Weobley Castle

   A jaunt onto Gower this morning and a visit to Weobley Castle, romantically set high above the salt marshes on the north coast of the peninsula with wide views across the Loughor estuary and far to the Brecon Beacons. On the landward side the castle stands beside a working farm. As castles go not at all large, but a comfortable fortified manor house, the best remaining example of its type in Glamorgan according to the Buildings of Wales volume on the county. Some nice architectural details too.  In places the ruins seem to merge with the natural outcropping rocks. 

   From there to quite my favourite village on Gower, Llanmadog, wth sheep grazing in the village street and ancient stone walls and even older parish church. A place to treasure. We took a brief walk along the coastal path towards the pine woods of Whiteford Burrows and Cwm Ivy Torr, a place of utter silence and solitude. Le Pays de Galles profonde. A truly remarkable place, very atmospheric if not faintly disturbing in its emptiness. I can quite understand its folkloric associations. From there back to civilisation and the lovely Cwm Ivy cafe for tea and cake.

Dinefwr

     Over to Llandeilo last Monday to meet up with family who were staying there for a couple of days.

     After a tour of the town we walked over to the landscape park at Dinefwr. Quite interesting for the hand of Capability Brown, who was employed here as an adviser, and who could be terribly dull, but here had good bones to work with.

   It was our second visit and it is only in researching post have I come to realise how rich, complex and ancient is the history of this site. There is an Iron Age hill fort where the castle stands and a large Roman fort under the park. With the collapse of the Empire in the West the ancient Kingdom of the Demetae (its civitas was at Carmarthen) re-emerged as Dyfed. The subsequent history is one of repeated dissolution and consolidation, until the emergence of Deheubarth, which was centred on Llandeilo and Dinefwr where eventually the Lords Rhys erected a castle high on the bluff above the river Towy. A small town grew up to the north of the castle augmented by a second community, Newton (Drenewydd) further north still. Both have disappeared, and the Park has swallowed their remains. The castle survives though succeeded by Newton House, aka Plas Dinefwr, built on the site of that second community. And Newton House was our first destination, though because of Covid closed to the public. I'm not that sure we missed much. I wrote about this in my first Dinefwr post, but I will say it again. The National Trust should have employed a leading interior designer to work on the interior. This was their policy in the 1960s & 70s: David Milnaric at Benningbrough; John Fowler at Clandon Park and Sudbury Hall; and David Hicks at Blickling Hall. These designers combined historical knowledge and refined aesthetics. It was a self-confident approach, but like many institutions today confidence is something the Trust lacks. Enough with the rant. Newton House dates from the 1660s and was given a thorough-going High Victorian Gothic face-lift in the 1850s by J R Penson. The result is, perhaps, not entirely satisfactory.

     Our next stop was the castle. The views from the battlements were wonderful. The 12th century round keep, continued in use into the 17th century, a belvedere being added to the top to take advantage of those views.

     Our final stop was Llandyfeisant church - a tiny structure embowered beautifully in trees below the park, dedicated to St.Tyfi. One of the followers of St Teilo, there are a number of confusing traditions around the saint one of which places his martyrdom here. Heavily restored in c. 1879, but rather beautifully and sensitively done. According to 'The Buildings of Wales' the architect was Rev William Wiggin of Hampnett, Glouscetershire, Lord Dynevor's brother-in-law; according to 'Coflein', J Kyrke Pearson (I think they mean Penson) of Oswestry, the guy who worked on Newton House. Roman remains were found here in the late 18th century and it was then asserted that the church stands on the site of a Roman temple. Contemporary historians have suggested it stands on the site of a Roman bath house attached to the fort. Just to the north of the church we found what we wondered was a holy well. Research on the internet didn't get me very far. There was mention of the Dinefwr Well and the Nant-y-Rheibis, but nothing to firmly locate it by the church. Long the estate church of Dinefwr, the late 20th century has not been kind and for a number of years the church was derelict.  It is now being restored.

Llansteffan Castle

     A busy weekend we've had of it. Saturday was spent at the 'Festival of Senses' in Llandeilo doing a bit of Christmas shopping, while yesterday we drove over to Llansteffan on the beautiful Towy estuary. Good weather on both days was a welcome bonus after all the rain of late.
     Llansteffan is a village clustering between the foot of steep wooded hills and the beach. A small, discreet seaside resort, a bit higgledy-piggledy really, but none the worse for that. Mainly Victorian by the look of it and all colourwashed including the church but not its tower. The church is mainly Perpendicular.
     High on a headland south of the village and at the very mouth of the river stands the castle. All dark grey and hoary rubble. Most of the finer stone, which would have been used for the details such as windows and doors, has been robbed out. Some details remain on the upper floors of the great gatehouse, which in the later Middle Ages was converted into the main lodgings. A donjon. Judging by those remaining details it must have been a pretty fine place to dwell. 

     The site is ancient - the castle defences utilise the earthen ramparts of an Iron Age hill fort - and strategic - controlling the mouth of the Towy and hence access up stream to Carmarthen and the upper Towy valley. The views  in themselves are worth the climb from the village: east over the estuary to Ferryside and south out across the mouths of the Gwendraeth and Loughor estuaries to the western tip of Gower. Quite haunting, that view south, on a cold winter's day.

Carreg Cennen Castle

     Standing there with a great pastoral landscape heaving and undulating around us like a great, green ocean it was hard to think that not so far away from us, behind those blind bracken covered hills on the horizon was a different, scarred, landscape of industrialisation and the 'world of telegrams and anger' - Swansea, and the small industrial towns of the Tawe valley and southern Carmarthenshire. This landscape seemed much older, much more settled and at ease with itself.  Of course it really isn't as simple as that but standing there amidst the wreck of Carreg Cennen Castle it was easy to think it was.

     Carreg Cennen Castle sits on a great crag of limestone, at a dizzying height above the tiny Cennen river that flows on to meet the Towy at Llandeilo Fawr.
The history of the castle is complex, changing hands many times throughout the Middle Ages, but site started off as an administrative centre in the Kingdom of Deheubarth and at the end of the War of the Roses it was awarded to Sir Rhys ap Thomas, who is now buried in St Peter's Carmarthen, before passing to the Vaughans of the Golden Grove, the Cawdors and finally into government ownership in 1932. (Thankfully the castle retains one, at least, of those beautiful 'Ministry of Works' signs.)  Architecturally speaking the important event in the castle's history is its capture by Edward I - most of what can be seen dates from the period shortly after when it was completely rebuilt by the Giffords who had been granted the castle in 1283. The best bit, apart form those breath-taking views is the mural passage leading to a cave under the castle. (Flashlights are provided for hire for this but we found the light on my mobile phone a very useful supplement.)
     Looking at the plan of the castle I was struck, given the irregularity of the site, by its regularity; a plan that displays its origins in the Late Antique.  It's always said that such designs were brought back to the West by the Crusaders impressed by the Eastern Roman and Islamic fortresses they encountered. The Crusaders, I think, were pretty overawed by the walls of the Imperial City of Constantinople, indeed it is thought that they were the inspiration for Edward I's mighty fortress at Carnarvon, which is a sort of mimetic model of the 'Holy City of Byzantium', in the same way that some scholars have understood Umayyad Damascus, but it must be remembered that both the Eastern Romans and the Arabs were essentially working in a continuing Late Antique tradition, an example of this can be seen the walls erected around Cairo in 1087-92 (a maidan was even laid out in the shape of a Roman hippodrome), or in the country houses erected in the Syrian Steppe by the Ummayad elite, and whose plans follow that of the Roman fortress - even the name for such a residence 'qasr' is derived from the Latin 'castrum'.
The shadow of Rhufain - Rome - is very long.

'This is Merlin's Town': Carmarthen and Pembroke

     Friday, the final full day of my holiday and we went into the west.  I exaggerate a little, as we only went as far as Pembroke, but there is something distinctive, almost other worldly, about west Wales.  Perhaps it is the quality of the light.
Our first point of call was Carmarthen, an ancient town, the oldest in Wales, high on a bluff above the river Towy at the point where it becomes tidal.  The Romans were there building a fortress and later a town - Moridunum, the civitas of the Demetae.  Remains of the amphitheatre are east of the town centre. 

     Carmarthen is at the southern end of the longest branch of the 'Sarn Helen', the network of Roman roads in Wales, the construction of which is traditionally credited to 'Elen Luyddog' - 'Helen of the Hosts', daughter of Eudaf Hen and wife of  Macsen Wledig, the late Western Roman Emperor Magnus Maximus. That ancient legend, the 'Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig' or 'Dream of Macsen Wledig', forms part of the Mabinogion and appears too in different form in Geoffrey of Monomouth's 'Historia Regnum Britanniae'. But I digress. Carmarthen is however associated with another mythic cycle that of Arthur, for Carmarthen, Caerfyrddin, is Merlin's town.  (There is some scholarly discussion as to whether Caerfyrddin actually refers to Merlin or not; either way there are number of local monuments that are connected to him.)  Be that as it may Carmarthen was an important centre in the Kingdoms of Dyfed and Deheubarth - the location of a 'bishop house', three monasteries within the walls, that sort of thing. The centre of the town now presents a mainly Georgian and Victorian face, the public spaces intimate, streets narrow, something that all old Welsh towns have in common I wonder? Coloured plaster predominates. The view from the south is dominated by the muscular County Hall building designed by Sir Percy Thomas architect of the Guildhall in Swansea.  It is, like the Guildhall, a building of impressive heft, with a nod in the direction of Richard Norman Shaw with its great chimneys and impressive graded slate roof. There is however, like the Guildhall, some of that twentieth century froideur about it.  It is an austere, somewhat aloof, building that sits squarely within the remains of the castle on the site of the gaol that John Nash built during his Welsh sojourn.  Its not helped by the fact it is now encircled by a puddle of parked cars.  I left wondering what the wonderful Josef Plechnik would have made of the commission like that.  

     We had time also to pop into St Peter's church.  Full of civic pomp, and a dash over restored, but worth a visit.  It contains the lavish tomb of Sir Rhys ap Thomas supporter of Henry Tudor in his rebellion against Richard III and reputed slayer of the king at Bosworth Field.

     Then on into Pembrokeshire and the mighty castle at Pembroke - no time really to look at the town.  This incredibly powerful Norman fortress, which stands at the point of a great tine of land, between two branches  (south one silted up) of the Milford Haven ria.  While doing a research for this post I've been struck by the shear political and cultural dynamism of the Normans; R H C Davies in 'The Normans and their Myth' (London 1974) talks about the Dukes of Normandy forging 'a new aristocracy, a new church, a new monasticism and a new culture'. At the same time as the Normans were first conquering England, and then conquering and settling south Wales, Norman knights were conquering first the southern Italian peninsular, defeating the Lombards and the Eastern Roman Empire in the process, and then island of Sicily, before eventually launching the invasion and attempted conquest of North Africa. In the following century they would nearly conquer all of Ireland and settle peacefully, at the behest of the monarch, in Scotland, and wherever they went they brought that new culture with them - there are Norman churches, for instance, all over the British Isles (including areas such as the Shetlands (Kingdom of Norway) and Pre-Conquest Ireland, that politically were beyond  the Norman world). Castles too such as Pembroke.
     Pembroke fell to the Normans in 1093, to put it in context that is twenty-nine years after the Norman Conquest of England and just two years after the Norman conquest of Sicily.  As at Abergavenny, Kidwelly and Brecon in addition to building a castle a monastery was founded. A pattern also followed here in south Lincolnshire at South Kyme, Castle Bytham/Grimsthorpe and more importantly for this post at Bourne under the aegis of Baldwin Fitzgilbert. In 1138, the same year that Baldwin was founding Bourne Abbey, his brother Gilbert was raised to the Earldom of Pembroke with Palatine powers. It was his son Richard de Clare, 'Strongbow', who began the Norman invasion of Ireland.  In 1170 Henry II embarked for Ireland from Pembroke in an attempt to control that invasion, but being virtually impregnable Pembroke castle played little part in British history again until, that is, the Wars of the Roses. By then Pembroke was in the hands of the Lancastrian Tudors, and it became a stage, as it were, for several key events in the rise to power of Henry VII - his birth in 1457, his dramatic escape from a Yorkist siege and flight to France and his return to claim the throne. For this blog the resonate event is his birth, for Henry's mother was the remarkable Lady Margaret Beaufort, (this is her fourth appearance on this blog) wife of Edmund Tudor, descendant of Baldwin FitzGilbert, Lady of the Manor of Bourne, patron of the abbey.
     Back to the architecture.  It is, it has to be said, not only very grand and imposing, but also rather workman-like, utilitarian.  Which is probably what you'd expect with a castle, but it is almost all lacking in detail and being constructed almost wholly of rubble masonry the castle has a very homogenous look making it hard to differentiate sometimes the work of different periods.  Thinking back it seems to be that though there are Early English details and some Geometric detailing in the residential block north of the keep there was nothing later in style.  No Curvilinear Decorated or Perp.  Nothing either of a Great Hall.  All that is left, and there is a lot of it, is the defensive. The most distinctive is the great circular keep - a massive cylinder of stone, 53 feet in diameter at the base and 80 feet high. It is thought to date from the time of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke of the second creation, who was the husband of Isabel de Clare, daughter of 'Strongbow' and Aiofe McMurrough, daughter of the King of Leinster. The view from the top is exhilarating.