# Caerphilly Castle

castle in Caerphilly, Wales

Caerphilly, United Kingdom

Fortification. 1268 CE

## Story

• Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, also titled Gilbert de Clare, 3rd Earl of Gloucester, began Caerphilly Castle against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, with the main work placed from 1268 to 1271.
• Lakes, fortified dams and concentric walls made it the largest castle in Wales and, at about 30 acres, the second-largest castle in Britain.
• Llywelyn burned the works in 1270, Morgan ap Maredudd burned half the town in 1294, and Llywelyn Bren took the outer ward in January 1316 without breaking the inner defences.
• Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger sheltered here in 1326, and the garrison held out until March 1327.
• The lakes drained and the stone was robbed, the south-east tower leaned, and the Marquesses of Bute restored the castle before it passed to the state in 1950.
• A 2021 excavation found moat upcast and medieval pottery, and no sign of a medieval settlement before the castle. The Great Hall reopened on 19 July 2025.

## Visiting

The castle is open from 9.30am to 5pm from 1 March to 30 June and from 1 September to 31 October. It is open from 9.30am to 6pm from 1 July to 31 August, and open from 10.00am to 4pm from 1 November to 28 February. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing. The castle is closed on 24, 25 and 26 December and on 1 January.
Adult admission is 12 pounds and 90 pence, senior admission is 11 pounds and 60 pence, and junior or student admission is 9 pounds, for 1 September 2026 to 31 March 2027. Admission is free for members, for children under 5, and for a disabled visitor with one companion. A 1 pound admission ticket is available for visitors on Universal Credit and other named benefits. Online tickets include a 5 percent discount and are non-refundable.
Blue Light and armed forces visitors receive 10 percent off individual admission, and that reduction is not available on online tickets. Student photo identification is required for the student admission price. The castle may currently accept only online tickets because of a system fault. Dogs on leads are allowed to enter the ground floor, and only assistance dogs are allowed to enter the floors above.
Smoking is not allowed. Climbing is not allowed. Wedding bookings are not allowed in the Great Hall while the present works continue.

## History

Caerphilly Castle stands in the Rhymney Valley in South Wales, a Pennant sandstone fortress on a gravel bank inside artificial lakes. The whole defended site covers about 30 acres and is the largest castle in Wales, placed second in Britain only to Windsor. Another account gives the castle, and also its western island, an area of 1.2 hectares. Concentric walls and fortified dams were used here together, and the water defences are regarded as the most elaborate in Britain.

The builder was Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, also titled Gilbert de Clare, 3rd Earl of Gloucester, and known as Red Gilbert. He inherited Glamorgan in 1263 and advanced north from Cardiff once the baronial war of the 1260s had been crushed. One account already has him building Caerphilly in 1265. The castle’s own history places the start in 1268, and the main work is placed between 1268 and 1271, at a cost estimated as high as 19,000 pounds.

He had seen the lakes at the siege of Kenilworth in 1266, and the dams at Caerphilly follow that model. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, recognised as Prince of Wales by the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267, was the rival the castle was built against. In 1270 he burned the site. In 1271 the bishops Roger de Meyland and Godfrey Giffard took possession and promised a pause.

In February 1272 Gilbert’s men seized the castle back, and he claimed the whole of Glamorgan. Further towers, gatehouses and water defences followed. Major work at the eastern end, in a different style, was undertaken before Llywelyn’s death. Edward I of England broke Llywelyn’s power in the war of 1277 and ended independent Welsh rule in the war of 1282.

Llywelyn was killed on 11 December 1282 at the Battle of Orewin Bridge, and is also placed at Cilmeri. Two accounts agree that he was drawn away from his army and then killed, and they differ on the wood at Aberedw and on who struck the blow. Gilbert’s southern army had been defeated at Llandeilo Fawr, and he was removed from that command. Work on the castle’s defences ran on until about 1290, and Gilbert died at Monmouth Castle on 7 December 1295.

In 1294 Madog ap Llywelyn led a revolt against new administrators and a tax of one fifteenth. Morgan ap Maredudd, dispossessed by Gilbert in 1270, burned half the town of Caerphilly. The castle held, and Madog was defeated at Maes Moydog on 5 March 1295 and was captured that summer. He was still alive in 1305, and Morgan surrendered and in 1297 entered royal service.

Gilbert’s son, the 8th Earl of Gloucester, was killed at Bannockburn on 24 June 1314 and left no child. The lordship passed into royal keeping. On 28 January 1316 Llywelyn Bren attacked with a reported 10,000 men, took the outer ward, and could not break the inner defences. The town and the mills were destroyed.

The garrison, in one account under Eleanor de Clare, was relieved on 12 March. Llywelyn surrendered at Ystradfellte on 18 March. In 1318 he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Cardiff, blamed both on Hugh Despenser the Younger and on the king’s own order. Hugh Despenser the Younger received Glamorgan in the partition of 1317 and remodelled the Great Hall, placed both in 1320 and in 1325 to 1326.

In the autumn of 1326 Edward II and Hugh fled to Caerphilly from Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer. They left in early November, abandoning stores and a sum given both as 14,000 pounds and as at least 13,000 pounds. They were captured on 16 November, placed north of the castle and near Llantrisant. Hugh was executed at Hereford on 24 November, and a garrison of 130 men, with Hugh’s son, held the castle until March 1327 and surrendered on condition the son was pardoned.

The military life of the castle was short. It passed through the Beauchamp and Neville families to Jasper Tudor in 1486, and then declined in favour of Cardiff. John Leland, about 1539, found wonderful thickness of wall, one tower used for prisoners, and marsh where the lakes had been. Thomas Lewis robbed the stone after 1583.

In the Civil War a fort was built on the old Roman site to the north-west. The south-east tower leans at 10 degrees. Subsidence after the water drained, and Civil War damage, are both given as the cause. The Bute family acquired the ruins in 1776.

John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, reroofed the hall in the 1870s. John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute, rebuilt the inner east gatehouse and other towers between 1928 and 1939. The castle was given to the state in 1950, and the lakes were put back, the east moat in 1962. It is a scheduled monument and a grade I listed building.

Excavation in 2021 found thirteenth-century upcast from the moat, a wall footing on the eastern platform, medieval Vale ware, and no Ham Green ware, which indicates no medieval occupation before the castle. A sheep skeleton belongs with the later abandonment. In October 2024 medieval coarse stonework was found under the north gatehouse floor, while walls at the Fisherman’s Entrance were read as twentieth-century repairs.

The Great Hall reopened on 19 July 2025 after an investment given as both 8 million and 10 million pounds. From July 2025 to June 2026, 109,891 people visited.

## Photographs

- [Caerphilly Castle from the southwest - shortly before dawn on 22nd June 2020 — Pratjeffley](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/2020-06-22_CaerphillyCastleBeforeDawn.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle east gate in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0067.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle east gate in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0068.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle east gate in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0069.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle east gate in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0070.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle east gate in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0071.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle east gate in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0072.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle eastern wall in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_exterior_eastern_wall-0059.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle eastern wall in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_exterior_eastern_wall-0060.jpg)
- [A view of Caerphilly Castle eastern wall in September 2021. — Balon Greyjoy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_exterior_eastern_wall-0061.jpg)

## Sources

- [Caerphilly Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caerphilly_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_de_Clare,_7th_Earl_of_Gloucester) — Wikipedia
- [Llywelyn ap Gruffudd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_ap_Gruffudd) — Wikipedia
- [Llywelyn Bren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_Bren) — Wikipedia
- [Madog ap Llywelyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madog_ap_Llywelyn) — Wikipedia
- [Edward II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_II) — Wikipedia
- [Edward I of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [Hugh Despenser the Younger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Despenser_the_Younger) — Wikipedia
- [Eleanor de Clare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_de_Clare) — Wikipedia
- [Isabella of France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_France) — Wikipedia
- [Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_de_Clare,_8th_Earl_of_Gloucester) — Wikipedia
- [Morgan ap Maredudd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_ap_Maredudd) — Wikipedia
- [John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crichton-Stuart,_3rd_Marquess_of_Bute) — Wikipedia
- [John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crichton-Stuart,_4th_Marquess_of_Bute) — Wikipedia
- [Caerphilly Castle](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/caerphilly-castle) — Cadw
- [Caerphilly Castle listed building report](https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?id=13539&lang=en) — Cadw
- [Caerphilly Castle scheduled monument report](https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/sam/FullReport?id=2848) — Cadw
- [Castell Caerffili](https://coflein.gov.uk/en/sites/94497) — Coflein
- [Caerphilly Castle footpaths archaeological evaluation, 2021](https://archwilio.org.uk/her/chi3/report/page.php?watprn=GGATE008456) — Heneb
- [Caerphilly Castle visitor centre excavation, 2021](https://archwilio.org.uk/her/chi3/report/page.php?watprn=GGATE008574) — Heneb
- [Caerphilly Castle stone tumble watching brief, 2022](https://archwilio.org.uk/her/chi3/report/page.php?watprn=GGATE008285) — Heneb
- [Caerphilly Castle Fisherman’s Entrance watching brief, 2024](https://archwilio.org.uk/her/chi3/report/page.php?watprn=GGATE008608) — Heneb
- [A medieval makeover! Caerphilly Castle’s Great Hall reopens](https://cadw.gov.wales/about-us/news/a-medieval-makeover-caerphilly-castles-great-hall-reopens) — Cadw
- [Caerphilly Castle: one year of wall-to-wall achievements](https://www.gov.wales/caerphilly-castle-one-year-wall-wall-achievements) — Welsh Government
- [Caerphilly Castle visitor numbers up following refurbishment](https://caerphilly.observer/news/1061227/caerphilly-castle-visitor-numbers-up-following-refurbishment/) — Caerphilly Observer
- [2020-06-22 CaerphillyCastleBeforeDawn.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2020-06-22_CaerphillyCastleBeforeDawn.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle east gate-0067.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0067.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle east gate-0068.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0068.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle east gate-0069.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0069.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle east gate-0070.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0070.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle east gate-0071.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0071.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle east gate-0072.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_east_gate-0072.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle exterior eastern wall-0059.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_exterior_eastern_wall-0059.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle exterior eastern wall-0060.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_exterior_eastern_wall-0060.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [20210904 Caerphilly Castle exterior eastern wall-0061.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210904_Caerphilly_Castle_exterior_eastern_wall-0061.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Caerphilly Castle, Castell Caerffili in Welsh, stands in Caerphilly in South Wales, in a basin of the Rhymney Valley beside the Rhymney River. It is a medieval fortification built of Pennant sandstone on a natural gravel bank. The defended site covers about 30 acres, or 12 hectares, and is the largest castle in Wales. It is the second-largest castle in the United Kingdom, and in Britain it is placed second only to Windsor. Another account gives the castle itself an area of 1.2 hectares and still calls it the second largest in Britain. The same account describes a western artificial island, the hornwork, of 1.2 hectares. Those figures sit beside the larger acreage of the whole water-defended site and should not be collapsed into one measurement.

The place is famous for two military ideas used together at a huge scale. Concentric walls, an inner ring overlooked by a stronger inner ward, were introduced to Britain here and then taken up in the castles Edward I of England built in North Wales. The water defences, artificial lakes held by fortified dams, are regarded as the most elaborate in Britain. They gave particular protection against mining under the walls. The plan has been called a turning point in the history of the castle in Britain. The eastern front, a fortified embankment facing the town, is described as an array of walls, towers and bastions about 280 metres long. The south dam is given separately as a massive structure 152 metres, or 499 feet, long, ending in a huge buttressed wall.

A Roman auxiliary fort stood here as early as the year 75 and was abandoned by the second century. For about a thousand years after that the ground is described as sparsely populated. The fort enclosed about 3 acres, 1.2 hectares, on the north-west side of the western island. In the seventeenth century a civil-war gun platform was raised on that same spot. The castle that visitors see is the thirteenth-century stone fortress, not the Roman work. A dig in 2021 recovered a single residual sherd of Romano-British grey ware among later pottery, which does not by itself re-establish the fort.

The Normans began pushing into Wales from the late 1060s, marking their advance with castles and regional lordships. The task of subduing Glamorgan was given to the earls of Gloucester in 1093. Fighting between Anglo-Norman lords and Welsh rulers continued through the twelfth century and the early thirteenth. The de Clare family acquired the earldom in 1217 and kept trying to take the whole of Glamorgan. The lordship was one of the richest of the Welsh Marcher lordships. A Marcher lord could wage private war, hold courts, and raise fortresses with a freedom that lords inside England did not have. That privilege is part of why a castle of this size could be begun by a subject rather than by the king.

The builder was Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, the same man who is also titled Gilbert de Clare, 3rd Earl of Gloucester. He is Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford as well. He was known as Red Gilbert, or the Red Earl, probably from the colour of his hair or from his temper in battle. He was born on 2 September 1243 at Christchurch in Hampshire, the son of Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester, and of Maud de Lacy, daughter of John de Lacy and Margaret de Quincy. He inherited his father’s estates in 1262. From 1263 he held the titles, including Lord of Glamorgan. He was still under age at his father’s death and was made a ward of Humphrey de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford. He held the lordship of Glamorgan and more than 200 English manors, 172 of them in the Honour of Clare.

His politics in the 1260s explain both his power and the danger he was answering. During the Second Barons’ War, in April 1264, he led the massacre of the Jews at Canterbury, as supporters of Simon de Montfort had done elsewhere. Henry III took his castles of Kingston and Tonbridge. The king let Clare’s countess, Alice de Lusignan, leave Tonbridge because she was the king’s niece. On 12 May 1264 Clare and Montfort were denounced as traitors. On 14 May, just before the Battle of Lewes, Montfort knighted the earl and his brother Thomas. Clare commanded the central division of the baronial army on the Downs west of Lewes. On 20 October 1264 Pope Clement IV excommunicated Gilbert and his associates and placed his lands under an interdict. He then changed sides. To stop Montfort escaping, he destroyed ships at Bristol and the bridge over the Severn at Gloucester. He shared Prince Edward’s victory at Kenilworth on 16 July 1265 and, at the Battle of Evesham on 4 August 1265, commanded the second division. Montfort was killed there. On 6 October 1265 Gilbert received papal absolution, and on 9 October the king’s pardon. In October 1265, as a reward for supporting Prince Edward, he was given Abergavenny and the honour and castle of Brecknock. On 24 June 1268, reconciled to the prince, he and Edward took the cross together at Northampton.

Opposite him in Wales was Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Llywelyn the Last. Llywelyn was Prince of Gwynedd from 1255. After campaigns in 1257 he proclaimed himself Prince of Wales in 1258. Henry III recognised that title in the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267, the high point of Llywelyn’s power. The other Welsh princes submitted to him except Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg, whose homage Llywelyn could buy for 5,000 marks. Recognition cost Llywelyn 24,000 marks, paid in instalments and confirmed by the papacy. He had reached that bargain from the wreck of the baronial war. In 1264 Simon de Montfort defeated the king’s side at Lewes and captured Henry and Lord Edward. Llywelyn negotiated with Montfort and in 1265 offered 25,000 marks for a permanent peace, 5,000 at once and then 3,000 a year. The Treaty of Pipton, on 22 June 1265, allied them. Pope Clement IV warned Llywelyn against the excommunicated Montfort. Llywelyn was offered rule of the principality and the castles of Maud, Hawarden, Ellesmere and Montgomery. He did not fight at Evesham. After Montfort’s death he campaigned quickly, routing Hamo le Strange and Maurice FitzGerald in North Wales and then Roger Mortimer at Montgomery, and opened talks with the papal legate Ottobuono.

Llywelyn had used the chaos of the 1260s, the civil war between Henry III and the rebel barons, to expand across the region. In 1265 he allied with the baronial faction in exchange for authority over the local Welsh magnates, including those of Glamorgan. Gilbert believed his lands were under threat and allied himself with Henry III against the barons and against Llywelyn. The baronial revolt was crushed between 1266 and 1267. Gilbert was then free to advance north into Glamorgan from his base at Cardiff. A dispute with Llywelyn over the allegiance of a Welsh nobleman who held lands in Glamorgan sat at the centre of that advance. Gilbert built Caerphilly Castle in response. At the end of 1268 he refused a summons to parliament, saying that constant inroads by Llywelyn meant his Welsh estates needed him. His own life says that by the autumn of 1265 he was already building Caerphilly into a fortress. The history of the castle places the start of work in 1268, after the occupation of the north of Glamorgan. The listing of the building places the original construction between 1268 and 1271. Both the earlier date and the 1268 start are on record, and they are not the same claim.

The castle lay at the heart of a network of paths and roads. Work began at a huge pace. Ditches were cut to the basic shape, temporary wooden palisades went up, and water defences were made by damming a local stream. Walls and internal buildings followed quickly and formed the main part of the castle. The architect is unknown. The precise cost is unknown. Modern estimates put it as high as the cost of Conwy or Caernarfon, perhaps as much as 19,000 pounds, a huge sum for the time. The water defences were almost certainly inspired by Kenilworth. Gilbert had fought at the siege of Kenilworth in 1266, a different moment from the fight there on 16 July 1265, and he would have seen Kenilworth’s artificial lakes and dams at first hand. The core of Caerphilly, including the luxurious rooms, stood on what became a central island, surrounded by lakes. The dams were fortified. An island to the west added another layer of protection. A borough grew with the castle, and a vast deer park enclosed the Aber valley, about 3 kilometres to the north-west.

Llywelyn answered with his own forces, but Henry III’s diplomacy held off an outright clash at first. Gilbert kept building. In 1270 Llywelyn attacked and burned the site, probably destroying the temporary defences and the stores. Gilbert started again the next year. Henry sent two bishops, Roger de Meyland and Godfrey Giffard, to take the site and arbitrate. Another account says the king sent a bishop to take possession while the dispute was resolved. The bishops took possession later in 1271 and promised Llywelyn that building would pause and that talks would begin the following summer. In February 1272 Gilbert’s men seized the castle back, threw out the bishops’ soldiers, and Gilbert, protesting his innocence, resumed work. He had regained it by trickery, and neither Henry nor Llywelyn could readily intervene. Gilbert laid claim to the whole of Glamorgan. More water defences, towers and gatehouses were added. Before Llywelyn was defeated and killed in mid Wales in 1282, major works were undertaken at the eastern end of the castle in a different style, and the south and west sides were further fortified.

Llywelyn’s power thinned over the next two decades, and the reason was the kingship of Edward I of England. Edward was born on the night of 17 to 18 June 1239 at the Palace of Westminster, the eldest son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence. He was Lord Edward before he was king. In 1259 he briefly sided with the baronial reform movement and the Provisions of Oxford, then stayed loyal to his father through the Second Barons’ War. After Lewes he was a hostage, escaped, and defeated Montfort at Evesham. With England quieter he left on the Ninth Crusade in 1270. Henry III died on 16 November 1272 while Edward was on the way home. Gilbert took the lead in swearing fealty to the absent king. The next day, with the Archbishop of York, he entered London and proclaimed peace to Christians and to Jews, and for the first time secured acknowledgement that the king’s eldest son succeeded at once. He was joint guardian of England during the absence. Edward reached England in August 1274 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Gilbert entertained him at Tonbridge Castle.

While Edward was still away, the regency included Roger Mortimer, a rival of Llywelyn in the marches. Humphrey de Bohun tried to recover Brycheiniog, which the Treaty of Montgomery had granted to Llywelyn, and Mortimer backed Bohun. Llywelyn was struggling to pay the annual sums under the treaty and stopped paying. In early 1274 his brother Dafydd and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys Wenwynwyn, with Gruffydd’s son Owain, plotted to kill him. Owain was to arrive with armed men on 2 February, and a snowstorm stopped him. Llywelyn learned the full plot when Owain confessed to the Bishop of Bangor. The aim had been to make Dafydd prince of Gwynedd and to reward Gruffydd with lands. Dafydd and Gruffydd fled to England, were maintained by the king, and raided Llywelyn’s lands. When Edward called Llywelyn to Chester in 1275 to do homage, Llywelyn refused.

In 1276 Edward declared Llywelyn a rebel. In 1277 he gathered a very large army. He meant to disinherit Llywelyn completely and take Gwynedd Is Conwy himself. For Gwynedd Uwch Conwy he considered either dividing it between Dafydd and Owain or annexing Anglesey and dividing only the mainland. Many lesser Welsh princes who had supported Llywelyn made peace. By the summer of 1277 Edward’s force had come from Chester to the Conwy and camped at Deganwy, while another force took Anglesey and its harvest, cutting off food. Llywelyn sought terms. The Treaty of Aberconwy was signed on 9 November 1277. He kept Anglesey and parts of Snowdonia as Prince of Wales, with the homage of five lords, and he faced a fine of 50,000 marks. He gave up his share of the rent of Anglesey. The Llŷn went to Owain, released from jail. The Perfeddwlad went to Dafydd, with a promise of a share of Gwynedd Uwch Conwy if Llywelyn died without an heir. At Christmas 1277 Llywelyn came to London and parliament and did homage. He was allowed to marry Eleanor at the door of Worcester Cathedral on 13 October 1278, a smaller ceremony attended by the kings of Scotland and England and by the Earl of Lancaster.

The castle’s history says that Edward’s invasion of 1277 broke Llywelyn’s power in South Wales. In Glamorgan the de Clare hold tightened, and Caerphilly was no longer quite the front line it had been while the prince could still threaten the lowlands. It remained the administrative centre of the lordship. Further defences were added to the walls until work stopped around 1290. Another account says the concentric castle and the lakes were created over three decades from 1268 and that construction ceased almost completely when Gilbert died in 1295. The two statements can stand together: the main campaign of building belongs to the years from 1268, work on the defences ran on towards 1290, and the death in 1295 ended what was left.

The second Welsh war began before that death. By early 1282 many of the lesser princes who had backed Edward in 1277 were disillusioned with royal officials. On Palm Sunday Dafydd ap Gruffydd attacked the English at Hawarden Castle and then besieged Rhuddlan. The revolt spread. Aberystwyth Castle was captured and burnt. In South Wales, Carreg Cennen Castle was taken. Llywelyn wrote to John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, that he had not planned the revolt. He felt obliged to support his brother, and the Welsh were ill prepared. Edward’s forces again took Gwynedd Is Conwy and Anglesey and the harvest. An English force on Anglesey tried to cross on a bridge of boats and was defeated at the Battle of Moel-y-don. Peckham tried to mediate. Llywelyn was offered a large estate in England if he would surrender Wales. Dafydd was to go on crusade and not return without permission. Llywelyn refused. He said he would not abandon the people his ancestors had protected since the days of Kamber son of Brutus. He left Dafydd to hold Gwynedd and took a force south, hoping to rally mid and south Wales and open a second front.

Gilbert insisted on leading an attack into southern Wales. Edward made him commander of the southern army. That army was heavily defeated at the Battle of Llandeilo Fawr. Gilbert was relieved of the command and replaced by William de Valence, 1st Earl of Pembroke, whose son had died in the battle. On 11 December 1282, at the Battle of Orewin Bridge at Builth Wells, Llywelyn was killed, separated from his army. He is also placed at Cilmeri. Both accounts of his death agree that he was tricked away from the bulk of his men and then attacked. One account, written in the north of England about fifty years later, says that he and his chief minister crossed a bridge and approached the forces of Edmund Mortimer and Hugh Le Strange, heard the main body engaged by Roger Despenser and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, turned back, and was struck down by a lone lancer. An English knight recognised the body only later. Another account, written in the east of England by monks in contact with Llywelyn’s daughter Gwenllian and his niece Gwladys ferch Dafydd, says he approached the forces of Edmund and Roger Mortimer, Hugh Le Strange and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn on a false promise of homage. His army was routed. He and eighteen retainers were separated. At dusk they were ambushed and chased into a wood at Aberedw. As he lay dying he asked for a priest and gave his name. He was killed and his head was cut off. A list of conspirators, which may have been faked, and his privy seal were taken from him. His body’s last resting place is not certain. Tradition puts it at the Cistercian abbey of Abbeycwmhir. On 28 December 1282 Peckham wrote to the Archdeacon of Brecon about the dead prince.

With Llywelyn dead, Welsh resistance weakened. Dafydd was his named successor and fought on until June 1283. He was captured in the uplands above Abergwyngregyn, at Bera Mountain, with his family, taken to Shrewsbury, and condemned by a special parliament. He was dragged through the streets and hanged, drawn and quartered. Eleanor, Llywelyn’s wife, had died in childbirth on 19 June 1282 after bearing a daughter, Gwenllian. The child was captured in 1283 and in 1284 was placed in Sempringham Priory for life. She died without children in 1337. By 1283 Edward I of England had removed the threat of an independent Welsh principality. The need for Caerphilly as a front-line fortress had gone. It stayed the de Clare centre in Glamorgan, with a small town emerging to the south and the deer park in the Aber valley.

Local quarrels did not stop. In 1290 Gilbert argued with Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. The next year the case came before the king, and Caerphilly was temporarily taken into royal hands. The fuller account of that quarrel places it in 1291, over the lordship of Brecknock, where Bohun accused Clare of building a castle on Bohun land. It became a private war. Marcher lords claimed the right to wage such wars. Edward tested the right. He called them first before a court of their Marcher peers, then, expecting that court to protect the privilege, before his own court. Both were imprisoned. Both were sentenced to forfeit their lands for life. Gilbert, as the aggressor, was fined 10,000 marks, and the Earl of Hereford 1,000 marks. They were released almost at once and their lands were restored. The public lesson remained, and their prestige was diminished. This Humphrey de Bohun was the 3rd Earl of Hereford, grandson of the guardian of Gilbert’s minority. On 30 April 1290 Gilbert had married Joan of Acre, daughter of Edward I, born in 1272. The marriage waited on a papal sanction. On 3 July 1290 he gave a great banquet at Clerkenwell. As a condition of the marriage he surrendered his lands to the king and received them back jointly with Joan, to pass to their joint heirs, or to Joan’s heirs by a later marriage if they had no child together. Their son Gilbert was born about 10 May 1291.

Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, died at Monmouth Castle on 7 December 1295 and was buried at Tewkesbury Abbey, on the left side of his grandfather, who was also named Gilbert de Clare. Joan of Acre kept the lands until her own death in 1307 and did homage on 20 January 1296. In 1297 she secretly married Ralph de Monthermer, a squire of the late earl’s household. Edward I was enraged, imprisoned Monthermer, and later relented. Monthermer was styled Earl of Gloucester and Hertford for Joan’s lifetime only.

Before that death, the castle faced the revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn. Madog, who died after 1305, led the Welsh revolt of 1294 to 1295, surpassed in length only by the later rising of Owain Glyndŵr. He was a distant relation of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, of a junior branch of the house of Aberffraw. His father, Llywelyn ap Maredudd, last vassal lord of Meirionydd, had been deprived of his patrimony in 1256 for opposing Llywelyn at the Battle of Bryn Derwin, lived in exile on an English pension, reconciled with Llywelyn in June 1262, and died fighting for the Welsh in April 1263. Madog may have been born in exile. Edward I gave him substantial gifts in 1277. In 1278 Madog sued the Prince of Wales, trying to recover Meirionydd. After 1282 he returned to Gwynedd and received lands in Anglesey.

On Michaelmas, 29 September 1294, Madog put himself at the head of a national revolt. The causes were the actions of new royal administrators in north and west Wales and taxes such as a levy of one fifteenth on all movables. There is no evidence that the aim was to restore the old principality, but in one land grant during the revolt he used the title Prince of Wales. The rising had been planned for months. Attacks came on the same day across Wales. Madog acted in the north. In mid and south Wales the leaders were Cynan ap Maredudd, Maelgwn ap Rhys, and Morgan ap Maredudd of Gwynllwg in Glamorgan. They hoped Edward and most of his forces would already be in France. Bad weather had kept the army from sailing, and Edward cancelled the French campaign. Caernarfon was overrun and the castle occupied. Castell y Bere was taken and later burnt. Hawarden, Ruthin and Denbigh fell. Criccieth and Harlech were besieged. Morlais was captured under Morgan. Cynan besieged Builth for six weeks. Half the town of Caerphilly was burnt, and the castle held out. Kenfig Castle was sacked.

In Glamorgan, Morgan ap Maredudd, sometimes called Morgan the Rebel, led the local rising. He flourished from about 1270 to 1316. His family had been deprived of its estates by Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester. Morgan had been dispossessed in 1270 and claimed to be at war only against the lords of Glamorgan, not against the king. Under him the Welsh captured castles at Kenfig, Llangibby and Morlais. The castle history says Morgan attacked Caerphilly, burned half the town, and failed to take the castle. In December 1294 Edward led an army into north Wales, by Wrexham, Denbigh and Abergele, and reached Conwy shortly before Christmas. He was ambushed, lost his baggage, and was besieged in Conwy until his navy relieved him in 1295. Harlech was at one point held by 37 men. The decisive battle was Maes Moydog in Powys on 5 March 1295. An army under the Earl of Warwick surprised Madog’s men. The Welsh formed a schiltron of pikes, the formation associated with Scottish armies, and broke an English cavalry charge. English arrows then inflicted heavy losses, and many Welsh soldiers drowned in a swollen river during the pursuit. Madog escaped, was a fugitive until Ynyr Fychan of Nannau captured him, and was handed to John de Havering in Snowdonia in late July or early August 1295. He was taken to London and was still alive in 1305. Edward answered the revolt with humiliating ordinances that further restricted Welsh civil rights and economic life. In the south, Gilbert attacked Morgan’s forces and retook the region between April and May 1295. Morgan surrendered. In 1297 Morgan became an esquire of Edward’s household and his agent in south Wales. Gilbert died at the end of that year, 1295, leaving Caerphilly in good condition.

The heir was another Gilbert de Clare, born about 10 May 1291, the 8th Earl of Gloucester and 7th Earl of Hertford, son of the Red Earl and Joan of Acre. He was four when his father died. Because of the joint enfeoffment, Joan kept custody. Only a few months after her death in 1307, the young Gilbert received his inheritance. By March 1308 his maternal uncle, Edward II, made him Earl of Gloucester and Hertford. He was sixteen. It was once thought that he and Edward II were brought up together, but that rests on a confusion with another Gilbert de Clare. In 1308 he married Maud, or Matilda, de Burgh, daughter of Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster. They had no surviving children. His attention was more on war than on domestic politics. He was one of the Lords Ordainers who ordered the expulsion of Piers Gaveston in 1311. When Gaveston was killed on his return in 1312, Gloucester helped negotiate a settlement between the killers and the king. He then became one of Edward’s strongest supporters and went with him to Scotland in 1314 when several other nobles refused.

Edward II had been king since 1307. He was born on 25 April 1284 and died on 21 September 1327. He was the fourth son of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, and he became heir after his older brother Alphonso died. From 1300 he campaigned in Scotland with his father. He was knighted at Westminster Abbey in 1306 and succeeded in 1307. In 1308 he married Isabella of France, daughter of Philip IV, as part of the long effort to settle tension between the English and French crowns. His close relationship with Piers Gaveston, who had joined his household in 1300, angered the barons and the French royal family. The nature of that relationship is uncertain. They may have been friends, lovers, or sworn brothers. Gaveston was exiled, recalled, and in 1312 seized and executed by barons led by Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster. The Ordinances of 1311 had tried to restrain the king. Edward revoked them and recalled his favourite. English forces were pushed back in Scotland. At the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 Edward was decisively defeated by Robert the Bruce. Famine followed, and criticism of the reign mounted.

Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester, was killed at Bannockburn on 24 June 1314. The circumstances are unclear, and the most detailed narrative, the Vita Edwardi Secundi, is a moral tale, so it has to be read with caution. On 23 June, while the king was still deciding whether to camp or to fight, Gloucester and Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, charged into the New Park where the Scots were camped, either through insubordination or through a misunderstanding. Henry de Bohun, Hereford’s cousin, was killed by Robert the Bruce. Gloucester was thrown from his horse in the retreat and escaped unhurt. The next day he sided with experienced captains who urged Edward not to fight that day. Younger men around the king called that cowardly. According to the Vita, Edward accused Gloucester of treason, and the earl answered that he would prove his loyalty on the field. Some accounts say he rushed in for glory and died of his own foolishness. The Vita says he was knocked from his horse while fighting and was killed because his own men did not rescue him. A quarrel with Hereford over precedence may have added to the chaos. One account says he rode without a distinguishing coat of arms, so the Scots, who would otherwise have wanted a rich ransom, did not spare him. Sir Thomas Gray, who was present, described a crash of spears and dying horses so dense that the English rear could not reach the Scots or help themselves, and flight was all that remained. Robert had ordered that no prisoners be taken in the heat of battle. The body was identified quickly enough for Robert, a second cousin, to stand vigil over it in a local church. He then allowed it to be taken to England. Gilbert was buried at Tewkesbury Abbey, on his father’s right-hand side. He was the most prominent casualty of a humiliating English defeat. The de Clare male line ended with him. The family lands were worth as much as 6,000 pounds a year, second only to those of the Earl of Lancaster among the nobility.

The lands went into royal hands while the inheritance was settled. By the entail of 1290 only direct descendants of the seventh earl and Joan of Acre could inherit. Maud claimed to be pregnant and delayed the proceedings, but by 1316 that claim had failed. The late earl’s three sisters became co-heiresses. Eleanor de Clare, Margaret de Clare, widow of Gaveston, and Elizabeth de Clare were by 1317 all married to favourites of Edward II: Hugh Despenser the Younger, Hugh de Audley, and Roger d’Amory. The English possessions were split equally. Hugh Despenser the Younger received the entire lordship of Glamorgan, politically the most important of the de Clare lands. The partition was not fully settled until 1317. During the wait, Caerphilly was held by the king.

That vacancy, and the way it was administered, produced the revolt of Llywelyn Bren. Llywelyn Bren, also Llywelyn ap Gruffudd ap Rhys, Llywelyn of the Woods, was born in the 1260s and died about 1317. He was a nobleman of the minor royal house of the cantref of Senghenydd and of Miscin, a descendant of Ifor Bach. His father, Gruffudd ap Rhys, was dispossessed of Senghenydd in the 1260s by Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, and imprisoned in Kilkenny Castle in Ireland. There is no record that the father returned to Wales. Gruffudd had his son taught Middle Welsh, French, and Latin. Llywelyn married Lleucu, who died in 1349, in the 1280s or 1290s. They had at least seven sons, who took part in the revolt. As a young man he was a landowner and the constable of Senghenydd, supervising the beadles for the English crown. Among his possessions in 1317 was a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, the only one known in fourteenth-century Wales.

The Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314 left a power vacuum in Glamorgan after more than fifty years of de Clare control of Gwynllwg. Among the losses in an English army of about 5,000, roughly 500 men of Glamorgan were Welsh. A revolt in the lordship followed from June or July until September 1314. It appears to have ended when Edward II appointed Bartholomew de Badlesmere as royal custodian. On 8 July 1315, as guardian of the three sisters, Edward replaced Badlesmere with Payn de Turberville of Coity Castle. Bren had held office under the young earl, whom he considered a friend. Turberville persecuted the people of Glamorgan during a famine that lasted three years across much of northern Europe. Llywelyn denounced the new administration and was accused of sedition. He appealed to Edward II to control the agent. Edward ordered him to parliament to face a treason charge, and said that if the charge were true Llywelyn would be hanged. The king called him a son of death and summoned him to Lincoln for 27 January 1316. Llywelyn fled home in secret.

The revolt began on 28 January 1316 with a surprise attack on Caerphilly Castle. With 10,000 Welshmen and six sons, Bren went against Turberville and the English administration. He captured the constable outside the castle. His men took the outer ward and could not break into the inner defences. They burned the town, killed some of the townspeople, and began a siege. The castle history says the castle withstood the attack, the town was destroyed, and a royal army later defeated Bren in a battle at Caerphilly Mountain and broke the siege. The listing of the building says the attack caused minor damage, mostly to the south gatehouse, while the town and the mills were destroyed. Another account says the castle held out under the lady of Clare, almost certainly Eleanor de Clare, and a small garrison, until Sir William Montacute relieved it on 12 March 1316. The rising spread from Glamorgan in the west to Rumney in the east. Kenfig was sacked, and so was Llantrisant. St Georges-super-Ely, Dinefwr and Llangybi were attacked. Llangybi is recorded as repaired around 1315 or 1316. Cardiff was raided and buildings were burned.

Edward ordered Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford and lord of neighbouring Brecon, to crush the revolt. Hereford gathered overwhelming forces, supported by men of the chief Marcher lords, including Henry of Lancaster and Roger Mortimer of Chirk. In March, forces advanced from Cardiff. At a brief fight at Castell Morgraig, where Llywelyn’s men may have had a base hidden in the uplands, they forced him to break off the siege of Caerphilly. English troops came from Cheshire and north Wales, and some Welsh soldiers came from west Wales. The Welsh retreated higher onto the north Glamorgan plateau while Hereford moved south from Brecon. On 18 March 1316, seeing the fight was hopeless, Llywelyn surrendered to the Earl of Hereford at Ystradfellte. He told his men on the hills that the revolt was his fault and that he would surrender, and he pleaded that only he should be punished. A monk of Malmesbury recorded him as saying that it was not safe to engage the English, that he had been the cause of the whole, and that it was better that one should die than that the whole people be banished or put to the sword. Hereford and Mortimer promised to intercede and promised leniency. Llywelyn was sent to London in July 1316 and was in the Tower of London from 27 July 1316 to 17 June 1317. His conduct earned the respect of his captors, including Roger Mortimer, a witness to the surrender. They urged the king to pardon him and his family, and it seems their influence won a pardon for many of his men.

In November 1317 Hugh Despenser the Younger became Lord of Glamorgan and the largest landowner in South Wales. Llywelyn became his prisoner. Despenser took him to Cardiff Castle, where he was reported to have had him hanged, drawn and quartered, an act contemporaries treated as an extrajudicial killing. Hugh Despenser the Elder was also accused of a part in it at the parliament of 1321 that demanded the exile of both men. Another account says the execution was most likely carried out at the command of the king himself, and that Despenser was blamed because Mortimer and Hereford could not publicly show anger at Edward. The killing is placed in 1318. Llywelyn was buried in the Greyfriars at Cardiff. Despenser seized his lands and imprisoned Lleucu and three of her sons, first in London, then in Bristol, and finally in Cardiff. The revolt was the last serious Welsh challenge to English rule until Owain Lawgoch tried to invade with French support in the 1370s. The unlawful character of the execution helped to lead, in the longer run, to the overthrow of both Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger.

Hugh Despenser the Younger, also Hugh le Despenser, 1st Baron le Despenser, was born about 1287 or 1289 and died on 24 November 1326. He was the son of Hugh Despenser, Earl of Winchester, the Elder, and of Isabel Beauchamp, daughter of William Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick. In May 1306 he was knighted at the Feast of the Swans at Westminster Abbey beside Prince Edward, and that summer he married Eleanor de Clare. Eleanor’s grandfather, Edward I, had owed the elder Despenser 2,000 marks, and the marriage settled the debt. Edward I granted Eleanor a dowry of 2,000 pounds. When her brother was killed at Bannockburn she became one of three co-heiresses, and in her right Hugh gained Glamorgan. In a few years he went from a landless knight to one of the wealthiest magnates in the kingdom. Eleanor was the niece of Edward II, which drew Hugh closer to the court. He had joined the baronial opposition to Gaveston, his brother-in-law through Gaveston’s marriage to Eleanor’s sister Margaret. In 1315, after a brother-in-law’s death, he seized Tonbridge Castle under the mistaken belief that it belonged to his mother-in-law, then gave it up when he found that the Archbishop of Canterbury was the rightful owner.

He became royal chamberlain in 1318 and displaced Roger d’Amory in the king’s affection. One chronicler wrote that Edward loved him dearly with all his heart and mind. By 1320 his greed was widely feared. He was accused of seizing the Welsh lands of his wife’s inheritance while ignoring his brothers-in-law, of cheating Elizabeth de Clare out of Gower and Usk, and of forcing Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, to give up lands. He and his father were accused of murdering Llywelyn Bren in 1318 while Llywelyn was a hostage, conspiring to exercise a jurisdiction they could not lawfully have. Queen Isabella of France came to hate him. In 1321 Lancaster’s alliance moved against the Despensers. Barons under the Earl of Hereford, with Hugh Audley and Roger d’Amory, petitioned Edward to dismiss and exile them. When he refused, Welshmen and Marcher lords raided Despenser’s lands in Glamorgan for about ten days. Llywelyn Bren’s death had helped to unite native Welsh and Marcher lords against the favourite. Edward exiled the Despensers in August 1321. He soon showed that he meant to recall them. An attack on Isabella’s party at Leeds Castle, possibly orchestrated, gave him a cause. Early in 1322, while Mortimer’s barons were busy with risings on their own lands, the Despensers returned. Edward crushed the rebellion. Mortimer surrendered. Thomas of Lancaster was captured and executed. The Earl of Hereford died at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. Edward and the Despensers revoked the Ordinances of 1311, executed enemies, and confiscated estates. Lleucu and her sons, released for a time, were imprisoned again, this time in Bristol Castle.

At the castle itself, Hugh employed Master Thomas de la Bataile and William Hurley to enlarge the Great Hall, with richly carved windows and doors. The castle history places that work in 1325 and 1326. The listing of the building places a remodelling in 1320, to host lavish entertainments, by William de Hurley and Thomas de la Botaille, leading craftsmen of the king. Both dates and both spellings of the craftsmen’s names are on record. The hall was a sumptuous ground-floor room. In the medieval period it would have been subdivided by wooden screens, brightly decorated, richly carved, and warmed by a large central fireplace. Carved corbels in the shape of male and female heads survive, possibly depicting the royal court of the 1320s, including Edward II, Isabella of France, Hugh Despenser and Eleanor de Clare. Two doors at the east end led to a buttery and a cellar, possibly with a small chapel over them. To the west were the private apartments, two solar blocks with luxurious fittings, fireplaces, and a large traceried window on the first floor. The hall is also described as earlier fourteenth century, which fits either date for the remodelling. A later presentation of the room evokes a royal feast of the 1320s.

Eleanor de Clare was born in October 1292 at Caerphilly Castle, the eldest daughter of Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, and Joan of Acre, and she died on 30 June 1337. She was suo jure 6th Lady of Glamorgan. She and Hugh had nine children who survived infancy. Despite being heavily pregnant, she was briefly made constable of the Tower of London in October 1326, the only woman to hold that office, as the king and her husband fled the rising in London. A month later the citizens compelled her to hand the Tower over, and she was confined there. Her eldest son, Hugh le Despenser, born about 1308 or 1309, held Caerphilly against the queen’s forces.

The crisis that put the king inside the castle began in France. Isabella of France was probably born between April 1295 and January 1296, though one annal places her birth in 1292. Her parents were Philip IV and Joan I of Navarre. As queen she had been able to work with Gaveston. She could not work with Hugh Despenser the Younger. By 1325 her lands in England had been seized, her children taken from her, and her household staff arrested. Her brother Charles IV had seized Edward’s French possessions in the War of Saint-Sardos. Edward, as Duke of Aquitaine, owed homage for Gascony and had avoided it. Isabella went to France in March 1325 as Edward’s delegate to negotiate a peace. She agreed a truce under which their son Edward, then thirteen, would do homage. The prince did homage in September. Isabella stayed in France, dressed as a widow, and said that Hugh had destroyed her marriage. She feared the young Despenser, or the Earl of Richmond, or her husband, would try to kill her if she returned. Charles IV refused to expel her. She gathered the king’s exiled enemies, among them Roger Mortimer, who had escaped from the Tower in August 1323. A physical relationship between Isabella and Mortimer may have begun from December 1325. Both were taking a serious risk. Her former French sisters-in-law had died in prison on charges of adultery, and their alleged lovers had been executed.

In the middle of 1326 Isabella and Mortimer left the French court for Hainaut. She betrothed Prince Edward to Philippa of Hainault in exchange for a dowry, and with that money and an earlier loan from Charles she raised a mercenary army. William, Count of Hainaut, provided eight men-of-war and smaller ships. She appears to have made a secret agreement with the Scots for the duration of the campaign. Edward II spent August and September 1326 mobilising the coasts. Fleets gathered at Portsmouth and at Orwell. A raiding force of 1,600 men was sent into Normandy as a diversion. About 2,000 men were ordered to Orwell to repel an invasion, and only 55 seem to have arrived. On 22 September Isabella, Mortimer and their force set sail. On 24 September they landed at Orwell, having evaded Edward’s fleet. Estimates of the army run from about 300 to about 2,000, with 1,500 a common middle figure. They were unsure at first where they had landed. Local levies changed sides. Isabella, dressed as a widow, was at Bury St Edmunds the next day and then at Cambridge. Thomas, Earl of Norfolk, and Henry of Lancaster joined her. Edward issued orders to sheriffs that had little effect. London became unsafe. Isabella reached Oxford on 2 October. Adam Orleton, Bishop of Hereford, preached there against the Despensers. Edward left London the same day. On 2 October the city rose. Mobs killed Walter Stapledon, the former treasurer, in St Paul’s Cathedral, took the Tower, and released the prisoners. Edward reached Gloucester between 9 and 12 October, hoping to reach Wales and raise an army. Isabella reached Gloucester about a week after him. He crossed into Wales the day she arrived.

Edward and Hugh Despenser the Younger sailed from Chepstow, probably aiming first for Lundy and then for Ireland. Bad weather drove them back and they landed at Cardiff. Edward retreated to Caerphilly Castle and tried to rally what remained. The castle history says the pair stayed there at the end of October and in early November, then left to escape Isabella’s approaching forces, abandoning extensive stores and 14,000 pounds. Another account says they fled the castle around 2 November, leaving jewellery, considerable supplies, and at least 13,000 pounds in cash, still hoping perhaps to reach Ireland. On 16 November they were captured. One account places the capture by a search party north of Caerphilly. Another places it near Llantrisant. A third says they were captured in Llantrisant and afterwards killed, while the castle was still under siege. The dated accounts put the capture on 16 November and the deaths later: Hugh was not killed at the moment of capture, and Edward was not killed there either. Edward was taken first to Monmouth Castle and then to Kenilworth, the fortress of the Earl of Lancaster. Hugh Despenser the Elder had held Bristol. Isabella and Mortimer besieged it from 18 to 26 October. When it fell, Isabella recovered her daughters Eleanor and Joan, who had been in the Despensers’ custody. The elder Hugh was executed at Bristol on 27 October 1326. One account says his body was hacked to pieces and fed to dogs, despite some attempt by Isabella to protect him.

William la Zouche besieged Caerphilly with 425 soldiers. Inside were the constable, Sir John de Felton, Hugh’s son, also called Hugh, and a garrison of 130 men. The castle held out until March 1327, a siege of about four months, and the garrison surrendered on condition that the younger Hugh, the son, was pardoned. His father had already been executed. The son remained a prisoner until July 1331 and was later restored to favour. He had been summoned to parliament in 1338 as Baron le Despenser and died without issue on 8 February 1349. Hugh Despenser the Younger was tried on 24 November 1326 at Hereford, before Mortimer, Isabella and the Lancastrian lords. He was condemned for theft to hanging and for treason to drawing and quartering. He was hanged, drawn and quartered that day. A crowd had gathered with trumpets and drums. He was crowned with nettles, his arms were reversed, and a verse from Psalm 52 was written on him. Simon de Reading was hanged beside him on a lower gibbet. The charges included breaking the terms of exile, breaching Magna Carta and the Ordinances of 1311, killing and imprisoning the great men of the realm, causing the king to fight in Scotland at the cost of thousands of lives, usurping royal authority, and trying to fund the destruction of Isabella and her son while they were in France. His role in Llywelyn Bren’s death was not in that list of charges. Attempts to raise troops in Glamorgan had already failed. The country remembered what had been done there.

Edward II was still king in name, and still Isabella’s husband. There was no established procedure for removing an English king. On 12 January 1327 the leading barons and clergy agreed that he should be replaced by his son. On 20 January, at Kenilworth, the Earl of Lancaster and the bishops of Winchester and Lincoln told him that if he resigned, his son would succeed, and that if he did not, the son might be disinherited as well. On 21 January Sir William Trussell withdrew homage and formally ended the reign. Edward III was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 1 February 1327. Edward of Caernarfon was moved from Kenilworth to Berkeley Castle. He died there in September 1327. His own life places the death on 21 September and says he was probably murdered on the orders of the new regime. Isabella and Edward III were told by a messenger on 23 September that he had died in a fatal accident. The manner is not settled. Murder on the orders of the new regime, ill health brought on by captivity, and a fatal accident are all on record. Stories of a red-hot poker, and of a Latin note whose meaning flipped with a comma, do not rest on strong contemporary evidence. Later claims that he escaped and lived abroad are also disputed, and they are not the account to treat as established. His body was buried at Gloucester. With the overthrow, the estates in Senghenydd were restored on 11 February 1327 to Llywelyn Bren’s sons, Gruffydd, John, Meurig, Roger, William and Llywelyn. The earls of Hereford continued to pay Lleucu an allowance at Brecon until 12 April 1349, when she likely died. The family lands were dispersed and lost within a century.

Eleanor was freed in February 1328 and in April 1328 was restored to her own lands, for which she did homage. Three of her daughters were forced to take the veil. Only Isabel, already married, and Elizabeth, still an infant, escaped that. In January 1329 William la Zouche, 1st Baron Zouche of Mortimer, the man who had led the siege of Caerphilly and had been one of her first husband’s captors, abducted her from Hanley Castle. The abduction may have been an elopement. Edward III seized her lands and ordered their arrest. She was accused of stealing jewels from the Tower. After February 1329 she was imprisoned again, in the Tower and then at Devizes. In January 1330 she was released and pardoned after agreeing to sign away the most valuable part of her Clare inheritance. She could recover the lands only by paying 50,000 pounds in a single day. Within the year Edward III, her first cousin, overthrew Roger Mortimer and had him executed. Isabella’s regency ended. Eleanor petitioned that she had signed the lands away because Mortimer threatened she would never be freed otherwise. In 1331 Edward III allowed her to recover them on a fine of 10,000 pounds, later reduced to 5,000, paid in instalments. Most of the fine was still outstanding when she died. John de Grey claimed he had married her first. The case went to the pope more than once. Zouche won, and Eleanor remained with him until his death in February 1337, a few months before her own death on 30 June 1337. They had one child. The lordship of Glamorgan had been restored to Eleanor and her heirs after the fall of Edward II and Hugh.

The castle’s active military life was short. Minor Welsh attacks in 1294 to 1295 and in 1316, and the siege of 1326 to 1327, did not break it. By the mid-fourteenth century one account says it was effectively disused, though it was maintained until the late fifteenth century. In 1416 it passed, through Isabel le Despenser, to her first husband, Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Worcester, and then to her second husband, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Isabel and her second husband invested heavily, repaired the castle, and made it fit to be their main residence in the region. Another account says that in the fourteenth century it passed to Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Worcester, and was abandoned and fell into disrepair because he made Cardiff Castle his chief residence. Both accounts are on record. In 1428 and 1429 extensive repairs included the main outer gatehouse. In 1449 the castle passed to Richard Neville, and in 1486 to Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. After 1486 it declined, eclipsed by the more fashionable residence at Cardiff. Once the sluice gates failed, the water defences probably drained away. From the reign of Henry VII, which began in 1485, it is described as falling into ruin. It was ruinous by the earlier sixteenth century. John Leland visited around 1539 and found walls of a wonderful thickness, but beyond a single tower kept up for prisoners the place was ruin and marsh. Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, used it for his manorial court. In 1583 it was leased to Thomas Lewis of the Van, who stripped much of the stone, including the dressings, to enlarge his house.

In 1642 the English Civil War broke out between the Royalist supporters of Charles I and the supporters of Parliament. South Wales was predominantly Royalist. During the war a sconce, a small fort, was built overlooking the castle to the north-west, on the site of the old Roman fort. It is not known whether Royalists built it or whether the Parliamentary army that occupied the area in the final months of the war, in March 1646, built it. The guns of that fort would have dominated the interior of the castle. It is also uncertain whether Parliament deliberately slighted Caerphilly to stop it being used again. Several towers had collapsed by the eighteenth century, which might have been the result of slighting. It is probable that the deterioration came from subsidence once the water defences retreated, because there is no evidence that a deliberate destruction was ordered. The south-east tower of the inner ward leans outward at 10 degrees. It is partly ruined and stands about 15 metres high. The cause, subsidence or Civil War slighting, is unknown. One account attributes the precarious angle to Civil War gunpowder. The tower has been left as it was found, because it was stable enough to stand. A seventeenth-century earthwork gun platform lies north-west of the moat. It is not known whether Royalists raised it or whether Parliamentarian forces raised it after March 1646. The castle was probably put into a state of defence in the mid-seventeenth century when a great bastion or redoubt was raised to guard the north-western side.

The Marquesses of Bute acquired the castle in 1776. John Stuart, the first marquess, took steps to protect the ruins. In the Romantic period the castle was often the first ruin travellers met on entering Wales, because it lies so near the English border. It reminded some of them of Tintern, yet unlike Tintern and many other Welsh ruins it was not covered in ivy. In 1844 Carl Gustav Carus visited and found the ruins more desolate than beautiful. From that year, extensive conservation and restoration are recorded, alongside the protection the family had already begun.

John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, was born on 12 September 1847 at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute and died on 9 October 1900. He succeeded at less than six months old, in 1848, when his father, the second marquess, died. The inheritance was reported to make him the richest man in the world. He owned 116,000 acres, about 47,000 hectares, mostly in Glamorgan, Ayrshire and Bute. His wealth came in large part from the South Wales coalfields. He was passionately interested in the medieval period. On 8 December 1868 he was received into the Catholic Church, and a little later Pius IX confirmed him in Rome. The conversion was a public scandal and became the inspiration for Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Lothair. From 1865 he worked with William Burges. Their partnership produced Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch, Gothic Revival buildings paid for by industrial wealth and designed as an escape from the scene of that wealth. William Frame, who worked on interiors for him elsewhere, fully surveyed Caerphilly. In the 1870s the third marquess reroofed the great hall and had detailed measured drawings made. He began buying back leasehold properties around the castle so that town houses built up to the edge of the site could be cleared. He died of Bright’s disease after a first stroke in 1896. His heart was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. His will left 100,000 pounds to each of his children except the eldest son, who inherited the estates, including Cardiff Castle, Mount Stuart and Dumfries House.

John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute, was born on 20 June 1881 at Chiswick House and succeeded in October 1900, at nineteen. His father’s family list gives his death as 16 May 1947. His own life gives 25 April 1947. He was educated at Harrow, took his seat in the House of Lords in June 1902, and, like his father, was a Knight of the Thistle. He had a passion for architecture and was responsible for restoring Caerphilly Castle. Between 1928 and 1939 he carried out a major restoration. Stonework was carefully repaired. Moulds were made to recreate missing pieces. The inner east gatehouse was rebuilt, along with several other towers, including one tower of the south gateway and the west towers of the inner ward. The outer face of the inner east gatehouse was completely rebuilt. The work copied medieval masonry technique and used materials that could be distinguished from the original. He landscaped the setting with the intention of reflooding the lakes. Decades of purchases let him demolish the houses that encroached on the view. In 1936 he published a plea for Scotland’s smaller burgh dwellings. In 1938 he sold the remaining Bute estate in Cardiff and was called the man who sold a city. On 6 July 1905 he married Augusta Bellingham. They had seven children. The fifth marquess, John Crichton-Stuart, inherited in 1947. By then the family had given up most of its land in South Wales. He sold the remaining property interests and in 1950 gave Caerphilly Castle to the state.

The lakes were reflooded, and the last stages of the restoration were finished in the 1950s and 1960s. The south lake was intended to be reflooded, with three new bridges, in time for the Empire Games of 1958. The east moat was refilled in 1962. On 21 June the stopcock was turned on by Richard Thomson, Parliamentary Secretary to the ministry then responsible for the works. Landscaping and reflooding of the lakes is also placed in the late 1960s. Since then the castle has been in state care and open to visitors. In 2006 it received 90,914 visitors. It is protected as a scheduled monument and as a grade I listed building. The great hall has been available for wedding ceremonies. During the present works, wedding bookings in the hall are not being taken.

The fabric that those restorations repaired can be read in bands from the outside inward. The eastern defences are protected by the outer east moat and the north lake. The central island and the western island are protected by the south lake. The outer main gatehouse, on the east, is both the present entrance and the original one. Its circular towers rest on spurred, pyramidal bases, a design particular to castles in South Wales. It was originally reached by two drawbridges linked by an intervening tower, since destroyed. A bridge still leads to the east gatehouse of the outer ward, which has twin D-shaped towers. Only the restored outer walls of that gatehouse remain. North of the gatehouse, the north dam is protected by three substantial towers and may have carried the stables. Despite subsidence, it still holds back the north lake. The south dam ends in Felton’s Tower, a square fortification built to protect the sluice gates that regulated the water. The south gatehouse, also called Giffard’s Tower, was originally reached by a drawbridge and led into the town. The remains of the castle mill, once powered by water from the dam, survive on the dam. Four replica siege engines stand on display there.

The central island holds the inner defences, a roughly square plan with a walled inner ward and a middle ward. Four corner towers stand on the inner ward. The north-west tower is complete. Little remains of the north-east tower. The south-east tower is the leaning one. In the medieval period the walls of the middle ward were much higher than they are now, so the concentric effect was stronger. The inner ward’s walls overlooked them. Access to the island was over a drawbridge and through a pair of gatehouses on the east. The inner east gatehouse follows the gatehouse built at Tonbridge in the 1250s and reinforced a wider change in gatehouse design in England and Wales. It is sometimes called a keep-gatehouse. It could be defended from the outside and from the inside, so it could hold even if the perimeter was lost. Two huge towers flank an entrance closed by portcullises and covered by murder-holes. Circular stair turrets stand on the inner corners. The size of the gatehouse made it a residence as well as a defence. It was equipped on a grand scale, probably for the constable and his family. The apartment on the second floor was probably the constable’s. Another pair of gatehouses protects the west side. The western island, probably reached by drawbridges, is called Y Weringaer or Caer y Werin, meaning the people’s fort. It may have been a refuge for the town in wartime. That is the island also called the hornwork.

What the ground has given up in the present century matches that sequence of building, abandonment and repair, and it does not invent an earlier medieval town under the castle. Between January and April 2021, eighteen evaluation trenches were dug, from 11 to 20 January, ahead of new footpaths, ramps, drainage, a soakaway in the middle ward, and a new power supply, and a watching brief followed the groundworks. A small truncated gully was found in the middle ward. A deposit of blacksmithing waste was found. A possible buried surface contained one sherd of residual Romano-British grey ware and medieval pottery. A possible original foundation for the north wall of the great hall was recorded. A sheep skeleton and a rubble layer were associated with the later medieval abandonment. A single-skin wall of pennant sandstone rubble, running parallel to and south of the north curtain in the inner ward, belongs to nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century renovation. In all, 669 artefacts were recovered, weighing 15.074 kilograms. They included 82 sherds of medieval pottery, weighing 908 grams, largely glazed and unglazed Vale ware. Vale ware is common in this part of South Wales from the early thirteenth century onward. Ham Green ware, usual in most twelfth-century and mid-thirteenth-century assemblages in the region, was entirely absent. That absence indicates that there was no medieval activity on the site before the castle was built.

From 24 May to 7 July 2021 an open-area excavation on the central eastern platform, three trenches and two test pits, looked at the ground where a new visitor building was being considered. It found thirteenth-century upcast from the digging of the moat, covered by post-medieval and modern made ground, mostly from nineteenth-century and twentieth-century landscaping. A substantial stone wall footing followed the line of the east wall of that platform. A rectangular spread of mortar may have been bedding for a robbed-out building. Those features, under sterile made ground, are likely to be medieval. A large cut and a spread of lime mortar were read as post-medieval or modern landscaping. Earlier ground investigation, from 16 November 2020 to early February 2021, put four infiltration trial holes and eight window-sample boreholes into the same platform. One of the twelve interventions found a possible stone structure of unknown date, perhaps a buried path or wall.

In 2022 five test pits, two hand-auger holes and three boreholes were cut around two areas of tumbled masonry in the middle ward, to inform repairs. All five test pits contained archaeological deposits: more tumbled masonry and possible in-situ masonry blocks, probably medieval, under modern made ground and later dumping. Boreholes found further made ground, gravels likely to be upcast from the digging of the moat.

On 16, 17 and 18 October 2024 a watching brief covered a new ramp and steps at the Fisherman’s Entrance and the lifting of the flagstone floor in the north gatehouse. At the Fisherman’s Entrance the sequence was simple. Two stone walls related to holding the moat water, with made ground and topsoil over them. Those walls are not consistent with medieval masonry in place. They appear on aerial photographs of 1947 and are likely to be remedial work of the earlier to mid-twentieth century. Identifiable pottery, glass and metal date from the 1950s or 1960s. A bottle from after 1962 in the made ground suggests the material was dumped during the renovation of the 1960s, when the lakes were put back. Under the flagstones of the north gatehouse, medieval coarse stonework survives.

The castle’s present life sits on that repaired fabric. Following two years of conservation, the great hall, the inner ward, and new digital exhibits were brought back for visitors. The hall reopened on 19 July 2025. The work is traced to plans first set out in 2021. The sum invested is given both as 8 million pounds and as 10 million pounds. The medieval water-gate passage, which connects the hall to the southern lake, was conserved and opened. Major repairs were made to the inner east gatehouse. New paths, ramps and a wildflower garden were added. The hall was given underfloor heating and a kitchen for events. The refitting of the hall is presented as a reflection of how the room might have looked in the 1320s. In the twelve months from July 2025 to June 2026, 109,891 people visited. That figure is described as 20 percent above the years before the recent pandemic, and the castle stood among the five most visited sites in the care of the Welsh historic-environment service. More than 1,400 people used a one-pound ticket for visitors receiving Universal Credit. Through the summer of 2026, conservation continued on the walls of the outer defences that help to hold the lakes. Specialist contractors worked on the south dam platform, using ropes to clear vegetation and to repoint with traditional lime mortar. From early July an in-house conservation team took on the north dam platform, and a newly appointed trainee mason worked on it. A second phase of work, focused on the visitor entrance, was being planned. The wider town scheme that includes the castle looks toward the year 2035.

A separate attraction inside the moat and banks, called the Dragon’s Lair, has been in place since St David’s Day in 2016. It uses four animatronic dragons named Dewi, Dwynwen, Dylan and Cariad. The castle has also been used as a filming place for the television series Doctor Who, including The End of Time in 2009, The Vampires in Venice in 2010, The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People in 2011, Robot of Sherwood in 2014, and Heaven Sent in 2015. For The End of Time, the residential quarters of the east gatehouse, the Constable’s Hall and the Braose Gallery stood in for a dungeon in a fictional prison. Those uses are recent. The history that made the walls is the Marcher fortress of Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, raised against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, held against Madog ap Llywelyn’s allies and against Llywelyn Bren, and last used as a royal refuge by Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger.

Canonical page: https://getsitesee.com/places/caerphilly-castle