These four castles are not mentioned in the _Brut y Tywysogion_, though the _Annales Cambriæ_ mentions the capture of Bleddfa, Knighton, and Norton by the Welsh in 1262. They all command important roads. Knighton and Norton were boroughs. [Illustration: FIG. 43.--MOTTE-CASTLES OF SOUTH WALES. Cardiff. Loughor.] CASTLES OF GLAMORGANSHIRE. _Cardiff_ (Fig. 43).--The first castle of Cardiff was certainly a wooden one; its lofty mound still remains. It is placed inside a Roman station, and the south and west walls of the castle bailey rest on Roman foundations, "but do not entirely coincide with those foundations."[979] The Roman fort was probably ruinous when Robert Fitz Hamon placed his first castle there, as on the N. and E. sides the bailey is defended by an earthbank, in which the remains of a Roman wall have been found buried. The area of the Roman Castrum was about 8-1/4 acres, and evidently the Normans found this too large, as they divided it by a cross wall, which reduces the inner fort to about 2 acres. The motte has its own ditch. The position of Cardiff was a very important base, not only as a port near Bristol, but as a point on the probably Roman road which connected Gloucester with Carmarthen and beyond.[980] The lands of Robert Fitz Hamon, in the next generation, passed into the hands of Robert, the great Earl of Gloucester, Henry I.'s illegitimate son. He was a great castle-builder, and it is probable that the first masonry of Cardiff Castle was his work.[981] NEWCASTLE BRIDGEND.--This castle and the three which follow are all situated on or near the "Roman" road from Cardiff to St David's, of which we have already spoken. There were two castles at Bridgend, the Old Castle and the New Castle, from which the town takes its name. The site of the former is now too much cut up for any definite conclusions about it; the site of the latter has been converted into market gardens, but a motte is still standing in one corner with the ruins of a tower upon it. [H. W.] This castle is not noticed either by the _Brut_ or the Aberpergwm version; the earliest mention known to us is in the _Pipe Roll_ of 1184, at a time when the castles of the Earl of Gloucester were in royal custody, and this appears to have been one of them.