# Deganwy Castle

castle in Wales

United Kingdom

Settlement · Fortification. 1080 CE

## Story

• Two rocky hills and a bailey guard the crossing of the Conwy in North Wales.
• Tradition links the hill with Maelgwn Gwynedd, and sixth-century Mediterranean pottery was found there.
• Robert of Rhuddlan, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, and Henry III of England each held and rebuilt the castle.
• Llywelyn ap Gruffudd destroyed the stone castle in 1263, and Edward I built Conwy on the opposite bank.
• The ruins were listed in 1950, and digging in the 1960s and a survey in 2009 traced the unfinished defences and the borough.

## History

Deganwy Castle occupies two steep hills above the eastern shore of the River Conwy, in Deganwy, North Wales, with a bailey in the saddle between them. The hills command the crossing on the road from Chester to Bangor and the shipping in Conwy Bay. The western hill is craggy and the eastern hill more conical, and the open ground around them is the Vardre.

Roman coins and pottery show activity on the hills from the first century into the fifth, though no Roman building has been located. Tradition places the court of Maelgwn Gwynedd here in the Early Middle Ages, and about a dozen sherds of east Mediterranean amphorae, one of them datable to the late fifth or sixth century, fit a high-status site of that time. A fortress of the Decantae, identified with this hill by its name, was burned by lightning in 812 and destroyed by the Saxons in 822. There is no record that confirms or denies the tradition of Maelgwn's court, and the hill may have been a frontier post rather than the heart of the Kingdom of Gwynedd.

Robert of Rhuddlan built a castle here in the later eleventh century, dated 1075, between 1073 and 1088, and about 1080. He was killed on the Great Orme, on 3 July 1093 after a noon alarm at Deganwy, or in 1088 while driving off a raid. The Welsh pushed the Normans out of Gwynedd in 1094. In 1098 Magnus Barefoot killed the Earl of Shrewsbury during the Norman attack on Anglesey, and a separate telling places Norman forces at Deganwy in a clash called the Battle of Diganoth.

The castle's own story through the twelfth century is otherwise blank. In 1157 a fleet that was meant to meet Henry II at Degannwy or Rhuddlan went to Anglesey instead. In 1188 Gerald of Wales crossed an arm of the sea below Degannwy. Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, prince of Gwynedd from 1199, received the district by inheritance in 1200 and later counted Deganwy among his stone castles.

In 1210 he destroyed the castle and fell back west of the Conwy as Ranulf de Blondeville invaded. The earl rebuilt it. One account has Llywelyn take it back quickly in stone, and another keeps the earl's rebuild in timber until a recapture in 1213. The north revetment is dated about 1213 and to Llywelyn.

King John's campaign of 1211 stripped Llywelyn of everything east of the Conwy, and for a time Deganwy and Rhuddlan were the castles he could not recover. He took both in 1213. From 1228 to 1234 he imprisoned his son Gruffudd, and Deganwy is named as the prison.

Henry III of England took the earldom of Chester, and with it Deganwy, into the Crown's hands. In 1241 Dafydd ap Llywelyn demolished the castle before he surrendered the site. Henry ordered it fortified again, and from August to October 1245 he stayed while a new castle was begun.

The work, which cost more than 2,200 pounds, was never finished. A round tower and a king's hall rose on the western hill from 1247, Mansell's Tower stood on the eastern hill by 1250, and only the south side of the bailey was completed in stone.

Henry planted a borough, with burgages, a Tuesday market, a fair, and a charter in 1252 that allowed a ditch and wall. The platforms north of the castle are read as that town. In 1254 he gave the castle to his son Edward.

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd attacked the castle in 1257. Henry relieved a siege and stayed ten days, and the place is also said to have been beleaguered for seven years. In 1263 Llywelyn starved the garrison out and brought the walls down with mines fired under them.

Edward I camped at Deganwy in 1277 and may have found a hasty refortification. In 1283 he abandoned the ruin and built Conwy Castle and a walled town on the opposite bank, at a combined cost of about 15,000 pounds. The market lived on, with nineteen plots recorded in 1305 to 1306, and it may have moved down to the ferry. The Welsh name of the hill, the Vardre, remembers the maerdref of the commote of Creuddyn.

The Crown sold the land to the Wynn family in the early seventeenth century, and it passed to the Mostyns in 1766. Housing closed in around the fields between 1900 and the middle of the 1960s. Leslie Alcock excavated the donjon, Mansell's Tower, the gates, and the northern rampart from 1961 to 1966. A survey in 2009 traced buildings and a road in the bailey, settlement to the north, and fields to the south, and found the archaeology kept to the higher, drier ground.

The ruins were listed on 23 September 1950 at grade II*. They are a scheduled monument, and the hills lie in the historic landscape of Creuddyn and Conwy. What remains is fragmentary: a northern revetment, footings, a stub of gate, the low banks of Mansell's Tower, and a ditch and bank on the north side that were never finished in stone.

## Photographs

- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_09.JPG)
- [Deganwy from across Afon Conwy with the hill-top site of Deganwy Castle in the background. — Photograph taken by myself, cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Castell_Degannwy_01.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_02.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_01.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_04.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_05.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_06.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_07.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_08.JPG)
- [Castell Deganwy Castle (Welsh: Caer Ddegannwy; Modern Welsh: Castell Degannwy) was an early stronghold of Gwynedd and lies in Deganwy at the mouth of the River — Llywelyn2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_03.JPG)

## Sources

- [Deganwy Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deganwy_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Deganwy Castle scheduled monument](https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/sam/FullReport?id=3395&lang=en) — Cadw
- [Deganwy Castle listed building](https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?id=3365) — Cadw
- [Deganwy Castle](https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/95282) — Coflein
- [Maelgwn Gwynedd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maelgwn_Gwynedd) — Wikipedia
- [Robert of Rhuddlan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_of_Rhuddlan) — Wikipedia
- [Hugh d'Avranches, 1st Earl of Chester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_d%27Avranches) — Wikipedia
- [Llywelyn ab Iorwerth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_ab_Iorwerth) — Wikipedia
- [Dafydd ap Llywelyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_ap_Llywelyn) — Wikipedia
- [Llywelyn ap Gruffudd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_ap_Gruffudd) — Wikipedia
- [Kingdom of Gwynedd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Gwynedd) — Wikipedia
- [Conwy Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conwy_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Edward I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I) — Wikipedia
- [Cnut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut) — Wikipedia
- [Orderic Vitalis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orderic_Vitalis) — Wikipedia
- [Afon Ddu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afon_Ddu) — Wikipedia
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 09.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_09.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy 01.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_01.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 02.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_02.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 01.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_01.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 04.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_04.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 05.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_05.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 06.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_06.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 07.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_07.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 08.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_08.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Degannwy Deganwy Castle Sir Ddinbych Wales 03.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Degannwy_Deganwy_Castle_Sir_Ddinbych_Wales_03.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Deganwy Castle stands on two steep hills above the eastern shore of the River Conwy, in Deganwy, in Conwy county borough, North Wales. The hills are igneous intrusions through the surrounding Ordovician rocks. One account calls the outcrop a volcanic plug in an area of limestone known as the Vardre, in Welsh Y Fardre, and gives the height as 110 metres, or 361 feet. A field assessment measured a plateau at about 70 metres above ordnance datum, with the hills rising to about 100 metres, and a saddle about 60 metres wide between them. The western hill is craggy. The eastern hill is smoother and more conical. The place is plotted on the Ordnance Survey National Grid, the system that locates any point in Great Britain by its distance from an origin to the west of the Isles of Scilly. The monument lies at easting 278214 and northing 379440, about 450 metres, a quarter of a mile, east of the mouth of the Conwy.

The castle was sited to control the crossing of the Conwy on the road from Chester to Bangor, and to watch shipping in Conwy Bay. The view runs all round the hills, and the sightlines that mattered when the castle was built ran east, south, west, and north-west, with a particular view north-north-east toward Bryniau Tower, which may have been an outpost. Upstream, the largest of the rivers called Afon Ddu leaves Llyn Cowlyd on the south-eastern edge of the Carneddau and joins the Conwy near Dolgarrog, well above the estuary the castle overlooks. Other streams of that name drain the Carneddau into the Dulyn and the Llanfairfechan, or join the Dysynni. The ground falls steeply to the west and south, and the shore of the estuary lies less than half a kilometre west of the hills. Housing now hems in the open land on the north, west, and south. The parish is Llanrhos, also called Eglwysrhos, in the medieval commote of Creuddyn and the cantref of Rhos. In the thirteenth century the place was called Gannock or Gannoc, and other spellings include Diganwy, Dyganwy, and Tiganwy.

Few of the visible remains are likely to be earlier than the thirteenth century, but the hills have a longer history. Prehistoric activity in the study area is known from chance finds. Two polished stone axes and a hoard of bronze palstaves have been found in the area, with another axe not far away. A broken polished axe of Graig Lwyd stone came from Gannock Park, though the recorded grid is approximate and the axe probably came from a garden rather than the open fields. Another Graig Lwyd axe came from Plas Mariandir, about 400 metres north of the study area. A complete axe of a stone other than Graig Lwyd was found near Cae'r Dail on the Vardre. In 1720 a considerable deposit of celts was found under a great stone at Degannwy and later identified as Bronze Age palstaves. The find spot is not known more closely, and a farmstead near the shore was also called Degannwy, so the hoard cannot be tied securely to the castle. An Iron Age roundhouse settlement was once recorded just north of the castle. The earthworks there have right-angled corners and rectangular hollows, and they line up with the medieval platforms, so that reading has been set aside.

Roman material is scattered on and between the hills. Five Constantinian coins were recorded on the slopes of the western hill, and one Roman coin was found embedded in the mortar of a thirteenth-century wall on the eastern hill, though those coins were lost before they could be examined. A small sherd of samian ware was picked up on the western hill during a survey. Later digging produced pottery of the third and fourth centuries and coins running from Gallienus, in 260 to 268, to Valens, in 364 to 378, together with some sherds of the first and second centuries. The coins have been described as an urban and military coinage, perhaps a sign of contact with Caerhun and with soldiers on the Roman road. Some wheel-thrown jars and bowls with large white calcite grits may run from the fourth century into the fifth. The occupation has been read as a stronghold, but there is not yet enough evidence to say what form it took or where any structures stood. A bone tool dug up in 1886 was assumed at the time to be Roman, though that digging was not an excavation.

The centuries after Roman rule are the Early Middle Ages, usually taken as the late fifth century to the tenth, between the decline of the western Roman empire and the High Middle Ages. In that stretch the hills are tied by tradition to Maelgwn Gwynedd, king of Gwynedd in the early sixth century, son of Cadwallon Lawhir ap Einion and great-grandson of Cunedda. His name is Middle Welsh for princely hound, and in Latin he is Maglocunus. Surviving records suggest he held a pre-eminent place among the Brittonic kings of Wales and their allies in the Old North. He supported churches across Wales, with gifts linked to Brynach, Cadoc, Cybi, Padarn, and Tydecho. He is also associated with the foundation of Bangor, though hard evidence for that is lacking. The only contemporary portrait is the condemnation by Gildas, written about 540, who set Maelgwn among five British kings and called him the dragon of the island, a phrase usually taken to mean Anglesey, the old stronghold of the kings of Gwynedd. Gildas said he overthrew his maternal uncle to take the throne, that he had been a monk and then returned to the world, that he married, divorced, and remarried the widow of his nephew after that nephew's death, and that he was tall. Some historians identify the uncle as Owain Danwyn. Gildas would more likely have used another Latin word had he meant the father's brother.

By tradition the royal court, the llys, stood at Deganwy on the Creuddyn peninsula of Rhos. Tradition also has him dying at nearby Llanrhos and buried there, while other traditions bury him on Ynys Seiriol, Puffin Island, off eastern Anglesey. There are no historical records that confirm or deny those traditions. A hill nearby is called Bryn Maelgwyn, one of several places in the district associated with him. In July 1979 a hoard of 204 silver pennies of Cnut was found on that hill. Cnut, also called Canute, was king of England from 1016, king of Denmark from 1018, and king of Norway from 1028, until his death on 12 November 1035. The pennies show that silver struck for him was buried on the hill. They do not, by themselves, show that he came to Deganwy. A great mortality of 547, in which Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd, died, is entered in the Welsh annals. A later note, absent from the earliest manuscript, speaks of the long sleep of Maelgwn in the court of Rhos, and then of the yellow plague. The phrase became a proverb for any long sleep and later tended to point at the church of Rhos rather than the court. Other texts have been taken to put the death about fifty years later. The yellow plague has been debated as a delayed arrival of the plague of Justinian or as an extreme relapsing fever that causes jaundice. The annal itself says only that there was a great mortality. Doubts have been raised about tying Maelgwn to Deganwy at all, because the place lies outside the heartland of Gwynedd, whose eastern boundary was traditionally the Conwy. On that reading the hill could only have been a frontier fortress. The commote of Creuddyn was put into Caernarfonshire in 1284 so that the crossing of the Conwy stayed inside that county, and a similar priority may have applied in Maelgwn's time. Later legend added a great deal that historians reject. Geoffrey of Monmouth made him a king of all Britain after Arthur, and the eighteenth-century Iolo manuscripts piled further stories onto his name. None of that confirms a court on these hills.

Digging on the castle produced about a dozen sherds of east Mediterranean amphorae of the kind called Tintagel Class B. Only one sherd is of the Bi type closely datable to the late fifth to the middle of the sixth century. Those amphorae were made in the Argolid, and possibly on Chios and Kos. The sherds link north Wales to Mediterranean trade in the sixth century. Tintagel has produced far more of the same wares and may have redistributed them around the Severn Sea and on up the Welsh coast to Deganwy. The number of sherds is very small, probably because so little of the hill was opened, and much rests on the single diagnostic piece. Some of the less diagnostic sherds have been suggested to run later, perhaps into the seventh, eighth, or ninth century. A drystone wall at least 1.75 metres wide was traced on the eastern side of the west hill. It could not be dated. It might have encircled the hill, and it has been placed anywhere from the eleventh-century castle back to the Iron Age, though other writers link it to the sixth-century activity. Taken together, the historical tradition and the pottery suggest a sixth-century fortified site of high status on the western hill. Many early medieval high-status sites in Britain sit on rocky outcrops with a river or the sea nearby, a safe harbour, and imported pottery. Deganwy fits that pattern. The sheltered harbour lay in the mouth of the river close to the foot of the hills. The top of the western hill has been disturbed by later builders and by rabbits, so little of an early fortress is likely to survive there, though middens below the crags or pockets of deposit inside the later castle remain possible.

A ninth-century fortress of the Decantae is identified with this hill, and the identification rests on the name. If it is right, the fortress was struck by lightning and burned in 812, and in 822 the Saxons destroyed it and took the kingdom of Powys into their own control. One account of the Kingdom of Gwynedd has the royal court moving west from Chester to the stronghold at Deganwy after the Battle of Chester in 613, and then, after the lightning and the Saxon destruction, to Aberffraw on Anglesey, with later exceptions such as a court at Rhuddlan. From about 1200 until 1283 the family home of the princes stood at Abergwyngregyn.

After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, followers of William the Conqueror were set as earls on the English counties that bordered Wales, and they pushed into Wales at different points. Hugh d'Avranches, born about 1047, became Earl of Chester in 1071, when Gerbod the Fleming was a prisoner after the Battle of Cassel and the king treated the earldom as vacant. Cheshire was a county palatine. Hugh, nicknamed the Large and later the Wolf, appointed hereditary barons, among them his cousin Robert of Rhuddlan. Robert, son of Humphrey de Tillieul and Adeliza de Grentemesnil, had served as a squire at the court of Edward the Confessor and was on the Welsh marches before 1066. Hugh became earl in 1070 on one reckoning, and Robert appears as his commander of troops in 1072. Robert captured land in the cantref of Tegeingl and built a motte-and-bailey at Twthill near Rhuddlan, holding it as Hugh's vassal.

In 1075 Gruffudd ap Cynan tried to recover the throne of Gwynedd from Trahaearn ap Caradog. Robert supplied Norman troops. Later that year Trahaearn drove Gruffudd to Ireland, and Robert used the civil war to seize the cantrefs of Rhos and Rhufoniog and to build another castle at Deganwy. He then ruled most of northern Wales east of the Conwy. The castle's own summary is more cautious. Orderic Vitalis, the English-born monk of Saint-Evroul, says that Robert established a castle at Degannwy, and that this would have been 1073 at the earliest. The precise spot on the hilltop and the layout are uncertain. The building is placed between 1073 and 1088, and also about 1080. There is no medieval motte, so the eleventh-century castle was probably on the summit of one of the hills. Castles of that period were usually timber, though it has been suggested that this one might have been a stone keep.

In 1081 Trahaearn was killed at the Battle of Mynydd Carn by Gruffudd ap Cynan and his allies. Gruffudd became king of Gwynedd, and shortly afterwards he was taken by treachery at Rhug near Corwen. Earl Hugh imprisoned him at Chester. Robert seems to have been responsible for the capture, because he was the one who claimed Gruffudd's lands. He built castles at Bangor, Caernarfon, Aberlleiniog, and elsewhere. In the Domesday survey he is said to hold all of North Wales apart from the lands of the bishoprics of Bangor and St Asaph, directly of the king rather than as a fief of Earl Hugh, at an annual rent of forty pounds. On William the Conqueror's death in 1087, Robert supported Robert Curthose and joined the siege of Rochester in 1088, then had to surrender to William Rufus.

Robert's death is dated in two ways. One account, drawn from Orderic Vitalis, puts it on 3 July 1093. Robert was taking a noon sleep in his castle at Deganwy when news came that Welsh raiders had landed in three ships under the Great Orme and were pillaging his lands. Some accounts say Gruffudd ap Cynan, escaped from Chester, led them. The raiders had beached their ships and were loading plunder. Robert sent for his troops and hurried to the Orme, found the tide about to float the ships, and rushed down with only his armour-bearer. He was killed by a volley of javelins, and the raiders sailed with his head fixed to a mast. Another account places his death in 1088, on the Great Orme, while he was driving off a Welsh raid. His lands in Gwynedd passed to Earl Hugh. In 1094 a Welsh rising led by Gruffudd ap Cynan cost the Normans most of that territory, and the Welsh pushed them out of Gwynedd. The history of the castle through the twelfth century is otherwise unknown.

In the summer of 1098 Hugh joined Hugh of Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, to relieve besieged castles, plunder Anglesey, and recover what he had lost in Gwynedd. Gruffudd had hired a Norse fleet from Ireland to hold the Menai. The Normans paid that fleet to ferry them across instead, and Gruffudd and Cadwgan ap Bleddyn fled to Ireland. The Norman landing was followed by extreme violence. During those days a Norwegian fleet under Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, appeared off Puffin Island. In the fight known as the Battle of Anglesey Sound, Magnus shot the Earl of Shrewsbury with an arrow to the eye. A separate telling places Norman forces at Deganwy in 1098 and calls the clash the Battle of Diganoth, with Magnus's men killing Hugh of Montgomery almost incidentally, after which the Normans retreated. Magnus was in the area to fight the Irish rather than the Normans, on that telling. The Normans left Anglesey. Gruffudd returned and, over the next three years, recovered upper Gwynedd as far as the Conwy. Hugh fell ill in July 1101, became a monk at St Werburgh's in Chester, and died that month. His death is given as both 17 July and 27 July 1101. His son Richard, and Robert of Rhuddlan's son William, were both lost in the White Ship in 1120. The earldom passed to Hugh's nephew Ranulph le Meschin.

In 1120 a border war in the Perfeddwlad left Rhufoniog and Rhos empty. Powys could not garrison them, and Chester could not push inland from its coastal holdings of Rhuddlan and Degannwy. Gruffudd ap Cynan annexed the cantrefs. He died in 1137. His son Owain Gwynedd carried the kingdom on. In 1157 Henry II marched from Chester against Owain. Owain's sons caught the king in the woods near Dinas Basing. Roger de Clare pulled Henry clear. Owain fell back, and Henry entered Rhuddlan. A fleet that was supposed to meet him at Degannwy or Rhuddlan had gone to plunder Anglesey instead. Its leader, Henry FitzRoy, burned churches on the island and was killed under a shower of lances. Henry made terms. Owain did homage, gave up Tegeingl and Rhuddlan, and restored his brother Cadwaladr. In 1188 Gerald of Wales crossed the Conwy, or rather an arm of the sea below Degannwy, and left the Cistercian monastery of Conway on his right, on the western bank. He also wrote that the Conway flows from the northern bastion of Snowdon and joins the sea below Degannwy Castle. The same journey found Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, still a boy, already in arms against his uncles. Gerald called him twelve. A chronicle places his birth in 1173, which would make him about fifteen in 1188.

Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, also called Llywelyn Fawr and Llywelyn the Great, was prince of the Kingdom of Gwynedd from 1199 until his death on 11 April 1240. He was probably born at the royal manor of Dolwyddelan, son of Iorwerth Drwyndwn and Marared, daughter of Madog ap Maredudd of Powys. In 1194 he defeated his uncle Dafydd ab Owain at the Battle of Aberconwy, at the mouth of the Conwy. He drove his cousins from Gwynedd west of the river after a battle in Arfon on Epiphany 1199, and in July 1201 he made a treaty with King John, the earliest surviving written agreement between an English king and a Welsh ruler. He married Joan, John's natural daughter, in 1205. The district, recovered by the Welsh after the Norman castle, passed by inheritance to Llywelyn Fawr in 1200.

In 1210 the peace with John broke. While John campaigned in Ireland against William de Braose, an army led by Ranulf de Blondeville, sixth Earl of Chester, and Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, invaded Gwynedd. Llywelyn destroyed his own castle at Deganwy, for fear of the king and of the earl's advance, and retreated west of the Conwy. The Earl of Chester rebuilt Deganwy, and Llywelyn ravaged the earl's lands. One account has the earl capturing the castle in 1210 and Llywelyn taking it back shortly afterwards in stone. Another places the earl's rebuild in timber that same year, with Llywelyn's recapture in 1213. The earliest surviving masonry, a revetment on the north side, belongs to about 1213 and to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth.

In 1211 John invaded with the help of almost all the other Welsh princes, intending to dispossess Llywelyn and destroy him utterly. A first advance was forced to retreat. One account says John's army reached Deganwy and was starved into retreat by Llywelyn's hold on the countryside. In August John came again with a larger army, crossed the Conwy, and entered Snowdonia. Bangor was burned and the bishop of Bangor was captured. Joan negotiated with her father. Llywelyn lost everything east of the Conwy, paid a tribute in cattle and horses, and handed over hostages, including his son Gruffudd. If he died without a legitimate heir by Joan, his lands were to revert to the king. Within two months in 1212 he recovered all of Gwynedd except the castles of Deganwy and Rhuddlan. John planned another invasion in August 1212, then abandoned it after warnings from Joan and from William of Scotland that his magnates might turn on him. In 1213 Llywelyn took Deganwy and Rhuddlan. In that year Owain ap Dafydd ap Owain was granted the cantrefs of Rhos, Rhufoniog, and Dyffryn Clwyd by John, with the castle of Gannock specifically excluded. Owain was defeated by Llywelyn, who took all of the Perfeddwlad except Rhuddlan and Deganwy, and then took those two castles by siege.

Llywelyn joined the barons against John, took Shrewsbury in 1215, and gained clauses in Magna Carta, including the release of Gruffudd, a hostage since 1211. Ednyfed Fychan became seneschal of Gwynedd that year. At Aberdyfi in 1216 the other princes did homage. John died in 1216, and in 1218 Llywelyn made the Treaty of Worcester with Henry III of England, confirming his recent conquests. Between 1220 and 1230 he built a line of castles that are counted among the first sophisticated stone castles in Wales: Criccieth, Deganwy, Dolbadarn, Dolwyddelan, and Castell y Bere. From 1228 to 1234 he imprisoned his son Gruffudd. The castle at Deganwy is named as that prison. Gruffudd's own life says he was imprisoned in those years and does not name the place. In 1230 Llywelyn dropped the title prince of North Wales for prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon. He never used the title prince of Wales. A paralytic stroke in 1237 left Dafydd a larger share of government. Joan died that year. The Peace of Middle in 1234 had already ended Llywelyn's wars, and the truce was renewed year by year until he died at Aberconwy, where he was buried.

Henry III of England annexed the earldom of Chester to the Crown in 1237. In 1238 a letter patent confirmed that the earldom, including the castles of Gannock and Dincolyn, that is Deganwy and Dyserth, belonged to the Crown. That did not stop the Welsh from taking the castle again. Dafydd ap Llywelyn, born shortly after Easter 1212 at Castell Hen Blas in Flintshire, was the only son of Llywelyn by Joan. Llywelyn had him recognised as heir by Henry in 1220, and Pope Honorius III declared Joan legitimate to strengthen the claim against the older half-brother Gruffudd. Dafydd ruled Gwynedd after April 1240. Henry accepted him in Gwynedd and would not let him keep his father's conquests outside it. Dafydd sent ambassadors to Louis IX of France. In August 1241 Henry invaded. After a short campaign Dafydd submitted under the Treaty of Gwerneigron. He gave up all his lands outside Gwynedd and handed over Gruffudd, whom he had imprisoned. He surrendered Deganwy only as a site. He had already demolished the castle ahead of the English advance. The demolition is entered in the Welsh annals. Work on a rebuilding started in 1241 and little was done.

Gruffudd was taken to the Tower of London. His wife Senana agreed to pay 600 marks for him and their eldest son Owain, and to give their younger sons as hostages. Henry kept Gruffudd anyway, as a weapon against Dafydd. In March 1244 Gruffudd fell to his death while climbing down a knotted sheet from the Tower. Dafydd was free of that threat. He allied with other Welsh princes and attacked English holdings. By March 1245 he had recovered Mold and his former possessions in what is now Flintshire, and Dyserth may have fallen to his men that summer. In 1244 Henry had already ordered that the castle of Gannok be fortified, but Welsh successes stopped much progress. The king reached the site himself and stayed from August to October 1245. One account says he occupied the castle for two months while his army lived in tents around it, cold, hungry, and miserable. Henry began building a new castle at Deganwy. The fighting there was savage, and he withdrew in the autumn after the Welsh captured some of his supplies. A truce held through the winter. Dafydd had also sought recognition from Pope Innocent IV of his right to rule North Wales. Henry's envoys had that decision reversed in 1245. Dafydd died suddenly on 25 February 1246 at the royal house of Abergwyngregyn. He was buried with his father at Aberconwy Abbey. He was called the shield of Wales. He left no heir by his wife Isabella de Braose. Gwynedd passed to Gruffudd's elder sons, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and Owain Goch ap Gruffydd, who fought on until the Treaty of Woodstock in April 1247. They were left with Gwynedd west of the Conwy. The Perfeddwlad, east of the river, went to Henry.

The building of the new castle belongs to those years, and it was never finished. The works fall into three parts. The donjon occupies the larger western hill, Mansell's Tower stands on the eastern hillock, and the bailey occupies the saddle. The donjon of the mid-thirteenth-century castle was a polygonal enclosure wall about four feet thick around the top of the hill. Two latrine slots lie near the north-west angle. The south-west angle, where the entrance was, is destroyed. At the south-east angle stood a round tower about forty feet in diameter, with a simple roll moulding at its base, almost certainly the tower of the castle built in 1247 and raised one storey in 1248. West of it are the remains of a range about ninety feet by thirty, including the king's hall, completed by 1250. At the east end of that range, on a different alignment, is the angle of a rectangular building that may belong to the castle of 1213 to 1241. The revetment on the north side of the hill, earlier than the main enclosure wall, may belong to the same years. A large quarry near the centre of the hill, and the south end of a rectangular building east of it, are ancient and of uncertain period. The quarry is about five metres deep and likely supplied stone for one of the main builds. The rubble is the local rhyolite of the hills. The dressed stone is an imported grit.

The donjon was approached by a steep roadway rising from east to west along the south side of the hill, with a gate at each end. The track was held above by a revetted slope and below by a vertical revetment. The south side of the bailey is protected by a wall and an outer ditch. That wall is given as about five feet thick. Excavation found the bailey wall about three metres wide, with traces of an earlier palisade behind it. Midway between the hills are the remains of a strong gateway, a passage about eight feet wide between a pair of D-shaped towers, each about forty-five feet by thirty. The visible remains are slighter than a published plan suggested. Near the foot of the east hill a tower about twelve feet square stood within the wall, with what seems to have been a latrine outlet below it, and higher up the base of a small turret. On the north side the only surviving masonry is a short stub of wall just below the enclosure on the west hill, and a fragment that seems meant for a gateway. Otherwise the north side is a strong ditch and an earthen bank that seems never to have carried masonry. The ditch is up to 4.5 metres deep at its western end. A fragment of the northern gate tower still stands about 2.5 metres high. The entrance was immediately east of that tower.

On 23 August 1250 instructions went to Alan la Zusch to raise Mansell's Tower by twelve feet, to fortify the bailey between that tower and the donjon with stone and lime, to make a barrier outside the tower, two gates with two towers on each side in pairs, two chambers above those towers with fireplaces, and a chapel in the town of Gannoc in honour of the Blessed Virgin. Payment for 1250 to 1254 is recorded for walling half the bailey and making one such gate. The north side was never more than started, and little further work was done on the fortifications. Mansell's Tower is named for John Mansel, Henry's chief clerk and counsellor. It was built by 1249, when its height was ordered to be raised, and it was further raised and roofed in 1250. It now shows as a low wall, D-shaped in plan, no more than about 0.4 metres high, with a central division. Excavation found no closing wall on the west side of the D, though it seems probable that the west side was originally closed. A platform a little below the top of the east hill may be unfinished work for the barrier. One reading of the ruins finds no structures now visible on the eastern hillock, where the tower formerly stood. The low banks of the D-shaped plan are still there to be seen. The donjon was begun in 1247 and not completed before 1249. The two hills were at first linked by palisades. In 1249 and 1250 the king ordered the bailey fortified in stone, with two stone gateways. A horse mill was ordered in 1250. A millstone found just outside the south gate in 1948, one foot five inches across and three inches thick, with a central hole three and a half inches across and two radial slots, probably came from that mill.

In 1250 an engineer called Master Gerard was sent to oversee the works, which continued for three years and seem never to have been finished. The southern bailey wall and gateway were completed. There is no record from Henry's reign of payment for the northern bailey defences. The ditch, rampart, and gate tower on that side have been dated after 1254. The building as a whole cost more than 2,200 pounds. Of four or five periods of construction known from documents, only two, both probably of the thirteenth century, can be identified on the ground with any certainty. Earlier work was probably earth, timber, and dry stone, reshaped or wiped out by the later masonry. A crowned stone head and arch mouldings found in rubble south of the bailey wall are early thirteenth century in style and were judged more likely to come from buildings of Llywelyn's time than from the later donjon.

Henry also planted a town. Tenements at Deganwy are mentioned in 1241, which suggests a small Welsh vill. In 1248 he ordered burgages to be assigned at Gannoc. Fairs and markets were granted in 1250, and the borough received its royal charter in 1252, with leave for the burgesses to enclose the town with a ditch and wall. There is no evidence that the wall was built. Henry established a Tuesday market and a six-day fair on St Martin's Day. A rent of ten shillings from the town is recorded for 1250 to 1255. The charter town has been linked to a group of roughly rectangular enclosures north of the bailey, with traces of long huts. Five main platforms terrace the slope north from the north gate, scarps generally about half a metre high and some a metre or more, with internal features that suggest buildings. Stones in some banks may mean stone houses. They respect the roadway and the north gate, and they read as contemporary with the masonry castle, so they fit the borough of Henry's years better than an older Welsh court. Four smaller platforms on the south foot of the west hill, the largest about fifteen metres by five, may have housed workers during the build. A level area inside the bailey, about twenty-eight by twenty-three metres, with facing stones in a scarp, is probably a substantial building or range just inside the south gate.

In 1254 Henry gave the new castle to his son Edward as part of the Earldom of Chester. Edward, the future Edward I, visited the Perfeddwlad in the summer of 1256 and did not settle grievances against his officers. That November Llywelyn ap Gruffudd crossed the Conwy with an army, with his brother Dafydd, whom he had released after the Battle of Bryn Derwin in June 1255. By early December Llywelyn held all of Gwynedd east of the Conwy except the royal castle at Dyserth. In 1257 an English force was brought from Scotland as far as Deganwy and did not cross into the Conwy, which was treated as Llywelyn's territory. Henry waited for an Irish fleet to land in the west and corner him. The fleet never came. Henry rescued the castle from siege that year and stayed ten days. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd attacked in 1257, and the castle was captured and probably finally destroyed in 1263. The great castle Henry built from 1245 to 1250 is also said to have been beleaguered for seven years before Llywelyn ab Gruffudd destroyed it systematically in 1263. A truce followed in 1258. The English crown refused Llywelyn the title prince of Wales, which he was using by early 1258. In 1263 his brother Dafydd submitted to Henry. On 12 December 1263 Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn did homage to Llywelyn at Ystumanner.

In 1263 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd starved the garrison into surrender and destroyed the castle so thoroughly that very few walls still stand. The demolition used mines dug under the walls and then fired so that the walls collapsed. That method was used on the southern gateway, on the curtain wall of the donjon, and on the buildings inside the donjon. The thoroughness of the work has been called a striking testimony to his authority, power, and malice. The site then seems to have been abandoned, even though the lack of a castle here left Gwynedd open to English attack. Traces of a hasty refortification may belong to the campaign of 1277, when Edward I signed letters from Gannou. That summer Edward's army came from Chester to the Conwy and camped at Deganwy, while another force took Anglesey and its harvest. Llywelyn sought terms. The Treaty of Aberconwy in November 1277 left him Gwynedd and the title prince of Wales. Edward had invaded in July 1277 with a force of 15,500, of whom 9,000 were Welsh. The campaign did not come to a major battle.

War returned in 1282, begun by Dafydd ap Gruffudd and then joined by Llywelyn. Edward captured Aberconwy in March 1283 and decided the place would be the centre of a new county. He moved the Cistercian abbey eight miles up the valley to Maenan and built a new English castle and walled town on the monastery's site. The ruined castle of Deganwy was abandoned and never rebuilt. Stone from Deganwy may have been taken for the new work. Conwy Castle was built between 1283 and 1287, with the town walls, at a combined cost of around 15,000 pounds. The first season cut the ditch within days of the decision. James of St George oversaw the masons, and Sir John Bonvillars controlled the work. The labourers gathered at Chester each summer and walked into Wales. Placing the new town on a high-status Welsh site was in part a demonstration of English power. The crossing that Deganwy had watched for so long was now held from the opposite bank. By the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 the principality was given English-style counties and sheriffs. The commote of Creuddyn was included in Caernarfonshire so that the crossing stayed in that county.

The Welsh name Castell y Faerdre, castle of the maerdref, survives in the tithe name Vaerdref and in the modern name Vardre. A maerdref was the township of the king's administrator, the base of the commote, with a llys, a court complex, at its centre, and bond tenants on the king's demesne. The name indicates that the maerdref of Creuddyn lay on or near the castle. The administrative pattern was already in decline by the thirteenth century. After the castle fell, the market returned. In 1295 six men are named as burgesses of Gannou. A rental of 1305 to 1306 lists nineteen placeae in the town of Ganneu, and early in the reign of Edward II there were twenty-nine inhabited places. The platforms by the castle are too few for that number, so the borough is thought to have shifted to the river bank, near a ferry. From 1284 until 1536 the market was held on Mondays and the annual fair on St Simon and St Jude's day, 28 October. In the fifteenth century the market is described as the market at the ferry. It continued into the sixteenth century. Whether the township itself lasted is unclear. A hamlet or farm still used the name in the eighteenth century. Wooden stakes of a fish weir near the former settlement at the foot of Tywyn Hill were radiocarbon dated to 1570, plus or minus twenty years.

John Leland, writing between 1536 and 1542, described the great ruins of Hegannoye Castle standing on a hill. It is unlikely that more wall stood then than stands now. The Crown sold the land to the Wynn family in the early seventeenth century, and it became part of the Bodysgallen estate. Margaret Wynne, daughter and heiress of Dr Hugh Wynn of Bodysgallen and Berth Ddu, married Sir Roger Mostyn, fifth baronet, in 1766, and the estate passed to the Mostyns. A rental of 1763 to 1764, while Margaret Wynne still held the land, names the farmsteads of Fattw and Cae'r Dial and says the Vaerdre had been let from May until All Saints for grazing for twelve oxen. Lewis Morris's map of 1748 marks the castle as Castell y Fadre, with Digannwy just to the north, and names the owner as Stodart. The 1846 tithe map shows the fields much as they are today. The castle field was Vaerdref and the field to the south was Vattw, both owned by the Bodysgallen estate and occupied by Bridget Mostyn. A farm called Dyganwy, near the later site of the Deganwy Castle Hotel, was owned and occupied by John Lloyd Jones.

In 1892 the fields on the western side were offered as a building estate, divided into plots with proposed roads. The detached mansions in the sale catalogue were not what was built. Between 1900 and the middle of the 1960s the higher density of Gannock Park and the housing off Deganwy Road filled the ground. Antiquaries had already been at the ruins. G. A. Humphreys, architect and surveyor for the Mostyn estates, published a plan drawn by E. W. Cox before 1910, with some features reconstructed more hopefully than the masonry allowed. A measured survey in 1948, published in 1956, also included reconstructions, especially around the south gate. Permission was given for slight clearance that would not disturb stratification, and five trenches, some up to a metre deep, were dug in 1952. No description of the results has been found. There is a photographic record.

Leslie Alcock directed small excavations from 1961 to 1966. The programme was planned by the University of Wales and funded by the Board of Celtic Studies and the Caernarvonshire Historical Society. The trenches examined the donjon, Mansell's Tower, the south gate and bailey wall, and the northern rampart. He was born on 24 April 1925 at Cheadle Hulme, read modern history at Oxford, directed the Archaeological Survey of Pakistan, and then taught at Cardiff, where he dug Dinas Powys and later South Cadbury. The Deganwy work belongs to his Cardiff years. He published the excavations in 1967. Many features of the castle and the surrounding earthworks remained undated. He later held the chair of archaeology at Glasgow and died on 6 June 2006.

In 2009 the castle and its immediate fields were assessed on the ground, and a magnetometer survey was made of the bailey and the ground north and south of the hills. The field visit was on 6 February. Short grass made even slight earthworks readable. Bracken on the flanks had died back. Blackthorn and gorse still hid parts of the western hill. The survey showed buildings and a road in the bailey, the extent of settlement to the north, and an area of activity that could be medieval beside the southern approach. The archaeology seems confined to the higher ground around the two hills, probably because the low ground to the north-east and south is very wet. New features included a field system south of the castle, thought to be in part contemporary with the medieval occupation, a hollow-way leading toward the castle, further house platforms, a possible large building in the bailey, a quarry below the south side of the donjon, and possible construction inclines for the donjon. The field banks south of the castle stand up to about half a metre, and one field has straight ridge and furrow about three metres wide and less than a tenth of a metre high. A sinuous boundary seems related to the castle track and is likely to be medieval, even if the fields went on being used after the castle fell. Narrower ridge and furrow in one holding looks more like spade cultivation and may be later. North of the castle, very slight ridges about two metres wide may be machine or steam ploughing, perhaps from a wartime cultivation, and a broad low scarp may be a ploughed-out boundary of the castle period.

On the south side of the eastern approach, practice trenches of the First World War run for about fifty metres and are about eight metres across. They form a zigzag of conjoined squares, with a bank on the north-west and an access trench on the south-east, the same pattern as practice trenches recorded as parchmarks on the Maesdu golf course on 15 July 2003. At the foot of the east hill a rectangular stone enclosure, walls sloping from about four metres to about two, appears on the map of 1889 and was probably built in the mid-nineteenth century as sheep pens. A stone-lined culvert more than 200 metres long crosses the field to the south and is of a kind typical of nineteenth-century estate work. An underground chamber, marked as a well and later as a tank, predates the surrounding houses and was presumably a water supply, possibly for stock.

The ruins were listed on 23 September 1950 at grade II*, as the remains of an early medieval castle and the most important defensive site in the area before Conwy Castle. They are also a scheduled monument. The scheduled area covers the two hills, the northern settlement, and part of the field to the south. The castle lies in a landscape of outstanding historic interest, Creuddyn and Conwy, described as a mainly coastal landscape with evidence of land use and settlement from the early prehistoric period to the present. The hills are a significant part of that landscape. The monument is judged of national importance for what it can still show of medieval defence and settlement. The earthworks are well preserved, later disturbance after the thirteenth century is slight, and there is a strong chance that dating, building methods, and the use of rooms survive under the turf. The masonry that remains is fragmentary. The northern revetment is the one substantial stretch of wall. Everything else is footings, a stub of gate, the low banks of Mansell's Tower, and the ditch and bank that were never finished in stone.

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