a patch on Ipswich's Christchurch Park) and a large body of water in the heart of the town, perhaps Ipswich's most endearing feature and greatest saving grace.
But Norwich has everything else - to continue Pevsner's eulogy, a cathedral, a castle on a mound right in the middle, walls and towers, a medieval centre with winding streets and alleys, thirty-five medieval parish churches and a river with steamships. It even has hills...
I think it would be possible to visit Norwich and not even know this cathedral was there. The centre of the city is dominated by the castle, and the most familiar feature to visitors is the great market square widened by the clearances of the 1930s, and the fine City Hall built at that time which towers above it. In comparison, Norwich Cathedral sits down in a dip beside the river, walled in by its close, and is visible best from outside the city walls, especially from the east on the riverside, and to the north from Mousehold Heath. If you arrive by road from the south or west, you may not even catch a glimpse of it. The great spire is hidden by those winding streets and alleys, and many of the city's churches are more visible, especially St Giles, St Peter Mancroft in the Market Place, and the vast Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist, on Grapes Hill. It is said that the nave floor of St John the Baptist is at the same height above sea level as the top of the crossing of the Anglican cathedral.
With the possible exception of Lincoln Cathedral, I think that Norwich Cathedral is my favourite cathedral in all England. Call this East of England chauvinism if you like, But Norwich Cathedral has everything you could possible want from a great medieval building. But there is more to it than that. It is also one of the most welcoming cathedrals in England. There is no charge for admission, and they positively encourage you to wander around through the daily business of the cathedral, in the continental manner. No boards saying Silence Please - Service in Progress here. Because of this, the Cathedral becomes an act of witness in itself, and you step into what feels like it probably really is the house of God on Earth. They even used to say the Lord's Prayer over the PA system once an hour, and invite you to stop and join in - I wish they'd go back to doing that. The three pounds you pay for a photography permit must be one of the bargains of the century so far.
Norwich Cathedral is unusual, in that this is the original building. It has been augmented over the centuries of course, but this is still essentially the very first cathedral on this site. This is because the see was only moved to Norwich after the Norman invasion. The Normans saw the wisdom of drawing together ecclesiastical and civil power, and one way in which this might be achieved was by siting the cathedrals in the hearts of important towns. At the time of the conquest, Bishop Herfast had his seat at Thetford, and it was decided to move the see to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. It had moved several times during the previous four centuries, from Walton in Suffolk to North Elmham in Norfolk before Thetford, where the first proper but simple stone building had been raised. But as well as an eye for efficient administration, the Normans brought the idea that Cathedrals should be glorified; already, vast edifices were being raised in Durham, London and Ely. and Bury St Edmunds, with its famous Abbey, was the obvious place for the Diocese of East Anglia to sit.
However, such a move would have removed the Abbey's independent direct line with Rome, and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Province of Canterbury. The Abbey community was determined that this would not happen, and Abbot Baldwin sent representations to the Pope that ensured the survival of St Edmundsbury Abbey's independence. Bishop Herfast would not be allowed to glorify his position in East Anglia in the way his colleagues were doing elsewhere. But his successor, Herbert de Losinga, was more determined - and, perhaps, steeled by his conscience. A Norman, he had bought the Bishopric from the King in 1091, an act of simony that required penance. Building a great cathedral could be seen as that act of penance. But where? Bury was a lost cause; instead, he chose to move the see to a thriving market town in the north-east of his Diocese; a smaller, more remote place than Bury, to be sure, but proximity to the Abbey of St Edmund was perhaps not such a good thing anyway. It tended to cast a rather heavy shadow. And so it was that the great medieval cathedral of the East Anglian bishops came to be built, instead, at Norwich.
Work began in 1094, and seems to have been complete by 1145. It is one of the great Romanesque buildings of northern Europe, its special character a result of responses to fires and collapses over the course of the next few centuries. At the Reformation in the sixteenth century, it became a protestant cathedral of the new Church of England, losing its role as a setting for ancient sacraments and devotions, but being maintained as the administrative seat of a Diocese which covered all of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the ceremonial church of its great city. In the 19th Century, the western part of the Norwich Diocese was transferred into that of Ely, and at the start of the 20th Century the southern parishes became part of the new Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. Today, the Diocese of Norwich consists of north, south and east Norfolk, and the north-eastern tip of Suffolk.
The absence of this great church from the Norfolk Churches site has long been the elephant in the room, so to speak. And having it here at last is, I feel, a mark of how things have changed. When I first started the Norfolk and Suffolk sites back in 1999, I did not have a decent camera, and the earliest entries did not have any photographs at all. How the wheel has turned. Now, the photographs have become the sites, and with no apologies I don't intend to make this a wordy entry.
The perfection of Norwich is of distant views, the cloisters, and the interior. The exterior is hemmed in, and the most familiar part of the building, the west front, is a poor thing, the victim of barbarous restorations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is almost a surprise to step through its mundanity into the soaring glory of the nave. Above, the famous vaulting is home to one of the largest collections of medieval bosses in the world. There are more in the beautiful cloisters.
The view to the east is of the great organ, looking very 17th Century but actually the work of Stephen Dykes Bower in the 1950s. Beyond is the intimacy of the quire and ambulatory with its radial chapels, the best of which is St Luke's chapel, containing the Despenser retable. Bishop Despenser is one of history's villains, putting down the Peasants Revolt in East Anglia with some enthusiasm. It is likely that this retable was made for the cathedral's high altar, possibly even to give thanks for the end of the Revolt. It was discovered upside down in use as a table in the 1840s. This chapel is, unusually, also a parish church; the parish of St Mary in the Marsh, the church of which was demolished at the Reformation, moved into the cathedral. They brought their seven sacrament font with them, and here it remains.
In the ambulatory there are many traces of medieval paint, almost certainly from the original building of the Cathedral. Two curiosities: at the back of the apse is the original Bishop's chair, and rising across the north side of the ambulatory like a bridge is a relic screen.
There is a good range of glass dating from the 14th to the 21st centuries. Highlights include the medieval panels in the north side of the ambulatory, Edward Burne-Jones's bold figures in the north transept, Moira Forsyth's spectacular Benedictine window of 1964 in a south chapel, and the millennium glass high in the north transept, which I think will in time become one of the defining features of the Cathedral. The figure of the Blessed Virgin with the Christ Child seated on her lap is the work of Norfolk-based artist John Hayward, who died recently, but the glass above is Hayward's reworking of Keith New's 1960s glass for St Stephen Walbrook in London, removed from there in the 1980s, and now reset here. Towards the west end of the nave are two sets of Stuart royal arms in glass, a rare survival.
I grew up in a city some sixty miles away from Norwich, but I didn't come here until I was in my mid-teens. I remember wandering around this building and being blown away by it, and I still get that feeling today. There is always something new to find here. My favourite time here is first thing in the morning on a winter Saturday. Often, I can be the only visitor, which only increases the awe. Another time I like to be here in winter is on a Saturday afternoon for choral evensong. Perhaps best of all, though, is to wander and wonder in the cloisters on a bright sunny day, gazing at fabulous bosses almost within arm's reach.
Several English cathedrals have good closes, but Norwich's is the only one in a major city, I think. It creates the sense of an ecclesiastical village at the heart of the city; and then, beyond, the lanes and alleys spread out, still hanging on despite German bombing and asinine redevelopment. And now I think perhaps it is part of the beauty of this building that it is tucked away by the river, a place to seek out and explore. Norwich has everything, says Pevsner. But really, I think this is the very best thing of all.
www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichcathedral/norwichcathedr...
It is funny how we forget things we have done.
Below, I state that this was my first visit to the cathedral as a churchcrawler.
When I began to post shots, I looked for the album to put the shots in, only to find there wasn't one.
A search of my photostream showed two visits to the cathedral, complete with interior shots from 2013 and the previous years.
I had no memories of these visits.
What else have I forgotten?
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Norwich is a fine city. Or so the signs say on every road into it. But, and there can be no denying it, it is a jewel in the Norfolk countryside.
For me it is “just” Norwich Where used to go for our important shopping, for football and later for concerts. We, and I, would take for granted its cobbled streets, Norman cathedral and medieval churches by the dozen. Also it’s a pub for every day, the ramshackle market, and the Norman castle keep looking down on the city sprawled around.
Just Norwich.
Later, it also became where I bought new records from Backs in Swan Lane, and searched for punk classics in the Record and Tape Exchange.
Norwich is lucky that the industrial revolution passed by the city leaving few changes, the character and history intact. World War II did damage, some churches were abandoned, some rebuilt, but many survived.
And Norwich is a friendly city. It sees warm and colourful, and on a hot summer’s day when the locals were in shorts and t-shirts, much white flesh was on display. I also take the football club for granted. I have supported it from nearly 49 years, and being away from the city means I get my news and views largely second hand, but I also forget how central the club is to the people.
Other cities would have children dressed in any one of a dozen Premier League club’s replica shirts. In Norwich yellow and green was the dominant colour, even after a chastening season that saw us finish rock bottom of the league. The local sports “superstore” has a Norwich Fan’s fanzone, and a third of the window is given to the home city club.
I knew the city like the back of my hand, so knew the route I wanted to take to provide me with views that would refresh those in my mind. I didn’t dally, pressed on to my two targets, the Anglican Cathedral and St Peter Mancroft.
This wasn’t the original plan; that was to meet two friends I used to go to the football with, Ian and Ali, but they both caught a bug in Manchester watching the women’s Euros, so couldn’t meet with me. But I had an alternative plan, maybe with a pub stop or two.
The trip happened as I got a mail offering a tempting 20% off the trip that had been selling poorly, I checked with Ian and Alison, they said they were free, but had yet to fall ill. So seats were booked, as Jools liked the sound of an afternoon in Norwich and meeting my friends.
Up at quarter to five so we could catch the first High Speed service out of Dover, so to be in London in time to catch the railtour to Norwich.
Sun had yet to light up Dover Priory when we arrived, but a few people milling around, including two still at the end of their night out.
Folkestone was light by the warm light of the rising sun, and well worth a shot as we passed over Foord Viaduct.
Later, I was hoping the calm morning meant the Medway would be a mirror, but a breeze disturbed the surface ruining the reflections I had hoped for.
Finally, emerging into Essex, the line climbs as the go over the Dartford Crossing, just enough time to grab a shot.
It was already hot in London, so we stayed in the shade of the undercroft at St Pancras, had a coffee and a pasty from Greggs before walking over to Kings Cross to see if our tour was already at the buffers.
We walked across the road to King's Cross, and find the station packed with milling passengers, all eyes trained on the departure boards waiting for platform confirmations.
Ours was due to be platform 3, and the rake of carriages was indeed there, top and tailed by class 66 freight locomotives.
We get on the train and find we had been allocated a pair of seats nearest the vestibule. This meant that they were a few inches less wide than others, meaning Jools and I were jammed in.
Almost straight away, Jools's back and Achilles began to ache, and the thought of four hours of this in the morning and another four in the evening was too much, and so she decided to get off at the first stop at Potters Bar.
In the end, a wise choice I think.
The guy in the seat opposite to us talked the whole journey. I mean filling any silence with anything: how much he paid for the components of his lunch, his cameras and then his job. In great detail. He also collected train numbers. I didn't know that was really a thin in the days of EMUs, but I helped out from time to time telling him units he had missed.
We had a twenty minute break at Peterborough because of pathing issues, so we all got out to stretch our legs and do some extra trainspotting.
An Azuma left from the next platform, and another came in on the fast line. I snapped them both.
From Peterborough, the train reversed, and after the 20 minute wait, we went out of the station southwards, taking the line towards Ely.
Now that we had done our last stop, the train could open up and we cruised across the Fens at 70mph, the flat landscape botted with wind turbines and church towers slipped by.
Instead of going into Ely station, we took the rarely used (for passenger trains) freight avoiding line, now a single track. Emerging crossing the main line, taking the line eastwards towards Thetford.
Again, the regulator was opened, and we rattled along. Even so, the journey was entering its fourth hour, and with my travelling colleague and without Jools, time was dragging.
We were now back in Norfolk, passing the STANTA training area, all warning signs on the fences telling the trainee soldiers that that was where the area ended. I saw no soldiers or tanks. My only thought was of the rare flowers that would be growing there, unseen.
And so for the final run into Norwich, familiar countryside now.
Under the southern bypass and the main line from London, slowing down where the two lines merged at Trowse before crossing the River Wensum, before the final bend into Norwich Thorpe.
At last I could get off the train and stretch my legs.
Many others were also getting off to board coaches to take them to Wroxham for a cruise on the Broads, or a ride on the Bure Valley Railway, while the rest would head to Yarmouth for four hours at the seaside.
I got off the train and walked through the station, out into the forecourt and over the main road, so I could walk down Riverside Road to the Bishop’s Bridge, then from there into the Cathedral Close.
The hustle and bustle of the station and roadworks were soon left behind, as the only noise was from a family messing about in a rowing boat in front of Pulls Ferry and a swan chasing an Egyptian Goose, so the occasional splash of water.
I reached the bridge and passed by the first pub, with already many folks sitting out in the beer garden, sipping wines and/or summer beers. I was already hot and would loved to have joined them, but I was on a mission.
In the meantime, Jools had texted me and said if I fancied getting a regular service back home, then I should. And a seed grew in my brain. Because, on the way back, departing at just gone five, the tour had to have a 50 minute layover in a goods siding at Peterborough, and would not get back to Kings Cross until half nine, and then I had to get back to Dover.
I could go to the cathedral the church, walk back to the station. Or get a taxi, and get a train back to London at four and still be home by eight.
Yes.
I walked past the Great Hospital, then into the Close via the swing gate, round to the entrance where there was no charge for entry and now no charge for photography. But I would make a donation, I said. And I did, a tenner.
I have been to the cathedral a few times, but not as a churchcrawler. So, I made my way round, taking shots, drinking in the details. But the walk up had got me hot and bothered, I always run with a hot engine, but in summer it can be pretty damp. I struggled to keep my glasses on my nose, and as I went round I knew I was in no mood to go round again with the wide angle, that could wait for another visit.
The church is pretty much as built by the Normans, roof excepted which has been replaced at least twice, but is poetry in stone. And for a cathedral, not many people around also enjoying the building and its history.
At one, bells chimed, and I think The Lord’s Prayer was read out, we were asked to be quiet. I always am when snapping.
In half an hour I was done, so walked out through the west door, through the gate and into Tombland. I was heading for the Market and St Peter which site on the opposite side to the Guildhall.
I powered on, ignoring how warm I felt, in fact not that warm at all. The heat and sweats would come when I stopped, I found out.
I walk up the side of the market and into the church, and into the middle of an organ recital.
Should I turn round and do something else, or should I stop and listen. I stopped and listened.
Everyone should hear an organ recital in a large church. There is nothing quite like it. The organ can make the most beautiful sounds, but at the same time, the bass pipes making noises so deep you can only feel it in your bones.
Tony Pinel knew his way round the organ, and via a video link we could see his hands and feet making the noises we could hear. It was wonderful, but quite how someone can play one tune with their feet and another with their hands, and pulling and pushing knobs and stoppers, is beyond me. But glad some people can.
It finished at quarter to two, and I photograph the font canopy and the 15th century glass in the south chapel. Font canopies are rare, there is only four in England, and one of the others is in Trunch 20 miles to the north. Much is a restoration, but it is an impressive sight when paired with the seven-sacrament font under it.
The glass is no-less spectacular, panels three feet by two, five wide and stretching to the vaulted roof. I can’t photograph them all, but I do over 50%.
I go to the market for a lunch of chips, for old times sake. I mean that was the treat whenever we went either to Norwich or Yarmouth; chips on the market. I was told they no longer did battered sausage, so had an un-battered one, and a can of pop. I stood and ate in the alleyway between stalls, people passing by and people buying chips and mushy peas of their own.
Once done, I had thought of getting a taxi back to the station, but the rank that has always been rammed with black cabs was empty, and two couples were shouting at each other as to who should have the one that was there. So I walked to the station, across Gentleman’s Walk, along to Back of the Inns, then up London Street to the top of Prince of Wales Road and then an easy time to the station across the bridge.
I got my ticket and saw a train to Liverpool Street was due to depart at 14:32. In three minutes.
I went through the barrier and got on the train, it was almost empty in the new, swish electric inter-city unit. I was sweating buckets, and needed a drink, but there appeared to be no buffet, instead just electric efficiency and silence as the train slid out of the station and went round past the football ground to the river, then taking the main line south.
In front of me, two oriental ladies talked for the whole journey. I listened to them, no idea what they talked about to fill 105 minutes.
I thought it would be nearly five when the train got in, but helped by only stopping at Diss, Ipswich, Manningtree and Colchester we got in, on time, at quarter past four.
I walked to the main concourse and down into the Circle Line platforms, getting a train in a couple of minutes the four stops to St Pancras. I knew there was a train soon leaving, and after checking the board and my watch I saw I had five minutes to get along the length of the station and up to the Southeastern platforms.
I tried. I did, but I reached the steps up to the platforms and I saw I had 45 seconds, no time to go up as they would have locked the doors. So, instead I went to the nearby pub and had a large, ice-cold bottle of Weiss beer.
That was better.
I was all hot and bothered again, but would have an hour to cool down, and the beer helped.
At ten past five, I went up and found the Dover train already in, I went through the barriers and took a seat in a carriage I thought would stop near the exit at Dover Priory. I called Jools to let her know I would be back at quarter to seven, and she confirmed she would pick me up.
She was there, people got off all out on a night on the town, dressed in shiny random pieces of fabric covering boobs and bottoms. I was young once, I thought.
Jools was there, she started the car and drove us home via Jubilee Way. Across the Channel France was a clear as anything, and four ferries were plying between the two shores. Take us home.
Once home, Jools had prepared Caprese. I sliced some bread and poured wine. On the wireless, Craig spun funk and soul. We ate.
Tired.
It was going to be a hot night, but I was tired enough to sleep through it. Or so I thought.
--------------------------------------------
Norwich has everything. Thus, the normally dry and undemonstrative Nikolaus Pevsner began his survey of the capital of Norfolk in his 1962 volume Buildings of England: Norwich and north-east Norfolk. And there is no doubt that this is one of the best cities of its size in northern Europe. Living in Ipswich as I do, I hear plenty of grumbles about Norwich; but really, although the two places have roughly the same population, Ipswich cannot even begin to compare with regard to its townscape. The only features which the capital of Suffolk can claim to hold above its beautiful northern neighbour are a large central park (Norwich's Chapelfield gardens is not a patch on Ipswich's Christchurch Park) and a large body of water in the heart of the town, perhaps Ipswich's most endearing feature and greatest saving grace.
But Norwich has everything else - to continue Pevsner's eulogy, a cathedral, a castle on a mound right in the middle, walls and towers, a medieval centre with winding streets and alleys, thirty-five medieval parish churches and a river with steamships. It even has hills...
I think it would be possible to visit Norwich and not even know this cathedral was there. The centre of the city is dominated by the castle, and the most familiar feature to visitors is the great market square widened by the clearances of the 1930s, and the fine City Hall built at that time which towers above it. In comparison, Norwich Cathedral sits down in a dip beside the river, walled in by its close, and is visible best from outside the city walls, especially from the east on the riverside, and to the north from Mousehold Heath. If you arrive by road from the south or west, you may not even catch a glimpse of it. The great spire is hidden by those winding streets and alleys, and many of the city's churches are more visible, especially St Giles, St Peter Mancroft in the Market Place, and the vast Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist, on Grapes Hill. It is said that the nave floor of St John the Baptist is at the same height above sea level as the top of the crossing of the Anglican cathedral.
With the possible exception of Lincoln Cathedral, I think that Norwich Cathedral is my favourite cathedral in all England. Call this East of England chauvinism if you like, But Norwich Cathedral has everything you could possible want from a great medieval building. But there is more to it than that. It is also one of the most welcoming cathedrals in England. There is no charge for admission, and they positively encourage you to wander around through the daily business of the cathedral, in the continental manner. No boards saying Silence Please - Service in Progress here. Because of this, the Cathedral becomes an act of witness in itself, and you step into what feels like it probably really is the house of God on Earth. They even used to say the Lord's Prayer over the PA system once an hour, and invite you to stop and join in - I wish they'd go back to doing that. The three pounds you pay for a photography permit must be one of the bargains of the century so far.
Norwich Cathedral is unusual, in that this is the original building. It has been augmented over the centuries of course, but this is still essentially the very first cathedral on this site. This is because the see was only moved to Norwich after the Norman invasion. The Normans saw the wisdom of drawing together ecclesiastical and civil power, and one way in which this might be achieved was by siting the cathedrals in the hearts of important towns. At the time of the conquest, Bishop Herfast had his seat at Thetford, and it was decided to move the see to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. It had moved several times during the previous four centuries, from Walton in Suffolk to North Elmham in Norfolk before Thetford, where the first proper but simple stone building had been raised. But as well as an eye for efficient administration, the Normans brought the idea that Cathedrals should be glorified; already, vast edifices were being raised in Durham, London and Ely. and Bury St Edmunds, with its famous Abbey, was the obvious place for the Diocese of East Anglia to sit.
However, such a move would have removed the Abbey's independent direct line with Rome, and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Province of Canterbury. The Abbey community was determined that this would not happen, and Abbot Baldwin sent representations to the Pope that ensured the survival of St Edmundsbury Abbey's independence. Bishop Herfast would not be allowed to glorify his position in East Anglia in the way his colleagues were doing elsewhere. But his successor, Herbert de Losinga, was more determined - and, perhaps, steeled by his conscience. A Norman, he had bought the Bishopric from the King in 1091, an act of simony that required penance. Building a great cathedral could be seen as that act of penance. But where? Bury was a lost cause; instead, he chose to move the see to a thriving market town in the north-east of his Diocese; a smaller, more remote place than Bury, to be sure, but proximity to the Abbey of St Edmund was perhaps not such a good thing anyway. It tended to cast a rather heavy shadow. And so it was that the great medieval cathedral of the East Anglian bishops came to be built, instead, at Norwich.
Work began in 1094, and seems to have been complete by 1145. It is one of the great Romanesque buildings of northern Europe, its special character a result of responses to fires and collapses over the course of the next few centuries. At the Reformation in the sixteenth century, it became a protestant cathedral of the new Church of England, losing its role as a setting for ancient sacraments and devotions, but being maintained as the administrative seat of a Diocese which covered all of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the ceremonial church of its great city. In the 19th Century, the western part of the Norwich Diocese was transferred into that of Ely, and at the start of the 20th Century the southern parishes became part of the new Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. Today, the Diocese of Norwich consists of north, south and east Norfolk, and the north-eastern tip of Suffolk.
The absence of this great church from the Norfolk Churches site has long been the elephant in the room, so to speak. And having it here at last is, I feel, a mark of how things have changed. When I first started the Norfolk and Suffolk sites back in 1999, I did not have a decent camera, and the earliest entries did not have any photographs at all. How the wheel has turned. Now, the photographs have become the sites, and with no apologies I don't intend to make this a wordy entry.
The perfection of Norwich is of distant views, the cloisters, and the interior. The exterior is hemmed in, and the most familiar part of the building, the west front, is a poor thing, the victim of barbarous restorations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is almost a surprise to step through its mundanity into the soaring glory of the nave. Above, the famous vaulting is home to one of the largest collections of medieval bosses in the world. There are more in the beautiful cloisters.
The view to the east is of the great organ, looking very 17th Century but actually the work of Stephen Dykes Bower in the 1950s. Beyond is the intimacy of the quire and ambulatory with its radial chapels, the best of which is St Luke's chapel, containing the Despenser retable. Bishop Despenser is one of history's villains, putting down the Peasants Revolt in East Anglia with some enthusiasm. It is likely that this retable was made for the cathedral's high altar, possibly even to give thanks for the end of the Revolt. It was discovered upside down in use as a table in the 1840s. This chapel is, unusually, also a parish church; the parish of St Mary in the Marsh, the church of which was demolished at the Reformation, moved into the cathedral. They brought their seven sacrament font with them, and here it remains.
In the ambulatory there are many traces of medieval paint, almost certainly from the original building of the Cathedral. Two curiosities: at the back of the apse is the original Bishop's chair, and rising across the north side of the ambulatory like a bridge is a relic screen.
There is a good range of glass dating from the 14th to the 21st centuries. Highlights include the medieval panels in the north side of the ambulatory, Edward Burne-Jones's bold figures in the north transept, Moira Forsyth's spectacular Benedictine window of 1964 in a south chapel, and the millennium glass high in the north transept, which I think will in time become one of the defining features of the Cathedral. The figure of the Blessed Virgin with the Christ Child seated on her lap is the work of Norfolk-based artist John Hayward, who died recently, but the glass above is Hayward's reworking of Keith New's 1960s glass for St Stephen Walbrook in London, removed from there in the 1980s, and now reset here. Towards the west end of the nave are two sets of Stuart royal arms in glass, a rare survival.
I grew up in a city some sixty miles away from Norwich, but I didn't come here until I was in my mid-teens. I remember wandering around this building and being blown away by it, and I still get that feeling today. There is always something new to find here. My favourite time here is first thing in the morning on a winter Saturday. Often, I can be the only visitor, which only increases the awe. Another time I like to be here in winter is on a Saturday afternoon for choral evensong. Perhaps best of all, though, is to wander and wonder in the cloisters on a bright sunny day, gazing at fabulous bosses almost within arm's reach.
Several English cathedrals have good closes, but Norwich's is the only one in a major city, I think. It creates the sense of an ecclesiastical village at the heart of the city; and then, beyond, the lanes and alleys spread out, still hanging on despite German bombing and asinine redevelopment. And now I think perhaps it is part of the beauty of this building that it is tucked away by the river, a place to seek out and explore. Norwich has everything, says Pevsner. But really, I think this is the very best thing of all.
www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichcathedral/norwichcathedr...
Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382 - 1439) was an English medieval nobleman and military commander. The son of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick and Margaret Ferrers, his godfather was King Richard II. He was knighted at the coronation of King Henry IV, and succeeded as Earl of Warwick in 1401.
Warwick acquired quite a reputation for chivalry, when in 1408 he went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was challenged many times to fight in the sporting combat which was then popular. Hspent much of the next decade fighting the French in the Hundred Years' War. He took a prominent part in the campaigns of 1417–18.
Henry V's will gave Warwick the responsibility for the education of the infant Henry VI of England. This duty required him to travel back and forth between England and Normandy many times, and during these travels, he acted as superintendent of the trial of Joan of Arc.
Richard Beauchamp's will was made at Caversham Castle in 1437. After his debts were paid, the trust endowed the Collegiate Church of St Mary in Warwick, and called for the construction of a new chapel there. The Beauchamp chapel is one of the most splendid late medieval funerary chapels in western Europe.
Richard's tomb, the centrepiece of the chapel, is one of the most important pieces of late medieval English art. John Essex, a London marbler, may have been responsible for the overall design, but the chest was carved from Purbeck marble by John Bourde of Corfe in Dorset. The effigy, by John Massingham, was cast from litten, a copper alloy similar to brass, and then gilded. His head rests on a helm which is surmounted by a swan. At his feet are a bear and a griffin, the badges respectively of the Beauchamps and of his second wife's family, the Despensers. The cage-like structure over the effigy represents a hearse.
A sculpture of how Newport Castle looked like, in the city of Newport, South Wales.
The first castle at "Castell Newyd ar Uysc" (New Castle on the River Usk) — so named to distinguish it from the old Roman port upstream at Caerleon — was a Norman motte possibly built by William Rufus around 1075 but Its exact location is uncertain.
The castle was restored in 1249 by Henry III, and it was held in 1265 by the Earl of Leicester. That same year, Prince Edward occupied the castle, and in 1295, when he was the king, he ordered improvements and repairs. It was ceded to Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester in 1320 and two years later Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March attacked the castle, took its furnishings and set it on fire. Three hundred trees were needed for reconstruction.
The second castle at Newport, commonly known as Newport Castle, was built in the 14th century, possibly by Hugh de Audley, 1st Earl of Gloucester, after de Audley took control of Despenser's lands in 1326, or, more probably, by his son-in-law and successor Ralph, Earl of Stafford. Historians, such as Jeremy Knight, believe it was built between 1327 and 1386.
The castle was first documented in 1405, when it was repaired after being sacked in 1402 in the rebellion by Owain Glyndŵr. Around 1435 further work was undertaken by Humphrey Stafford, Lord of Newport. Owen Tudor was held prisoner within the castle in 1460.
It was occupied in the early 16th century by Henry VIII's uncle, Jasper Tudor. Seized by Henry VIII in 1521, the castle was held by the king until 1547 when it was then possessed by Edward VI. It had suffered from lack of upkeep from 1522, at which date it was already reported to be in disrepair. In 1645, during the Civil War, Colonel Henry Herbert established a garrison of 50 troops at the castle, which was taken by Oliver Cromwell's forces in 1648. The Herbert and Morgan families held it over a 300-year period that began in 1548. It was in a state of ruin by 1743.
In the 19th century, the buildings within the ruin were used as a tannery and later as a brewery. The hall's traceried windows were destroyed in that century, and the brewery was destroyed by a fire in 1883. In 1891, the south tower came into the ownership of the Corporation, and the rest of the castle was bought by Lord Tredegar in 1899. The Office of Works became the guardian of the castle between 1930 and 1950, at which time there was a refurbishment of the stonework.
Information Source:
Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382 - 1439) was an English medieval nobleman and military commander. The son of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick and Margaret Ferrers, his godfather was King Richard II. He was knighted at the coronation of King Henry IV, and succeeded as Earl of Warwick in 1401.
Warwick acquired quite a reputation for chivalry, when in 1408 he went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was challenged many times to fight in the sporting combat which was then popular. Hspent much of the next decade fighting the French in the Hundred Years' War. He took a prominent part in the campaigns of 1417–18.
Henry V's will gave Warwick the responsibility for the education of the infant Henry VI of England. This duty required him to travel back and forth between England and Normandy many times, and during these travels, he acted as superintendent of the trial of Joan of Arc.
Richard Beauchamp's will was made at Caversham Castle in 1437. After his debts were paid, the trust endowed the Collegiate Church of St Mary in Warwick, and called for the construction of a new chapel there. The Beauchamp chapel is one of the most splendid late medieval funerary chapels in western Europe.
Richard's tomb, the centrepiece of the chapel, is one of the most important pieces of late medieval English art. John Essex, a London marbler, may have been responsible for the overall design, but the chest was carved from Purbeck marble by John Bourde of Corfe in Dorset. The effigy, by John Massingham, was cast from litten, a copper alloy similar to brass, and then gilded. His head rests on a helm which is surmounted by a swan. At his feet are a bear and a griffin, the badges respectively of the Beauchamps and of his second wife's family, the Despensers. The cage-like structure over the effigy represents a hearse.
The Norman Keep
The twelve-sided Keep at Cardiff is the finest in Wales and is known as a ‘shell’ keep. Its outer walls provided a shell for smaller buildings within it. From the top of the Keep the panoramic views of the city are breath-taking and to the north you can see as far as Castell Coch. There are approximately 50 steep stone steps leading to the Keep entrance and further steps to reach the viewing platform, but it’s worth the effort!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Castle
Cardiff Castle (Welsh: Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city centre of Cardiff, Wales. The original motte and bailey castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort. The castle was commissioned either by William the Conqueror or by Robert Fitzhamon, and formed the heart of the medieval town of Cardiff and the Marcher Lord territory of Glamorgan. In the 12th century the castle began to be rebuilt in stone, probably by Robert of Gloucester, with a shell keep and substantial defensive walls being erected. Further work was conducted by Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, in the second half of the 13th century. Cardiff Castle was repeatedly involved in the conflicts between the Anglo-Normans and the Welsh, being attacked several times in the 12th century, and stormed in 1404 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr.
After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries the castle was acquired by Richard de Beauchamp in 1423. Richard conducted extensive work on the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses, the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War Cardiff Castle was initially taken by a Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the Battle of St Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned, probably to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.
In the mid-18th century, Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Marquesses of Bute. John Stuart, the first Marquess, employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to renovate the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion, and to landscape the castle grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls. During the first half of the 19th century the family became extremely wealthy as a result of the growth of the coal industry in Glamorgan. The third Marquess, John Crichton-Stuart, used this wealth to back an extensive programme of renovations under William Burges. Burges remodelled the castle in a Gothic revival style, lavishing money and attention on the main range. The resulting interior designs are considered to be amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved".[2] The grounds were re-landscaped and, following the discovery of the old Roman remains, reconstructed walls and a gatehouse in a Roman style were incorporated into the castle design. Extensive landscaped parks were built around the outside of the castle.
In the early 20th century the fourth Marquess inherited the castle and construction work continued into the 1920s. The Bute lands and commercial interests around Cardiff were sold off or nationalised until, by the time of the Second World War, little was left except the castle. During the war, extensive air raid shelters were built in the castle walls; they could hold up to 1,800 people. When the Marquess died in 1947, the castle was given to the city of Cardiff. Today the castle is run as a tourist attraction, with the grounds housing the "Firing Line" regimental museum and interpretation centre. The castle has also served as a venue for events, including musical performances and festivals.
History
1st–4th centuries AD
The future site of Cardiff Castle was first used by the Romans as a defensive location for many years.[3] The first fort was probably built about AD 55 and occupied until AD 80.[4] It was a rectangular structure much larger than the current site, and formed part of the southern Roman border in Wales during the conquest of the Silures.[5] When the border advanced, defences became less important and the fort was replaced with a sequence of two, much smaller, fortifications on the north side of the current site.[6]
A fourth fort was built in the middle of the 3rd century in order to combat the pirate threat along the coast, and forms the basis of the Roman remains seen on the castle site.[7] The fort was almost square in design, approximately 635 feet (194 m) by 603 feet (184 m) large, constructed from limestone brought by sea from Penarth.[8] The fort's irregular shape was determined by the River Taff that flowed along the west side of the walls.[9] The sea would have come much closer to the site than is the case in the 21st century, and the fort would have directly overlooked the harbour.[8] This Roman fort was probably occupied at least until the end of the 4th century, but it is unclear when it was finally abandoned.[10] There is no evidence for the re-occupation of the site until the 11th century.[10]
11th century
Plan of the castle in the 21st century; A - North Gate; B - motte and shell keep; C - outer bailey; D - main lodgings; E - inner bailey; F - the Clock Tower; G - the Black Tower; H - South Gate and barbican tower
The Normans began to make incursions into South Wales from the late 1060s onwards, pushing westwards from their bases in recently occupied England.[11] Their advance was marked by the construction of castles, frequently on old Roman sites, and the creation of regional lordships.[12] The reuse of Roman sites produced considerable savings in the manpower required to construct large earth fortifications.[13]
Cardiff Castle was built during this period. There are two possible dates for the construction: William the Conqueror may have built a castle at Cardiff as early as 1081 on his return from his pilgrimage to St Davids.[14] Alternatively, the first Norman fortification may have been constructed around 1091 by Robert Fitzhamon, the lord of Gloucester.[15] Fitzhamon invaded the region in 1090, and used the castle as a base for the occupation of the rest of southern Glamorgan over the next few years.[16] The site was close to the sea and could be easily supplied by ship, was well protected by the Rivers Taff and Rhymney and also controlled the old Roman road running along the coast.[17]
Cardiff Castle was a motte-and-bailey design. The old Roman walls had collapsed and the Normans used their remains as the basis for the outer castle perimeter, digging a defensive trench and throwing up a 27-foot (8.2 m) high bank of earth over the Roman fortifications.[18] The Normans further divided the castle with an internal wall to form an inner and an outer bailey. In the north-west corner of the castle a wooden keep was constructed on top of a 40-foot (12 m) tall earth motte, surrounded by a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide moat.[19] The motte was the largest built in Wales.[20] The overall area of the castle was around 8.25 acres (3.34 ha); the inner bailey was around 2 acres (0.81 ha) in area.[21] Mills were essential to local communities during this period, and the castle mill was located outside the west side of the castle, fed by the River Taff; under local feudal law, the residents of Cardiff were required to use this mill to grind their own grain.[22]
The conquered lands in Glamorgan were given out in packages called knights' fees, and many of these knights held their lands on condition that they provided forces to protect Cardiff Castle.[23] Under this approach, called a castle-guard system, some knights were required to maintain buildings called "houses" within the castle itself, in the outer bailey.[24] Anglo-Saxon peasants settled the region around Cardiff, bringing with them English customs, although Welsh lords continued to rule the more remote districts almost independently until the 14th century.[25] Cardiff Castle was a Marcher Lord territory, enjoying special privileges and independence from the English Crown. The medieval town of Cardiff spread out from the south side of the castle.[26]
12th–14th centuries
Part of the reconstructed Roman wall (l), the foundations of the internal bailey wall, and the reconstructed Roman north gatehouse (r)
FitzHamon was fatally injured at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106 and died shortly afterwards.[27] Henry I then gave the castle in 1122 to Robert of Gloucester, the king's illegitimate son and the husband of FitzHamon's daughter, Mabe.[28] After the failed attempt of Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror's eldest son, to take England from Henry I, Robert of Normandy was imprisoned in the castle until his death in 1134.[29] Robert held the castle during the troubled years of the Anarchy in England and Wales, and passed it on to his son, William Fitz Robert.[30] Around the middle of the century, possibly under Robert of Gloucester, a 77-foot (23 m) wide, 30-foot (9 m) high shell keep was constructed on top of the motte, along with a stone wall around the south and west sides of the inner bailey.[31] The polygonal shell keep has architectural links to a similar design at Arundel Castle.[32] The building work was probably undertaken in response to the threat posed following the Welsh uprising of 1136.[20]
Tensions with the Welsh continued, and in 1158 Ifor Bach raided the castle and took William hostage for a period.[30] A further attack followed in 1183.[30] By 1184 town walls had been built around Cardiff, and the West Gate to the town was constructed in the gap between the castle and the river.[33] William died in 1183, leaving three daughters. One of these, Isabel, Countess of Gloucester, was declared the sole heir to the estate by Henry II. This was contrary to legal custom in England, and was done in order that Henry could then marry her to his youngest son Prince John and thus provide him with extensive lands.[34] John later divorced Isabel, but he retained control of the castle until she married Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1214.[35]
Upon Isabel's death in 1217 the castle passed through her sister to Gilbert de Clare, becoming part of the Honour of Clare, a major grouping of estates and fortifications in medieval England.[36] The castle formed the centre of the family's power in South Wales, although the de Clares typically preferred to reside in their castles at Clare and Tonbridge.[37] Gilbert's son, Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, carried out building work at the castle in the late 13th century, constructing the Black Tower that forms part of the southern gateway seen today.[38] On the ground floor the tower contained the Stavell Oged and Stavell Wenn chambers, with three rooms constructed above them.[38] Richard was also probably responsible for rebuilding the northern and eastern walls of the inner bailey in stone.[39] The inner bailey was reached through a gatehouse on the eastern side, protected by two circular towers and later called the Exchequer Gate.[40] The defensive work may have been prompted by the threat posed by the hostile Welsh leader Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales.[41]
Richard's grandson, Gilbert de Clare, the last male de Clare, died at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and the castle was given to Hugh Despenser the Younger, the controversial favourite of Edward II.[30] Poor harvests and harsh governance by the Despenser family encouraged a Welsh rebellion under Llywelyn Bren in 1316; this was crushed and Llywelyn was hanged, drawn and quartered in Cardiff Castle in 1318 on Hugh's orders.[42] The execution attracted much criticism from across both the English and Welsh communities, and in 1321 Hugh arrested Sir William Fleminge as a scapegoat for the incident, first detaining him in the Black Tower and then executing him in the castle grounds.[43] Conflict between the Despensers and the other Marcher Lords broke out soon after, leading to the castle being sacked in 1321 during the Despenser War.[30] The Despensers recovered the castle and retained it for the rest of the century, despite the execution of Hugh Despenser for treason in 1326.[44] Under a 1340 charter granted by the Despensers, the castle's constable was made the de facto mayor of Cardiff, controlling the local courts.[45]
15th–16th centuries
By the 15th century, the Despensers were increasingly using Caerphilly Castle as their main residence in the region rather than Cardiff.[46] Thomas le Despenser was executed in 1400 on charges of conspiring against Henry IV.[47] In 1401 rebellion broke out in North Wales under the leadership of Owain Glyndŵr, quickly spreading across the rest of the country. In 1404 Cardiff and the castle were taken by the rebels, causing considerable damage to the Black Tower and the southern gatehouse in the process.[48] On Thomas's death the castle passed first to his young son, Richard, and on his death in 1414, through his daughter Isabel to the Beauchamp family.[47] Isabel first married Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Worcester and then, on his death, to his cousin Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, in 1423.[47]
Richard did not acquire Caerphilly Castle as part of the marriage settlement, so he set about redeveloping Cardiff instead.[49] He built a new tower alongside the Black Tower in 1430, restoring the gateway, and extended the motte defences.[50] He also constructed a substantial new domestic range in the south-west of the site between 1425 and 1439, with a central octagonal tower 75-foot (23 m) high, sporting defensive machicolations, and featuring four smaller polygonal turrets facing the inner bailey.[51] The range was built of Lias ashlar stone with limestone used for some of the details, set upon the spur bases characteristic of South Wales and incorporated parts of the older 4th and 13th century walls.[52] The buildings were influenced by similar work in the previous century at Windsor Castle and would in turn shape renovations at Newport and Nottingham Castles; the octagonal tower has architectural links to Guy's Tower, built at around the same time in Warwick Castle.[53] A flower garden was built to the south of the range, with private access to Richard's chambers.[54] Richard also rebuilt the town's wider defences, including a new stone bridge over the River Taff guarded by the West Gate, finishing the work by 1451.[55]
Cardiff Castle remained in the hands of Richard's son, Henry and Henry's daughter, Anne until 1449.[47] When Anne died, it passed by marriage to Richard Neville, who held it until his death in 1471 during the period of civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses.[47] As the conflict progressed and political fortunes rose and fell, the castle passed from George, the Duke of Clarence, to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to Jasper Tudor, the Duke of Bedford, back to Richard Neville's wife Anne, back to Jasper and finally to Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII.[56] The ascension of the Tudor dynasty to the English throne at the end of the wars heralded a change in the way Wales was administered. The Tudors were Welsh in origin, and their rule eased hostilities between the Welsh and English. As a result, defensive castles became less important.[57] In 1495 Henry VII formally revoked the Marcher territory status of Cardiff Castle and the surrounding territories, bringing them under normal English law as the County of Glamorgan.[58]
The Crown leased the castle to Charles Somerset in 1513; Charles used it while he was living in Cardiff.[59] In 1550 William Herbert, later the Earl of Pembroke, then bought Cardiff Castle and the surrounding estates from Edward VI.[60] The outer bailey contained a range of buildings at this time, and extensive building work was carried out during the century.[61] The Shire Hall had been built in the outer bailey, forming part of a walled complex of buildings that included the lodgings for the traditional twelve holders of castle-guard lands.[62] The outer bailey also included orchards, gardens and a chapel.[63] The castle continued to be used to detain criminals during the 16th century, with the Black Tower being used as a prison to hold them; the heretic Thomas Capper was burnt at the castle on the orders of Henry VIII.[64] The visiting antiquarian John Leland described the keep as "a great thing and strong, but now in some ruine", but the Black Tower was considered to be in good repair.[65] In the inner bailey, the Herberts built an Elizabethan extension to the north end of the main range, with large windows looking onto a new northern garden; the southern garden was replaced by a kitchen garden.[66]
17th–18th centuries
In 1610 the cartographer John Speed produced a map of the castle, and noted that it was "large and in good repair."[67] In 1642, however, civil war broke out between the rival Royalist supporters of King Charles I and Parliament. Cardiff Castle was then owned by Philip Herbert, a moderate Parliamentarian, and the castle was initially held by a pro-Royalist garrison. It was taken by Parliamentary forces in the early period of the war, according to popular tradition by a sneak attack using a secret passageway.[68] The Royalist commander William Seymour, the Marquess of Hertford, then attacked the castle in turn, taking it in a surprise assault. Parliamentary forces and local troops then immediately besieged the castle, retaking it after five hours of fighting and reinstalling a garrison.[69] In early 1645 Mr Carne, the High Sheriff, rebelled against Parliament, taking Cardiff town but initially failing to seize the castle.[69] The King sent forces from Oxford, under the command of Sir Charles Kemys, to reinforce Carne but Parliament despatched a naval squadron to provide support to their forces from the sea.[69] A small battle ensued before the castle was taken by the Royalists.[70]
With the Royalist military position across the country worsening, King Charles himself came to Cardiff Castle that July to meet with local Welsh leaders.[71] Relations between his commander in the region, Sir Charles Gerard, and the people of Glamorgan had deteriorated badly and when Charles left the castle, he was confronted by a small army of angry locals, demanding to be given control of the castle.[71] These clubmen then declared themselves the "Peaceable Army" and increased their demands to include near independence for the region.[72] After negotiations, a compromise was found in which the royal garrison would quit the castle, to be replaced by a local Glamorgan force, commanded by Sir Richard Beaupré; in return, £800 and a force of a thousand men were promised to Charles.[71] In September, Charles returned to South Wales and reneged on the agreement, disbanding the Peaceable Army, but his military position in the region was collapsing.[73] The Peaceable Army's leaders switched sides and forced the surrender of Cardiff and the castle to Parliament in mid-September.[73]
With the outbreak of fresh fighting in 1648, a Royalist army of 8,000 fresh recruits was mustered under the command of General Rowland Laugharne and Sir Edward Stradling, with the intent of retaking Cardiff.[74] Parliamentary forces in Brecon under the command of Colonel Thomas Horton moved quickly to reinforce the castle, although with only 3,000 men they were content to wait until a larger army under Oliver Cromwell could arrive from Gloucester.[74] With time against them, the Royalist army attacked, leading to the battle of St Fagans just to the west of Cardiff, and a heavy Royalist defeat.[75]
After the war, Cardiff Castle escaped the slighting, or deliberate damage and destruction, that affected many other castles.[76] Probably because of the threat of a pro-Royalist invasion by the Presbyterian Scots, a Parliamentary garrison was installed instead and the castle remained intact.[76] The Herberts continued to own the castle as the Earls of Pembroke, both during the interregnum and after the restoration of Charles II.[77] The castle's constable continued to act as mayor of the town of Cardiff, controlling the meetings of the town's burgesses, bailffs and aldermen; the Herberts usually appointed members of the more important local gentry to this position during the period.[78]
Lady Charlotte Herbert was the last of the family to control Cardiff Castle.[77] She married twice, latterly to Thomas, Viscount Windsor and on her death in 1733 the castle passed to their son, Herbert.[77] Herbert's daughter, Charlotte Jane Windsor, married John Stuart, who rose to become the Marquess of Bute, beginning a family line that would control the castle for the next century.[77]
In 1776 the Marquess began to renovate the property with the intention of turning it into a residence for his son, John.[79] The grounds were radically altered under a programme of work that involved Capability Brown and his son-in-law, Henry Holland.[80] The stone wall that separated the inner and outer baileys was destroyed using gunpowder, the Shire Hall and the knights' houses in the outer bailey were destroyed and the remaining ground partially flattened; the whole of the area was laid with turf.[81] Considerable work was carried out on the main lodgings, demolishing the Herbert additions, building two new wings and removing many of the older features to produce a more contemporary, 18th century appearance.[82] The keep and motte was stripped of the ivy and trees that had grown up them, and a spiral path was laid down around the motte.[83] The motte's moat was filled in as part of the landscaping.[84] A summer house was built in the south-east corner of the castle.[83] Further work was planned on the property, including a reported proposal to roof the keep in copper, insert new windows and turn it into an assembly room for dances, but these projects were cut short by the Marquess's son's death in 1794.[82]
19th century
In 1814 Lord Bute's grandson, John, inherited his title and the castle. In 1825 the new Marquess began a sequence of investments in the Cardiff Docks, an expensive programme of work that would enable Cardiff to become a major coal exporting port.[85] Although the Docks were not particularly profitable, they transformed the value of the Butes' mining and land interests, making the family immensely wealthy.[86] By 1900, the family estate owned 22,000 acres (8,900 ha) of land in Glamorgan.[87]
The second Marquess preferred to live on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and only used Cardiff Castle occasionally.[88] The castle saw little investment and only four full-time servants were maintained on the premises, meaning that cooked food had to be brought across from the kitchens at a nearby hotel.[89] The castle remained at the centre of the Butes' political power base in Cardiff, however, with their faction sometimes termed as "the Castle party".[90] During the violent protests of the Merthyr Rising of 1831, the Marquess-based himself at Cardiff Castle, from where he directed operations and kept Whitehall informed of the unfolding events.[91] The governance of the city of Cardiff was finally reformed by an act of Parliament in the 1835, introducing a town council and a mayor, severing the link with the castle constable.[92]
The Clock Tower
The third Marquess of Bute, again called John, inherited the title and castle in 1848.[93] He was then less than a year old, and as he grew up he came to despise the existing castle, believing that it represented a mediocre, half-hearted example of the Gothic style.[94] Bute engaged the architect William Burges, to undertake the remodelling of the castle. The two shared a passion in medieval Gothic Revivalism and this, combined with Bute's huge financial resources, enabled Burges to rebuild the property on a grand scale. Burges brought with him almost of all of the team that had supported him on earlier projects, including John Starling Chapple, William Frame and Horatio Lonsdale.[95] Burges's contribution, in particular his research into the history of the castle and his architectural imagination, was critical to the transformation.[96]
Work began on Bute's coming of age in 1868 with the construction of the 150-foot (46 m) high Clock Tower.[97] The tower, built in Burges's signature Forest of Dean ashlar stone, formed a suite of bachelor's rooms, comprising a bedroom, a servant's room and the Summer and Winter smoking rooms.[97] Externally, the tower was a re-working of a design Burges had previously used in an unsuccessful competition entry for the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Internally, the rooms were sumptuously decorated with gildings, carvings and cartoons, many allegorical in style, depicting the seasons, myths and fables.[98] In his A History Of The Gothic Revival, written as the tower was being built, Charles Locke Eastlake wrote of Burges's "peculiar talents (and) luxuriant fancy."[99] The Summer Smoking Room rested at the top of the structure and was two storeys high with an internal balcony that, through an unbroken band of windows, gave views of the Cardiff Docks, the Bristol Channel, and the Glamorgan countryside. The floor had a map of the world in mosaic. The sculpture was created by Thomas Nicholls.[100]
As the rest of the castle was developed, work progressed along the rest of the 18th century range including the construction of the Guest Tower, the Arab Room, the Chaucer Room, the Nursery, the Library, the Banqueting Hall and bedrooms for both Lord and Lady Bute.[95] In plan, the new castle followed the arrangement of a standard Victorian country house quite closely. The Bute Tower included Lord Bute's bedroom and ended in another highlight, the Roof Garden, featuring a sculpture of the Madonna and child by Ceccardo Fucigna. Bute's bedroom contained extensive religious iconography and an en-suite bathroom. The Octagon Tower followed, including an oratory, built on the spot where Bute's father died, and the Chaucer Room, the roof of which is considered by historian Mark Girouard to be a "superb example of Burges's genius".[101]
The central part of the castle comprised a two-storey banqueting hall, with the library below. Both are enormous, the latter to hold part of the bibliophile Marquess's vast library. Both included elaborate carvings and fireplaces, those in the banqueting hall depicting the castle itself in the time of Robert, Duke of Normandy.[102] The decoration here is less impressive than elsewhere in the castle, as much of it was completed after Burges's death by Lonsdale, a less talented painter.[101] The Arab Room in the Herbert Tower remains however one of Burges's masterpieces. Its jelly mould ceiling in a Moorish style is particularly notable. It was this room on which Burges was working when he died and Bute placed Burges's initials, and his own, and the date 1881 in the fireplace as a memorial.[103] The central portion of the castle also included the Grand Staircase, recorded in a watercolour perspective prepared by Axel Haig.[104]
Burges's interiors at Cardiff Castle have been widely praised. The historian Megan Aldrich considers them amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved", J. Mordaunt Crook has described them as "three dimensional passports to fairy kingdoms and realms of gold", and John Newman praises them as "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."[105] The exterior of the castle, however, has received a more mixed reception from critics. Crook admires the variegated and romantic silhouette of the building, but architect John Grant considered them to present a "picturesque if not happy combination" of varying historical styles, and Adrian Pettifer criticises them as "incongruous" and excessively Gothic in style.[106]
Work was also carried out on the castle grounds, the interior being flattened further, destroying much of the medieval and Roman archaeological remains.[107] In 1889, Lord Bute's building works uncovered the remains of the old Roman fort for the first time since the 11th century, leading to archaeological investigations being carried out in 1890.[9] New walls in a Roman style were built by William Frame on the foundations of the originals, complete with a reconstructed Roman North Gate, and the outer medieval bank was stripped away around the new walls.[108]
The grounds were extensively planted with trees and shrubs, including over the motte.[83] From the late 18th century until the 1850s the castle grounds were completely open to the public, but restrictions were imposed in 1858 and as a replacement the 434 acres of land to the west and north of the castle was turned into Bute Park.[109] From 1868, the castle grounds were closed to the public altogether.[108] Stables were built just to the north of the castle, but only half were completed during the 19th century.[110] The Animal Wall was built along the south side of the castle, decorated with statues of animals, and the Swiss Bridge – a combination of summerhouse and river-crossing – was erected over the river by the West Gate.[111] Cathays Park was built on the east side of the castle, but was sold to the city of Cardiff in 1898.[112]
20th and 21st centuries
John, the fourth Marquess, acquired the castle in 1900 on the death of his father, and the family estates and investments around the castle began to rapidly reduce in size.[113] Cardiff had grown hugely in the previous century, its population increasing from 1,870 in 1800 to around 250,000 in 1900, but the coal trade began to diminish after 1918 and industry suffered during the depression of the 1920s.[114] John only inherited a part of the Butes' Glamorgan estates, and in the first decades of the 20th century he sold off much of the remaining assets around Cardiff, including the coal mines, docks and railway companies, with the bulk of the land interests being finally sold off or nationalised in 1938.[113]
Development work on the castle continued. There was extensive restoration of the medieval masonry in 1921, with architect John Grant rebuilding the South Gate and the barbican tower, and reconstructing the medieval West Gate and town wall alongside the castle, with the Swiss Bridge being moved in 1927 to make room for the new West Gate development.[115] Further archaeological investigations were carried out into the Roman walls in 1922 and 1923, leading to Grant redesigning the northern Roman gatehouse.[116] The second half of the castle stables were finally completed.[83] The Animal Wall was moved in the 1920s to the west side of the castle to enclose a pre-Raphaelite themed garden.[112] The grand staircase in the main range was torn out in the 1930s.[117] During World War II, extensive air-raid shelters were tunnelled out within the medieval walls, with eight different sections, able to hold up to 1,800 people in total, and the castle was also used to tether barrage balloons above the city.[118]
In 1947, the John, the fifth Marquess, inherited the castle on the death of his father and faced considerable death duties.[119] He sold the very last of the Bute lands in Cardiff and gave the castle and the surrounding park to the city on behalf of the people of Cardiff; the family flag was taken down from the castle as part of the official hand-over ceremony.[120] The castle was protected as a grade I listed building and as a scheduled monument.[121]
Cardiff Castle is now run as a tourist attraction, and is one of the most popular sites in the city.[122] The castle is not fully furnished, as the furniture and fittings in the castle were removed by the Marquess in 1947 and subsequently disposed of; an extensive restoration has been carried out, however, of the fittings originally designed for the Clock Tower by Burges.[123] The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, founded in 1949, was housed in the castle's main range for many years, but moved into the castle's former stables north of the castle in 1998.[124] A new interpretation centre, which opened in 2008, was built alongside the South Gate at a cost of £6.5 million, and the castle also contains "Firing Line", the joint regimental museum of the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards and the Royal Welsh.[125]
The castle has been used for a range of cultural and social events. The castle has seen various musical performances, including by Tom Jones, Green Day and the Stereophonics, with a capacity to accommodate over 10,000 people. During the 1960s and 1970s the castle was the setting for a sequence of military tattoos.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Castle
Cardiff Castle (Welsh: Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city centre of Cardiff, Wales. The original motte and bailey castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort. The castle was commissioned either by William the Conqueror or by Robert Fitzhamon, and formed the heart of the medieval town of Cardiff and the Marcher Lord territory of Glamorgan. In the 12th century the castle began to be rebuilt in stone, probably by Robert of Gloucester, with a shell keep and substantial defensive walls being erected. Further work was conducted by Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, in the second half of the 13th century. Cardiff Castle was repeatedly involved in the conflicts between the Anglo-Normans and the Welsh, being attacked several times in the 12th century, and stormed in 1404 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr.
After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries the castle was acquired by Richard de Beauchamp in 1423. Richard conducted extensive work on the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses, the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War Cardiff Castle was initially taken by a Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the Battle of St Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned, probably to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.
In the mid-18th century, Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Marquesses of Bute. John Stuart, the first Marquess, employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to renovate the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion, and to landscape the castle grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls. During the first half of the 19th century the family became extremely wealthy as a result of the growth of the coal industry in Glamorgan. The third Marquess, John Crichton-Stuart, used this wealth to back an extensive programme of renovations under William Burges. Burges remodelled the castle in a Gothic revival style, lavishing money and attention on the main range. The resulting interior designs are considered to be amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved".[2] The grounds were re-landscaped and, following the discovery of the old Roman remains, reconstructed walls and a gatehouse in a Roman style were incorporated into the castle design. Extensive landscaped parks were built around the outside of the castle.
In the early 20th century the fourth Marquess inherited the castle and construction work continued into the 1920s. The Bute lands and commercial interests around Cardiff were sold off or nationalised until, by the time of the Second World War, little was left except the castle. During the war, extensive air raid shelters were built in the castle walls; they could hold up to 1,800 people. When the Marquess died in 1947, the castle was given to the city of Cardiff. Today the castle is run as a tourist attraction, with the grounds housing the "Firing Line" regimental museum and interpretation centre. The castle has also served as a venue for events, including musical performances and festivals.
History
1st–4th centuries AD
The future site of Cardiff Castle was first used by the Romans as a defensive location for many years.[3] The first fort was probably built about AD 55 and occupied until AD 80.[4] It was a rectangular structure much larger than the current site, and formed part of the southern Roman border in Wales during the conquest of the Silures.[5] When the border advanced, defences became less important and the fort was replaced with a sequence of two, much smaller, fortifications on the north side of the current site.[6]
A fourth fort was built in the middle of the 3rd century in order to combat the pirate threat along the coast, and forms the basis of the Roman remains seen on the castle site.[7] The fort was almost square in design, approximately 635 feet (194 m) by 603 feet (184 m) large, constructed from limestone brought by sea from Penarth.[8] The fort's irregular shape was determined by the River Taff that flowed along the west side of the walls.[9] The sea would have come much closer to the site than is the case in the 21st century, and the fort would have directly overlooked the harbour.[8] This Roman fort was probably occupied at least until the end of the 4th century, but it is unclear when it was finally abandoned.[10] There is no evidence for the re-occupation of the site until the 11th century.[10]
11th century
Plan of the castle in the 21st century; A - North Gate; B - motte and shell keep; C - outer bailey; D - main lodgings; E - inner bailey; F - the Clock Tower; G - the Black Tower; H - South Gate and barbican tower
The Normans began to make incursions into South Wales from the late 1060s onwards, pushing westwards from their bases in recently occupied England.[11] Their advance was marked by the construction of castles, frequently on old Roman sites, and the creation of regional lordships.[12] The reuse of Roman sites produced considerable savings in the manpower required to construct large earth fortifications.[13]
Cardiff Castle was built during this period. There are two possible dates for the construction: William the Conqueror may have built a castle at Cardiff as early as 1081 on his return from his pilgrimage to St Davids.[14] Alternatively, the first Norman fortification may have been constructed around 1091 by Robert Fitzhamon, the lord of Gloucester.[15] Fitzhamon invaded the region in 1090, and used the castle as a base for the occupation of the rest of southern Glamorgan over the next few years.[16] The site was close to the sea and could be easily supplied by ship, was well protected by the Rivers Taff and Rhymney and also controlled the old Roman road running along the coast.[17]
Cardiff Castle was a motte-and-bailey design. The old Roman walls had collapsed and the Normans used their remains as the basis for the outer castle perimeter, digging a defensive trench and throwing up a 27-foot (8.2 m) high bank of earth over the Roman fortifications.[18] The Normans further divided the castle with an internal wall to form an inner and an outer bailey. In the north-west corner of the castle a wooden keep was constructed on top of a 40-foot (12 m) tall earth motte, surrounded by a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide moat.[19] The motte was the largest built in Wales.[20] The overall area of the castle was around 8.25 acres (3.34 ha); the inner bailey was around 2 acres (0.81 ha) in area.[21] Mills were essential to local communities during this period, and the castle mill was located outside the west side of the castle, fed by the River Taff; under local feudal law, the residents of Cardiff were required to use this mill to grind their own grain.[22]
The conquered lands in Glamorgan were given out in packages called knights' fees, and many of these knights held their lands on condition that they provided forces to protect Cardiff Castle.[23] Under this approach, called a castle-guard system, some knights were required to maintain buildings called "houses" within the castle itself, in the outer bailey.[24] Anglo-Saxon peasants settled the region around Cardiff, bringing with them English customs, although Welsh lords continued to rule the more remote districts almost independently until the 14th century.[25] Cardiff Castle was a Marcher Lord territory, enjoying special privileges and independence from the English Crown. The medieval town of Cardiff spread out from the south side of the castle.[26]
12th–14th centuries
Part of the reconstructed Roman wall (l), the foundations of the internal bailey wall, and the reconstructed Roman north gatehouse (r)
FitzHamon was fatally injured at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106 and died shortly afterwards.[27] Henry I then gave the castle in 1122 to Robert of Gloucester, the king's illegitimate son and the husband of FitzHamon's daughter, Mabe.[28] After the failed attempt of Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror's eldest son, to take England from Henry I, Robert of Normandy was imprisoned in the castle until his death in 1134.[29] Robert held the castle during the troubled years of the Anarchy in England and Wales, and passed it on to his son, William Fitz Robert.[30] Around the middle of the century, possibly under Robert of Gloucester, a 77-foot (23 m) wide, 30-foot (9 m) high shell keep was constructed on top of the motte, along with a stone wall around the south and west sides of the inner bailey.[31] The polygonal shell keep has architectural links to a similar design at Arundel Castle.[32] The building work was probably undertaken in response to the threat posed following the Welsh uprising of 1136.[20]
Tensions with the Welsh continued, and in 1158 Ifor Bach raided the castle and took William hostage for a period.[30] A further attack followed in 1183.[30] By 1184 town walls had been built around Cardiff, and the West Gate to the town was constructed in the gap between the castle and the river.[33] William died in 1183, leaving three daughters. One of these, Isabel, Countess of Gloucester, was declared the sole heir to the estate by Henry II. This was contrary to legal custom in England, and was done in order that Henry could then marry her to his youngest son Prince John and thus provide him with extensive lands.[34] John later divorced Isabel, but he retained control of the castle until she married Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1214.[35]
Upon Isabel's death in 1217 the castle passed through her sister to Gilbert de Clare, becoming part of the Honour of Clare, a major grouping of estates and fortifications in medieval England.[36] The castle formed the centre of the family's power in South Wales, although the de Clares typically preferred to reside in their castles at Clare and Tonbridge.[37] Gilbert's son, Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, carried out building work at the castle in the late 13th century, constructing the Black Tower that forms part of the southern gateway seen today.[38] On the ground floor the tower contained the Stavell Oged and Stavell Wenn chambers, with three rooms constructed above them.[38] Richard was also probably responsible for rebuilding the northern and eastern walls of the inner bailey in stone.[39] The inner bailey was reached through a gatehouse on the eastern side, protected by two circular towers and later called the Exchequer Gate.[40] The defensive work may have been prompted by the threat posed by the hostile Welsh leader Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales.[41]
Richard's grandson, Gilbert de Clare, the last male de Clare, died at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and the castle was given to Hugh Despenser the Younger, the controversial favourite of Edward II.[30] Poor harvests and harsh governance by the Despenser family encouraged a Welsh rebellion under Llywelyn Bren in 1316; this was crushed and Llywelyn was hanged, drawn and quartered in Cardiff Castle in 1318 on Hugh's orders.[42] The execution attracted much criticism from across both the English and Welsh communities, and in 1321 Hugh arrested Sir William Fleminge as a scapegoat for the incident, first detaining him in the Black Tower and then executing him in the castle grounds.[43] Conflict between the Despensers and the other Marcher Lords broke out soon after, leading to the castle being sacked in 1321 during the Despenser War.[30] The Despensers recovered the castle and retained it for the rest of the century, despite the execution of Hugh Despenser for treason in 1326.[44] Under a 1340 charter granted by the Despensers, the castle's constable was made the de facto mayor of Cardiff, controlling the local courts.[45]
15th–16th centuries
By the 15th century, the Despensers were increasingly using Caerphilly Castle as their main residence in the region rather than Cardiff.[46] Thomas le Despenser was executed in 1400 on charges of conspiring against Henry IV.[47] In 1401 rebellion broke out in North Wales under the leadership of Owain Glyndŵr, quickly spreading across the rest of the country. In 1404 Cardiff and the castle were taken by the rebels, causing considerable damage to the Black Tower and the southern gatehouse in the process.[48] On Thomas's death the castle passed first to his young son, Richard, and on his death in 1414, through his daughter Isabel to the Beauchamp family.[47] Isabel first married Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Worcester and then, on his death, to his cousin Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, in 1423.[47]
Richard did not acquire Caerphilly Castle as part of the marriage settlement, so he set about redeveloping Cardiff instead.[49] He built a new tower alongside the Black Tower in 1430, restoring the gateway, and extended the motte defences.[50] He also constructed a substantial new domestic range in the south-west of the site between 1425 and 1439, with a central octagonal tower 75-foot (23 m) high, sporting defensive machicolations, and featuring four smaller polygonal turrets facing the inner bailey.[51] The range was built of Lias ashlar stone with limestone used for some of the details, set upon the spur bases characteristic of South Wales and incorporated parts of the older 4th and 13th century walls.[52] The buildings were influenced by similar work in the previous century at Windsor Castle and would in turn shape renovations at Newport and Nottingham Castles; the octagonal tower has architectural links to Guy's Tower, built at around the same time in Warwick Castle.[53] A flower garden was built to the south of the range, with private access to Richard's chambers.[54] Richard also rebuilt the town's wider defences, including a new stone bridge over the River Taff guarded by the West Gate, finishing the work by 1451.[55]
Cardiff Castle remained in the hands of Richard's son, Henry and Henry's daughter, Anne until 1449.[47] When Anne died, it passed by marriage to Richard Neville, who held it until his death in 1471 during the period of civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses.[47] As the conflict progressed and political fortunes rose and fell, the castle passed from George, the Duke of Clarence, to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to Jasper Tudor, the Duke of Bedford, back to Richard Neville's wife Anne, back to Jasper and finally to Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII.[56] The ascension of the Tudor dynasty to the English throne at the end of the wars heralded a change in the way Wales was administered. The Tudors were Welsh in origin, and their rule eased hostilities between the Welsh and English. As a result, defensive castles became less important.[57] In 1495 Henry VII formally revoked the Marcher territory status of Cardiff Castle and the surrounding territories, bringing them under normal English law as the County of Glamorgan.[58]
The Crown leased the castle to Charles Somerset in 1513; Charles used it while he was living in Cardiff.[59] In 1550 William Herbert, later the Earl of Pembroke, then bought Cardiff Castle and the surrounding estates from Edward VI.[60] The outer bailey contained a range of buildings at this time, and extensive building work was carried out during the century.[61] The Shire Hall had been built in the outer bailey, forming part of a walled complex of buildings that included the lodgings for the traditional twelve holders of castle-guard lands.[62] The outer bailey also included orchards, gardens and a chapel.[63] The castle continued to be used to detain criminals during the 16th century, with the Black Tower being used as a prison to hold them; the heretic Thomas Capper was burnt at the castle on the orders of Henry VIII.[64] The visiting antiquarian John Leland described the keep as "a great thing and strong, but now in some ruine", but the Black Tower was considered to be in good repair.[65] In the inner bailey, the Herberts built an Elizabethan extension to the north end of the main range, with large windows looking onto a new northern garden; the southern garden was replaced by a kitchen garden.[66]
17th–18th centuries
In 1610 the cartographer John Speed produced a map of the castle, and noted that it was "large and in good repair."[67] In 1642, however, civil war broke out between the rival Royalist supporters of King Charles I and Parliament. Cardiff Castle was then owned by Philip Herbert, a moderate Parliamentarian, and the castle was initially held by a pro-Royalist garrison. It was taken by Parliamentary forces in the early period of the war, according to popular tradition by a sneak attack using a secret passageway.[68] The Royalist commander William Seymour, the Marquess of Hertford, then attacked the castle in turn, taking it in a surprise assault. Parliamentary forces and local troops then immediately besieged the castle, retaking it after five hours of fighting and reinstalling a garrison.[69] In early 1645 Mr Carne, the High Sheriff, rebelled against Parliament, taking Cardiff town but initially failing to seize the castle.[69] The King sent forces from Oxford, under the command of Sir Charles Kemys, to reinforce Carne but Parliament despatched a naval squadron to provide support to their forces from the sea.[69] A small battle ensued before the castle was taken by the Royalists.[70]
With the Royalist military position across the country worsening, King Charles himself came to Cardiff Castle that July to meet with local Welsh leaders.[71] Relations between his commander in the region, Sir Charles Gerard, and the people of Glamorgan had deteriorated badly and when Charles left the castle, he was confronted by a small army of angry locals, demanding to be given control of the castle.[71] These clubmen then declared themselves the "Peaceable Army" and increased their demands to include near independence for the region.[72] After negotiations, a compromise was found in which the royal garrison would quit the castle, to be replaced by a local Glamorgan force, commanded by Sir Richard Beaupré; in return, £800 and a force of a thousand men were promised to Charles.[71] In September, Charles returned to South Wales and reneged on the agreement, disbanding the Peaceable Army, but his military position in the region was collapsing.[73] The Peaceable Army's leaders switched sides and forced the surrender of Cardiff and the castle to Parliament in mid-September.[73]
With the outbreak of fresh fighting in 1648, a Royalist army of 8,000 fresh recruits was mustered under the command of General Rowland Laugharne and Sir Edward Stradling, with the intent of retaking Cardiff.[74] Parliamentary forces in Brecon under the command of Colonel Thomas Horton moved quickly to reinforce the castle, although with only 3,000 men they were content to wait until a larger army under Oliver Cromwell could arrive from Gloucester.[74] With time against them, the Royalist army attacked, leading to the battle of St Fagans just to the west of Cardiff, and a heavy Royalist defeat.[75]
After the war, Cardiff Castle escaped the slighting, or deliberate damage and destruction, that affected many other castles.[76] Probably because of the threat of a pro-Royalist invasion by the Presbyterian Scots, a Parliamentary garrison was installed instead and the castle remained intact.[76] The Herberts continued to own the castle as the Earls of Pembroke, both during the interregnum and after the restoration of Charles II.[77] The castle's constable continued to act as mayor of the town of Cardiff, controlling the meetings of the town's burgesses, bailffs and aldermen; the Herberts usually appointed members of the more important local gentry to this position during the period.[78]
Lady Charlotte Herbert was the last of the family to control Cardiff Castle.[77] She married twice, latterly to Thomas, Viscount Windsor and on her death in 1733 the castle passed to their son, Herbert.[77] Herbert's daughter, Charlotte Jane Windsor, married John Stuart, who rose to become the Marquess of Bute, beginning a family line that would control the castle for the next century.[77]
In 1776 the Marquess began to renovate the property with the intention of turning it into a residence for his son, John.[79] The grounds were radically altered under a programme of work that involved Capability Brown and his son-in-law, Henry Holland.[80] The stone wall that separated the inner and outer baileys was destroyed using gunpowder, the Shire Hall and the knights' houses in the outer bailey were destroyed and the remaining ground partially flattened; the whole of the area was laid with turf.[81] Considerable work was carried out on the main lodgings, demolishing the Herbert additions, building two new wings and removing many of the older features to produce a more contemporary, 18th century appearance.[82] The keep and motte was stripped of the ivy and trees that had grown up them, and a spiral path was laid down around the motte.[83] The motte's moat was filled in as part of the landscaping.[84] A summer house was built in the south-east corner of the castle.[83] Further work was planned on the property, including a reported proposal to roof the keep in copper, insert new windows and turn it into an assembly room for dances, but these projects were cut short by the Marquess's son's death in 1794.[82]
19th century
In 1814 Lord Bute's grandson, John, inherited his title and the castle. In 1825 the new Marquess began a sequence of investments in the Cardiff Docks, an expensive programme of work that would enable Cardiff to become a major coal exporting port.[85] Although the Docks were not particularly profitable, they transformed the value of the Butes' mining and land interests, making the family immensely wealthy.[86] By 1900, the family estate owned 22,000 acres (8,900 ha) of land in Glamorgan.[87]
The second Marquess preferred to live on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and only used Cardiff Castle occasionally.[88] The castle saw little investment and only four full-time servants were maintained on the premises, meaning that cooked food had to be brought across from the kitchens at a nearby hotel.[89] The castle remained at the centre of the Butes' political power base in Cardiff, however, with their faction sometimes termed as "the Castle party".[90] During the violent protests of the Merthyr Rising of 1831, the Marquess-based himself at Cardiff Castle, from where he directed operations and kept Whitehall informed of the unfolding events.[91] The governance of the city of Cardiff was finally reformed by an act of Parliament in the 1835, introducing a town council and a mayor, severing the link with the castle constable.[92]
The Clock Tower
The third Marquess of Bute, again called John, inherited the title and castle in 1848.[93] He was then less than a year old, and as he grew up he came to despise the existing castle, believing that it represented a mediocre, half-hearted example of the Gothic style.[94] Bute engaged the architect William Burges, to undertake the remodelling of the castle. The two shared a passion in medieval Gothic Revivalism and this, combined with Bute's huge financial resources, enabled Burges to rebuild the property on a grand scale. Burges brought with him almost of all of the team that had supported him on earlier projects, including John Starling Chapple, William Frame and Horatio Lonsdale.[95] Burges's contribution, in particular his research into the history of the castle and his architectural imagination, was critical to the transformation.[96]
Work began on Bute's coming of age in 1868 with the construction of the 150-foot (46 m) high Clock Tower.[97] The tower, built in Burges's signature Forest of Dean ashlar stone, formed a suite of bachelor's rooms, comprising a bedroom, a servant's room and the Summer and Winter smoking rooms.[97] Externally, the tower was a re-working of a design Burges had previously used in an unsuccessful competition entry for the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Internally, the rooms were sumptuously decorated with gildings, carvings and cartoons, many allegorical in style, depicting the seasons, myths and fables.[98] In his A History Of The Gothic Revival, written as the tower was being built, Charles Locke Eastlake wrote of Burges's "peculiar talents (and) luxuriant fancy."[99] The Summer Smoking Room rested at the top of the structure and was two storeys high with an internal balcony that, through an unbroken band of windows, gave views of the Cardiff Docks, the Bristol Channel, and the Glamorgan countryside. The floor had a map of the world in mosaic. The sculpture was created by Thomas Nicholls.[100]
As the rest of the castle was developed, work progressed along the rest of the 18th century range including the construction of the Guest Tower, the Arab Room, the Chaucer Room, the Nursery, the Library, the Banqueting Hall and bedrooms for both Lord and Lady Bute.[95] In plan, the new castle followed the arrangement of a standard Victorian country house quite closely. The Bute Tower included Lord Bute's bedroom and ended in another highlight, the Roof Garden, featuring a sculpture of the Madonna and child by Ceccardo Fucigna. Bute's bedroom contained extensive religious iconography and an en-suite bathroom. The Octagon Tower followed, including an oratory, built on the spot where Bute's father died, and the Chaucer Room, the roof of which is considered by historian Mark Girouard to be a "superb example of Burges's genius".[101]
The central part of the castle comprised a two-storey banqueting hall, with the library below. Both are enormous, the latter to hold part of the bibliophile Marquess's vast library. Both included elaborate carvings and fireplaces, those in the banqueting hall depicting the castle itself in the time of Robert, Duke of Normandy.[102] The decoration here is less impressive than elsewhere in the castle, as much of it was completed after Burges's death by Lonsdale, a less talented painter.[101] The Arab Room in the Herbert Tower remains however one of Burges's masterpieces. Its jelly mould ceiling in a Moorish style is particularly notable. It was this room on which Burges was working when he died and Bute placed Burges's initials, and his own, and the date 1881 in the fireplace as a memorial.[103] The central portion of the castle also included the Grand Staircase, recorded in a watercolour perspective prepared by Axel Haig.[104]
Burges's interiors at Cardiff Castle have been widely praised. The historian Megan Aldrich considers them amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved", J. Mordaunt Crook has described them as "three dimensional passports to fairy kingdoms and realms of gold", and John Newman praises them as "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."[105] The exterior of the castle, however, has received a more mixed reception from critics. Crook admires the variegated and romantic silhouette of the building, but architect John Grant considered them to present a "picturesque if not happy combination" of varying historical styles, and Adrian Pettifer criticises them as "incongruous" and excessively Gothic in style.[106]
Work was also carried out on the castle grounds, the interior being flattened further, destroying much of the medieval and Roman archaeological remains.[107] In 1889, Lord Bute's building works uncovered the remains of the old Roman fort for the first time since the 11th century, leading to archaeological investigations being carried out in 1890.[9] New walls in a Roman style were built by William Frame on the foundations of the originals, complete with a reconstructed Roman North Gate, and the outer medieval bank was stripped away around the new walls.[108]
The grounds were extensively planted with trees and shrubs, including over the motte.[83] From the late 18th century until the 1850s the castle grounds were completely open to the public, but restrictions were imposed in 1858 and as a replacement the 434 acres of land to the west and north of the castle was turned into Bute Park.[109] From 1868, the castle grounds were closed to the public altogether.[108] Stables were built just to the north of the castle, but only half were completed during the 19th century.[110] The Animal Wall was built along the south side of the castle, decorated with statues of animals, and the Swiss Bridge – a combination of summerhouse and river-crossing – was erected over the river by the West Gate.[111] Cathays Park was built on the east side of the castle, but was sold to the city of Cardiff in 1898.[112]
20th and 21st centuries
John, the fourth Marquess, acquired the castle in 1900 on the death of his father, and the family estates and investments around the castle began to rapidly reduce in size.[113] Cardiff had grown hugely in the previous century, its population increasing from 1,870 in 1800 to around 250,000 in 1900, but the coal trade began to diminish after 1918 and industry suffered during the depression of the 1920s.[114] John only inherited a part of the Butes' Glamorgan estates, and in the first decades of the 20th century he sold off much of the remaining assets around Cardiff, including the coal mines, docks and railway companies, with the bulk of the land interests being finally sold off or nationalised in 1938.[113]
Development work on the castle continued. There was extensive restoration of the medieval masonry in 1921, with architect John Grant rebuilding the South Gate and the barbican tower, and reconstructing the medieval West Gate and town wall alongside the castle, with the Swiss Bridge being moved in 1927 to make room for the new West Gate development.[115] Further archaeological investigations were carried out into the Roman walls in 1922 and 1923, leading to Grant redesigning the northern Roman gatehouse.[116] The second half of the castle stables were finally completed.[83] The Animal Wall was moved in the 1920s to the west side of the castle to enclose a pre-Raphaelite themed garden.[112] The grand staircase in the main range was torn out in the 1930s.[117] During World War II, extensive air-raid shelters were tunnelled out within the medieval walls, with eight different sections, able to hold up to 1,800 people in total, and the castle was also used to tether barrage balloons above the city.[118]
In 1947, the John, the fifth Marquess, inherited the castle on the death of his father and faced considerable death duties.[119] He sold the very last of the Bute lands in Cardiff and gave the castle and the surrounding park to the city on behalf of the people of Cardiff; the family flag was taken down from the castle as part of the official hand-over ceremony.[120] The castle was protected as a grade I listed building and as a scheduled monument.[121]
Cardiff Castle is now run as a tourist attraction, and is one of the most popular sites in the city.[122] The castle is not fully furnished, as the furniture and fittings in the castle were removed by the Marquess in 1947 and subsequently disposed of; an extensive restoration has been carried out, however, of the fittings originally designed for the Clock Tower by Burges.[123] The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, founded in 1949, was housed in the castle's main range for many years, but moved into the castle's former stables north of the castle in 1998.[124] A new interpretation centre, which opened in 2008, was built alongside the South Gate at a cost of £6.5 million, and the castle also contains "Firing Line", the joint regimental museum of the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards and the Royal Welsh.[125]
The castle has been used for a range of cultural and social events. The castle has seen various musical performances, including by Tom Jones, Green Day and the Stereophonics, with a capacity to accommodate over 10,000 people. During the 1960s and 1970s the castle was the setting for a sequence of military tattoos.
This attractive thatched cottage by Manor Farm at Mapledurwell, is Ivy House, in Tunworth Road and is a freehold detached 17 century house. It is a two-storeyed timber-framed house with later additions and irregular fenestration. The thatched roof is hipped with low eaves at the south end. The atractive exposed timber frame on the first floor is rendered and has painted brick panels, otherwise painted brick walls.
Mapledurwell is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Mapledurwell and Up Nately, in the Basingstoke and Deane district, in the county of Hampshire, England. It is located south east of Basingstoke. In 1931 the parish had a population of 182.
The name Mapledurwell means 'maple tree spring.'. Recorded in the Domesday Book, the land was held by Anschill for Edward the Confessor. From 1086, it became the sole Hampshire estate of Hugh de Port, covering the parishes of Newnham, Up Nately and Andwell. Forfeited by Adam de Port in 1172, after the King gave the manor to Alan Basset, it was transferred to Hugh de Despenser in 1306, who was hanged by Queen Isabel in 1326. Returned to the Despenser family in 1337, it remained in their possession for two centuries. In 1528, William Frost of Avington granted the manor to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which remained the major land owner until 1839. This later long period of ownership resulted in the continuation of small tenant farm holdings, and hence the relatively late enclosure of the farmlands, and retention of an open land setting and older "twisty" road layout. The present area of allotment land was awarded to the village under and Enclosure act of June 1863. The opening of the Basingstoke Canal from 1778, which ran through the northern half of Up Nately, and the expansion of the nearby brickworks brought many industrial jobs to the area.
The village of Mapledurwell is part of the Basing ward of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.[5] The borough council is a Non-metropolitan district council of Hampshire County Council.
On 1 April 1932 the parish was abolished to form "Mapledurwell & Up Nately".
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ILLUMINATA 2011 -9TH. ---11TH. DECEMBER
As darkness falls, CAERPHILLY Castle will be bathed in light for a twice nightly sound and light show. Illuminata, which is supported by the £19m European funded Heritage Tourism Project, backed by £8.5million from the European Regional Development Fund, reflects the fascinating history of this iconic stronghold.
Caerphilly’s Illuminata story begins in 1268 with the construction of the castle .
Projected onto the castle walls of the Inner Wards, four eras in Caerphilly's long history will be displayed from Gilbert de Clare to Llywelyn Bren, when much of the castle was destroyed, through to Hugh Despenser and Edward II and the grisly end of an English king, before moving on to the ravages of the Civil War and the castle's subsequent restoration by Coal Baron, the Marques of Bute.
The Welsh Dragon (Welsh: Y Ddraig Goch "the red dragon", appears on the national flag of Wales (the flag itself is also called "Y Ddraig Goch").
The oldest recorded use of the dragon to symbolise Wales is from the Historia Brittonum, written around 820, but it is popularly supposed to have been the battle standard of King Arthur and other ancient Celtic leaders
The Norman Keep
The twelve-sided Keep at Cardiff is the finest in Wales and is known as a ‘shell’ keep. Its outer walls provided a shell for smaller buildings within it. From the top of the Keep the panoramic views of the city are breath-taking and to the north you can see as far as Castell Coch. There are approximately 50 steep stone steps leading to the Keep entrance and further steps to reach the viewing platform, but it’s worth the effort!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Castle
Cardiff Castle (Welsh: Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city centre of Cardiff, Wales. The original motte and bailey castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort. The castle was commissioned either by William the Conqueror or by Robert Fitzhamon, and formed the heart of the medieval town of Cardiff and the Marcher Lord territory of Glamorgan. In the 12th century the castle began to be rebuilt in stone, probably by Robert of Gloucester, with a shell keep and substantial defensive walls being erected. Further work was conducted by Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, in the second half of the 13th century. Cardiff Castle was repeatedly involved in the conflicts between the Anglo-Normans and the Welsh, being attacked several times in the 12th century, and stormed in 1404 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr.
After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries the castle was acquired by Richard de Beauchamp in 1423. Richard conducted extensive work on the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses, the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War Cardiff Castle was initially taken by a Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the Battle of St Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned, probably to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.
In the mid-18th century, Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Marquesses of Bute. John Stuart, the first Marquess, employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to renovate the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion, and to landscape the castle grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls. During the first half of the 19th century the family became extremely wealthy as a result of the growth of the coal industry in Glamorgan. The third Marquess, John Crichton-Stuart, used this wealth to back an extensive programme of renovations under William Burges. Burges remodelled the castle in a Gothic revival style, lavishing money and attention on the main range. The resulting interior designs are considered to be amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved".[2] The grounds were re-landscaped and, following the discovery of the old Roman remains, reconstructed walls and a gatehouse in a Roman style were incorporated into the castle design. Extensive landscaped parks were built around the outside of the castle.
In the early 20th century the fourth Marquess inherited the castle and construction work continued into the 1920s. The Bute lands and commercial interests around Cardiff were sold off or nationalised until, by the time of the Second World War, little was left except the castle. During the war, extensive air raid shelters were built in the castle walls; they could hold up to 1,800 people. When the Marquess died in 1947, the castle was given to the city of Cardiff. Today the castle is run as a tourist attraction, with the grounds housing the "Firing Line" regimental museum and interpretation centre. The castle has also served as a venue for events, including musical performances and festivals.
History
1st–4th centuries AD
The future site of Cardiff Castle was first used by the Romans as a defensive location for many years.[3] The first fort was probably built about AD 55 and occupied until AD 80.[4] It was a rectangular structure much larger than the current site, and formed part of the southern Roman border in Wales during the conquest of the Silures.[5] When the border advanced, defences became less important and the fort was replaced with a sequence of two, much smaller, fortifications on the north side of the current site.[6]
A fourth fort was built in the middle of the 3rd century in order to combat the pirate threat along the coast, and forms the basis of the Roman remains seen on the castle site.[7] The fort was almost square in design, approximately 635 feet (194 m) by 603 feet (184 m) large, constructed from limestone brought by sea from Penarth.[8] The fort's irregular shape was determined by the River Taff that flowed along the west side of the walls.[9] The sea would have come much closer to the site than is the case in the 21st century, and the fort would have directly overlooked the harbour.[8] This Roman fort was probably occupied at least until the end of the 4th century, but it is unclear when it was finally abandoned.[10] There is no evidence for the re-occupation of the site until the 11th century.[10]
11th century
Plan of the castle in the 21st century; A - North Gate; B - motte and shell keep; C - outer bailey; D - main lodgings; E - inner bailey; F - the Clock Tower; G - the Black Tower; H - South Gate and barbican tower
The Normans began to make incursions into South Wales from the late 1060s onwards, pushing westwards from their bases in recently occupied England.[11] Their advance was marked by the construction of castles, frequently on old Roman sites, and the creation of regional lordships.[12] The reuse of Roman sites produced considerable savings in the manpower required to construct large earth fortifications.[13]
Cardiff Castle was built during this period. There are two possible dates for the construction: William the Conqueror may have built a castle at Cardiff as early as 1081 on his return from his pilgrimage to St Davids.[14] Alternatively, the first Norman fortification may have been constructed around 1091 by Robert Fitzhamon, the lord of Gloucester.[15] Fitzhamon invaded the region in 1090, and used the castle as a base for the occupation of the rest of southern Glamorgan over the next few years.[16] The site was close to the sea and could be easily supplied by ship, was well protected by the Rivers Taff and Rhymney and also controlled the old Roman road running along the coast.[17]
Cardiff Castle was a motte-and-bailey design. The old Roman walls had collapsed and the Normans used their remains as the basis for the outer castle perimeter, digging a defensive trench and throwing up a 27-foot (8.2 m) high bank of earth over the Roman fortifications.[18] The Normans further divided the castle with an internal wall to form an inner and an outer bailey. In the north-west corner of the castle a wooden keep was constructed on top of a 40-foot (12 m) tall earth motte, surrounded by a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide moat.[19] The motte was the largest built in Wales.[20] The overall area of the castle was around 8.25 acres (3.34 ha); the inner bailey was around 2 acres (0.81 ha) in area.[21] Mills were essential to local communities during this period, and the castle mill was located outside the west side of the castle, fed by the River Taff; under local feudal law, the residents of Cardiff were required to use this mill to grind their own grain.[22]
The conquered lands in Glamorgan were given out in packages called knights' fees, and many of these knights held their lands on condition that they provided forces to protect Cardiff Castle.[23] Under this approach, called a castle-guard system, some knights were required to maintain buildings called "houses" within the castle itself, in the outer bailey.[24] Anglo-Saxon peasants settled the region around Cardiff, bringing with them English customs, although Welsh lords continued to rule the more remote districts almost independently until the 14th century.[25] Cardiff Castle was a Marcher Lord territory, enjoying special privileges and independence from the English Crown. The medieval town of Cardiff spread out from the south side of the castle.[26]
12th–14th centuries
Part of the reconstructed Roman wall (l), the foundations of the internal bailey wall, and the reconstructed Roman north gatehouse (r)
FitzHamon was fatally injured at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106 and died shortly afterwards.[27] Henry I then gave the castle in 1122 to Robert of Gloucester, the king's illegitimate son and the husband of FitzHamon's daughter, Mabe.[28] After the failed attempt of Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror's eldest son, to take England from Henry I, Robert of Normandy was imprisoned in the castle until his death in 1134.[29] Robert held the castle during the troubled years of the Anarchy in England and Wales, and passed it on to his son, William Fitz Robert.[30] Around the middle of the century, possibly under Robert of Gloucester, a 77-foot (23 m) wide, 30-foot (9 m) high shell keep was constructed on top of the motte, along with a stone wall around the south and west sides of the inner bailey.[31] The polygonal shell keep has architectural links to a similar design at Arundel Castle.[32] The building work was probably undertaken in response to the threat posed following the Welsh uprising of 1136.[20]
Tensions with the Welsh continued, and in 1158 Ifor Bach raided the castle and took William hostage for a period.[30] A further attack followed in 1183.[30] By 1184 town walls had been built around Cardiff, and the West Gate to the town was constructed in the gap between the castle and the river.[33] William died in 1183, leaving three daughters. One of these, Isabel, Countess of Gloucester, was declared the sole heir to the estate by Henry II. This was contrary to legal custom in England, and was done in order that Henry could then marry her to his youngest son Prince John and thus provide him with extensive lands.[34] John later divorced Isabel, but he retained control of the castle until she married Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1214.[35]
Upon Isabel's death in 1217 the castle passed through her sister to Gilbert de Clare, becoming part of the Honour of Clare, a major grouping of estates and fortifications in medieval England.[36] The castle formed the centre of the family's power in South Wales, although the de Clares typically preferred to reside in their castles at Clare and Tonbridge.[37] Gilbert's son, Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, carried out building work at the castle in the late 13th century, constructing the Black Tower that forms part of the southern gateway seen today.[38] On the ground floor the tower contained the Stavell Oged and Stavell Wenn chambers, with three rooms constructed above them.[38] Richard was also probably responsible for rebuilding the northern and eastern walls of the inner bailey in stone.[39] The inner bailey was reached through a gatehouse on the eastern side, protected by two circular towers and later called the Exchequer Gate.[40] The defensive work may have been prompted by the threat posed by the hostile Welsh leader Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales.[41]
Richard's grandson, Gilbert de Clare, the last male de Clare, died at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and the castle was given to Hugh Despenser the Younger, the controversial favourite of Edward II.[30] Poor harvests and harsh governance by the Despenser family encouraged a Welsh rebellion under Llywelyn Bren in 1316; this was crushed and Llywelyn was hanged, drawn and quartered in Cardiff Castle in 1318 on Hugh's orders.[42] The execution attracted much criticism from across both the English and Welsh communities, and in 1321 Hugh arrested Sir William Fleminge as a scapegoat for the incident, first detaining him in the Black Tower and then executing him in the castle grounds.[43] Conflict between the Despensers and the other Marcher Lords broke out soon after, leading to the castle being sacked in 1321 during the Despenser War.[30] The Despensers recovered the castle and retained it for the rest of the century, despite the execution of Hugh Despenser for treason in 1326.[44] Under a 1340 charter granted by the Despensers, the castle's constable was made the de facto mayor of Cardiff, controlling the local courts.[45]
15th–16th centuries
By the 15th century, the Despensers were increasingly using Caerphilly Castle as their main residence in the region rather than Cardiff.[46] Thomas le Despenser was executed in 1400 on charges of conspiring against Henry IV.[47] In 1401 rebellion broke out in North Wales under the leadership of Owain Glyndŵr, quickly spreading across the rest of the country. In 1404 Cardiff and the castle were taken by the rebels, causing considerable damage to the Black Tower and the southern gatehouse in the process.[48] On Thomas's death the castle passed first to his young son, Richard, and on his death in 1414, through his daughter Isabel to the Beauchamp family.[47] Isabel first married Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Worcester and then, on his death, to his cousin Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, in 1423.[47]
Richard did not acquire Caerphilly Castle as part of the marriage settlement, so he set about redeveloping Cardiff instead.[49] He built a new tower alongside the Black Tower in 1430, restoring the gateway, and extended the motte defences.[50] He also constructed a substantial new domestic range in the south-west of the site between 1425 and 1439, with a central octagonal tower 75-foot (23 m) high, sporting defensive machicolations, and featuring four smaller polygonal turrets facing the inner bailey.[51] The range was built of Lias ashlar stone with limestone used for some of the details, set upon the spur bases characteristic of South Wales and incorporated parts of the older 4th and 13th century walls.[52] The buildings were influenced by similar work in the previous century at Windsor Castle and would in turn shape renovations at Newport and Nottingham Castles; the octagonal tower has architectural links to Guy's Tower, built at around the same time in Warwick Castle.[53] A flower garden was built to the south of the range, with private access to Richard's chambers.[54] Richard also rebuilt the town's wider defences, including a new stone bridge over the River Taff guarded by the West Gate, finishing the work by 1451.[55]
Cardiff Castle remained in the hands of Richard's son, Henry and Henry's daughter, Anne until 1449.[47] When Anne died, it passed by marriage to Richard Neville, who held it until his death in 1471 during the period of civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses.[47] As the conflict progressed and political fortunes rose and fell, the castle passed from George, the Duke of Clarence, to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to Jasper Tudor, the Duke of Bedford, back to Richard Neville's wife Anne, back to Jasper and finally to Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII.[56] The ascension of the Tudor dynasty to the English throne at the end of the wars heralded a change in the way Wales was administered. The Tudors were Welsh in origin, and their rule eased hostilities between the Welsh and English. As a result, defensive castles became less important.[57] In 1495 Henry VII formally revoked the Marcher territory status of Cardiff Castle and the surrounding territories, bringing them under normal English law as the County of Glamorgan.[58]
The Crown leased the castle to Charles Somerset in 1513; Charles used it while he was living in Cardiff.[59] In 1550 William Herbert, later the Earl of Pembroke, then bought Cardiff Castle and the surrounding estates from Edward VI.[60] The outer bailey contained a range of buildings at this time, and extensive building work was carried out during the century.[61] The Shire Hall had been built in the outer bailey, forming part of a walled complex of buildings that included the lodgings for the traditional twelve holders of castle-guard lands.[62] The outer bailey also included orchards, gardens and a chapel.[63] The castle continued to be used to detain criminals during the 16th century, with the Black Tower being used as a prison to hold them; the heretic Thomas Capper was burnt at the castle on the orders of Henry VIII.[64] The visiting antiquarian John Leland described the keep as "a great thing and strong, but now in some ruine", but the Black Tower was considered to be in good repair.[65] In the inner bailey, the Herberts built an Elizabethan extension to the north end of the main range, with large windows looking onto a new northern garden; the southern garden was replaced by a kitchen garden.[66]
17th–18th centuries
In 1610 the cartographer John Speed produced a map of the castle, and noted that it was "large and in good repair."[67] In 1642, however, civil war broke out between the rival Royalist supporters of King Charles I and Parliament. Cardiff Castle was then owned by Philip Herbert, a moderate Parliamentarian, and the castle was initially held by a pro-Royalist garrison. It was taken by Parliamentary forces in the early period of the war, according to popular tradition by a sneak attack using a secret passageway.[68] The Royalist commander William Seymour, the Marquess of Hertford, then attacked the castle in turn, taking it in a surprise assault. Parliamentary forces and local troops then immediately besieged the castle, retaking it after five hours of fighting and reinstalling a garrison.[69] In early 1645 Mr Carne, the High Sheriff, rebelled against Parliament, taking Cardiff town but initially failing to seize the castle.[69] The King sent forces from Oxford, under the command of Sir Charles Kemys, to reinforce Carne but Parliament despatched a naval squadron to provide support to their forces from the sea.[69] A small battle ensued before the castle was taken by the Royalists.[70]
With the Royalist military position across the country worsening, King Charles himself came to Cardiff Castle that July to meet with local Welsh leaders.[71] Relations between his commander in the region, Sir Charles Gerard, and the people of Glamorgan had deteriorated badly and when Charles left the castle, he was confronted by a small army of angry locals, demanding to be given control of the castle.[71] These clubmen then declared themselves the "Peaceable Army" and increased their demands to include near independence for the region.[72] After negotiations, a compromise was found in which the royal garrison would quit the castle, to be replaced by a local Glamorgan force, commanded by Sir Richard Beaupré; in return, £800 and a force of a thousand men were promised to Charles.[71] In September, Charles returned to South Wales and reneged on the agreement, disbanding the Peaceable Army, but his military position in the region was collapsing.[73] The Peaceable Army's leaders switched sides and forced the surrender of Cardiff and the castle to Parliament in mid-September.[73]
With the outbreak of fresh fighting in 1648, a Royalist army of 8,000 fresh recruits was mustered under the command of General Rowland Laugharne and Sir Edward Stradling, with the intent of retaking Cardiff.[74] Parliamentary forces in Brecon under the command of Colonel Thomas Horton moved quickly to reinforce the castle, although with only 3,000 men they were content to wait until a larger army under Oliver Cromwell could arrive from Gloucester.[74] With time against them, the Royalist army attacked, leading to the battle of St Fagans just to the west of Cardiff, and a heavy Royalist defeat.[75]
After the war, Cardiff Castle escaped the slighting, or deliberate damage and destruction, that affected many other castles.[76] Probably because of the threat of a pro-Royalist invasion by the Presbyterian Scots, a Parliamentary garrison was installed instead and the castle remained intact.[76] The Herberts continued to own the castle as the Earls of Pembroke, both during the interregnum and after the restoration of Charles II.[77] The castle's constable continued to act as mayor of the town of Cardiff, controlling the meetings of the town's burgesses, bailffs and aldermen; the Herberts usually appointed members of the more important local gentry to this position during the period.[78]
Lady Charlotte Herbert was the last of the family to control Cardiff Castle.[77] She married twice, latterly to Thomas, Viscount Windsor and on her death in 1733 the castle passed to their son, Herbert.[77] Herbert's daughter, Charlotte Jane Windsor, married John Stuart, who rose to become the Marquess of Bute, beginning a family line that would control the castle for the next century.[77]
In 1776 the Marquess began to renovate the property with the intention of turning it into a residence for his son, John.[79] The grounds were radically altered under a programme of work that involved Capability Brown and his son-in-law, Henry Holland.[80] The stone wall that separated the inner and outer baileys was destroyed using gunpowder, the Shire Hall and the knights' houses in the outer bailey were destroyed and the remaining ground partially flattened; the whole of the area was laid with turf.[81] Considerable work was carried out on the main lodgings, demolishing the Herbert additions, building two new wings and removing many of the older features to produce a more contemporary, 18th century appearance.[82] The keep and motte was stripped of the ivy and trees that had grown up them, and a spiral path was laid down around the motte.[83] The motte's moat was filled in as part of the landscaping.[84] A summer house was built in the south-east corner of the castle.[83] Further work was planned on the property, including a reported proposal to roof the keep in copper, insert new windows and turn it into an assembly room for dances, but these projects were cut short by the Marquess's son's death in 1794.[82]
19th century
In 1814 Lord Bute's grandson, John, inherited his title and the castle. In 1825 the new Marquess began a sequence of investments in the Cardiff Docks, an expensive programme of work that would enable Cardiff to become a major coal exporting port.[85] Although the Docks were not particularly profitable, they transformed the value of the Butes' mining and land interests, making the family immensely wealthy.[86] By 1900, the family estate owned 22,000 acres (8,900 ha) of land in Glamorgan.[87]
The second Marquess preferred to live on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and only used Cardiff Castle occasionally.[88] The castle saw little investment and only four full-time servants were maintained on the premises, meaning that cooked food had to be brought across from the kitchens at a nearby hotel.[89] The castle remained at the centre of the Butes' political power base in Cardiff, however, with their faction sometimes termed as "the Castle party".[90] During the violent protests of the Merthyr Rising of 1831, the Marquess-based himself at Cardiff Castle, from where he directed operations and kept Whitehall informed of the unfolding events.[91] The governance of the city of Cardiff was finally reformed by an act of Parliament in the 1835, introducing a town council and a mayor, severing the link with the castle constable.[92]
The Clock Tower
The third Marquess of Bute, again called John, inherited the title and castle in 1848.[93] He was then less than a year old, and as he grew up he came to despise the existing castle, believing that it represented a mediocre, half-hearted example of the Gothic style.[94] Bute engaged the architect William Burges, to undertake the remodelling of the castle. The two shared a passion in medieval Gothic Revivalism and this, combined with Bute's huge financial resources, enabled Burges to rebuild the property on a grand scale. Burges brought with him almost of all of the team that had supported him on earlier projects, including John Starling Chapple, William Frame and Horatio Lonsdale.[95] Burges's contribution, in particular his research into the history of the castle and his architectural imagination, was critical to the transformation.[96]
Work began on Bute's coming of age in 1868 with the construction of the 150-foot (46 m) high Clock Tower.[97] The tower, built in Burges's signature Forest of Dean ashlar stone, formed a suite of bachelor's rooms, comprising a bedroom, a servant's room and the Summer and Winter smoking rooms.[97] Externally, the tower was a re-working of a design Burges had previously used in an unsuccessful competition entry for the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Internally, the rooms were sumptuously decorated with gildings, carvings and cartoons, many allegorical in style, depicting the seasons, myths and fables.[98] In his A History Of The Gothic Revival, written as the tower was being built, Charles Locke Eastlake wrote of Burges's "peculiar talents (and) luxuriant fancy."[99] The Summer Smoking Room rested at the top of the structure and was two storeys high with an internal balcony that, through an unbroken band of windows, gave views of the Cardiff Docks, the Bristol Channel, and the Glamorgan countryside. The floor had a map of the world in mosaic. The sculpture was created by Thomas Nicholls.[100]
As the rest of the castle was developed, work progressed along the rest of the 18th century range including the construction of the Guest Tower, the Arab Room, the Chaucer Room, the Nursery, the Library, the Banqueting Hall and bedrooms for both Lord and Lady Bute.[95] In plan, the new castle followed the arrangement of a standard Victorian country house quite closely. The Bute Tower included Lord Bute's bedroom and ended in another highlight, the Roof Garden, featuring a sculpture of the Madonna and child by Ceccardo Fucigna. Bute's bedroom contained extensive religious iconography and an en-suite bathroom. The Octagon Tower followed, including an oratory, built on the spot where Bute's father died, and the Chaucer Room, the roof of which is considered by historian Mark Girouard to be a "superb example of Burges's genius".[101]
The central part of the castle comprised a two-storey banqueting hall, with the library below. Both are enormous, the latter to hold part of the bibliophile Marquess's vast library. Both included elaborate carvings and fireplaces, those in the banqueting hall depicting the castle itself in the time of Robert, Duke of Normandy.[102] The decoration here is less impressive than elsewhere in the castle, as much of it was completed after Burges's death by Lonsdale, a less talented painter.[101] The Arab Room in the Herbert Tower remains however one of Burges's masterpieces. Its jelly mould ceiling in a Moorish style is particularly notable. It was this room on which Burges was working when he died and Bute placed Burges's initials, and his own, and the date 1881 in the fireplace as a memorial.[103] The central portion of the castle also included the Grand Staircase, recorded in a watercolour perspective prepared by Axel Haig.[104]
Burges's interiors at Cardiff Castle have been widely praised. The historian Megan Aldrich considers them amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved", J. Mordaunt Crook has described them as "three dimensional passports to fairy kingdoms and realms of gold", and John Newman praises them as "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."[105] The exterior of the castle, however, has received a more mixed reception from critics. Crook admires the variegated and romantic silhouette of the building, but architect John Grant considered them to present a "picturesque if not happy combination" of varying historical styles, and Adrian Pettifer criticises them as "incongruous" and excessively Gothic in style.[106]
Work was also carried out on the castle grounds, the interior being flattened further, destroying much of the medieval and Roman archaeological remains.[107] In 1889, Lord Bute's building works uncovered the remains of the old Roman fort for the first time since the 11th century, leading to archaeological investigations being carried out in 1890.[9] New walls in a Roman style were built by William Frame on the foundations of the originals, complete with a reconstructed Roman North Gate, and the outer medieval bank was stripped away around the new walls.[108]
The grounds were extensively planted with trees and shrubs, including over the motte.[83] From the late 18th century until the 1850s the castle grounds were completely open to the public, but restrictions were imposed in 1858 and as a replacement the 434 acres of land to the west and north of the castle was turned into Bute Park.[109] From 1868, the castle grounds were closed to the public altogether.[108] Stables were built just to the north of the castle, but only half were completed during the 19th century.[110] The Animal Wall was built along the south side of the castle, decorated with statues of animals, and the Swiss Bridge – a combination of summerhouse and river-crossing – was erected over the river by the West Gate.[111] Cathays Park was built on the east side of the castle, but was sold to the city of Cardiff in 1898.[112]
20th and 21st centuries
John, the fourth Marquess, acquired the castle in 1900 on the death of his father, and the family estates and investments around the castle began to rapidly reduce in size.[113] Cardiff had grown hugely in the previous century, its population increasing from 1,870 in 1800 to around 250,000 in 1900, but the coal trade began to diminish after 1918 and industry suffered during the depression of the 1920s.[114] John only inherited a part of the Butes' Glamorgan estates, and in the first decades of the 20th century he sold off much of the remaining assets around Cardiff, including the coal mines, docks and railway companies, with the bulk of the land interests being finally sold off or nationalised in 1938.[113]
Development work on the castle continued. There was extensive restoration of the medieval masonry in 1921, with architect John Grant rebuilding the South Gate and the barbican tower, and reconstructing the medieval West Gate and town wall alongside the castle, with the Swiss Bridge being moved in 1927 to make room for the new West Gate development.[115] Further archaeological investigations were carried out into the Roman walls in 1922 and 1923, leading to Grant redesigning the northern Roman gatehouse.[116] The second half of the castle stables were finally completed.[83] The Animal Wall was moved in the 1920s to the west side of the castle to enclose a pre-Raphaelite themed garden.[112] The grand staircase in the main range was torn out in the 1930s.[117] During World War II, extensive air-raid shelters were tunnelled out within the medieval walls, with eight different sections, able to hold up to 1,800 people in total, and the castle was also used to tether barrage balloons above the city.[118]
In 1947, the John, the fifth Marquess, inherited the castle on the death of his father and faced considerable death duties.[119] He sold the very last of the Bute lands in Cardiff and gave the castle and the surrounding park to the city on behalf of the people of Cardiff; the family flag was taken down from the castle as part of the official hand-over ceremony.[120] The castle was protected as a grade I listed building and as a scheduled monument.[121]
Cardiff Castle is now run as a tourist attraction, and is one of the most popular sites in the city.[122] The castle is not fully furnished, as the furniture and fittings in the castle were removed by the Marquess in 1947 and subsequently disposed of; an extensive restoration has been carried out, however, of the fittings originally designed for the Clock Tower by Burges.[123] The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, founded in 1949, was housed in the castle's main range for many years, but moved into the castle's former stables north of the castle in 1998.[124] A new interpretation centre, which opened in 2008, was built alongside the South Gate at a cost of £6.5 million, and the castle also contains "Firing Line", the joint regimental museum of the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards and the Royal Welsh.[125]
The castle has been used for a range of cultural and social events. The castle has seen various musical performances, including by Tom Jones, Green Day and the Stereophonics, with a capacity to accommodate over 10,000 people. During the 1960s and 1970s the castle was the setting for a sequence of military tattoos.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382 - 1439) was an English medieval nobleman and military commander. The son of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick and Margaret Ferrers, his godfather was King Richard II. He was knighted at the coronation of King Henry IV, and succeeded as Earl of Warwick in 1401.
Warwick acquired quite a reputation for chivalry, when in 1408 he went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was challenged many times to fight in the sporting combat which was then popular. Hspent much of the next decade fighting the French in the Hundred Years' War. He took a prominent part in the campaigns of 1417–18.
Henry V's will gave Warwick the responsibility for the education of the infant Henry VI of England. This duty required him to travel back and forth between England and Normandy many times, and during these travels, he acted as superintendent of the trial of Joan of Arc.
Richard Beauchamp's will was made at Caversham Castle in 1437. After his debts were paid, the trust endowed the Collegiate Church of St Mary in Warwick, and called for the construction of a new chapel there. The Beauchamp chapel is one of the most splendid late medieval funerary chapels in western Europe.
Richard's tomb, the centrepiece of the chapel, is one of the most important pieces of late medieval English art. John Essex, a London marbler, may have been responsible for the overall design, but the chest was carved from Purbeck marble by John Bourde of Corfe in Dorset. The effigy, by John Massingham, was cast from litten, a copper alloy similar to brass, and then gilded. His head rests on a helm which is surmounted by a swan. At his feet are a bear and a griffin, the badges respectively of the Beauchamps and of his second wife's family, the Despensers. The cage-like structure over the effigy represents a hearse.
Tuttington is a village and former parish in the Broadland district of Norfolk.
The village is 3 miles east of the town of Aylsham, 11 miles south of Cromer, and 15 miles north of Norwich. The village’s name originated Saxon times and means 'farm/settlement of Tutta's people'.
After the Romans left, Tuttington became part of the kingdom of the East Angles. It is likely that an early church was established in the village during this period.
In the Domesday Book the village is referred to as Tatituna or Tutincghetuna. In the first entry, it names connected nobles as Earl Harold, Earl Ralph the constable, Earl Gyrth, Turold, and William of Warenne, and Archbishop Stigand. In the second, the settlement is listed under the aegis of The Abbey of St Benet at Holme. There is also mention of a mill.
The round towered church of St. Peter & St. Paul dates from the 11th. century. Records show that a rectory was established in Tuttington in 1234, and that a vicarage was later endowed in 1275. There is also mention of a chapel located just to the north of the church. The chapel was built apparently before 1214 and was dedicated to St. Botolph. There is reference to a fair being held there on 17th. June, St. Botolph’s Day. There are further records of the fair in 1285 at which time it was called the Earl’s Fair in honour of Roger Bygod, Earl of Norfolk.
The Battle of North Walsham which occurred on 25th. or 26th. June 1381 took place 3 miles east of Tuttington. The battle was the last expression of resistance during the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 which had spread throughout East Anglia that year. The main protagonists were Geoffrey Listster for the rebels and the so-called fighting Bishop Henry Le Despenser. Listster lost the battle due to Despenser's overwhelming forces. The rebel leader was subsequently executed in Norwich; members of the surviving rebel band were likely put to the sword.
The village used to have a pub called The Ship. It has been suggested that as the village is several miles from the sea or any navigable waterways, the name could have been a corruption of The Sheep, as the pub may have been used by drovers.
On 1st. April 1935 the parish of Burgh was merged with Tuttington, and] on 21st. April 1980 the parish was renamed Burgh & Tuttington.
The village sign shows the church in the background with a ploughman and team of two horses, with two sheep in the foreground.
On this day in 1282 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, known in Welsh as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (lit. 'Llywelyn, Our Last Leader') was killed when he was ambushed near Cilmeri in Mid Wales. The son of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr and grandson of Llywelyn the Great, he was Prince of Wales from 1258 until his death and was the last sovereign prince of Wales before its conquest by Edward I of England.
In 1267 Llywelyn had been recognised by the English Crown as Prince of Wales, holding his lands with the king of England as his feudal overlord. However, following the death of Henry III in 1272, the relationship between England and Wales broke down as the new and ambitious King Edward I pressed his ambition to master of the whole island of Great Britain. By 1276 Llywelyn had been declared a rebel and diplomatic pressure was followed by a massive invasion force the following year. Edward forced Llywelyn into submission, confining him to lands above the Conwy.
In 1282 however, many of the lesser princes who had supported Edward against Llywelyn in 1277 had become disillusioned with the exactions of the English royal officers. On Palm Sunday that year, Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd ap Gruffydd attacked the English at Hawarden Castle and then laid siege to Rhuddlan. The revolt quickly spread to other parts of Wales, with Aberystwyth Castle captured and burnt and rebellion in Ystrad Tywi in south Wales, also inspired by Dafydd according to the annals, where Carreg Cennen castle was captured.
Though he claimed not to have been involved in the planning, Llywelyn felt obliged to join his brother’s ill prepared rebellion. The Archbishop of Canterbury tried mediating between Llywelyn and Edward, and Llywelyn was offered a large estate in England if he would surrender Wales to Edward, while Dafydd was to go on a crusade and not return without the king's permission. In an emotional reply, which has been compared to the Declaration of Arbroath, Llywelyn said he would not abandon the people whom his ancestors had protected since "the days of Kamber son of Brutus". The offer was refused.
Llywelyn now left Dafydd to lead the defense of Gwynedd and took a force south, trying to rally support in mid and south Wales and open up an important second front. On December 11th at the Battle of Orewin Bridge at Builth Wells, he was killed while separated from his army. The exact circumstances are unclear and there are two conflicting accounts of his death. Both accounts agree that Llywelyn was tricked into leaving the bulk of his army and was then attacked and killed. The first account says that Llywelyn and his chief minister approached the forces of Edmund Mortimer and Hugh Le Strange after crossing a bridge. They then heard the sound of battle as the main body of his army was met in battle by the forces of Roger Despenser and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn. Llywelyn turned to rejoin his forces and was pursued by a lone lancer who struck him down. It was not until sometime later that an English knight recognised the body as that of the prince. This version of events was written in the north of England some fifty years later and has suspicious similarities with details about the Battle of Stirling Bridge in Scotland.
An alternative version of events written in the east of England by monks in contact with Llywelyn's exiled daughter, Gwenllian ferch Llywelyn, and niece, Gwladys ferch Dafydd, states that Llywelyn, at the front of his army, approached the combined forces of Edmund and Roger Mortimer, Hugo Le Strange, and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn on the promise that he would receive their homage. This was a deception. His army was immediately engaged in fierce battle during which a significant section of it was routed, causing Llywelyn and his eighteen retainers to become separated. At around dusk, Llywelyn and a small group of his retainers (which included clergy) were ambushed and chased into a wood at Aberedw. Llywelyn was surrounded and struck down. As he lay dying, he asked for a priest and gave away his identity. He was then killed and his head hewn from his body. His person was searched and various items recovered, including a list of "conspirators", which may well have been faked, and his privy seal.
There are legends surrounding the fate of Llywelyn's severed head. It is known that it was sent to Edward at Rhuddlan and after being shown to the English troops based in Anglesey, Edward sent the head on to London. In London, it was set up in the city pillory for a day, and crowned with ivy (i.e. to show he was a "king" of Outlaws and in mockery of the ancient Welsh prophecy, which said that a Welshman would be crowned in London as king of the whole of Britain). Then it was carried by a horseman on the point of his lance to the Tower of London and set up over the gate. It was still on the Tower of London 15 years later. The last resting place of Llywelyn's body is not known for certain; however, it has always been tradition that it was interred at the Cistercian Abbey at Abbeycwmhir.
Following these events Dafydd ap Gruffydd proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and attempted to continue the fight. However, he was quickly defeated and, having spent months in hiding, was captured on June 22nd 1283. He was hanged, drawn and quartered in October. It is by this means that Wales became "united and annexed" to the Crown of England as under the auspices of Llewelyn and Dafydd’s ‘treason’, Edward I was able to take possession of the lands and titles of the House of Aberffraw.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Castle
ardiff Castle (Welsh: Castell Caerdydd) is a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city centre of Cardiff, Wales. The original motte and bailey castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort. The castle was commissioned either by William the Conqueror or by Robert Fitzhamon, and formed the heart of the medieval town of Cardiff and the Marcher Lord territory of Glamorgan. In the 12th century the castle began to be rebuilt in stone, probably by Robert of Gloucester, with a shell keep and substantial defensive walls being erected. Further work was conducted by Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, in the second half of the 13th century. Cardiff Castle was repeatedly involved in the conflicts between the Anglo-Normans and the Welsh, being attacked several times in the 12th century, and stormed in 1404 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr.
After being held by the de Clare and Despenser families for several centuries the castle was acquired by Richard de Beauchamp in 1423. Richard conducted extensive work on the castle, founding the main range on the west side of the castle, dominated by a tall octagonal tower. Following the Wars of the Roses, the status of the castle as a Marcher territory was revoked and its military significance began to decline. The Herbert family took over the property in 1550, remodelling parts of the main range and carrying out construction work in the outer bailey, then occupied by Cardiff's Shire Hall and other buildings. During the English Civil War Cardiff Castle was initially taken by a Parliamentary force, but was regained by Royalist supporters in 1645. When fighting broke out again in 1648, a Royalist army attacked Cardiff in a bid to regain the castle, leading to the Battle of St Fagans just outside the city. Cardiff Castle escaped potential destruction by Parliament after the war and was instead garrisoned, probably to protect against a possible Scottish invasion.
In the mid-18th century, Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Marquesses of Bute. John Stuart, the first Marquess, employed Capability Brown and Henry Holland to renovate the main range, turning it into a Georgian mansion, and to landscape the castle grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls. During the first half of the 19th century the family became extremely wealthy as a result of the growth of the coal industry in Glamorgan. The third Marquess, John Crichton-Stuart, used this wealth to back an extensive programme of renovations under William Burges. Burges remodelled the castle in a Gothic revival style, lavishing money and attention on the main range. The resulting interior designs are considered to be amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved".[2] The grounds were re-landscaped and, following the discovery of the old Roman remains, reconstructed walls and a gatehouse in a Roman style were incorporated into the castle design. Extensive landscaped parks were built around the outside of the castle.
In the early 20th century the fourth Marquess inherited the castle and construction work continued into the 1920s. The Bute lands and commercial interests around Cardiff were sold off or nationalised until, by the time of the Second World War, little was left except the castle. During the war, extensive air raid shelters were built in the castle walls; they could hold up to 1,800 people. When the Marquess died in 1947, the castle was given to the city of Cardiff. Today the castle is run as a tourist attraction, with the grounds housing the "Firing Line" regimental museum and interpretation centre. The castle has also served as a venue for events, including musical performances and festivals.
History
1st–4th centuries AD
The future site of Cardiff Castle was first used by the Romans as a defensive location for many years.[3] The first fort was probably built about AD 55 and occupied until AD 80.[4] It was a rectangular structure much larger than the current site, and formed part of the southern Roman border in Wales during the conquest of the Silures.[5] When the border advanced, defences became less important and the fort was replaced with a sequence of two, much smaller, fortifications on the north side of the current site.[6]
A fourth fort was built in the middle of the 3rd century in order to combat the pirate threat along the coast, and forms the basis of the Roman remains seen on the castle site.[7] The fort was almost square in design, approximately 635 feet (194 m) by 603 feet (184 m) large, constructed from limestone brought by sea from Penarth.[8] The fort's irregular shape was determined by the River Taff that flowed along the west side of the walls.[9] The sea would have come much closer to the site than is the case in the 21st century, and the fort would have directly overlooked the harbour.[8] This Roman fort was probably occupied at least until the end of the 4th century, but it is unclear when it was finally abandoned.[10] There is no evidence for the re-occupation of the site until the 11th century.[10]
11th century
Plan of the castle in the 21st century; A - North Gate; B - motte and shell keep; C - outer bailey; D - main lodgings; E - inner bailey; F - the Clock Tower; G - the Black Tower; H - South Gate and barbican tower
The Normans began to make incursions into South Wales from the late 1060s onwards, pushing westwards from their bases in recently occupied England.[11] Their advance was marked by the construction of castles, frequently on old Roman sites, and the creation of regional lordships.[12] The reuse of Roman sites produced considerable savings in the manpower required to construct large earth fortifications.[13]
Cardiff Castle was built during this period. There are two possible dates for the construction: William the Conqueror may have built a castle at Cardiff as early as 1081 on his return from his pilgrimage to St Davids.[14] Alternatively, the first Norman fortification may have been constructed around 1091 by Robert Fitzhamon, the lord of Gloucester.[15] Fitzhamon invaded the region in 1090, and used the castle as a base for the occupation of the rest of southern Glamorgan over the next few years.[16] The site was close to the sea and could be easily supplied by ship, was well protected by the Rivers Taff and Rhymney and also controlled the old Roman road running along the coast.[17]
Cardiff Castle was a motte-and-bailey design. The old Roman walls had collapsed and the Normans used their remains as the basis for the outer castle perimeter, digging a defensive trench and throwing up a 27-foot (8.2 m) high bank of earth over the Roman fortifications.[18] The Normans further divided the castle with an internal wall to form an inner and an outer bailey. In the north-west corner of the castle a wooden keep was constructed on top of a 40-foot (12 m) tall earth motte, surrounded by a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide moat.[19] The motte was the largest built in Wales.[20] The overall area of the castle was around 8.25 acres (3.34 ha); the inner bailey was around 2 acres (0.81 ha) in area.[21] Mills were essential to local communities during this period, and the castle mill was located outside the west side of the castle, fed by the River Taff; under local feudal law, the residents of Cardiff were required to use this mill to grind their own grain.[22]
The conquered lands in Glamorgan were given out in packages called knights' fees, and many of these knights held their lands on condition that they provided forces to protect Cardiff Castle.[23] Under this approach, called a castle-guard system, some knights were required to maintain buildings called "houses" within the castle itself, in the outer bailey.[24] Anglo-Saxon peasants settled the region around Cardiff, bringing with them English customs, although Welsh lords continued to rule the more remote districts almost independently until the 14th century.[25] Cardiff Castle was a Marcher Lord territory, enjoying special privileges and independence from the English Crown. The medieval town of Cardiff spread out from the south side of the castle.[26]
12th–14th centuries
Part of the reconstructed Roman wall (l), the foundations of the internal bailey wall, and the reconstructed Roman north gatehouse (r)
FitzHamon was fatally injured at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106 and died shortly afterwards.[27] Henry I then gave the castle in 1122 to Robert of Gloucester, the king's illegitimate son and the husband of FitzHamon's daughter, Mabe.[28] After the failed attempt of Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror's eldest son, to take England from Henry I, Robert of Normandy was imprisoned in the castle until his death in 1134.[29] Robert held the castle during the troubled years of the Anarchy in England and Wales, and passed it on to his son, William Fitz Robert.[30] Around the middle of the century, possibly under Robert of Gloucester, a 77-foot (23 m) wide, 30-foot (9 m) high shell keep was constructed on top of the motte, along with a stone wall around the south and west sides of the inner bailey.[31] The polygonal shell keep has architectural links to a similar design at Arundel Castle.[32] The building work was probably undertaken in response to the threat posed following the Welsh uprising of 1136.[20]
Tensions with the Welsh continued, and in 1158 Ifor Bach raided the castle and took William hostage for a period.[30] A further attack followed in 1183.[30] By 1184 town walls had been built around Cardiff, and the West Gate to the town was constructed in the gap between the castle and the river.[33] William died in 1183, leaving three daughters. One of these, Isabel, Countess of Gloucester, was declared the sole heir to the estate by Henry II. This was contrary to legal custom in England, and was done in order that Henry could then marry her to his youngest son Prince John and thus provide him with extensive lands.[34] John later divorced Isabel, but he retained control of the castle until she married Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1214.[35]
Upon Isabel's death in 1217 the castle passed through her sister to Gilbert de Clare, becoming part of the Honour of Clare, a major grouping of estates and fortifications in medieval England.[36] The castle formed the centre of the family's power in South Wales, although the de Clares typically preferred to reside in their castles at Clare and Tonbridge.[37] Gilbert's son, Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, carried out building work at the castle in the late 13th century, constructing the Black Tower that forms part of the southern gateway seen today.[38] On the ground floor the tower contained the Stavell Oged and Stavell Wenn chambers, with three rooms constructed above them.[38] Richard was also probably responsible for rebuilding the northern and eastern walls of the inner bailey in stone.[39] The inner bailey was reached through a gatehouse on the eastern side, protected by two circular towers and later called the Exchequer Gate.[40] The defensive work may have been prompted by the threat posed by the hostile Welsh leader Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales.[41]
Richard's grandson, Gilbert de Clare, the last male de Clare, died at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and the castle was given to Hugh Despenser the Younger, the controversial favourite of Edward II.[30] Poor harvests and harsh governance by the Despenser family encouraged a Welsh rebellion under Llywelyn Bren in 1316; this was crushed and Llywelyn was hanged, drawn and quartered in Cardiff Castle in 1318 on Hugh's orders.[42] The execution attracted much criticism from across both the English and Welsh communities, and in 1321 Hugh arrested Sir William Fleminge as a scapegoat for the incident, first detaining him in the Black Tower and then executing him in the castle grounds.[43] Conflict between the Despensers and the other Marcher Lords broke out soon after, leading to the castle being sacked in 1321 during the Despenser War.[30] The Despensers recovered the castle and retained it for the rest of the century, despite the execution of Hugh Despenser for treason in 1326.[44] Under a 1340 charter granted by the Despensers, the castle's constable was made the de facto mayor of Cardiff, controlling the local courts.[45]
15th–16th centuries
By the 15th century, the Despensers were increasingly using Caerphilly Castle as their main residence in the region rather than Cardiff.[46] Thomas le Despenser was executed in 1400 on charges of conspiring against Henry IV.[47] In 1401 rebellion broke out in North Wales under the leadership of Owain Glyndŵr, quickly spreading across the rest of the country. In 1404 Cardiff and the castle were taken by the rebels, causing considerable damage to the Black Tower and the southern gatehouse in the process.[48] On Thomas's death the castle passed first to his young son, Richard, and on his death in 1414, through his daughter Isabel to the Beauchamp family.[47] Isabel first married Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Worcester and then, on his death, to his cousin Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, in 1423.[47]
Richard did not acquire Caerphilly Castle as part of the marriage settlement, so he set about redeveloping Cardiff instead.[49] He built a new tower alongside the Black Tower in 1430, restoring the gateway, and extended the motte defences.[50] He also constructed a substantial new domestic range in the south-west of the site between 1425 and 1439, with a central octagonal tower 75-foot (23 m) high, sporting defensive machicolations, and featuring four smaller polygonal turrets facing the inner bailey.[51] The range was built of Lias ashlar stone with limestone used for some of the details, set upon the spur bases characteristic of South Wales and incorporated parts of the older 4th and 13th century walls.[52] The buildings were influenced by similar work in the previous century at Windsor Castle and would in turn shape renovations at Newport and Nottingham Castles; the octagonal tower has architectural links to Guy's Tower, built at around the same time in Warwick Castle.[53] A flower garden was built to the south of the range, with private access to Richard's chambers.[54] Richard also rebuilt the town's wider defences, including a new stone bridge over the River Taff guarded by the West Gate, finishing the work by 1451.[55]
Cardiff Castle remained in the hands of Richard's son, Henry and Henry's daughter, Anne until 1449.[47] When Anne died, it passed by marriage to Richard Neville, who held it until his death in 1471 during the period of civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses.[47] As the conflict progressed and political fortunes rose and fell, the castle passed from George, the Duke of Clarence, to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to Jasper Tudor, the Duke of Bedford, back to Richard Neville's wife Anne, back to Jasper and finally to Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII.[56] The ascension of the Tudor dynasty to the English throne at the end of the wars heralded a change in the way Wales was administered. The Tudors were Welsh in origin, and their rule eased hostilities between the Welsh and English. As a result, defensive castles became less important.[57] In 1495 Henry VII formally revoked the Marcher territory status of Cardiff Castle and the surrounding territories, bringing them under normal English law as the County of Glamorgan.[58]
The Crown leased the castle to Charles Somerset in 1513; Charles used it while he was living in Cardiff.[59] In 1550 William Herbert, later the Earl of Pembroke, then bought Cardiff Castle and the surrounding estates from Edward VI.[60] The outer bailey contained a range of buildings at this time, and extensive building work was carried out during the century.[61] The Shire Hall had been built in the outer bailey, forming part of a walled complex of buildings that included the lodgings for the traditional twelve holders of castle-guard lands.[62] The outer bailey also included orchards, gardens and a chapel.[63] The castle continued to be used to detain criminals during the 16th century, with the Black Tower being used as a prison to hold them; the heretic Thomas Capper was burnt at the castle on the orders of Henry VIII.[64] The visiting antiquarian John Leland described the keep as "a great thing and strong, but now in some ruine", but the Black Tower was considered to be in good repair.[65] In the inner bailey, the Herberts built an Elizabethan extension to the north end of the main range, with large windows looking onto a new northern garden; the southern garden was replaced by a kitchen garden.[66]
17th–18th centuries
In 1610 the cartographer John Speed produced a map of the castle, and noted that it was "large and in good repair."[67] In 1642, however, civil war broke out between the rival Royalist supporters of King Charles I and Parliament. Cardiff Castle was then owned by Philip Herbert, a moderate Parliamentarian, and the castle was initially held by a pro-Royalist garrison. It was taken by Parliamentary forces in the early period of the war, according to popular tradition by a sneak attack using a secret passageway.[68] The Royalist commander William Seymour, the Marquess of Hertford, then attacked the castle in turn, taking it in a surprise assault. Parliamentary forces and local troops then immediately besieged the castle, retaking it after five hours of fighting and reinstalling a garrison.[69] In early 1645 Mr Carne, the High Sheriff, rebelled against Parliament, taking Cardiff town but initially failing to seize the castle.[69] The King sent forces from Oxford, under the command of Sir Charles Kemys, to reinforce Carne but Parliament despatched a naval squadron to provide support to their forces from the sea.[69] A small battle ensued before the castle was taken by the Royalists.[70]
With the Royalist military position across the country worsening, King Charles himself came to Cardiff Castle that July to meet with local Welsh leaders.[71] Relations between his commander in the region, Sir Charles Gerard, and the people of Glamorgan had deteriorated badly and when Charles left the castle, he was confronted by a small army of angry locals, demanding to be given control of the castle.[71] These clubmen then declared themselves the "Peaceable Army" and increased their demands to include near independence for the region.[72] After negotiations, a compromise was found in which the royal garrison would quit the castle, to be replaced by a local Glamorgan force, commanded by Sir Richard Beaupré; in return, £800 and a force of a thousand men were promised to Charles.[71] In September, Charles returned to South Wales and reneged on the agreement, disbanding the Peaceable Army, but his military position in the region was collapsing.[73] The Peaceable Army's leaders switched sides and forced the surrender of Cardiff and the castle to Parliament in mid-September.[73]
With the outbreak of fresh fighting in 1648, a Royalist army of 8,000 fresh recruits was mustered under the command of General Rowland Laugharne and Sir Edward Stradling, with the intent of retaking Cardiff.[74] Parliamentary forces in Brecon under the command of Colonel Thomas Horton moved quickly to reinforce the castle, although with only 3,000 men they were content to wait until a larger army under Oliver Cromwell could arrive from Gloucester.[74] With time against them, the Royalist army attacked, leading to the battle of St Fagans just to the west of Cardiff, and a heavy Royalist defeat.[75]
After the war, Cardiff Castle escaped the slighting, or deliberate damage and destruction, that affected many other castles.[76] Probably because of the threat of a pro-Royalist invasion by the Presbyterian Scots, a Parliamentary garrison was installed instead and the castle remained intact.[76] The Herberts continued to own the castle as the Earls of Pembroke, both during the interregnum and after the restoration of Charles II.[77] The castle's constable continued to act as mayor of the town of Cardiff, controlling the meetings of the town's burgesses, bailffs and aldermen; the Herberts usually appointed members of the more important local gentry to this position during the period.[78]
Lady Charlotte Herbert was the last of the family to control Cardiff Castle.[77] She married twice, latterly to Thomas, Viscount Windsor and on her death in 1733 the castle passed to their son, Herbert.[77] Herbert's daughter, Charlotte Jane Windsor, married John Stuart, who rose to become the Marquess of Bute, beginning a family line that would control the castle for the next century.[77]
In 1776 the Marquess began to renovate the property with the intention of turning it into a residence for his son, John.[79] The grounds were radically altered under a programme of work that involved Capability Brown and his son-in-law, Henry Holland.[80] The stone wall that separated the inner and outer baileys was destroyed using gunpowder, the Shire Hall and the knights' houses in the outer bailey were destroyed and the remaining ground partially flattened; the whole of the area was laid with turf.[81] Considerable work was carried out on the main lodgings, demolishing the Herbert additions, building two new wings and removing many of the older features to produce a more contemporary, 18th century appearance.[82] The keep and motte was stripped of the ivy and trees that had grown up them, and a spiral path was laid down around the motte.[83] The motte's moat was filled in as part of the landscaping.[84] A summer house was built in the south-east corner of the castle.[83] Further work was planned on the property, including a reported proposal to roof the keep in copper, insert new windows and turn it into an assembly room for dances, but these projects were cut short by the Marquess's son's death in 1794.[82]
19th century
In 1814 Lord Bute's grandson, John, inherited his title and the castle. In 1825 the new Marquess began a sequence of investments in the Cardiff Docks, an expensive programme of work that would enable Cardiff to become a major coal exporting port.[85] Although the Docks were not particularly profitable, they transformed the value of the Butes' mining and land interests, making the family immensely wealthy.[86] By 1900, the family estate owned 22,000 acres (8,900 ha) of land in Glamorgan.[87]
The second Marquess preferred to live on the Isle of Bute in Scotland and only used Cardiff Castle occasionally.[88] The castle saw little investment and only four full-time servants were maintained on the premises, meaning that cooked food had to be brought across from the kitchens at a nearby hotel.[89] The castle remained at the centre of the Butes' political power base in Cardiff, however, with their faction sometimes termed as "the Castle party".[90] During the violent protests of the Merthyr Rising of 1831, the Marquess-based himself at Cardiff Castle, from where he directed operations and kept Whitehall informed of the unfolding events.[91] The governance of the city of Cardiff was finally reformed by an act of Parliament in the 1835, introducing a town council and a mayor, severing the link with the castle constable.[92]
The Clock Tower
The third Marquess of Bute, again called John, inherited the title and castle in 1848.[93] He was then less than a year old, and as he grew up he came to despise the existing castle, believing that it represented a mediocre, half-hearted example of the Gothic style.[94] Bute engaged the architect William Burges, to undertake the remodelling of the castle. The two shared a passion in medieval Gothic Revivalism and this, combined with Bute's huge financial resources, enabled Burges to rebuild the property on a grand scale. Burges brought with him almost of all of the team that had supported him on earlier projects, including John Starling Chapple, William Frame and Horatio Lonsdale.[95] Burges's contribution, in particular his research into the history of the castle and his architectural imagination, was critical to the transformation.[96]
Work began on Bute's coming of age in 1868 with the construction of the 150-foot (46 m) high Clock Tower.[97] The tower, built in Burges's signature Forest of Dean ashlar stone, formed a suite of bachelor's rooms, comprising a bedroom, a servant's room and the Summer and Winter smoking rooms.[97] Externally, the tower was a re-working of a design Burges had previously used in an unsuccessful competition entry for the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Internally, the rooms were sumptuously decorated with gildings, carvings and cartoons, many allegorical in style, depicting the seasons, myths and fables.[98] In his A History Of The Gothic Revival, written as the tower was being built, Charles Locke Eastlake wrote of Burges's "peculiar talents (and) luxuriant fancy."[99] The Summer Smoking Room rested at the top of the structure and was two storeys high with an internal balcony that, through an unbroken band of windows, gave views of the Cardiff Docks, the Bristol Channel, and the Glamorgan countryside. The floor had a map of the world in mosaic. The sculpture was created by Thomas Nicholls.[100]
As the rest of the castle was developed, work progressed along the rest of the 18th century range including the construction of the Guest Tower, the Arab Room, the Chaucer Room, the Nursery, the Library, the Banqueting Hall and bedrooms for both Lord and Lady Bute.[95] In plan, the new castle followed the arrangement of a standard Victorian country house quite closely. The Bute Tower included Lord Bute's bedroom and ended in another highlight, the Roof Garden, featuring a sculpture of the Madonna and child by Ceccardo Fucigna. Bute's bedroom contained extensive religious iconography and an en-suite bathroom. The Octagon Tower followed, including an oratory, built on the spot where Bute's father died, and the Chaucer Room, the roof of which is considered by historian Mark Girouard to be a "superb example of Burges's genius".[101]
The central part of the castle comprised a two-storey banqueting hall, with the library below. Both are enormous, the latter to hold part of the bibliophile Marquess's vast library. Both included elaborate carvings and fireplaces, those in the banqueting hall depicting the castle itself in the time of Robert, Duke of Normandy.[102] The decoration here is less impressive than elsewhere in the castle, as much of it was completed after Burges's death by Lonsdale, a less talented painter.[101] The Arab Room in the Herbert Tower remains however one of Burges's masterpieces. Its jelly mould ceiling in a Moorish style is particularly notable. It was this room on which Burges was working when he died and Bute placed Burges's initials, and his own, and the date 1881 in the fireplace as a memorial.[103] The central portion of the castle also included the Grand Staircase, recorded in a watercolour perspective prepared by Axel Haig.[104]
Burges's interiors at Cardiff Castle have been widely praised. The historian Megan Aldrich considers them amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved", J. Mordaunt Crook has described them as "three dimensional passports to fairy kingdoms and realms of gold", and John Newman praises them as "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."[105] The exterior of the castle, however, has received a more mixed reception from critics. Crook admires the variegated and romantic silhouette of the building, but architect John Grant considered them to present a "picturesque if not happy combination" of varying historical styles, and Adrian Pettifer criticises them as "incongruous" and excessively Gothic in style.[106]
Work was also carried out on the castle grounds, the interior being flattened further, destroying much of the medieval and Roman archaeological remains.[107] In 1889, Lord Bute's building works uncovered the remains of the old Roman fort for the first time since the 11th century, leading to archaeological investigations being carried out in 1890.[9] New walls in a Roman style were built by William Frame on the foundations of the originals, complete with a reconstructed Roman North Gate, and the outer medieval bank was stripped away around the new walls.[108]
The grounds were extensively planted with trees and shrubs, including over the motte.[83] From the late 18th century until the 1850s the castle grounds were completely open to the public, but restrictions were imposed in 1858 and as a replacement the 434 acres of land to the west and north of the castle was turned into Bute Park.[109] From 1868, the castle grounds were closed to the public altogether.[108] Stables were built just to the north of the castle, but only half were completed during the 19th century.[110] The Animal Wall was built along the south side of the castle, decorated with statues of animals, and the Swiss Bridge – a combination of summerhouse and river-crossing – was erected over the river by the West Gate.[111] Cathays Park was built on the east side of the castle, but was sold to the city of Cardiff in 1898.[112]
20th and 21st centuries
John, the fourth Marquess, acquired the castle in 1900 on the death of his father, and the family estates and investments around the castle began to rapidly reduce in size.[113] Cardiff had grown hugely in the previous century, its population increasing from 1,870 in 1800 to around 250,000 in 1900, but the coal trade began to diminish after 1918 and industry suffered during the depression of the 1920s.[114] John only inherited a part of the Butes' Glamorgan estates, and in the first decades of the 20th century he sold off much of the remaining assets around Cardiff, including the coal mines, docks and railway companies, with the bulk of the land interests being finally sold off or nationalised in 1938.[113]
Development work on the castle continued. There was extensive restoration of the medieval masonry in 1921, with architect John Grant rebuilding the South Gate and the barbican tower, and reconstructing the medieval West Gate and town wall alongside the castle, with the Swiss Bridge being moved in 1927 to make room for the new West Gate development.[115] Further archaeological investigations were carried out into the Roman walls in 1922 and 1923, leading to Grant redesigning the northern Roman gatehouse.[116] The second half of the castle stables were finally completed.[83] The Animal Wall was moved in the 1920s to the west side of the castle to enclose a pre-Raphaelite themed garden.[112] The grand staircase in the main range was torn out in the 1930s.[117] During World War II, extensive air-raid shelters were tunnelled out within the medieval walls, with eight different sections, able to hold up to 1,800 people in total, and the castle was also used to tether barrage balloons above the city.[118]
In 1947, the John, the fifth Marquess, inherited the castle on the death of his father and faced considerable death duties.[119] He sold the very last of the Bute lands in Cardiff and gave the castle and the surrounding park to the city on behalf of the people of Cardiff; the family flag was taken down from the castle as part of the official hand-over ceremony.[120] The castle was protected as a grade I listed building and as a scheduled monument.[121]
Cardiff Castle is now run as a tourist attraction, and is one of the most popular sites in the city.[122] The castle is not fully furnished, as the furniture and fittings in the castle were removed by the Marquess in 1947 and subsequently disposed of; an extensive restoration has been carried out, however, of the fittings originally designed for the Clock Tower by Burges.[123] The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, founded in 1949, was housed in the castle's main range for many years, but moved into the castle's former stables north of the castle in 1998.[124] A new interpretation centre, which opened in 2008, was built alongside the South Gate at a cost of £6.5 million, and the castle also contains "Firing Line", the joint regimental museum of the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards and the Royal Welsh.[125]
The castle has been used for a range of cultural and social events. The castle has seen various musical performances, including by Tom Jones, Green Day and the Stereophonics, with a capacity to accommodate over 10,000 people. During the 1960s and 1970s the castle was the setting for a sequence of military tattoos.
Caerphilly Castle in South Wales boasts the most extensive water defences in the UK and is second, after Windsor, in being the largest castle by area. It is also somewhere I have been wanting to visit for more than 45 years, ever since I first read about it.
It is one of the first flowerings of the theory of concentric defence’ where high inner walls are surrounded by but also dominate some much lower outer walls, a concept also seen in Edward I’s great castles in North Wales especially at Harlech and Beaumaris. The castle features two separate moats and were thus protected by elaborate water management including a huge dam which function as an outer ward. CADW has rebuilt some of the castle's wooden brattices or hoardings which once overhung the massive inner walls and allowed for vertical fire on attackers at the very foot of the walls.
Essentially a single development by Gilbert De Clare from 1268 onwards, he appears to have built in three phases with some additions by Hugh Despenser the younger in the early 14th century. Edward II fled from here in 1326 to escape his vengeful French queen Isabella.
Damaged in the English Civil War it was restored by the Marquesses of Bute in the 19th and 20th centuries before being taken into public ownership. It is now run by the Welsh organisation CADW.
This is my first video and still photography shoot with a 20-minute accompanying documentary to be found here:
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.
The Grade II* Listed Newport Castle, all that remains is this east side of the castle. In the city of Newport, South Wales.
The first castle at "Castell Newyd ar Uysc" (New Castle on the River Usk) — so named to distinguish it from the old Roman port upstream at Caerleon — was a Norman motte possibly built by William Rufus around 1075 but Its exact location is uncertain.
The castle was restored in 1249 by Henry III, and it was held in 1265 by the Earl of Leicester. That same year, Prince Edward occupied the castle, and in 1295, when he was the king, he ordered improvements and repairs. It was ceded to Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester in 1320 and two years later Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March attacked the castle, took its furnishings and set it on fire. Three hundred trees were needed for reconstruction.
The second castle at Newport, commonly known as Newport Castle, was built in the 14th century, possibly by Hugh de Audley, 1st Earl of Gloucester, after de Audley took control of Despenser's lands in 1326, or, more probably, by his son-in-law and successor Ralph, Earl of Stafford. Historians, such as Jeremy Knight, believe it was built between 1327 and 1386.
The castle was first documented in 1405, when it was repaired after being sacked in 1402 in the rebellion by Owain Glyndŵr. Around 1435 further work was undertaken by Humphrey Stafford, Lord of Newport. Owen Tudor was held prisoner within the castle in 1460.
It was occupied in the early 16th century by Henry VIII's uncle, Jasper Tudor. Seized by Henry VIII in 1521, the castle was held by the king until 1547 when it was then possessed by Edward VI. It had suffered from lack of upkeep from 1522, at which date it was already reported to be in disrepair. In 1645, during the Civil War, Colonel Henry Herbert established a garrison of 50 troops at the castle, which was taken by Oliver Cromwell's forces in 1648. The Herbert and Morgan families held it over a 300-year period that began in 1548. It was in a state of ruin by 1743.
In the 19th century, the buildings within the ruin were used as a tannery and later as a brewery. The hall's traceried windows were destroyed in that century, and the brewery was destroyed by a fire in 1883. In 1891, the south tower came into the ownership of the Corporation, and the rest of the castle was bought by Lord Tredegar in 1899. The Office of Works became the guardian of the castle between 1930 and 1950, at which time there was a refurbishment of the stonework.
Information Source:
On this day in 1282 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, known in Welsh as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (lit. 'Llywelyn, Our Last Leader') was killed when he was ambushed near Cilmeri in Mid Wales. The son of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr and grandson of Llywelyn the Great, he was Prince of Wales from 1258 until his death and was the last sovereign prince of Wales before its conquest by Edward I of England.
In 1267 Llywelyn had been recognised by the English Crown as Prince of Wales, holding his lands with the king of England as his feudal overlord. However, following the death of Henry III in 1272, the relationship between England and Wales broke down as the new and ambitious King Edward I pressed his ambition to master of the whole island of Great Britain. By 1276 Llywelyn had been declared a rebel and diplomatic pressure was followed by a massive invasion force the following year. Edward forced Llywelyn into submission, confining him to lands above the Conwy.
In 1282 however, many of the lesser princes who had supported Edward against Llywelyn in 1277 had become disillusioned with the exactions of the English royal officers. On Palm Sunday that year, Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd ap Gruffydd attacked the English at Hawarden Castle and then laid siege to Rhuddlan. The revolt quickly spread to other parts of Wales, with Aberystwyth Castle captured and burnt and rebellion in Ystrad Tywi in south Wales, also inspired by Dafydd according to the annals, where Carreg Cennen castle was captured.
Though he claimed not to have been involved in the planning, Llywelyn felt obliged to join his brother’s ill prepared rebellion. The Archbishop of Canterbury tried mediating between Llywelyn and Edward, and Llywelyn was offered a large estate in England if he would surrender Wales to Edward, while Dafydd was to go on a crusade and not return without the king's permission. In an emotional reply, which has been compared to the Declaration of Arbroath, Llywelyn said he would not abandon the people whom his ancestors had protected since "the days of Kamber son of Brutus". The offer was refused.
Llywelyn now left Dafydd to lead the defense of Gwynedd and took a force south, trying to rally support in mid and south Wales and open up an important second front. On December 11th at the Battle of Orewin Bridge at Builth Wells, he was killed while separated from his army. The exact circumstances are unclear and there are two conflicting accounts of his death. Both accounts agree that Llywelyn was tricked into leaving the bulk of his army and was then attacked and killed. The first account says that Llywelyn and his chief minister approached the forces of Edmund Mortimer and Hugh Le Strange after crossing a bridge. They then heard the sound of battle as the main body of his army was met in battle by the forces of Roger Despenser and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn. Llywelyn turned to rejoin his forces and was pursued by a lone lancer who struck him down. It was not until sometime later that an English knight recognised the body as that of the prince. This version of events was written in the north of England some fifty years later and has suspicious similarities with details about the Battle of Stirling Bridge in Scotland.
An alternative version of events written in the east of England by monks in contact with Llywelyn's exiled daughter, Gwenllian ferch Llywelyn, and niece, Gwladys ferch Dafydd, states that Llywelyn, at the front of his army, approached the combined forces of Edmund and Roger Mortimer, Hugo Le Strange, and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn on the promise that he would receive their homage. This was a deception. His army was immediately engaged in fierce battle during which a significant section of it was routed, causing Llywelyn and his eighteen retainers to become separated. At around dusk, Llywelyn and a small group of his retainers (which included clergy) were ambushed and chased into a wood at Aberedw. Llywelyn was surrounded and struck down. As he lay dying, he asked for a priest and gave away his identity. He was then killed and his head hewn from his body. His person was searched and various items recovered, including a list of "conspirators", which may well have been faked, and his privy seal.
There are legends surrounding the fate of Llywelyn's severed head. It is known that it was sent to Edward at Rhuddlan and after being shown to the English troops based in Anglesey, Edward sent the head on to London. In London, it was set up in the city pillory for a day, and crowned with ivy (i.e. to show he was a "king" of Outlaws and in mockery of the ancient Welsh prophecy, which said that a Welshman would be crowned in London as king of the whole of Britain). Then it was carried by a horseman on the point of his lance to the Tower of London and set up over the gate. It was still on the Tower of London 15 years later. The last resting place of Llywelyn's body is not known for certain; however, it has always been tradition that it was interred at the Cistercian Abbey at Abbeycwmhir.
Following these events Dafydd ap Gruffydd proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and attempted to continue the fight. However, he was quickly defeated and, having spent months in hiding, was captured on June 22nd 1283. He was hanged, drawn and quartered in October. It is by this means that Wales became "united and annexed" to the Crown of England as under the auspices of Llewelyn and Dafydd’s ‘treason’, Edward I was able to take possession of the lands and titles of the House of Aberffraw.
Caerphilly Castle in South Wales boasts the most extensive water defences in the UK and is second, after Windsor, in being the largest castle by area. It is also somewhere I have been wanting to visit for more than 45 years, ever since I first read about it.
It is one of the first flowerings of the theory of concentric defence’ where high inner walls are surrounded by but also dominate some much lower outer walls, a concept also seen in Edward I’s great castles in North Wales especially at Harlech and Beaumaris. The castle features two separate moats and were thus protected by elaborate water management including a huge dam which function as an outer ward. CADW has rebuilt some of the castle's wooden brattices or hoardings which once overhung the massive inner walls and allowed for vertical fire on attackers at the very foot of the walls.
Essentially a single development by Gilbert De Clare from 1268 onwards, he appears to have built in three phases with some additions by Hugh Despenser the younger in the early 14th century. Edward II fled from here in 1326 to escape his vengeful French queen Isabella.
Damaged in the English Civil War it was restored by the Marquesses of Bute in the 19th and 20th centuries before being taken into public ownership. It is now run by the Welsh organisation CADW.
This is my first video and still photography shoot with a 20-minute accompanying documentary to be found here:
Neath Castle in South Wales was one of the minor Norman castles in the lordship of Glamorgan. The Normans chose this strategic spot guarding the river crossing for a stronghold. The first castle was built here in the 12th century by Robert, Earl of Gloucester. The castle was much harried by the Welsh and was rebuilt sometime in the early 13th century, possibly after being destroyed by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth in 1231. The castle was again severely damaged by enemies of the unpopular Lord of Glamorgan, Hugh Despenser. It was the 14th-century rebuilding after this attack that gave it its magnificent gatehouse whose great D-shaped towers and arch survive as pictured here.
The church itself is one of the finest Norman buildings in England. Its massive crossing tower was rated "probably the largest and finest Romanesque tower in England" by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner. Fourteen of England's cathedrals are of smaller dimensions, while only Westminster Abbey contains more medieval church monuments.
The Chronicle of Tewkesbury records that the first Christian worship was brought to the area by Theoc, a missionary from Northumbria, who built his cell in the mid-7th century near on a gravel spit where the Severn and Avon rivers join together. The cell was succeeded by a monastery in 715, but nothing remaining of it has been identified.
In the 10th century the religious foundation at Tewkesbury became a priory subordinate to the benedictine Cranbourne Abbey in Dorset. In 1087, William the Conqueror gave the manor of Tewkesbury to his cousin, Robert Fitzhamon, who, with Giraldus, Abbot of Cranbourne, founded the present abbey in 1092. Building of the present Abbey church did not start until 1102, employing Caen stone imported from Normandy and floated up the Severn.
Robert Fitzhamon died at Falaise in Normandy, in 1102, but his son-in-law, Robert FitzRoy, the natural son of Henry I who was made Earl of Gloucester, continued to fund the building work. The Abbey's greatest single later patron was Lady Eleanor le Despenser, last of the De Clare heirs of FitzRoy. In the High Middle Ages, Tewkesbury became one of the richest abbeys of England.
After the Battle of Tewkesbury in the Wars of the Roses on 4 May 1471, some of the defeated Lancastrians sought sanctuary in the abbey, but the victorious Yorkists, led by King Edward IV, forced their way into the abbey, and the resulting bloodshed caused the building to be closed for a month until it could be purified and re-consecrated.
After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the people of Tewkesbury saved the abbey from destruction in 1539: Insisting it was their parish church, which they had the right to keep, they bought it for the value of its bells and lead roof which would have been salvaged and melted down, leaving the structure a roofless ruin. The price came to £453.
The bells merited their own free-standing belltower, an unusual feature in English sites. After the Dissolution, the bell-tower was used as the gaol for the borough until it was demolished in the late 18th century.
The central stone tower was originally topped with a wooden spire, which collapsed in 1559 and was never rebuilt. Some restoration undertaken in the 19th century under Sir Gilbert Scott included the rood screen that replaced the one removed when the Abbey became a parish church.
The church's 17th century organ was originally made for Magdalen College, Oxford. After the Civil War it was removed to the chapel of Hampton Court Palace and came to Tewkesbury in 1737.
Flood waters reached inside the Abbey in severe floods in 1760, and again on 23 July 2007.
On this day in 1282 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, known in Welsh as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (lit. 'Llywelyn, Our Last Leader') was killed when he was ambushed near Cilmeri in Mid Wales. The son of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr and grandson of Llywelyn the Great, he was Prince of Wales from 1258 until his death and was the last sovereign prince of Wales before its conquest by Edward I of England.
In 1267 Llywelyn had been recognised by the English Crown as Prince of Wales, holding his lands with the king of England as his feudal overlord. However, following the death of Henry III in 1272, the relationship between England and Wales broke down as the new and ambitious King Edward I pressed his ambition to master of the whole island of Great Britain. By 1276 Llywelyn had been declared a rebel and diplomatic pressure was followed by a massive invasion force the following year. Edward forced Llywelyn into submission, confining him to lands above the Conwy.
In 1282 however, many of the lesser princes who had supported Edward against Llywelyn in 1277 had become disillusioned with the exactions of the English royal officers. On Palm Sunday that year, Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd ap Gruffydd attacked the English at Hawarden Castle and then laid siege to Rhuddlan. The revolt quickly spread to other parts of Wales, with Aberystwyth Castle captured and burnt and rebellion in Ystrad Tywi in south Wales, also inspired by Dafydd according to the annals, where Carreg Cennen castle was captured.
Though he claimed not to have been involved in the planning, Llywelyn felt obliged to join his brother’s ill prepared rebellion. The Archbishop of Canterbury tried mediating between Llywelyn and Edward, and Llywelyn was offered a large estate in England if he would surrender Wales to Edward, while Dafydd was to go on a crusade and not return without the king's permission. In an emotional reply, which has been compared to the Declaration of Arbroath, Llywelyn said he would not abandon the people whom his ancestors had protected since "the days of Kamber son of Brutus". The offer was refused.
Llywelyn now left Dafydd to lead the defense of Gwynedd and took a force south, trying to rally support in mid and south Wales and open up an important second front. On December 11th at the Battle of Orewin Bridge at Builth Wells, he was killed while separated from his army. The exact circumstances are unclear and there are two conflicting accounts of his death. Both accounts agree that Llywelyn was tricked into leaving the bulk of his army and was then attacked and killed. The first account says that Llywelyn and his chief minister approached the forces of Edmund Mortimer and Hugh Le Strange after crossing a bridge. They then heard the sound of battle as the main body of his army was met in battle by the forces of Roger Despenser and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn. Llywelyn turned to rejoin his forces and was pursued by a lone lancer who struck him down. It was not until sometime later that an English knight recognised the body as that of the prince. This version of events was written in the north of England some fifty years later and has suspicious similarities with details about the Battle of Stirling Bridge in Scotland.
An alternative version of events written in the east of England by monks in contact with Llywelyn's exiled daughter, Gwenllian ferch Llywelyn, and niece, Gwladys ferch Dafydd, states that Llywelyn, at the front of his army, approached the combined forces of Edmund and Roger Mortimer, Hugo Le Strange, and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn on the promise that he would receive their homage. This was a deception. His army was immediately engaged in fierce battle during which a significant section of it was routed, causing Llywelyn and his eighteen retainers to become separated. At around dusk, Llywelyn and a small group of his retainers (which included clergy) were ambushed and chased into a wood at Aberedw. Llywelyn was surrounded and struck down. As he lay dying, he asked for a priest and gave away his identity. He was then killed and his head hewn from his body. His person was searched and various items recovered, including a list of "conspirators", which may well have been faked, and his privy seal.
There are legends surrounding the fate of Llywelyn's severed head. It is known that it was sent to Edward at Rhuddlan and after being shown to the English troops based in Anglesey, Edward sent the head on to London. In London, it was set up in the city pillory for a day, and crowned with ivy (i.e. to show he was a "king" of Outlaws and in mockery of the ancient Welsh prophecy, which said that a Welshman would be crowned in London as king of the whole of Britain). Then it was carried by a horseman on the point of his lance to the Tower of London and set up over the gate. It was still on the Tower of London 15 years later. The last resting place of Llywelyn's body is not known for certain; however, it has always been tradition that it was interred at the Cistercian Abbey at Abbeycwmhir.
Following these events Dafydd ap Gruffydd proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and attempted to continue the fight. However, he was quickly defeated and, having spent months in hiding, was captured on June 22nd 1283. He was hanged, drawn and quartered in October. It is by this means that Wales became "united and annexed" to the Crown of England as under the auspices of Llewelyn and Dafydd’s ‘treason’, Edward I was able to take possession of the lands and titles of the House of Aberffraw.
The Grade II* Listed Newport Castle, all that remains is this east side of the castle. In the city of Newport, South Wales.
The first castle at "Castell Newyd ar Uysc" (New Castle on the River Usk) — so named to distinguish it from the old Roman port upstream at Caerleon — was a Norman motte possibly built by William Rufus around 1075. Its exact location is uncertain, but a common theory is that it was built at Stow Hill close to St Woolos Church, about 0.5 miles southwest of the later castle.
In 1910, James Matthews, author of Historic Newport, wrote that the first mention of a castle in Newport was in 1126. William, Earl of Gloucester had a garrison established at the castle in 1171, but the following year the castle was destroyed by Iorwerth. According to Trett, "It is recorded in the Welsh Brut y Tywysogion that in about 1172 King Henry II visited Castell Newyd ar Uysc (New Castle on the River Usk). In 1185 the king’s accounts show that six pounds fourteen shillings and sixpence were spent on repairs to the castle of Novi Burgi (i.e. Newport) and its buildings and bridge."
The castle was restored in 1249 by Henry III, and it was held in 1265 by the Earl of Leicester. That same year, Prince Edward occupied the castle, and in 1295, when he was the king, he ordered improvements and repairs. It was ceded to Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester in 1320 and two years later Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March attacked the castle, took its furnishings and set it on fire. Three hundred trees were needed for reconstruction.
The scanty remains of the Norman castle were probably buried by spoil from a railway tunnel dug in 1846.
The second castle at Newport, commonly known as Newport Castle, was built in the 14th century, possibly by Hugh de Audley, 1st Earl of Gloucester, after de Audley took control of Despenser's lands in 1326, or, more probably, by his son-in-law and successor Ralph, Earl of Stafford. Historians, such as Jeremy Knight, believe it was built between 1327 and 1386. A coin made during Edward III's reign was found during an 1845 excavation of the site. It had an "imposing position" above the river and controlled the river crossing and trade upstream. At that time Newport became the centre of the lordship of Wentlooge.
The castle was first documented in 1405, when it was repaired after being sacked in 1402 in the rebellion by Owain Glyndŵr. Around 1435 further work was undertaken by Humphrey Stafford, Lord of Newport. Owen Tudor was held prisoner within the castle in 1460. It was primarily the lordship's administrative centre, an adjunct to their main estate for collecting local tenants' dues and rent. It was rarely used as the lord's residence.
It was occupied in the early 16th century by Henry VIII's uncle, Jasper Tudor. Seized by Henry VIII in 1521, the castle was held by the king until 1547 when it was then possessed by Edward VI. It had suffered from lack of upkeep from 1522, at which date it was already reported to be in disrepair. William Herbert of St. Julian leased the castle starting in 1548.
In 1645, during the Civil War, Colonel Henry Herbert established a garrison of 50 troops at the castle, which was taken by Oliver Cromwell's forces in 1648. The Herbert and Morgan families held it over a 300-year period that began in 1548. It was in a state of ruin by 1743.
In the 19th century, the buildings within the ruin were used as a tannery and later as a brewery. The hall's traceried windows were destroyed in that century, and the brewery was destroyed by a fire in 1883. In 1891, the south tower came into the ownership of the Corporation, and the rest of the castle was bought by Lord Tredegar in 1899. The Office of Works became the guardian of the castle between 1930 and 1950, at which time there was a refurbishment of the stonework.
Information Source:
Roof boss in St Faith's chapel.
The attractive town of Tewkesbury has been dominated by its superb abbey church since the beginning of the 12th century, and we can be forever grateful to its townspeople for purchasing the monastic church in 1540 for £453 for use as their parish church, saving it from the fate that befell countless similar great churches across the land during the turmoil of the Dissolution. It reminds us both how lucky we are to still marvel at it today, yet also how great a loss to our heritage the period wrought when many more such buildings were so utterly plundered as to have gone without trace (the fate of the monastic buildings here and even the lady chapel of the church whose footings are laid out in the grass at the east end).
Tewkesbury Abbey is thus rightly celebrated as one of our greatest non-cathedral churches, and remarkably much of the original Norman church remains substantially intact, most apparently in the great central tower, a fine example of Romanesque architecture adorned with rows of blind-arcading. The west front is dominated by a massive Norman-arched recess (enclosing the somewhat later west window) and the nave and transepts remain largely as originally built, though this is less clear externally owing to the changes made to the windows, nearly all of which were enlarged in the 14th century in the Decorated Gothic style. This century also saw the complete rebuilding of the eastern limb of the church, of a form less common in England with radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse of the choir (the central lady chapel sadly missing since 1540).
The interior reveals far more of the Romanesque structure with mighty columns supporting the round Norman arches of the nave arcades giving the building a great sense of solidity. The space is further enlivened by the changes made during the 14th century by the stunning vault over the nave (adorned with a rewarding series of figurative bosses) which sits surprisingly well with the Norman work below. Beyond the apsidal choir beckons, and both this and the space below the tower are enriched with stunningly complex vaulted ceilings (replete with further bosses and gilded metal stars), all ablaze with colour and gilding.
There is much to enjoy in glass here, most remarkably a complete set of 14th century glazing in the clerestorey of the choir, seven windows filled with saints and prophets (and most memorably two groups of knights in the westernmost windows on each side). A few of the figures have fared less well over the centuries but on the whole this is a wonderfully rare and well preserved scheme. There is much glass from the 19th century too, with an extensive scheme in the nave of good quality work by Hardman's, and more recently a pair of rich windows by Tom Denny were added in one of the polygonal chapels around the east end.
Some of the most memorable features are the monuments with many medieval tombs of note, primarily the effigies and chantry chapels of members of the Despenser family around the choir (two of the chantries being miniature architectural gems in their own right with exquisite fan-vaulting). In one of the apsidal chapels is the unusual cenotaph to Abbot Wakeman with his grisly cadaver effigy, a late medieval reminder of earthly mortality.
Tewkesbury Abbey is not to be missed and is every bit as rewarding as many of our cathedrals (superior in fact to all but the best). It is normally kept open and welcoming to visitors on a daily basis. I have also had the privilege of working on this great building several times over the years (as part of the team at the studio I once worked for), and have left my mark in glass in a few discreet places.