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.
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.
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