Hafoty, Anglesey

Hafoty is a medieval house on Anglesey. It has been undergoing conservation work to preserve the fabric of the building, and the front of the house is currently covered in scaffolding, to enable safe access for the man who is currently painting it white!

This house is rarely open to the public, although it will be on various dates in September 2008, under the Civic Trust's 'open doors' scheme:

http://www.civictrustwales.org/ehd/programme2008/handlist0108.pdf

A collection of objects found on site during the conservation work.

A newly created door, in oak.

The fireplace is huge, impressive, and beautifully carved. The carved stone with family crest above the fireplace was added much later. On the close up picture above, you can see the remains of medieval paint (red ochre) staining the grey stone.

One of the windows.

A refurbished window, complete with shutter. They didn't have curtains in early medieval times, they used solid wood shutters to keep the heat in.


An upstairs window. It is unlikely that this is the original window, but was either a replacement or an addition, as it has a stone frame, and the original windows were all wooden framed. The house has been changed through time, as all houses are, and has features created in a range of different times.


The upper part of the bedroom (the floor is on 2 different levels, this is the dias where the bed would have been, about a foot higher than the rest of the floor).


The fabulous roof trusses. Imagine lying in bed and looking at these? This house was originally built as an oak framed house, and the stonework was added a couple of hundred years later, when one of it's owners wanted the house to become a grander dwelling.


The rear of the property.

Wiston Castle, Pembrokeshire

Wiston Castle is small but perfectly formed. It is a small and simple motte and bailey type castle, in the small village of Wiston, in beautiful Pembrokeshire. There are no big hills on which to build a castle, so the earth was mounded up to create this base, and at the same time form a moat (which no longer has any water in it). On top of the mound, a castle was built - probably originally in timber, and later in stone, as timber was too vulnerable to fire.


The castle from a distance. You can see a very long way from up there.


The interior of the castle.

Harlech Castle

I have been very busy of late, and have rather neglected this blog,
so I thought I'd post some pictures of Harlech Castle, in north Wales.



The castle is accessed by wooden bridge in the location of the original drawbridge.
It looks formidable. This castle was rendered and painted white when it was built, as was Cricieth. They were meant to be highly visible as symbols of domination, from a long way off.



These were the grand apartments of the castle,
as viewed from the inner courtyard.


This is the remains of the Great Hall, you can see the fireplace and doorways on the left, and more holes in the walls, where beams would have supported the floors above.


You can see the potlug holes in the curved wall - large beams were insierted into these holes when the castle was being built - these beams then supported a ramp made of smaller pieces of wood, and the builders used the ramp to access the higher levels as they built the castle. The square structure where the curved wall meets the flat wall is the lavatory chute....


This view of a small window opening shows the thickness of the walls, about 10 feet, I think.


The view to the north from the castle. When the castle was built, the sea lapped at the base of the rocks it was built on, and it was supplied by sea, as this was easier and safer than trying to bring supplies through a difficult geographic region full of hostile Welsh people.


The remains of a grand fireplace and chimneys. See the corbels (stones standing out of the wall) which would once have supported a ceiling or floor or part of a roof.


Some steps within the castle - made from huge slabs of local Welsh slate.

Dolbadarn Castle, north Wales

This castle was built by a Welsh prince
- Llewelyn ap Iorwerth -
in the early 1200s.
It is built of slate and rubble,
and stands about 80ft above the nearby lakes,
guarding one of the main routes through
the mountains of north Wales.


The castle as seen from the main road.
It is very near the town of Llanberis,
which is where the Snowdon mountain railway trains
collect passengers to take them up to the top of Snowdon:

http://www.snowdonrailway.co.uk/



A closer view of the castle,
which is not in bad condition
for it's age of 800 years...
shame all the wooden floors and roofs are long gone.



This is Lake Peris, to the south of the castle - you can
see the huge slate quarry worls on the opposite shore.
Llanberis is famous for its slate,
and has a museum, where workers
demonstrate how to cut and split slate:

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/slate/


This is the view to the north,
Lake Padarn - from which the castle gets its name,
Dolbadarn means Padarn meadow.
You can see Llanberis town on the
lake shore to the left of the picture.

Valle Crucis Abbey

Valle Crucis Abbey near Llangollen, north Wales,
is set in a beautiful location.

Building work began at this site in 1201.

Unfortunately, at some point in the more recent past,
planning permission was given to the owner
of the surrounding land to allow it to be used
for camping and as a caravan park.

This makes the approach to the Abbey ruins really ugly,
but once within the Abbey,
the clever use of high stone walls blocks
most of the view of caravans.

This is probably the best preserved Abbey in Wales.

Remember you can click on the pictures
if you want to look more closely.


The front wall of the Abbey church, as seen from inside.
To give you an idea of the scale of the buildings,
see the wooden benches either
side of the door - each would seat 3-4 people.


The large fishpond, behind the Abbey,
is the last remaining monastic fishpond in Wales.
There were so many days in the year on which
meat could not be eaten,
that most religious houses had a fishpond
to supply them with fresh fish.

The main doors into the church, shown below,
are about 10 feet tall, and are set into a wonderfully
carved arched doorway.
Soft stone was used for doorways and windows,
as it was much easier to carve.
Unfortunately, this also means it weathers more quickly,
and carved detail is lost over the years


Some old carved stones have been re-used in the buildings,
as shown here in this part of the abbey, built in the 1500s.



There is a display of carved stones in the abbey ,
this is a lovely example.


Look at the detail in the hinges of the abbey church doors.


Also the detail of the keyhole and handle mounting.
(handle is only on the inside of the doors)


This is a view of the chapter house,
where all the monks gathered each day
to listen to a chapter of the bible being read.

This is quite a small room,
and probably would only hold 30 people at most,
compared to the Abbey church,
which would have had the capacity
to hold several hundred people.

Talley Abbey

Talley Abbey is about 7 miles from Llandeilo. It is located in a small but attractive village in a lovely valley. I suppose some of the pretty houses nearby have been built from some of the stone originally used in the Abbey.

It is hard to imagine from the photo just how high those arches are, but I would estimate that the large arch must be 30 - 35 feet, and the smaller arch around 20 feet tall. It must have been quite majestic when first built.

Sadly, like most abbeys and monasteries, it fell into disuse and disrepair following the dissolution of the monastries by Henry VIII in the 1500s...

Terrific Tintern

Tintern Abbey today is a ruin,
in the beautiful Wye valley in south east Wales,
close to the English border...

It once was a place of worship
and a living 'village' full of monks.

It was built on a grand scale,
but fell into disrepair following the
dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII in 1536.

Today is is a tourist attraction, partly because of its grandeur,
partly because of it's location in a magnificent setting.

Some of the stonework is being replaced.
The renewed stone gives you much more of an idea of
how beautiful it must have looked when it was built.
The stone used for the carved areas is much softer
(and easier to carve) than the stone used for walls,
but this means it weathers and loses the detail
and eventually wears thin enough
in places to lose it's strength.

A carved piece which probably formed part of a vaulted ceiling.
There were similar pieces nearby,
with different designs.
Near the gift shop there is a display of many
pieces of carved stone which all originally came
from a screened carved 'wall' within the Abbey.

Maybe one day they will put all the pieces together
and renew the missing parts.

The main doors leading into the Abbey. A smaller door has been cut into the large door on the left, as the large doors were too big and heavy to open on an everyday basis.

The same doors from the inside

Tintern Abbey is absolutely enormous.
If you click on the image above,
you will see a human wearing a blue coat.

She will give you an idea of the
scale of the remains of the Abbey.

JMW Turner thought it beautiful enough to paint it in the late 1700s:

http://tinyurl.com/24wa2l

and around the same time,
William Wordsworth found it inspiring and wrote a poem:

http://www.tintern.org.uk/wordswor.htm

This window is massive, and stunning.
Imagine how beautiful it must have been,
with stained glass panels, and the light streaming through,
it must have made the interior space dance with colour.

Ye olde serving hatch!

This is where the monks
washed (left) and stored (right) the dishes.

A view through some unrenovated windows

Oh, I just had to take another picture through a window.

I find them fascinating.
It must be symbolic of something,
but I don't know what it means!!!!

Montgomery Castle/Castell Trefaldwyn

Montgomery castle was built in the 1200s, was pretty much a ruin in the 1300s, and was refurbished in the 1500s. A grand house was built on the site in the early 1600s, and it was siezed after a big battle in the civil war in the 1600s, and then ordered demolished in 1649.

The ruins were excavated in the 1960s, and what you see today is what remains of the castle:


The 'grand entrance', with the remains of the two towers
that would have dominated and protected the entrance.


A panoramic view of the main castle remains



The castle remains from the ditch below


A misty winter view of Montgomery town from the castle

There is an aerial view of the castle and surrounding area here:



http://www.gtj.org.uk/en/blowup1/338