The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles.Armitage, Ella Sophia
History
The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles.
Armitage, Ella Sophia
Architecture, Norman; Castles -- Great Britain -- History -- To 1500; Normans -- Great Britain
PEMBROKE.--Giraldus says that Arnulf de Montgomeri first built this
castle of sods and wattles, a scanty and slender construction, in the
reign of Henry I.[911] This date, however, must certainly be wrong,
for the castle sustained a siege from the Welsh in 1094, and in 1098
Arnulf gave the chapel of St Nicholas in his castle of Pembroke to the
abbey of St Martin at Sées.[912] There is no motte at Pembroke Castle;
the magnificent keep (clearly of the 13th century or later) stands
in a small ward at the edge of a cliff,[913] separated by a former
ditch from the immense encircling bailey whose walls and towers are
clearly of Edwardian date. The words of Giraldus "a castle of wattles
and turf" might lead us to think that the first castle was a motte of
the usual type, but the use which he makes of the same expression in
his work on Ireland leads one to think that he means a less defensible
fort, a mere bank and fence.[914] There is some reason, moreover, to
doubt whether the present castle of Pembroke stands on the same site
as Arnulf's, as after the banishment of the latter, Gerald, the royal
Seneschal of Pembroke "built the castle anew in the place called Little
Cengarth."[915]
But however this may be, the castle of Pembroke was certainly strong
enough in 1094 to resist a great insurrection of the Welsh, when all
the castles of south-west Wales were destroyed, except Pembroke and
Rhyd y Gors. And it continued to be one of the chief strongholds of
English power in South Wales until Edward I. completed the conquest of
the country. Its splendid situation on a high cliff at the mouth of an
excellent harbour, to which supplies could be brought by sea, was one
of the secrets of its strength. A passage cut in the rock led from the
castle to a cave below opening on to the water.
*NEWPORT, or Trefdaeth, was the head of the Barony of Keymes, an
independent lordship founded at the time of the first Norman advance,
by Martin of Tours.[916] There is no mention of it before 1215. The
present ruined castle of Newport is not earlier than the 13th century,
but about 1-1/2 miles higher up the river, at Llanhyfer, is a fine
motte and bailey, which probably mark the site of the first castle of
Martin of Tours.[917]
WISTON, _alias_ Gwys or Wiz.--First mentioned in 1148, when it was
taken by the Welsh.[918] At a later period we find it one of the
castles of the Earl of Pembroke. There is a motte still remaining,
with a shell wall on top, 6 feet thick, having a plain round arched
entrance. This masonry is probably the work of William Marshall, Earl
of Pembroke, as he restored the castle in 1220 after it had been razed
to the ground by Llywelyn ap Jorwerth.[919] The bailey is large and
bean-shaped.
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