Loughor Castle
| Loughor Castle | ||
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 The ruined tower of Loughor Castle |
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| Alternative name (s): | Castell Llwchwr | |
| Creation time : | 12th Century | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Geographical location | 51 ° 39 '43.9 " N , 4 ° 4' 38.6" W | |
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Loughor Castle ( Welsh Castell Llwchwr ) is a ruined castle in Wales . The ruin, protected as a Scheduled Monument , was built on the ruins of a Roman fort and is located on the outskirts of the city of Loughor .
history
Roman fort
Around 75 legionaries of Legio II Augusta founded Leucarum Castle at the mouth of the River Loughor in the Bristol Channel . The small fort was used to guard the road from Viroconium to Moridunum , the main road through South Wales, which here crossed the Loughor River in a ford.
The small fort had a rectangular floor plan and was protected with earth walls and palisades, which were later replaced by plastered walls. The fort was abandoned around the middle of the 2nd century, but reoccupied in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries before it was finally abandoned.
Medieval ring wall
After 1106, the Anglo-Norman knight Henry de Viliers built a castle on the ruins of the Roman fort on behalf of Henry de Beaumont , the first Anglo-Norman Lord of Gower. The location at the mouth of the Loughor River was strategically very important and controlled access from the Welsh principalities to the Anglo-Norman-ruled Gower peninsula .
During the Welsh uprising after the death of King Henry I of England, a battle between Welsh and Anglo-Normans took place between Loughor and Swansea . The Anglo-Normans were decisively defeated, and it is said that 500 of their fighters died. In 1151 the castle was burned down during a renewed Welsh rebellion by the Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd von Deheubarth . The Lord of Gower took over the castle himself. A first settlement had already arisen next to the castle, for which Henry de Neubourg, a son of Henry de Beaumont, donated a church. The rebuilt castle fell to the crown in 1184 with the Gower reign. In 1203 King Johann gave Ohneland Gower to William de Braose . After the fall of Braose in 1208, the castle came back under royal administration and was again burned down by the Welsh under Rhys Gryg in 1215 . In 1219 John de Braose , William's grandson, received the castle, and a stone curtain wall was probably built under him. His son and successor William de Braose, 1st Baron Braose, was involved in longstanding border conflicts with the neighboring Welsh Lord of Dinefwr Rhys Fychan from the 1250s . Under the influence of these border conflicts, the stone residential tower was probably built in the second half of the 13th century. After the English King Edward I conquered Wales at the end of the 13th century , the castle quickly lost its importance. In 1302 the 2nd Baron Braose gave them to his administrator John Iweyn . After he was executed as Despenser's sheriff in Swansea during the uprising of the barons against Hugh le Despenser in 1321, the castle was no longer awarded and fell into disrepair.
From the end of the Middle Ages until today
In a description from 1587, the castle is described as derelict. In the 18th century the tower ruins were used as a beehive, in the 19th century the castle was an ivy-covered ruin. In the 1940s, the southeast corner of the residential tower collapsed. In 1946 the ruins were handed over to the Ministry of Works, which carried out safety measures. Its successor office, the Ministry of Public Building and Works , carried out excavations in the ruins between 1969 and 1971 and 1973.
Today the ruin is located in a small, 1 hectare park, which is surrounded by modern residential developments. The A484 expressway runs south of the castle. The castle is administered by Cadw . Since the freely accessible ruin has often been the target of vandalism, access to the ruin is currently blocked and can therefore only be viewed from a distance.
investment
Only minor traces of the terrain remain from the old Roman fort. The medieval castle was built as a ring wall in the southeast corner of the Roman fort, with parts of the Roman ramparts being used for the construction of the new castle.
The ruin consists of the oval, around 20 by 30 m large ring wall . The moat that once surrounded it is only partially preserved. The ring wall was crowned by a low stone ring wall , of which only the remains of the foundations have been preserved. On the western side of the wall is the ruin of the simple residential tower from the late 13th century. The tower has a footprint of 7 by 8 m and had two residential floors above the basement, each of which contained a room. The two living rooms were each equipped with windows, a fireplace and a latrine . In the rubble in front of the west side of the tower, you can still see the spiral staircase that once connected the two residential floors. The castle gate was located directly south of the tower. Only a few smaller buildings can have stood in the small area within the ring wall; the castle probably had an outer bailey , but no remains of it have survived.
literature
- Diane M. Williams: Gower. A Guide to ancient and historic monuments on the Gower peninsula . Cadw, Cardiff 1998, ISBN 1-85760-073-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan , Vol. III - Part I: The early castles. RCAHMW, 1991, ISBN 978-0-11-300035-7 , p. 270
- ^ Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan , Vol. III - Part I: The early castles. RCAHMW, 1991, ISBN 978-0-11-300035-7 , p. 45
- ↑ City and County of Swansea: Loughor Castle. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 24, 2012 ; Retrieved September 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
