Raglan Castle
| Raglan Castle | ||
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 The castle from the south with the main gate |
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| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Geographical location | 51 ° 46 '12.4 " N , 2 ° 50' 56" W | |
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Raglan Castle ( Welsh Castell Rhaglan ) is a ruined castle in Monmouthshire in Wales . The ruin, classified as a Grade I cultural monument and protected as a Scheduled Monument , is located north of the village of Raglan. The castle, built in the 15th century, was one of the last fortifications built as a castle in Great Britain, but it also served as a representative status symbol from the start.
history
Medieval origin and expansion under William ap Thomas
Presumably, during the Norman conquest of Gwent , a moth with earth and wood fortifications was built on the site of the current castle . It was later converted into a medieval mansion where the Bloet family lived. William ap Thomas , a member of the lower nobility, had married Elizabeth Bloet, widow of James Berkeley, around 1406. His wife died in 1420, and William received permission from his stepson James Berkeley to keep Raglan for life. In 1432 he bought the castle from his stepson. William, who had become wealthy and powerful in the meantime, had most of the old mansion demolished and began building a magnificent castle. Above all, the southern gate, the mighty keep and the hall wing come from him . The complex was enclosed by a curtain wall, which was probably still part of the old manor house.
Expansion under William Herbert
After his death in 1445, his ambitious son William Herbert took over the castle. He was the leading supporter of Richard of York in Wales during the Wars of the Roses . Herbert was also the guardian of the young Henry Tudor, later King Henry VII , who therefore spent part of his childhood in Raglan Castle until Herbert was executed in 1469 after the lost battle of Edgecote Moor . Herbert used his wealth to expand Raglan Castle and expand the castle to its present size. He built the fortress palace around two inner courtyards and instead of the southern gatehouse built the large gatehouse on the southwest facade. Presumably the construction was completed when he died, his son William only had the interior completed.
Castle-like expansion under the Earls of Worcester
The daughter and heiress of the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, Elizabeth Herbert, married Charles Somerset in 1492 , an illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset , who was made Earl of Worcester in 1514. After the 3rd Earl of Worcester inherited the castle in 1549, he had the castle remodeled like a castle in the Tudor style. During his renovation, he kept the defensive exterior and the previous architectural style, but he used a more reddish sandstone for his buildings. He rebuilt the east side of the hall, lengthened the hall wing and added the Long Gallery on the upper floor, which ran the entire length of the hall wing. He also rebuilt the northwest and northeast wings of the outer courtyard and laid terraced gardens around the castle and a large lake northwest of the castle. The 4th Earl of Worcester also had some modifications made around 1600, he built the passage around the moat of the keep.
Destruction during the English Civil War
The 5th Earl , who had inherited the castle in 1628, was made Marquess of Worcester in 1642, but paid a heavy price for his loyalty to the king. The castle became the last royalist bastion in South Wales during the Civil War , and in 1645 King Charles I sought refuge here for several weeks. In 1646 the castle saw its only military action when a parliamentary army under Fairfax besieged it. The marquess had erected earthworks for defense in the east and south of the castle, but after a thirteen-week siege and heavy mortar fire , the crew had to surrender to the opposing forces on August 19, 1646. The castle was badly damaged during the siege, after which the parliamentary troops had the fortifications razed . The keep and other parts of the castle were destroyed, and the winners also had the famous library of Welsh scripts, founded by William ap Thomas, destroyed. After the restoration of the monarchy , the 3rd Marquess of Worcester used Badminton House in Gloucestershire as a new residence instead of the destroyed Raglan . The ruin served as a quarry and became a tourist attraction by the end of the 18th century. The 10th Duke of Beaufort handed it over to the state in 1938, and today it is administered by Cadw .
investment
The ruin is situated on a dominant hill in the hill country of the middle Gwent. Access is through the outer 16th century White Gate, which is flanked by the ruins of two pavilions. Nothing remains of the original Norman castle and medieval manor house; the Great Tower and the inner Fountain Court presumably follow the layout of the medieval motte-and-bailey complex. The castle is built around two courtyards, with the keep outside the two courtyards and to the left of the main gate. The 15th century buildings were all meticulously crafted from hewn sandstone from the Wye Valley . Bricks were used in the interior of the castle, particularly the vaults, making the castle one of the earliest structures in Wales to be made of bricks.
Keep
The mighty keep stands south of the two castle courtyards and could be defended independently. The hexagonal floor plan, which is unusual for English and Welsh castles, was probably influenced by French castles that the builder William ap Thomas got to know during the campaigns in France. The mighty tower served as a status symbol for the wealth and for the position of its builder and is surrounded by its own moat. William Herbert also had the low, hexagonal wall built around the tower. The outer passage around the moat was probably laid out around 1600 as a walkway. The keep was originally accessed via a wooden bridge and two drawbridges from the main castle, which was later replaced by a stone bridge. Originally the tower had five storeys and was crowned with a battlement with machicolations , the 3 m thick walls were supposed to withstand fire by guns and had loopholes for guns on the ground floor. When the castle was razed, the two eastern sides and the upper floor of the tower were destroyed at considerable expense.
The Pitched Stone Court
The castle is accessed via a bridge from the 16th century through the imposing castle gate, which is framed by two pentagonal towers with machicolations based on the French model. On the upper floor of the gatehouse, which was fortified from the outside, there was a splendidly furnished living room with six large windows facing the inner courtyard. The passage through the gatehouse leads into the wide outer courtyard, which is called the pitched stone court and still has the paving from the 16th century. In the southeast corner of the castle is the mighty Closet Tower. William Herbert had this tower, as well as the kitchen tower in the northeast, based on the model of his father's Great Tower, also built on a hexagonal floor plan. The tower, which is almost completely preserved, contained several living rooms and a dungeon on the ground floor in addition to the latrines that gave it its name. On the east side are the remains of the Office Wing, which was rebuilt in the 16th century under the 3rd Earl of Worcester. The wing contained the eponymous administration rooms and was badly damaged by mortar fire in 1646. In the northern corner of the castle are the ruins of the hexagonal kitchen tower, which contained a cold room on the ground floor, the kitchen above it and living rooms on the upper floors. To the west of the kitchen tower are the ruins of the pantry and sideboard built in the 16th century.
Hall wing
On the southwest side of the Pitched Stone Court was the large living hall, the main living room of the castle. The building that separates the two courtyards was redesigned in the 16th century. During this renovation, the hall received a new east facade, a three-storey entrance porch and large, multiple-subdivided windows in Tudor style, including a large bay window at the southeast end, where the lord's table was probably located. The outer walls are still in full height, but only the beginnings of the magnificent wooden hammer-beam vault are preserved. Behind the hall an entrance led into the lord's private reception room, above which the lord's private dining room and bedchamber were located. The reception room and the dining room had magnificent bay windows facing the moat. Another door led from the hall into the destroyed chapel, and a staircase led to the Long Gallery above the chapel . The north-western end of the gallery, built in the 16th century, broke through the old medieval curtain wall and afforded magnificent views of the garden and over the lake to the Black Mountains through three large windows .
The inner courtyard (Fountain Court)
In the inner courtyard, only remnants are reminiscent of the eponymous White Horse Fountain. The almost rectangular courtyard was surrounded by two-story buildings. In the western corner of the castle was the large staircase, which today contains a modern wooden staircase. The west and north-west wings opened from this stairwell. The two wings contained living rooms, but only the outer walls of them have been preserved, while the walls on the courtyard side have been destroyed. The windows in the outer walls, which were once the castle wall, are small and simple, while the inner walls had larger windows. In the southern corner of the Brunnenhof is the southern gate, the original main entrance to the castle. The former three-storey gatehouse has a passage on the ground floor made of simply worked stones, which probably comes from the previous building of the castle. William Herbert had the gateway walled up, but during the renovation in the 16th century the gateway was reopened to allow access to the bowling green in the garden. Very little of the wing northeast of the gatehouse, which presumably contained living quarters, has survived, including the brick-vaulted cellars.
Gardens
Of the gardens, the bowling green in the south of the castle is still preserved. The adjacent terraces contained a formal garden, to the southwest of which are the foundation walls of a summer house built from bricks. Other terraced gardens set in stone were to the northwest of the castle, where they bordered the lake called Great Poole. At the end of the lake were water gardens created by the 4th Earl of Worcester with geometrically designed ponds and canals. However, the lake was drained after the castle was destroyed and only remnants of the magnificent gardens can be seen.
Raglan Castle in the movie
The castle was used as a backdrop for the Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains the Same in 1976 , for the fantasy film Time Bandits in 1981 and for the British film adaptation of Merlin in 1998 .
literature
- Elisabeth Whittle: Glamorgan and Gwent. HMSO, London 1992, ISBN 0-11-701221-1 , pp. 144-148.
Web links
- Raglan Castle at Cadw's website
- Castles of Wales: Raglan Castle. In: castlewales.com
Individual evidence
- ^ British Listed Buildings: Raglan Castle, Raglan. In: britishlistedbuildings.co.uk. Retrieved January 2, 2014 .
- ↑ Ancient Monuments: Raglan Castle. In: ancientmonuments.uk. Retrieved January 2, 2014 .
- ↑ BBC History: Wales under the Tudors. In: bbc.co.uk. Retrieved March 19, 2014 .
- ^ British Listed Buildings: Raglan Castle, Raglan. In: britishlistedbuildings.co.uk. Retrieved November 8, 2018 .
- ^ Paul Johnson: Castles of England, Scotland, and Wales . Harper & Row, New York 1989, ISBN 0-06-016103-5 , pp. 177 ( castlewales.com [accessed November 8, 2018]).
- ↑ Great Castles: Raglan Castle. In: great-castles.com. Retrieved January 8, 2014 .
- ^ Adrian Pettifer: Welsh Castles. A Guide by Counties. Boydell, Woodbridge 2000, ISBN 0-85115-778-5 , p. 136.
- ^ Castles of Wales: A Virtual Tour of Raglan Castle - The Great Tower. In: castlewales.com. Retrieved March 18, 2014 .
- ^ Castle and Manor Houses: Raglan. In: castlesandmanorhouses.com. Retrieved January 8, 2014 .