Eden House Country Guest House B & B Accommodation - Cilgerran Castle

Cilgerran Castle stands on a precipitous, craggy promontory overlooking the river Teifi where it merges with the Plysgog stream. The Teifi here is just at its tidal limit, so the castle was able to control both a natural crossing point and the passage of seagoing ships. We cannot be sure when this strong site was first fortified; it may be the same time as a Norman castle called 'Cenarth Bychan', from which we know, ‘Nest’, the spirited and beautiful wife of the Norman lord, Gerald of Windsor, ran off with Owain, son of the prince of Powys during a Welsh attack in 1109.

 

Cilgerran is first mentioned by name in 1164, when the Lord Rhys captured the castle here. It was retaken by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, in 1204, only to be taken again by the Welsh during Llywelyn the Great's campaigns in 1215. However, eight years later William's son, another William, regained control and it was probably he who built the imposing masonry castle we see today.

 

The castle as it now stands dates from a century later, when the powerful Norman baron William Marshall the Younger set about rebuilding it following a troubled period of capture and recapture from the Welsh in this hotly disputed area. Yet Marshall's efforts bore little fruit, for the castle was apparently derelict within 50 years. Its fortunes revived in 1377 when Edward III ordered repairs to counter a threatened French invasion, and it was in the wars again during the Owain Glyn Dwr uprising in the early 1400's.

Cilgerran's most striking surviving features are Marshall's powerful twin round towers and curtain wall, built to defend the castle’s vulnerable side. The form of the present castle may well reflect that of the earlier earthwork castle. The headland is cut off by a bank and ditch which encloses an outer ward, probably the original bailey. The ditch can still be seen, though much of it is cultivated as gardens. The outer gatehouse survives as low footings only and is of uncertain date and there may have been another, perhaps later, gatehouse on the site of the modern entrance. Much of the existing outer ward is a thin modern rebuild. The collapse of the original was caused by slate quarrying on the cliffs below.

 

Some 20 metres beyond the outer defences another ditch encloses the inner ward, which William fortified in stone with two formidable towers and a strong gatehouse. An interesting feature in the ditch is the sally-port, which consists of a door through the wall next to the east tower, and another in the outer ward wall, which together gave access to the sloping ground east of the castle to enable defenders to slip around to take attackers in the rear. A drawbridge crossed the deep ditch in front of the three-storey gatehouse. The outer part of the gatehouse has fallen, but the portcullis grooves and the draw-bar holes for the gate can still be seen at either end of the gate passage. There was a vaulted room, perhaps a chapel, over the gate, and above this, a passage in the curtain wall, defended with arrow slits, connected the gatehouse with the two round towers to its east. Finally, at the top of the wall, a battlemented wall-walk gave the castle's defenders a second access route to the towers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

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