World Heritage in Wales - Beaumaris castle

 Wales is often described as a 'country of castles', with the remains of perhaps over 600 castles dotting the Welsh landscape. That reminds us the the Welsh were feisty, and pretty keen on defending the territory they held.

Not all Welsh castles were built by the Welsh. Many of the well known and best preserved castles in Wales were built by invaders to hold onto territory they had taken control of. The most famous invaders were the Normans, who built the first stone castle in Wales - Chepstow. They went on to build a number of castles across south east Wales, the remains of which are visible today.

However, Edward I, the King of England in the late 1200s, took castle building to a completely new level. He was so determined to subdue the Welsh, and bring them and their lands under his control, that he built a series of castles along the north and north west coast of Wales, all designed to be supplied by sea. Four of those castles, Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy & Harlech, and the town walls of Caernarfon and Conwy, were designated a world heritage site in 1986. The reason for this is that is that these are superb examples of castle design.

Beaumaris castle is perhaps the most perfect concentric castle design ever.  It's defences are impregnable. It's beautiful, but it was never finished - Edward I went off to fight the Scots, and ran out of money!

The stone it was built from was quarried locally, but the castle builders used two diferent colours to create a chequerboard design on the outer walls, as you can see in this photograph (click on the image to see a larger version):

The main entrance to the castle is pretty impressive. There was once a drawbridge here, and you can see the grooves where the portcullis once was, and several sets of murder holes in the ceiling. If that wasn't enough, there are arrowslits for the crossbowmen to shoot their bolts an unfriendly visitors!

If you got through the main castle entrance, you found that there was a castle within a castle, and this is the entrance way into the inner part of the castle - it's fearsome. There were several heavy wooden gates and portcullises, and many more murder holes. Imagine if you got into here and they shut the gates at both ends? Perfect killing zone.

And what were the defences protecting? These beautiful royal apartments. They may not look very grand now, but imagine large light airy rooms with window seats and huge fireplaces behind these huge windows. 

When the castle was built, most ordinary people lived in small one-roomed wattle and daub buildings with thatched roofs and no windows. This castle must have seemed the most fantastic place on earth to them. Edward I certainly intended it to impress, and also to be a massive symbol of his power. He moved a whole village to the other side of the island so that he could build this castle here - right in the centre of the view enjoyed by the Welsh Princes, at their home in Abergwyngregyn, across the Menai Straits.

Many of us don't appreciate the significance of religion in medieval Britain. Religion was all important. People paid 10% of their income to the church in tithes (taxes), their diet was determined by what the church decreed they could eat on any given day, they worshipped regularly, and dying without absolution was literally a fate worse than death, as it condemned people to purgatory, rather than going to heaven (if they had been good, or given enough money to the church) or hell.

In Beaumaris castle, they built a beautiful chapel, for the residents to worship in. The acoustics in the chapel are fantastic, it would have sounded amazing when hymns and chants were sung. It's also very ethereal, and it's the one place in the castle where you can begin to imagine the beauty of the architectural detail. A peaceful haven.

World heritage in Wales - Caernarfon castle

Wales is often described as a 'country of castles', with the remains of perhaps over 600 castles dotting the Welsh landscape. That reminds us the the Welsh were feisty, and pretty keen on defending the territory they held.

Not all Welsh castles were built by the Welsh. Many of the well known and best preserved castles in Wales were built by invaders to hold onto territory they had taken control of. The most famous invaders were the Normans, who built the first stone castle in Wales - Chepstow. They went on to build a number of castles across south east Wales, the remains of which are visible today.

However, Edward I, the King of England in the late 1200s, took castle building to a completely new level. He was so determined to subdue the Welsh, and bring them and their lands under his control, that he built a series of castles along the north and north west coast of Wales, all designed to be supplied by sea. Four of those castles, Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy & Harlech, and the town walls of Caernarfon and Conwy, were designated a world heritage site in 1986. The reason for this is that is that these are superb examples of castle design.

Caernarfon castle was built as Edward I's administrative centre in north Wales.  It is the largest and most impressive of the castles he had built, but was never finished. The castle sits where the land meets the sea, with the river Arfon alongside. It was once the site of a small Roman fort, and perhaps an earlier Welsh built castle.

Unlike most of Edward's castles, this castle has no curves, or round towers, it is all flat walls and hexagonal sections. It was never designed to be rendered and limewashed, to be a shining white symbol of domination, as many castles were. 

Instead, it was built from huge blocks of finished stone, arranged in bands or stripes, around the walls. 

  

 The towers are exceptionally tall - imagine building these at a time when everything had to be done by hand? There may have been wooden scaffolding up the walls, and pulleys to lift the stone form the ground to working height, but ultimately each stone was moved and put in place by the hands of the castle builders, who were mainly from the south east of England, and paid pennies each week for doing this work. You can see the bands of different colours in the picture below (click on the image for a bigger version)

The interior of the castle is vast. The walls have corridors within, so that those who lived in the castle could walk around without going outdoors, also great protection in the unlikely event of arrows being shot over the high walls! The tall tower in the distance is the eagle tower, so called because there are carved stone eagles on the battlements. Edward I understood the power of symbols. Eryri - the Welsh name for Snowdon (heartland of the Welsh Princes) means 'place of the eagles'. He made Caernarfon castle the new 'place of the eagles', and home to the new Princes of Wales, beginning with his son, Edward II, the first of the new Princes. There's also a link back to earlier inhabitants of this place - the Romans - who often used the Eagle as one of their powerful symbols.

A closer view of the eagle tower - can you see the eagles perched on the battlements? The castle has recently had new interpretation installed, and there is an amazing life sized chessboard interpreting Edward I and his relationships of power on the ground floor, and an ethereal interpretation relating to Eleanor (Edward's wife) on another floor. Well worth a visit to have a look!

The picture below shows 'the Queen's gate'. The plan for this entrance to the castle was a ramp and drawbridge. Now, there is a viewing platform so that visitors inside the castle can look out over the 'Maes' - the open square in the town centre. When Prince Charles had his investiture here in 1969, he stood on this platform with Queen Elizabeth II and greeted the crowds surrounding the castle.

The castle has wonderful views across the Menai Straits and out to sea.  No boats could pass un-noticed, and the castle was designed to be supplied by sea, with a watergate opening onto the quayside which was built alongside the castle.

The main entrance to the castle is daunting. Above the archway there is a statue of Edward I, leaving no doubt about who the castle belonged to!  The rather beautiful windows above show us how elegant the accommodation within the castle was.

Look at the finely carved stone work. Imagine the hours it took the man with the hammer and chisel to make. Think about the very expensive hand made glass, probably transported from Europe on horseback or by sea, which filled the stone framework. Most ordinary people had never seen glass in the 1290s.

Caernarfon castle was built to dominate the Welsh people, but never fulfilled that purpose. Today it is conserved and is managed by the Welsh Government, and is one of the most iconic images of Wales. IT attracts many visitors to this corner of Wales, and the tourism trade in north west Wales would be much poorer without it. I wonder what Edward I would have made of that - the castle he built to subdue providing a living for many Welsh people?

Caerphilly and Dr Who

There is a medieval fair in Caerphilly this weekend, there are stalls selling food and gifts all along the main street, a small funfair, and all manner of medieval sights within the castle. There are also some incongruous sights, like this Santa having a chat with some passers by. Where's his sleigh and reindeer?


A jester in the castle....


Two country folk suffering from the plague singing slightly bawdy songs - great fun!


Great costumes...

The coin striker raising funds for the medieval Newport ship by letting people strike copies of a medieval coin for a small fee.


A beautifully painted medieval style chair:


Old friends meeting up for a chat:


There are female re-encators too...


And a sight of Dr Who's tardis, which has landed on one of the castle towers:







All in all we enjoyed our trip to Caerphilly, but even though we searched in every nook and crany of the castle, we couldn't find Dr Who anywhere. It was very atmoshpheric on places, though:

Pentre Ifan burial chamber, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Pentre Ifan - which translates as 'Ivan's village' is an ancient burial chamber. It was built somewhere around 6000 years ago. All that remains now are the large stones, but once there was an earth mound covering the whole thing.


These stones are large - you can walk under the cap stone without any difficulty. It's been estimated that the capstone weighs somewhere between 16 and 40 tons. It makes you wonder how the people who built this moved the stones here? And why?


What were the ceremonies to do with burial that were so important to them that they took the immense effort and time to buid this, and other, burial chambers for their dead?


The site of this burial chamber is fabulous. It overlooks the coast near Fishguard, Pemmbrokeshire, and there are other burial chambers nearby, as well as a reconstructed Iron Age viillage, Castell Henllys.

Between Brecon & Sennybridge, Wales, UK

On New Year's day, we had a rare event in south west Powys - we had a severe air frost. It had been dry, and although the ground wasn't all frosted, the winter trees and bushes looked stunning We went for a walk and took some photos, which I have finally gotten around to sharing. This picture of a very white world was taken near Llanspyddid, about 2 miles from home:



and here's a close up of some Rosebay willowherb:


and some cow parsley:

and some ferns:


We drove a mile or two further to Cwm Camlais and found some lovely frosted conifers:


and an extremely friendly robin:





and quite a friendly horse:





We found some beautiful iced spiders webs:



and icy branches in the hedges:









and the frost even made the wire fencing look pretty!



but this is my favourite scene of the day:

with this close up looking almost as good: