: The Middle Ages

Raglan Castle is one of the finest late medieval buildings in the British Isles and, although now ruined, it remains a striking presence in the landscape of south-east Wales.

Where is Raglan Castle?

Raglan Castle is located just north of the village of Raglan in the county of Monmouthshire, off the A40 between Monmouth and Abergavenny. For details on how to visit, see Cadw’s webpage.

When was Raglan Castle built?

Much of what remains at Raglan dates from the 15th century, the period of the Wars of the Roses and the rise of the Tudor dynasty, though there is believed to have been an earlier, Norman motte-and-bailey castle on the site.

The hexagonal Great Tower is the most impressive of the buildings from this period, dominating the two courtyards of the castle.

The Great Tower. An impressive self-contained fortress-cum-residence which lies outside the circuit of the castle's curtain walls. Image: Cadw (Crown copyright).

The castle as it stands today was built in three main phases.

The first phase of building in the fifteenth century included the hexagonal, five-storey Great Tower, which was surrounded by a moat and, when it was originally built, could only be accessed from inside the castle via a drawbridge.

The second phase, built by Sir William Herbert, the first Earl of Pembroke, added sumptuous apartments. Finally, the castle was transformed into a mansion by the Earls of Worcester in the 16th century.

The Great Gatehouse, Raglan. Built between 1460 and 1469 the gatehouse was designed to impress and intimidate visitors with its arrays of gun loops, machicolations, portcullises and doors. Image: Cadw (Crown copyright).

Who built Raglan Castle?

There is some controversy over who built the first phase of the castle; it was built either by William Herbert, the first Earl of Pembroke, or his father, William ap Thomas, who had purchased Raglan in 1432.

William Herbert was a key figure in the politics of the late 15th century. During the Wars of the Roses he supported Edward IV.

The reward for his loyalty was considerable, providing him with the title Earl of Pembroke, and sufficient resources to convert Raglan into a palace-fortress.

Earl William's success was, however, to be short-lived. In 1469 he was captured by Lancastrian supporters at the Battle of Edgecote and put to death.

The Herberts retained control of Raglan until 1492 when it passed to the Somerset family. William Somerset, the third Earl of Worcester (1526–1589), was the first of his family to significantly alter the castle's buildings.

Reconstruction of Raglan Castle, about 1620, showing the formal gardens that existed in the castle's heyday. Image: Cadw (Crown copyright).

He focused his efforts on upgrading the quality of the hall and service ranges to meet the social expectations of his time. He also established the gardens, including a series of walled terraces, an artificial lake, a fountain, flower beds and herb gardens.

The Herberts retained control of Raglan until 1492, when it passed to the Somerset family. William Somerset, the third Earl of Worcester (1526–1589), was the first of his family to significantly alter the castle's buildings.

The third Earl focused his efforts on upgrading the quality of the hall and service ranges to meet the social expectations of his time. He also established the gardens, including a series of walled terraces, an artificial lake, a fountain, flower beds and herb gardens.

Reconstruction of life at Raglan Castle in the 16th century, at the time of the Third Earl of Worcester. Image: Cadw (Crown copyright).

What happened to Raglan Castle?

By the middle of the 17th century, Raglan's fortunes were at their peak. It had achieved a level of sophistication and opulence that only the greatest country houses could match. However, the English Civil War was to change all this.

In 1642, the fifth Earl of Worcester declared his support for the Royalist cause, offering considerable financial support to King Charles I. This was to make Raglan a target for Parliamentarian forces, which subsequently besieged the castle in June 1646. Its defenders held out during the summer, but by mid-August the Parliamentarians had moved their siege works to within sixty yards of the castle. Its defenders surrendered on 19 August.

After it was captured, the castle was deliberately made useless for defensive purposes, a process known as ‘slighting’. This is when the gigantic hole was torn through the Great Tower.

In the years that followed Raglan was abandoned and left to decay, becoming a convenient source of building material and a picturesque tourist attraction. Today this decay has been halted and the building conserved through the work of Cadw and its predecessors.

The ivy-covered Main Gatehouse

, photographed by Sir Thomas Mansel Franklen (1840–1928)

Who owns Raglan Castle?

Raglan Castle is still owned by the Somerset family, who became Dukes of Beaufort in 1682. In 1938 it was put in the care of the Ministry of Works, and it is now looked after by Cadw.

Which films have used Raglan Castle as a backdrop?

Raglan Castle appeared in Terry Gilliam’s film Time Bandits (1981), where it stood in for an Italian castle under siege in the Napoleonic Wars.

Background reading

• Raglan Castle by J. R. Kenyon. Published by Cadw (2003).
• The decorated floor tiles from Raglan Castle
• Cadw listing
• Coflein listing (Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales)

Header image adapted from Raglan Castle by Steve Slater, CC BY 2.0

Coin of William Rufus - front

Coin of William Rufus - reverse

Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales has just acquired a rare piece of Cardiff’s early history: a silver penny of the Norman king William II (1087-1100) made in the castle mint in the early 1090s.

The newly acquired coin of William Rufus.

William II, known as ‘Rufus’ (‘the Red’, perhaps from his hair colour), was the son of William the Conqueror (also known as ‘the Bastard’). During his reign the Normans made their first incursions into this part of Wales under Robert FitzHamon, a Norman baron who conquered the area and became the first lord of Glamorgan. The Normans brought with them the habit of using coinage and it seems that a mint was set up at the castle soon after its foundation in 1081. However, no coin certainly identified to be of William Rufus from the Cardiff mint had been recorded before this one showed up in 2017, within a private collection which was offered up for auction.

Prior to the Norman invasion, coinage was in regular use in Anglo-Saxon England, with a network of mints and a centralised supply for the dies used to make it, but there was no tradition of minting in Wales. Early Norman Cardiff was a frontier town, and so its mint had to fend for itself: the obverse (‘heads’) die seems to have been borrowed from elsewhere and the king’s effigy was re-engraved, giving him a slightly comical appearance. The reverse (‘tails’) was made locally from scratch – it bears a clear, if crudely engraved mint signature ‘CAIRDI’ [CIVRDI or CIIIRDI], but we cannot fully read the moneyer’s name, ‘IÐHINI’ (Ð = ‘TH’) – he may have been called Æthelwine (interestingly, a Saxon rather than a Norman name).

The designs of current coins were changed every few years – and the king took a cut every time a new coinage was issued. We now know of coins from four different issues in the name of ‘William’ (which could be either William the Conqueror, or his son William Rufus) and four more for Henry I (1100-35) from the Cardiff mint, but they are all incredibly rare. In the civil war of King Stephen’s reign (1135-54), Cardiff fell into the hands of the Angevin party of his enemy, the Empress Maud. In 1980, a hoard of over 100 coins, mostly previously-unknown Cardiff issues of Maud, was found at Coed-y-Wenallt, above Cardiff, and transformed our knowledge of that period. It included baronial issues from Cardiff and Swansea – which, for the latter, was the earliest evidence of that place-name. After that, however, the Cardiff mint disappears from history.

Our new coin of Rufus provides another piece of the jigsaw that is the early history of Cardiff and its region. Many pieces are no doubt still missing, and who knows what may still await discovery? As for the man himself, he died on 2 August 1100, whilst hunting in the New Forest, when struck by an arrow: an unfortunate accident or was he murdered?

Edward Besly, Numismatist (Coins and Medals Curator), Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales.

Reconstructed Norman castle wall between the South Gate and the Clock Tower

The west castle wall. The stretch between the towers is essentially the wall of the Norman castle.

The massive Norman motte, with later medieval stone shell keep.

The Medieval bank surviving on the inside of the East walls. The crop mark visible in the foreground is a late medieval building.

The stone wall and gateway from the outer to the inner ward, seen here looking from the Keep to the South Gate. This wall probably has its origin in the defences of the Norman castle.

Speed’s 1610 map of Cardiff.

The coming of the Normans

Cardiff today is largely a product of Victorian development, but at the very centre of the city is a historic core originating with the Roman military and later re-occupied by the Normans.

There is little or no trace of a settlement at Cardiff between the end of the Roman period and the coming of the Normans into Wales in the 1080s, although there may have been some occupation at the point where the Roman road from Caerleon to Carmarthen crossed the River Taff.

When the Normans arrived, this was the point where they chose to site the military and administrative centre for their new lordship of Glamorgan, re-using the remains of the late Roman fort for a castle enclosure and establishing a small town at its southern gate.

Reconstructing the Norman castle

Norman Cardiff had its focus in the castle, but the castle building we see today is very different to the original one. To get at the Norman castle we have to strip away the 19th and 20th century alterations made by the marquesses of Bute, which had in part involved the restoration of the walls of the late Roman fort.

The Normans threw up a massive earth bank over the remains of the Roman fort walls, from a point near the north-west corner of the castle, round onto the sides now fronting Kingsway and Duke Street. The remaining Roman fort walling (from near the present south gate round onto the side now facing into Bute Park) was repaired, although, strangely, the projecting towers which will have formed part of the Roman defences appear to have been removed – perhaps to provide material for the repairs.

This Norman wall can still be seen, albeit with a good deal of 19th century restoration, between the south gate and the Clock Tower and north of the western castle apartments.

The material for the banks on the north, east and part of the south sides was taken from a massive ditch dug around the entire enclosure. This is now filled in on Kingsway and Castle/Duke Street and underlies the present western moat and northern dock feeder.

This ditch can still be glimpsed occasionally when service trenches are opened around the castle, but a clearer idea of its scale can be gained from the evidence of John Ward, curator of the Cardiff Museum and Art Gallery from 1893 to 1912. Ward observed the underground toilets being dug in Kingsway and reported that, although completely below ground, they did not reach the bottom of the ditch.

Ward’s schematic diagram of the castle’s earthen bank shows the result of this ditch digging – the sizeable bank still present on the inner side of the castle walls (to the left of the diagram) repeated on the outside.

Inside these outer defences, the Normans constructed a massive motte – a mound rather like an inverted pudding basin, surrounded by a large moat. This can still be seen, although the mound received some landscaping by Capability Brown in the late 18th century and the moat (which Brown filled in) was re-excavated in the 19th century and may be more regular than it once was.

We can assume that there was some sort of structure on the top of the mound, probably a wooden palisade and tower, likely to have been replaced by the present stone ‘shell-keep’ in the 1240s. The remainder of the castle interior was probably divided as seen now by some sort of wall between the keep and the south gate. A stone wall seems likely but is uncertain. We can expect buildings (probably of wood) within the two ‘wards’ thus created but, to date, no certain structures have been discovered within the limited area excavated.

The Norman town.

South of the castle lay the small town of Cardiff. The classic view of the medieval town is that created in 1610 by John Speed, which shows a walled enclosure extending south from just east of the south-east corner of the castle to the bottom of what is now St Mary’s Street.

This, however, depicts the late medieval town. It is likely that the first Norman town was smaller, probably bordered by the present day Womanby Street, Quay Street, Church Street and St Johns Street (the semi-circle of streets at the northern end of the town as seen on the Speed map).

This layout can still be seen in the streets of Cardiff and it is noticeable that the junctions of High Street and St Mary’s Street, and of St John’s Street and Working Street, lie on the suggested early boundary. This, along with much else of the documentary history of Norman and Angevin Cardiff, is discussed by David Crouch (2006). Crouch’s hope that archaeology will add to this picture has so far not been fulfilled. The only excavations within the suggested first town (in Womanby Street and Castle Street), although they confirm Norman occupation, have not yielded structures of such an early date. Indeed, the assiduous digging of cellars by the Victorian residents of Cardiff has unfortunately removed a good deal of the potential evidence.

Peter Webster, Honorary Research Fellow, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales (former lecturer, Cardiff University)