# Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd

World Heritage site in the United Kingdom

Wales, United Kingdom

Settlement · Fortification. 1280 CE

## Story

• Beaumaris, Harlech, Caernarfon and Conwy, with the town walls of Caernarfon and Conwy, were built for Edward I of England after the conquest of Gwynedd.
• James of Saint George directed works begun in 1283, and Beaumaris, started in April 1295, was still unfinished at his death in 1309.
• The castles faced Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294, Owain Glyndŵr after 1400, a Lancastrian siege at Harlech in 1468, and the English Civil War.
• In 1986 the four castles and two wall circuits were inscribed together as a World Heritage property of 7.27 hectares.
• An excavation in Caernarfon's lower ward, begun in January 2019, found first-century Roman pottery, tile and animal bone, and signs of an earlier fortification.

## Visiting

Admission tickets may be bought on arrival or booked in advance, and a ticket bought online costs 5 per cent less and is not refundable. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing. The four castles are closed on 24, 25 and 26 December and on 1 January. Caernarfon Castle, Conwy Castle, Beaumaris Castle and Harlech Castle are open from 9.30am to 5pm from 1 March to 30 June, open from 9.30am to 6pm from 1 July to 31 August, open from 9.30am to 5pm from 1 September to 31 October, and open from 10am to 4pm from 1 November to 28 February.
The castles may close at short notice in extreme weather, so the closing time can change on the day. From 1 September 2026 to 31 March 2027 an adult ticket at Caernarfon Castle is £14.90, a junior or student ticket is £10.40, a senior ticket is £13.40, a family ticket for two adults and up to three children is £47.70, and a family ticket for one adult and up to three children is £32.80. In the same period an adult ticket at Conwy Castle is £12.90, a junior or student ticket is £9.00, a senior ticket is £11.60, a family ticket for two adults and up to three children is £41.30, and a family ticket for one adult and up to three children is £28.40. In the same period an adult ticket at Beaumaris Castle is £10.40, a junior or student ticket is £7.20, a senior ticket is £9.30, a family ticket for two adults and up to three children is £33.30, and a family ticket for one adult and up to three children is £22.90.
In the same period an adult ticket at Harlech Castle is £10.40, a junior or student ticket is £7.20, a senior ticket is £9.30, a family ticket for two adults and up to three children is £33.30, and a family ticket for one adult and up to three children is £22.90. Entry is free for children under 5, and entry is free for a disabled person and one companion. Membership admission is free. A student ticket requires photo identification to be shown on entry.
A £1 ticket is offered to visitors receiving Universal Credit and other named benefits. Blue Light Card holders, and members of the armed forces and veterans, receive 10 per cent off an individual admission ticket bought on the day, and that reduction is not available on an online ticket. Entry is along a steep path with steps between the visitor centre and Conwy Castle. Admission to the Caernarfon and Conwy town walls is free, and the walls are open daily during reasonable daylight hours.
Visitors are not allowed to enter the wall-walk of the Caernarfon town walls. The key for Porth Mawr Tower may be collected from 10:00am to 3:00pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 31 March 2026 until the end of October, and entry is by that key. Dogs are welcome at the Caernarfon town walls, and smoking is not allowed. Dogs are not allowed on the Conwy wall-walks, and smoking is not allowed.
Visitors are not allowed to enter the closed stretch of the Conwy town walls between the Watch Tower and the Wing Gate, and reopening is hoped for by Easter 2027.

## History

The castles of Beaumaris, Harlech, Caernarfon and Conwy, together with the town walls of Caernarfon and Conwy, were built for Edward I of England after his conquest of Gwynedd. Work on Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech began in 1283 under James of Saint George. Beaumaris was begun in April 1295, after the revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn, and neither Beaumaris nor Caernarfon was ever finished. One account ends all new work by 1330, and another carries Caernarfon to 1330 and Beaumaris to 1331.

The Conquest of Wales by Edward I ran from 1277 to 1283. The Treaty of Aberconwy in November 1277 left Llywelyn ap Gruffudd with western Gwynedd only. In the war that followed, Llywelyn was killed on 11 December 1282 at the Battle of Orewin Bridge, a death also placed at Cilmeri, and his brother Dafydd was executed at Shrewsbury. The Statute of Rhuddlan, on 3 March 1284, divided the royal lands into shires and opened the way for English walled towns from which the Welsh were excluded.

The four castles were palaces as well as fortresses, supplied by sea, with garrisons of a few dozen men. Their cost was enormous: about £15,500 at Caernarfon, about £15,000 at Conwy, £8,190 at Harlech, and about £11,000 at Beaumaris by 1300. By 1304 the Welsh building programme had reached at least £80,000. The wider conquest, castles included, has been put at about £173,000.

Madog ap Llywelyn took Caernarfon in 1294 and burned it. Edward was besieged in Conwy over Christmas, and Harlech held with supplies brought up from the sea. One account says Madog was killed in the spring counter-attack. Another says he was captured in the late summer of 1295 and was still alive in 1305.

Later wars brought Owain Glyndŵr, a Lancastrian hold-out at Harlech from 1461 to 1468, and Royalist garrisons in the English Civil War. Harlech, the last of those garrisons, surrendered in March 1647. By the end of the seventeenth century the castles were ruins, stripped of roofs, lead and timber.

Artists came in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the state took the fabric back in the twentieth. In 1986 the four castles and two wall circuits were inscribed together as a World Heritage property of 7.27 hectares. A lower-ward excavation at Caernarfon, begun in January 2019 and announced as finished on 3 February 2021, found first-century Roman pottery, tile and animal bone, and traces of use just before the castle of 1283.

## Photographs

- [Caernarfon Castle, western view at low tide — Herbert Ortner](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Caernarfon_Castle_1994.jpg)
- [Beaumaris Castle. The castle is situated in the south east section of the square. This view is the north western corner of the castle. — Pam Brophy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Beaumaris_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_28577.jpg)
- [Tomen Dolbenmaen Motte Part of a 13th century motte and bailey castle. Dolbenmaen was the capital of the commote of Eifionydd ( an area extending between — Eric Jones](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Tomen_Dolbenmaen_Motte_-_geograph.org.uk_-_257820.jpg)
- [Dog walking across the bailey of Hugh D'Avranches' castle Fog swathes the valley in the background left. The tower on the right is that of the main building of — Eric Jones](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Dog_walking_across_the_bailey_of_Hugh_D%27Avranches%27_castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_658748.jpg)
- [Castle in the grounds of Portmeirion — Peter Broster](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Castell_Gwain_Goch%2C_Penrhyndeudraeth.jpg)

## Sources

- [Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castles_and_Town_Walls_of_King_Edward_in_Gwynedd) — Wikipedia
- [Edward I of England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England) — Wikipedia
- [Conquest of Wales by Edward I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Wales_by_Edward_I) — Wikipedia
- [James of Saint George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_of_St_George) — Wikipedia
- [Madog ap Llywelyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madog_ap_Llywelyn) — Wikipedia
- [English Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War) — Wikipedia
- [King Arthur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur) — Wikipedia
- [D. J. Cathcart King](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._J._Cathcart_King) — Wikipedia
- [Sidney Toy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Toy) — Wikipedia
- [Llywelyn ap Gruffudd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_ap_Gruffudd) — Wikipedia
- [Welsh rebellions against English rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rebellions_against_English_rule) — Wikipedia
- [Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/374/) — UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- [Castell Caernarfon](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/castell-caernarfon) — Cadw
- [Castell Conwy](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/castell-conwy) — Cadw
- [Castell Harlech](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/castell-harlech) — Cadw
- [Beaumaris Castle](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/beaumaris-castle) — Cadw
- [Caernarfon Town Walls and Porth Mawr Tower](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/caernarfon-town-walls) — Cadw
- [Conwy Town Walls](https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/conwy-town-walls) — Cadw
- [Largest ever excavation at Castell Caernarfon offers new clues about site’s history](https://cadw.gov.wales/about-us/news/largest-ever-excavation-castell-caernarfon-offers-new-clues-about-sites-history) — Cadw
- [Archaeology dig at Caernarfon Castle offers new history insight](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55922745) — BBC News
- [Caernarfon Castle 1994.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caernarfon_Castle_1994.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Beaumaris Castle - geograph.org.uk - 28577.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaumaris_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_28577.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Tomen Dolbenmaen Motte - geograph.org.uk - 257820.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tomen_Dolbenmaen_Motte_-_geograph.org.uk_-_257820.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dog walking across the bailey of Hugh D'Avranches' castle - geograph.org.uk - 658748.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dog_walking_across_the_bailey_of_Hugh_D%27Avranches%27_castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_658748.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Gwain Goch, Penrhyndeudraeth.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Gwain_Goch,_Penrhyndeudraeth.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

The Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd are four royal castles and two town-wall circuits in north-west Wales: Beaumaris, Harlech, Caernarfon with its town walls, and Conwy with its town walls. They stand in the former principality of Gwynedd. Since 1996 only Caernarfon and Harlech have lain in the county of Gwynedd. Beaumaris is on the Isle of Anglesey, and Conwy is in Conwy County Borough. The shared name still uses Gwynedd in the older, larger sense. In 1986 the four castles and the two wall circuits were inscribed together as a World Heritage property of 7.27 hectares. The boundary takes in the medieval defensive structures and leaves out the planned towns and the waterfronts. There is no buffer zone. An essential setting and significant views have been defined for each castle. Harlech lies in Snowdonia, also called Eryri. All four places sit in conservation areas. They are scheduled as monuments of national importance and held as guardianship monuments. The coastal relationship remains, although building has spread on the plain at Harlech and some new building has appeared at Caernarfon.

They were made as part of the Conquest of Wales by Edward I. That conquest ran from 1277 to 1283. English kings and Welsh princes had contended for this coast since the 1070s, and Norman and English lords had pushed their lands forward over several centuries. In the 1260s Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, later called Llywelyn the Last, used a civil war between Henry III and rebel barons to become the dominant power in Wales. He was recognised as prince of Wales under the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267. He had already proclaimed himself prince of Wales in 1258. He was prince of Gwynedd from 1255 until his death.

Edward I of England 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 baptised three days later at Westminster Abbey and was known as the Lord Edward until he became king. He grew to about 6 feet 2 inches, or 188 centimetres, and was called Longshanks. A drooping left eyelid and a lisp were remembered, and Michael Prestwich notes the advantage of his long arms with a sword and his long thighs on a horse. On 1 November 1254, aged fifteen, he married Eleanor of Castile, then about thirteen, at the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas. Alfonso X of Castile gave up his claim to Gascony, and Edward received lands said to be worth 15,000 marks a year, including Gascony, much of Ireland, the Earldom of Chester, and land in Wales. He fought in Wales in 1257. In 1263 a campaign against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd left his force besieged in the north and brought only limited results.

From 1264 to 1267 he was in the Second Barons' War. He was held after the Battle of Lewes on 14 May 1264, escaped from Hereford on 28 May 1265, and defeated Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham on 4 August 1265. He took part in the long siege of Kenilworth, which ended with the Dictum of Kenilworth in October 1266. On 24 June 1268 he pledged himself to a crusade. He sailed from Dover on 20 August 1270. Louis IX died at Tunis on 25 August 1270. Edward went on alone, landed at Acre on 9 May 1271, and left on 24 September 1272 after a dagger wound. His father had died on 16 November 1272. Edward's reign is dated from 20 November 1272. He travelled home through Savoy, where on 25 June 1273 his great-uncle Philip I, Count of Savoy, did homage at Saint-Georges-d'Espéranche for Alpine castles held under a treaty of 1246. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 19 August 1274 and then took off the crown, saying he would not wear it again until he had recovered the crown lands his father had surrendered.

Relations with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd collapsed after 1274. Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys and Llywelyn's brother Dafydd ap Gruffydd defected to Edward. Llywelyn refused a summons to Chester in 1275 to do homage, as the Treaty of Montgomery required. He also planned to marry Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort. In November 1276 Edward declared war. The aim at that stage was to bring a disobedient vassal to heel, not to conquer Wales outright. In July 1277 he led an army of 15,500 into north Wales, of whom 9,000 were Welshmen from the south, with a fleet from the Cinque Ports. The army camped at Flint, then at Rhuddlan and Deganwy. There was no major battle. By the Treaty of Aberconwy in November 1277 Llywelyn kept only western Gwynedd and the title prince of Wales. Eastern Gwynedd was divided between Edward and Dafydd. Deheubarth, Powys and mid-Wales became a mixture of royal land and English protectorates.

War returned early in 1282. Dafydd ap Gruffydd, discontented with his reward, attacked in concert with rulers in Deheubarth and north Powys. Llywelyn and other Welsh leaders joined. The rising drew wide support, sharpened by attempts to impose English law. Edward now treated it as a war of conquest. He mobilised a royal army of 8,000 foot soldiers and 750 cavalry and marched north to Rhuddlan, while Marcher forces advanced from Carmarthen and Montgomery. A fleet took Anglesey, and a temporary bridge was made toward the mainland. On 6 November 1282, while John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, was negotiating, Luke de Tany crossed a pontoon from Anglesey and was ambushed at the Battle of Moel-y-don. Llywelyn then left north Wales toward Builth. He was killed on 11 December 1282 at the Battle of Orewin Bridge. The same death is also placed in an ambush at Cilmeri. Edward took Dolwyddelan in January 1283. Dafydd, who had succeeded his brother, was captured in June 1283 in one account, and early in 1283 in another. He was taken to Shrewsbury, dragged through the streets by a horse, and hanged, drawn and quartered the following autumn. One account simply says he was captured and executed early in 1283.

Edward did not restore the old treaties. The remaining family of Llywelyn and Dafydd was crushed and their lands were divided among English nobles. The Statute of Rhuddlan, enacted on 3 March 1284, set out the new government. It declared the royal lands annexed and united to the English crown, though one account says they did not become part of the Kingdom of England. They were the king's personal fief. Wales under royal control was divided into shires on the English model. Three new shires were created in the north-west: Caernarfon, Merioneth and Anglesey. English criminal law was applied, with Welsh law still used in some civil cases, including inheritance, though illegitimate sons could no longer claim a share as Welsh law had allowed. In 1301 the royal lands and the title prince of Wales were given to Edward's son, Edward of Caernarfon, the future Edward II. One account calls that moment a crowning and an extreme provocation. Thereafter the lands and the title became the usual endowment of the heir to the English throne. The rest of Wales remained the March, under Marcher lords, although from the 1290s Edward intervened there more often. New Marcher lordships went to supporters such as the Earl of Lincoln at Denbigh. Welsh allies such as Owain ap Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn received their own lands back under feudal tenure and became known as Owen de la Pole.

In 1283 Edward ordered new castles and walled towns so that English settlers could live in them and administer the conquered country. Caernarfon Castle and its walled town overlook the River Seiont. Conwy Castle and its walled town control a crossing of the River Conwy. Harlech Castle protects a sea port and a new English town. A castle and walled settlement near Llanfaes on Anglesey, the future Beaumaris, was probably already planned and then postponed because the other works cost so much. Caernarfon and Harlech became centres of new shires. Conwy was responsible for a new county. The castles were also palaces, meant to house the king and queen. Conwy was planted on the site of Aberconwy Abbey, the burial place of the Welsh princes, and the abbey was moved eight miles inland. At Caernarfon the Welsh princes had valued the former Roman site for its imperial meaning, and parts of their own fortifications were taken and reused in the new castle. Harlech was associated with the legend of Branwen. The Welsh were banned from living inside the walls. The new towns were measured in burgages, town plots rented from the Crown. Conwy had 99 around 1295. Caernarfon had 57 in 1298. Harlech had only 24 and a half in 1305. Beaumaris, despite having no town walls, had 132 and a quarter burgages by 1305.

The works were run by trusted men. The most prominent was the Savoyard master James of Saint George. With him were Edward's friend Otto de Grandson, the soldier Sir John de Bonvillars, and the master mason John Francis. Carpenters, ditchers and masons were gathered by sheriffs across England, mustered at Chester and Bristol, sent to north Wales in the spring, and sent home each winter. The demand strained the national labour force. Caernarfon's castle and walls cost £15,500. Conwy's castle and walls came to around £15,000. Harlech cost £8,190. By 1300 Beaumaris had cost around £11,000. By 1304 the building programme in Wales had come to at least £80,000, described as almost six times Edward's annual income. The conquest as a whole, including the new castles, has been put at around £173,000, set beside an average annual revenue of about £40,000. A fourteenth-century nobleman such as Richard le Scrope had an income of only about £500 a year. Constables were appointed to defend the castles and, in some cases, the town walls. Permanent garrisons were set at 40 men at Caernarfon, 30 at Conwy and 36 at Harlech, with crossbows and armour. Each castle was a port. A postern or rear gate let supplies come in by sea even if the town had fallen. Edward's ships had near complete command of the Welsh coast.

James of Saint George was born about 1230. Circumstantial evidence points to Saint-Prex, and to a father named John who was himself a mason, identified with Jean Cotereel, the builder of Saint-Prex and of Lausanne Cathedral. The rose window at Lausanne has been set beside the rose window at Canterbury, and the west window at Lausanne beside the eastern hall window later built at Conwy. The name Saint George, used after he came to England, refers to Saint-Georges-d'Espéranche in the Viennois, and to a sainted archbishop of Vienne, not to the patron saint of England. He worked first for Peter II, Count of Savoy, at Yverdon-les-Bains, alongside his father and then alone by 1265, which is taken to mark his father's death. In 1267 and 1268 he worked at the château of Melphe at Salins-les-Thermes under the Gascon engineer Jean de Mézos, who had worked for Henry III. After Peter II died in 1268 he worked for Philip I on castles at Saint-Georges-d'Espéranche, La Côte-Saint-André, Voiron and Saint-Laurent-du-Pont between 1270 and 1275, and perhaps at Châtel-Argent in the Aosta Valley in the summer of 1275. There is a gap in the record from 1275 until 1278. It has been suggested that he may then have worked for the family of Otto de Grandson, perhaps at Grandson and Lucens.

The earliest English record, in April 1278, describes him going to Wales to put the castle works in order. He is recorded visiting Flint and Rhuddlan while Flint, Rhuddlan, Builth and Aberystwyth were under construction. From 1277 to 1280 his main task was Rhuddlan and the canalisation of the River Clwyd, and then Flint. Flint's plan has been compared with Yverdon. The first English use of the Saint George name is dated 8 November 1280. Around 1285 he was Master of the King's Works in Wales, in the Latin of the accounts Magistro Jacobo de sancto Georgio, Magistro operacionum Regis in Wallia, at a wage of 3 shillings a day. He directed Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech, all begun in 1283. Harlech was effectively finished in 1289, and it is also said to have been carried from the ground to the battlements in seven years. On 3 July 1290 he became constable of Harlech, after John de Bonvillars, who had died in August 1287. He held the constableship until 14 December 1293. Another account gives the same office simply as 1290 to 1293. His last Welsh castle was Beaumaris, begun in April 1295 and still unfinished when he died in 1309. His wife Ambrosia is not recorded as receiving a pension, so she probably did not outlive him. Two sons, Giles and Tassin of Saint George, survived him. He had joined Edward in Scotland, probably around September 1298, oversaw new defences at Linlithgow in February 1302, and was at the siege of Stirling in 1304.

The likeness between the Welsh works and the castles and walls of Savoy was set out by Arnold Taylor, also called A. J. Taylor, in 1950, after he travelled from Wales to Savoy. He pointed to the garderobes at La Bâtiaz, the windows at Chillon, which match Harlech in their dimensions, the town walls of Saillon, and the three-pinnacled merlons at the Castello di San Giorio di Susa and at Conwy. Semi-circular door arches, corbelled towers, the placing of putlog holes, tall round towers and crenellations with pinnacles were listed among the shared details. Later study has argued that his role as a designer, and Savoyard influence more generally, may have been overstated. The stonework in north Wales is of a higher quality. The great twin-towered gatehouses are not a Savoy feature. Some of the Savoy buildings were raised only after he had left and he could not have seen them. He may have been above all the man who managed the works, with a wider body of Savoy craftsmen carrying the details.

The new fortifications were tested in 1294, when Madog ap Llywelyn rebelled. He was the son of Llywelyn ap Maredudd, the last vassal lord of Meirionydd, who had lost his patrimony in 1256 for opposing Llywelyn ap Gruffudd at the Battle of Bryn Derwin, lived in exile on an English pension, returned in June 1262, and died in a skirmish in April 1263. Madog, who may have been born in exile, received gifts of money from Edward in 1277 and in 1278 sued the prince of Wales for his father's cantref of Meirionydd. After 1282 he received lands in Anglesey. He was a distant kinsman of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, of a junior branch of the house of Aberffraw. On Michaelmas, 29 September 1294, he put himself at the head of a revolt planned for months, answering new royal administrators and a tax of one fifteenth on movable goods. Attacks began the same day across Wales. In the middle and south the leaders were Cynan ap Maredudd, Maelgwn ap Rhys, and Morgan ap Maredudd of Gwynllŵg. The leaders had hoped Edward would already be in France. Bad weather had held the fleet, and he cancelled the French campaign.

Madog's men overran Caernarfon, still only partly built, occupied the castle, and set the castle and town alight. Castell y Bere was taken and later burnt. Hawarden, Ruthin and Denbigh were occupied. Criccieth and Harlech were besieged for months. At one moment Harlech was held by 37 men, beside the established garrison of 36. Morlais was taken in the south. Cynan ap Maredudd besieged Builth for six weeks. Half the town of Caerphilly was burnt, though the castle held, and Kenfig was sacked. On 11 November Henry de Lacy, lord of Denbigh, was ambushed and routed outside Denbigh. Reginald de Grey held Flint and Rhuddlan. Flint suffered a long siege and did not fall. Edward reached Conwy shortly before Christmas 1294, was ambushed, lost his baggage, and found the town burnt. He was shut in the castle, supplied by sea, until January 1295, and forces relieved him in February 1295. Another account says the navy relieved him in 1295, without naming the month. Harlech was saved by supplies shipped from Ireland. The path down the rock, called the Way from the Sea, is given as 127 steps in one account and as 108 steps in another.

In the spring Edward counter-attacked with a force put at 35,000. One account says he put the rising down and killed Madog. The battle of Maes Moydog in Powys, on 5 March 1295, was fought against an army led by the Earl of Warwick. The Welsh met a cavalry charge in a porcupine of pikes, or schiltron, and then took heavy losses from arrows. Many drowned in a swollen river during the pursuit. Madog escaped, was captured in late July or early August 1295 by Ynyr Fychan of Nannau, and was handed to John de Havering in Snowdonia. He was taken to London and was still alive in 1305. His death is placed after 1305, in the Tower of London. He left sons, Maredudd, who died about 1334, and Hywel, who died about 1352. In one land grant during the rising he used the title prince of Wales. The rising was longer than any Welsh revolt against English rule except the later rising of Owain Glyndŵr. Ordinances after 1295 further restricted Welsh civil rights and economic life. Other risings followed: Rhys ap Maredudd in the south in 1287 and 1288, Llywelyn Bren in 1316 to 1318, and planned French-backed landings by Owain Lawgoch in the 1370s. None of them restored Welsh independence. The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 to 1542 later brought Wales into the Kingdom of England.

After Madog's rising, work started again on Caernarfon. Anglesey was reoccupied, and the postponed castle was begun at Beaumaris, about 1 mile, or 1.6 kilometres, from the Welsh town of Llanfaes. The Welsh population was moved about 12 miles, or 19 kilometres, south-west to a new settlement called Newborough. James of Saint George directed a rapid build. The workforce lived in temporary huts inside the half-built castle. The pay often fell into arrears. By 1300 only Harlech and Conwy were properly finished. Conwy's castle and walls are also said to have been raised in four years, from 1283 to 1287. Caernarfon's town walls were finished, but much of the castle was not. At Beaumaris the inner walls stood only about half their intended height, and the outer walls had gaps. Edward's wars in Scotland, which followed the death of the Scottish heir and his claim to overlordship, took the money. In 1306 fear of a Scottish landing in north Wales prompted a little more work, but funds stayed tight. One account says all new work had ceased by 1330 and that Caernarfon and Beaumaris were never finished. Another says building went on until 1330 at Caernarfon and until 1331 at Beaumaris. The castles have had only minimal restoration and still show barbicans, drawbridges, fortified gates, chicanes, redoubts, towers and curtain walls.

Maintenance failed quickly. Constables had never been generously funded, and the sums fell through the fourteenth century. The constable of Conwy had £190 a year in 1284 and £40 a year by the 1390s. Harlech fell from £100 a year to £20 by 1391. A survey of 1321 found Conwy poorly equipped, with leaking roofs and rotten timbers. In the 1330s Edward III was told that none of the castles could host the court. A survey of 1343 found Beaumaris in need of heavy work, with several towers ruinous. Repairs were made at times. When the Mortimer family of the March threatened Edward II in southern Gwynedd, he ordered his sheriff, Sir Gruffudd Llywd, to extend the defences up to the gatehouse with extra towers. Edward, the Black Prince, took control of Caernarfon in 1343 and carried out extensive work.

At the end of the fourteenth century Conwy was the stage for the fall of Richard II. He returned from Ireland in August 1399 and sheltered in the castle from Henry Bolingbroke. Henry Percy, Bolingbroke's envoy, negotiated inside, and in the chapel swore to protect the king if he would leave. When Richard came out he was taken prisoner and later died in captivity at Pontefract. The performance of the great castles in the next Welsh war was judged by Michael Prestwich to have been no more than partially successful.

Tension broke again in 1400 with the rising of Owain Glyndŵr. Harlech's garrison was badly equipped, and Conwy was in disrepair. Two Welsh brothers took Conwy Castle by a surprise attack at the start of the war, and the rebels then took the walled town. Caernarfon was besieged in 1401. That November the Battle of Tuthill was fought nearby between the defenders and the besiegers. In 1403 and 1404 Caernarfon was besieged again, with French support, and held. Beaumaris was besieged and captured in 1403 and retaken by royal forces in 1405. Harlech was taken at the end of 1404 and became Glyndŵr's headquarters until English forces under the future Henry V retook it in a siege over the winter of 1408 to 1409. The rising was crushed by 1415.

Later in the century the Wars of the Roses divided Lancaster and York. After the Battle of Northampton in 1460, Harlech was a refuge for Queen Margaret of Anjou. From 1461 to 1468 Dafydd ap Ieuan held it for Lancaster against the Yorkist Edward IV. Natural defences and the sea route let it become the last major Lancastrian stronghold. It fell after a siege of a month. Those events are credited with inspiring the song Men of Harlech. The Tudor dynasty came to the English throne in 1485. The Tudors were Welsh in origin, and hostility between Welsh and English eased. The Edwardian castles mattered less. In 1538 many castles in Wales were reported much ruined and far in decay for lack of timely repair. Harlech seems not to have been repaired after 1468 and became wholly dilapidated. Henry VIII restored Conwy in the 1520s and 1530s. It soon decayed again and was sold by the Crown in 1627. Complaints about Beaumaris mounted, and by 1609 it was classed as utterly decayed. Caernarfon's walls were intact, but the buildings inside were rotten and falling. In 1610 the cartographer John Speed drew pictorial maps of the northern towns, including the castles and the town defences.

The English Civil War broke out in 1642 between the Royalist supporters of Charles I and the supporters of Parliament. It formed part of the wars in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1639 to 1653. The first war was fought over the balance of power between Parliament and the king and, in one account, ended in June 1646 with the king in custody. Royalist strength lay in the countryside, the cathedral cities and the poorer north and west, including Wales. Parliament's strength lay in the ports and the richer south and east. The northern castles and towns were held for the king and mattered as a route between royal armies in England and supplies from Ireland. The defences were repaired at heavy cost and garrisoned by local Royalists. Parliament's armies entered north Wales in 1646 and took Caernarfon, Beaumaris and Conwy that year. Harlech, the last fortress to hold for the king, surrendered in March 1647. That surrender is described as the end of the first phase of the war, later than the June 1646 end given for the first war as a whole.

Parliament then ordered slighting, the deliberate damage of castles so they could not be used again. North Wales was treated as a special case because Charles II might lead a Presbyterian rising in Scotland and attack by sea. He was crowned king of Scotland in 1650 in return for promising a Presbyterian church in England and Scotland, and the war that followed ended at Worcester on 3 September 1651. Conwy, Caernarfon and Beaumaris were garrisoned against a seaborne attack. Conwy was partly slighted in 1655. The Bakehouse Tower lost a great piece of wall. Caernarfon and Beaumaris escaped. Harlech, a less likely Scottish target, was made unusable but was not wholly demolished. Charles I had been executed in January 1649. In 1660 Charles II was restored. Beaumaris returned to the Bulkeley family, long its constables, who stripped what remained, including the roofs. Conwy returned to the Conway family, who took the lead and timber and left a ruin. The new government ordered Caernarfon's castle and town walls destroyed as a security risk. The order was never carried out, perhaps because of the cost.

The sites then passed into varied private hands. Lord Thomas Bulkeley bought Beaumaris from the Crown in 1807 and brought it into the park around his house. The descendants of the Conways leased Conwy Castle to the Holland family. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the ruins were admired as picturesque and sublime. The Napoleonic wars made travel to the continent difficult, and artists came to north Wales instead. They included John Cotman, Henry Gastineau, Thomas Girtin, Moses Griffith, Julius Ibbetson, Paul Sandby, J. M. W. Turner and John Varley. Ivy and other growth covered the stone. The future Queen Victoria came in 1832. In the 1830s the stonework at Caernarfon began to fall, and the Crown employed Anthony Salvin for emergency repairs. Railways and roads increased the number of visitors. Research, especially on Caernarfon and Conwy, grew from the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1865 Conwy Castle passed to the civic leadership of the town, which restored the ruins and rebuilt the slighted Bakehouse Tower. From the 1870s the government paid for repairs at Caernarfon. The deputy constable, Llewellyn Turner, directed a controversial restoration and rebuilding rather than a simple conservation of the stone that survived. Despite local protest, the moat on the north side was cleared of later buildings that were thought to spoil the view. That late nineteenth-century reconstruction at Caernarfon is the main later alteration. For about the last hundred years the rule has been to conserve what was found, with little intervention.

The state gathered the sites back in the twentieth century. Caernarfon had never left the Crown. Harlech passed to the Office of Works in 1914, Beaumaris in 1925, and Conwy was leased to the Ministry of Works in 1953. Large conservation programmes in the 1920s at Beaumaris and Harlech stripped vegetation, dug out the moats and repaired stone, without rebuilding the castles as new. At Conwy in the 1950s and 1960s, newer buildings that had crowded the thirteenth-century walls were cleared away. Sidney Toy and Charles Peers published studies, and Arnold Taylor joined the Office of Works as an assistant inspector in 1935. Major reports in the 1950s widened the reputation of the sites. Taylor was also important in opposing road schemes of the 1970s that would have changed the appearance of Conwy. Painters including Terry Ball, John Banbury and Ivan Lapper made detailed reconstructions. In 1984 a Welsh historic-environment service was formed as part of the Welsh Government and took over the four sites as places for visitors. In 2007 more than 530,000 visits were recorded. Between 2002 and 2003 the maintenance of the historic parts cost £239,500.

Caernarfon was used for the investiture of the prince of Wales in 1911 and again in 1969. The 1969 ceremony was the investiture of Prince Charles. Welsh nationalists, among them Alun Ffred Jones, challenged that use. Later interpretation at the sites gave more space to the effect of the castles on the Welsh and to the princes who had ruled before 1282. For much of the twentieth century the castles were read above all as military machines. Their concentric lines, barbicans and large gatehouses led D. J. Cathcart King to call them the zenith of English castle-building, and Sidney Toy to call them some of the most powerful castles of any age or country. David James Cathcart King, born in 1913 and died on 29 September 1989, was a historian, archaeologist and schoolteacher, president of the Cambrian Archaeological Association in 1976 and 1977, and a founder of the Castle Studies Group in 1987. Sidney Toy, born on 15 February 1875 at Redruth in Cornwall and died in 1967, was an architect and architectural historian whose book Castles appeared in 1939. Later historians, among them Michael Prestwich and Abigail Wheatley, also treated the buildings as palaces and as symbols of royal power. Richard Morris wrote that the impression was of an elite of soldiers, old comrades of the king, spending an almost unlimited budget on military display. Prestwich noted that the castles were larger than a defence against Welsh attack required, and that the Crown could not afford to garrison or maintain them, so that smaller works might have done more.

Each castle was planned to hold a royal court: several sets of private rooms, discreet service rooms, and security. Conwy keeps what Jeremy Ashbee calls the best preserved suite of medieval private royal chambers in England and Wales, with a private garden for the queen. The walls were once more colourful. At Conwy they were whitened with a lime render, and the putlog holes may have held painted shields, called targes. The western barbican at Conwy has the earliest surviving stone machicolations in Britain. A postern once led down to a small dock on the river. The castle is a rectangle on a coastal ridge of grey sandstone and limestone, much of the stone cut from the ridge itself, with an inner and an outer ward and four large towers on each side. A rock-cut ditch, a wall, a drawbridge and a gate separate the wards. An eastern barbican encloses the garden. The town walls run about 1.3 kilometres, or 0.81 miles, in a triangle around about 10 hectares, or 25 acres. They are also described as three quarters of a mile, with 21 towers and three original gateways. Most towers are gap-backed, open on the town side, and once had removable wooden bridges so that a length of wall could be cut off. Rhyolite was used on the upper parts of the eastern walls. The wall-walk is carried on a row of corbels. Twelve medieval latrines are built into the southern walls, first made for royal staff in the thirteenth century. The walls may have been whitewashed when new.

Caernarfon is divided into a lower ward, which held the royal lodging, and an upper ward, with services and rooms for the garrison. A curtain with polygonal towers surrounds them, and firing galleries run along the south side. The King's Gate leads from the town. The Queen's Gate gives a more direct approach. Only foundations remain of the internal buildings. If the castle had been finished it could have housed a royal household of several hundred people. Allen Brown called it one of the most formidable concentrations of fire-power in the Middle Ages. The town walls make an unbroken circuit of 734 metres, or 2,408 feet, around 4.18 hectares, or 10.3 acres, mostly of the same carboniferous limestone as the castle. Eight towers, mostly gap-backed, stand on the circuit, with removable bridges as at Conwy. The two original gates were the West Gate, or Golden Gate, facing the harbour and named after the principal gate of Constantinople, and the East Gate. Banded coloured stone, eagle statues and polygonal rather than round towers set Caernarfon apart. Arnold Taylor argued that the design represented the walls of Constantinople and that the Byzantine image asserted Edward's authority. Abigail Wheatley argues that the authority was real but that the image was drawn from Roman sites in Britain, to give the king an Arthurian legitimacy. In the thirteenth century King Arthur was believed to have been of Roman origin.

King Arthur is a legendary king of Britain, a hero of the medieval Matter of Britain. Welsh sources place him as a leader of the post-Roman Britons against the Anglo-Saxons in the late fifth and early sixth centuries. He first appears in the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, written about three centuries after that time, and most historians of the period do not treat him as a historical person. Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain made him an international figure and gave him Uther Pendragon, Merlin, Guinevere, Excalibur, a conception at Tintagel, a last battle against Mordred at Camlann, and rest in Avalon. The stonework at Caernarfon belongs to that later royal use of the legend, not to a historical court of Arthur on the Seiont.

Beaumaris was built near sea level in local Anglesey stone. An inner ward and an outer ward are wrapped by a moat, now partly filled. The main entrance, the Gate next the Sea, stood by a tidal dock so that ships could unload under the walls. The dock was covered by a wall later called the Gunners Walk and by a platform that may have held a trebuchet. The outer curtain has eight sides and twelve turrets. One gate opens toward the sea gate and the other, the Llanfaes Gate, opens to the north. The inner walls are heavier, with huge towers and two large gatehouses. Domestic ranges ran along the west and east of the inner ward, and fireplace remains survive in the stone. The outer gate is not in line with the inner gate, so anyone who passed the outer gate had to turn right across an open space under fire. Arnold Taylor called Beaumaris the most perfect example in Britain of symmetrical concentric planning. Beaumaris and Harlech have been singled out for the way a thirteenth-century double wall is combined with a central plan, and for the proportion and the masonry.

Harlech stands on the spur called the Harlech Dome. The ground falls sharply to the north and west, and a ditch cut in the rock covers the other approaches. The outer wall was once somewhat higher than it is now. The stone is local grey-green sandstone, with large regular blocks in the towers and rougher material, perhaps from the ditch, in the walls. The main approach crossed a stone bridge between two eastern ditch towers and the gatehouse. Little of those bridge towers remains, and a timber way now replaces the bridge. A water gate looks onto the protected stair down the cliff. The gatehouse has two massive D-shaped towers. The passage had three portcullises and at least two heavy doors. Two upper floors are divided into rooms, with three large windows toward the inner ward on each floor and two further grand windows on the second floor. Fireplaces and chimneys served the rooms. Four large round towers guard the inner ward and at different times held a dungeon and an artillery workshop. Around the ward stood a chapel, a kitchen, service rooms, a granary and a great hall. The battlements may once have carried triple finials, as at Conwy. A floating footbridge now lets a visitor enter as the original bridge did, for the first time in about 600 years.

The largest excavation yet undertaken at Caernarfon began in January 2019 in the lower ward and was announced as finished on 3 February 2021. A team from the University of Salford, directed by Ian Miller of Salford Archaeology, found sherds of first-century Roman pottery, together with tile and animal bone. The work also found evidence of use shortly before the present castle of 1283, adding weight to the idea of an earlier motte and bailey. Stone foundations raised the question of whether the markers now laid out in the lower ward, showing where thirteenth- or fourteenth-century buildings stood, need to be read again. The castle had been thought to occupy the site of a Roman fort. Ian Miller said the pottery suggested Roman settlers and a place of strategic weight long before 1283, and that the history might be enhanced rather than rewritten. Ian Halfpenney, an inspector of ancient monuments, noted how rare an excavation on this scale is inside a World Heritage property. The lower ward and the King's Gate were recorded by three-dimensional laser scanning, for conservation and as a public record of the gate. From March 2021 the records and the objects were to be assessed at Salford. No full published list of every find from that assessment is set out in the notices of the dig.

The four castles remain a single designed group, directed for Edward I of England by James of Saint George, and a record of colonisation as well as of defence. Their accounts name workmen brought from every region of England, the use of stone quarried on the site, the financing, and the daily life of the workforce. The plans, materials and main features are largely unaltered. Unsympathetic building on the landward side, and coastal or offshore building in the view, are the changes that would do most harm. Shoreline planning and flood-risk assessment are used to limit erosion and building that would break the coastal sightlines. The castles were the means by which a conquered Gwynedd was held, settled and governed, and they were never only barracks. They were also palaces, and at Caernarfon they were a claim, made in banded stone and in the memory of King Arthur and of Rome, that English rule on this coast was meant to last.

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