Caldicot Castle

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Caldicot Castle
The Keep of Caldicot Castle

The Keep of Caldicot Castle

Alternative name (s): Castell Cil-y-coed
Creation time : 12th Century
Conservation status: ruin
Geographical location 51 ° 35 '34.8 "  N , 2 ° 44' 31.2"  W Coordinates: 51 ° 35 '34.8 "  N , 2 ° 44' 31.2"  W.
Caldicot Castle (Wales)
Caldicot Castle

Caldicot Castle ( Welsh Castell Cil-y-coed ) is a ruined castle in Monmouthshire , Wales . The ruin, classified as a Grade I cultural monument and protected as a Scheduled Monument , is located on the eastern edge of the city of Caldicot .

history

12th century moth

In the Domesday Book of 1086, Caldicot is mentioned as an estate of Durand, Sheriff of Gloucester. After his death, the estate fell to his nephew Walter FitzRoger , who probably had the moth built. After Walter's death, his son Miles de Gloucester inherited the castle. After Miles 'sons all died without male offspring, the castle fell to Miles' daughter Margaret, who was married to Humphrey de Bohun .

Expansion into a stone fortress

Margaret's grandson Humphrey de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford, replaced the wooden moth tower with the stone keep during the second quarter of the 13th century . The Bohuns were among the most powerful peers of England in the 13th and 14th centuries, they were Earls of Hereford, Essex and Northampton, as well as hereditary Lord High Constables of England . When Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford died in 1373 without male heirs, King Edward III took over . the guardianship of his underage daughters Eleanor and Mary . The king's youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock , married Eleanor. Woodstock wanted to take over the rich estates of the Bohuns and therefore planned to deport his sister-in-law to a convent as a nun. However, his brother John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster , married Mary to his eldest son Henry Bolingbroke , so that the Bohuns' possessions had to be divided. Caldicot fell to Woodstock, who had the castle expanded. After the death of Joan, the widow of the 7th Earl of Hereford, who outlived her two daughters by 20 years, the division of the Bohun inheritance was revised. Anne of Gloucester , the eldest daughter of Eleanor and Woodstock, had to hand over Caldicot to Henry , the son of Mary, who had become King of England as Henry V. Caldicot fell to the Duchy of Lancaster and thus into the private property of the English kings.

Decline and decay

After the death of Heinrich V, Caldicot fell to his widow Katharina von Valois . During the Wars of the Roses , William Herbert , the leading supporter of the House of York in Wales, captured the castle. He left after 1460 the castle by destroying a portion of the eastern perimeter wall grind . Elizabeth, daughter of William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke , married Charles Somerset , illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset , in 1492 . The castle fell to Charles Somerset, who was made Earl of Worcester in 1514. Both the Herberts and Earls of Worcester resided at Raglan Castle , while Caldicot was neglected and fell into disrepair. Parts of the castle were used as a farm until 1759 when it was leased to Capel Hanbury, an industrialist from Pontypool . The castle remained in the possession of his family until 1830, when the Duchy of Lancaster sold the castle and the associated goods to the large landowner Charles Lewis of St Pierre. Festivals, archery competitions and other sporting events were held under him in the courtyard.

Victorian restoration and current use

In 1885 Lewis sold the castle to Joseph Richard Cobb, who converted the castle into a Victorian-style residence for his family. Cobb was an amateur at restoring medieval castles, but had experience restoring Pembroke and Manorbier Castle and tried to preserve the original structure whenever possible. After his death, his son Geoffrey Wheatley Cobb continued the restoration. After the Second World War, Cobb's grandson Geophrey Cobb made living spaces in the towers and gatehouse available for families to alleviate the housing shortage. In 1963 the Chepstow Rural District Council bought the castle for £ 12,000. Today the castle is owned by the municipality and serves as a museum. The castle is located in the surrounding 22 hectare Country Park with a playground, picnic tables and sanitary facilities.

investment

The castle was built in five phases. The oldest part is the round keep at the northwest corner of the castle. It can be found on the moth raised in the 12th century. The castle hill was surrounded by a moat. In the second phase of construction in the second quarter of the 13th century, the 2nd Earl of Hereford had the round stone keep built on the Motte. The four-story tower has carefully machined walls up to 3 m thick, it resembles the Keep of Skenfrith Castle and Tretower and Bronllys in Powys . A small round tower is built on the west side of the keep, which, apart from a dungeon on the ground floor and another chamber on the upper floor, is solidly lined. In the 19th century the interior of the tower was restored in the Victorian style.

The high ring wall with the round corner towers was built in the middle of the 13th century. It encloses a wide, roughly rectangular inner courtyard and was surrounded by a deep, steep-walled ditch that was probably filled with water from the nearby Nedern Brook. The two-storey round tower in the middle of the western curtain wall served as a gate tower, the gate was secured with cast and murder holes. The south-western round tower also has two floors. The D-shaped tower in the southeast corner was larger than the two towers in the west. Wooden buildings were attached to the inner north and east sides of the curtain wall, two small octagonal towers on the east side served as latrines, and four campfire sites can still be seen in the north curtain wall. The main entrance to the castle now leads through the breach made in the eastern wall after 1460.

The Victorian style restored gatehouse

In the fourth construction phase, the large hall on the south wall was built around 1340. However, it consisted only of wood or half-timbering , so that only three windows decorated with tracery in the southern curtain wall remind of it. Between 1384 and 1389, Thomas of Woodstock built the new large gatehouse in the south and the Woodstock Tower named after him in the north of the castle, both buildings presumably replacing older towers. The new main entrance not only served as a gate tower, but also contained the lord's living quarters. In the late 19th century, the gatehouse was restored in a Victorian style. Access was secured with a drawbridge, two gates and cast holes. The two-storey gatehouse is flanked by two rectangular towers that are higher than the gatehouse; the gatehouse was probably never completed. Opposite the gatehouse is the polygonal, three-story Woodstock Tower, which has a small exit gate.

The outer bailey was presumably to the west of the inner bailey . The medieval settlement of Caldicot probably emerged from it, so that no visible remains have been preserved.

literature

  • Elisabeth Whittle: Glamorgan and Gwent. HMSO, London 1992. ISBN 0-11-701221-1 , pp. 131-134

Web links

Commons : Caldicot Castle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ British Listed Buildings: Caldicot Castle, Caldicot. Retrieved January 3, 2014 .
  2. Ancient Monuments: Caldicot Castle (unoccupied parts). Retrieved January 3, 2014 .
  3. ^ Elisabeth Whittle: Glamorgan and Gwent. HMSO, London 1992. ISBN 0-11-701221-1 , p. 134