Pennard Castle
| Pennard Castle | ||
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 View from the south |
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| Alternative name (s): | Castell Pennard | |
| Creation time : | around 1100 | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Geographical location | 51 ° 34 '35.8 " N , 4 ° 6' 8.3" W | |
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Pennard Castle ( Welsh Castell Pennard ) is a ruined castle on the Gower Peninsula in Wales . The ruin, classified as a Grade II * cultural monument and protected as a Scheduled Monument , lies west of the village of Pennard on a sandy ridge. To the north and west the terrain slopes steeply to the valley of the Pennard Pill , from the castle one can overlook the Three Cliffs Bay and the Penmaen Burrows to the west .
history
Presumably Henry de Beaumont or one of his followers built a simple fortification consisting of a ring wall and moat after the Norman conquest of the Gower Peninsula at the beginning of the 12th century . Further west, on the other side of the Pennard Pill valley, was another 12th-century rampart fortification called Penmaen. At the beginning of the 13th century, Pennard Castle was expanded and rebuilt in stone at the end of the 13th or early 14th century. Local limestone and reddish sandstone were used for construction.
Like Oystermouth Castle , William de Braose received the castle in 1203 , which remained in the possession of his descendants until 1326, when it fell through success to John Mowbray . A small village with a stone church was built east of the castle, but due to its location the strategically favorable castle increasingly silted up and was abandoned towards the end of the 14th century. Because of the increasing siltation, the village was finally abandoned in 1532.
The ruin is freely accessible.
investment
The small castle consisted of a round, the course of the original ring wall following curtain wall . Inside the wall there was only a stone hall, probably dating from the 12th century. On the east side there was a gatehouse protected by twin towers, and on the west there was a rectangular residential tower . The castle, built of local limestone and reddish sandstone, was built in a relatively primitive manner. Although the gate towers had machicolations and loopholes, these were laid out so amateurishly that they could only have been used for defense to a limited extent.
In addition to the foundations of the castle, parts of the curtain wall on the north side and the remains of the gatehouse and the two towers have been preserved. 400 m east of the castle are the remains of the wall of the Church of St Mary, the only visible remains of the abandoned village.
literature
- 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, London 1991, ISBN 978-0-11-300035-7 , pp. 275-294
- Elisabeth Whittle: Glamorgan and Gwent. HMSO, London 1992. ISBN 0-11-701221-1 , pp. 123-124
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ British Listed Buildings: Pennard Castle, Pennard. Retrieved June 26, 2013 .
- ↑ Ancient Monuments: Pennard Castle and Church. Retrieved December 19, 2013 .