Penrice Castle

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Penrice Castle
The 18th century mansion with the castle ruins in the background

The 18th century mansion with the castle ruins in the background

Creation time : 12th Century
Geographical location 51 ° 34 '30.7 "  N , 4 ° 10' 13.1"  W Coordinates: 51 ° 34 '30.7 "  N , 4 ° 10' 13.1"  W.
Penrice Castle (Wales)
Penrice Castle

Penrice Castle is a ruined castle on the Gower Peninsula in Wales . The cultural monument of Category Grade II * classified ruins as well as a cultural monument of Category Grade I classified mansion from the 18th century are located approximately 800 m northeast of the village of Penrice and 1.5 km north of the village Oxwich .

history

Norman castle from the 12th to the 14th centuries

To secure the Anglo-Norman rule on the Gower peninsula, Henry de Beaumont built a first castle near the church in the hamlet of Penrice at the beginning of the 12th century and handed it over to one of his followers, who took the name de Penrice . Like Oystermouth and Swansea Castle , this castle was conquered by the Welsh prince Llywelyn from Iorwerth in 1215 and burned down by Rhys Gryg in 1217 . Robert de Penres built a new castle in place of the old castle around 1237 on the northern side of the valley, about 800 m northeast of the old castle stable . Welsh uprisings in the 1250s and 1260s led to further expansion of the castle. Another Robert de Penres was able to acquire Llansteffan Castle by marriage in 1338 , but in 1362 he drew the wrath of Edward III. closed because its castles in Wales were in ruins. He was charged with the murder of a woman in the village of Llanstephan in 1370 , so that in 1377 his possessions were stripped from him. His son John was able to buy back the property in 1391, but the family died out in 1410 without a male heir.

Castle ruins and mansion from Oxwich Bay

The castle under the mansels from the 15th to the 18th century

The heiress Isabel de Penrice had married Hugh Mansel , so that the castle now came into the possession of this Anglo-Norman family. The mansels lived in the castle until the 16th century. Rhys Mansel built Oxwich Castle as the new family seat and leased Penrice Castle in 1534 to William Benet, whose family farmed the lands until 1669.

The fortifications of the castle, which were no longer of military importance, were razed towards the end of the English Civil War . After 1669, the Mansels, who had relocated their headquarters from Oxwich to Margam Abbey near Aberavon around 1630 , gave the land to other tenants who built a farmhouse southwest of the castle. A copper engraving by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck from 1741 shows the castle as completely derelict. After the death of Bussy Mansel, 4th Baron Mansel , his sister Mary Mansel , who was married to John Ivory Talbot from Lacock Abbey , finally inherited Penrice and Margam, who came into the possession of the Talbot family.

Talbot mansion

In 1768 Thomas Mansel Talbot , a grandson of Mary and John Talbot who had just returned from his Grand Tour , inherited Margam and Penrice. The wild and romantic landscape on Gower reminded him of his trip to Italy, so that from 1773 to 1777 he had a classicist villa built below the castle ruins based on plans by Anthony Keck . After the house was completed, Talbot laid out a landscaped park with fish ponds, a kitchen garden and a long driveway according to plans by William Emes , a student of Capability Brown . Parts of the south wall of the castle ruins above the house were repaired as they served as a picturesque backdrop. From 1812 to 1817 the house was expanded and after the death of Thomas Mansel Talbot it was occupied by his widow from 1813 to 1855. Her son Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot, however, moved his main residence back to Margam Abbey, where he had Margam Castle built as a new mansion. He only used Penrice Castle for occasional visits and hunting trips. After her father's death in 1890, his daughter and heiress Emily Talbot had the house expanded again from 1893 to 1896 and the terrace garden laid out. After her death, Penrice fell to her niece's family. A large part of the property had to be sold after the Second World War to pay inheritance taxes. In 1967 the annexes from the 19th century, which were in need of renovation, were demolished.

The house is still the residence of the Methuen-Cambell family and cannot be visited. The ruins of the keep, the gatehouse and a large part of the curtain wall are still preserved from the castle, but they are completely dilapidated, overgrown with ivy and inaccessible. However, the ruin can be viewed from the nearby road and a footpath.

The driveway to the manor house with a ruin built as a folly

investment

The original castle was west of St Andrew's Church in Penrice. The 40 by 28 m ring wall , known as Mounty Borough , is heavily overgrown today, and remains of wooden palisades were found during excavations in 1927 .

The actual castle ruin is located as a spur castle on a slope, to the south and east the terrain slopes steeply, to the northwest the castle was secured with a moat that is now almost filled in. The walls and buildings that are still preserved today were almost all built from limestone in the 13th century; only minor alterations or additions were made in the later centuries.

The core of the castle is the keep in the northeast of the complex with an adjacent defensive wall that seals the castle courtyard from the ridges. The round keep has a diameter of 9.7 m with 2.1 m thick walls. Above the windowless ground floor is a single room with three windows and a latrine, but without a fireplace. The tower was later raised without creating additional living space, a single-storey extension with a crenellated flat roof was added to the courtyard. To the east of the keep is a former two-story hall building, of which only the inner wall has been preserved. The rectangular gatehouse in the north of the complex is strongly fortified with two rectangular flanking towers. The ring wall surrounding the unusually large, trapezoidal castle courtyard has different wall thicknesses and is provided with narrow round towers. In the northeast there is an elongated barn that is attached to the curtain wall. A late medieval pigeon house was added to the outer wall on the east side in the late Middle Ages .

South of the ruin is the Georgian-style mansion, built from Bath Stone in the 1770s . The northern entrance front of the house built on the slope has three floors, the southern garden side has four floors. The house is surrounded by a terrace garden to the east and south. A small extension in the east is the only remnant of the extensive extensions from the 19th century.

The house and garden are surrounded by a landscaped park. To the north of the house is the ruined castle, to the north and west of this the park turns into agricultural land. In the south and south-west of the house is a meadow bordered by groups of trees, which ends at a row of fish ponds in the valley floor. The ponds extend over 400 m southeast towards Oxwich Bay and are located in the lower valley in a forest called Penrice Wood . South of the fish ponds is a meadow interspersed with groups of trees and delimited by forest and hedges, behind which the park merges into the surrounding landscape. The driveway to the manor is in the east, at the beginning of the approximately 400 m long winding path is The Towers , a folly built around 1790 as a ruined tower .

About 500 m southeast of the mansion is the walled kitchen garden , about 100 m northeast of the mansion is the orangery , built around 1774, and the former stables, built between 1776 and 1778 and enclosing a courtyard on three sides .

literature

  • Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan. Volume III, Medieval secular monuments, Part 1b, The later castles from 1217 to the present . ISBN 1-871184-22-3 , pp. 286-307
  • Adrian Pettifer: Welsh Castles: A Guide by Counties . Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 2000. ISBN 0-85115-778-5

Web links

Commons : Penrice Castle  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ British Listed Buildings: Penrice Castle (Ruins), Penrice. Retrieved June 26, 2013 .
  2. ^ British Listed Buildings: Penrice Castle (Mansion). Retrieved June 26, 2013 .
  3. ^ Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan. Volume III, Medieval secular monuments, Part 1b, The later castles from 1217 to the present . ISBN 1-871184-22-3 , p. 12
  4. ^ Welsh Biography Online: Talbot Family. Retrieved June 24, 2013 .
  5. Coflein: Penrice Castle Ring, Mounty Borough. Retrieved June 24, 2013 .
  6. Coflein: Penrice Castle Mansion. Retrieved June 24, 2013 .