History
The oldest fortifications in Dryslwyn, controlling one of the crossings of meandering Tywi River, were built around the beginning of the second quarter of the 13th century by Rhys Gryg, ruler of the Welsh Deheubarth, or possibly by his successors. A year earlier Rhys had married into the powerful Anglo-Norman de Clare family, which strengthened his position and probably prompted the construction of the castle. Earlier, the Welsh princes did not build stone castles, new construction solutions only came with the Normans. At that time, in addition to Dryslwyn, Rhys also erected (or expanded) a very similar Dinefwr stronghold. Strengthened by his new fortifications, Rhys initially opposed Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s decision to pay tribute to English king Henry III, which prompted the Welsh ruler of Gwynedd to join the armed expedition and bring Rhys to heel.
After Rhys Gryg’s death in 1233, his lands were divided between his sons. Dryslwyn passed to his younger son, Maredudd ap Rhys, while Dinefwr passed to his elder son, Rhys Mechyll, and later to his son, Rhys Fychan. In 1245 or 1246, Dryslwyn was first clearly recorded, when the seneschal of Carmarthen besieged the castle to reclaim it for its rightful but unnamed owner, likely Maredudd ap Rhys. In the 1250s, a dispute over the castle erupted between Maredudd and Rhys Fychan. An Anglo-Norman intervention, ultimately defeated at Cymerau, further exacerbated the chaos. In 1271, Maredudd ap Rhys died at Dryslwyn and the castle was inherited by his son Rhys ap Maredudd. When the English-Welsh war broke out in 1277, Rhys ap Maredudd was in alliance with Llywelyn ap Gruffyd against English king Edward I. However, this cooperation quickly collapsed, as Rhys ap Maredudd began to seek agreement with the English, in return for keeping his lands and castles. Thanks to this, he was able to develop and strengthen Dryslwyn in the next years.
The conflict between Rhys ap Maredudd and the Englishmen occurred in 1287, probably as a result of dissatisfaction of the Welshman with too little reward for withdrawing from the alliance with Llywelyn. The struggle in solitude, however, did not turn out to be a good move, because in August 1287 Dryslwyn besieged over 11,000 people under the command of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall. After the fierce battles, during which both siege engines and mining were used, which collapsed a fragment of the wall that killed several knights inspected the attack, including Nicholas, Baron de Stafford, Sir William de Monte Caniso and Sir John de Bonvillars. The castle garrison surrendered on September 5, 1287. Rhys escaped but was deprived of his property and captured in 1292. Transported to York, he was brought to trial, accused of betrayal and executed. After the capture, Dryslwyn was handed over to Alan Plucknet, who made the necessary repairs and expansion of the castle.
During the late 13th century, Dryslwyn Castle remained under the control of the English kings, who commissioned periodic repairs and minor reconstructions. In 1316, it was attacked during the Welsh Rebellion but escaped significant damages. The following year, Edward II granted Dryslwyn, along with several other castles, to his unpopular favorite, Hugh Despenser. This provoked an uprising in 1321 by the English nobility, who were dissatisfied with the Despenser’s expanding influence. The castle several times changed hands during the struggle, until it was restored to the Crown in 1326, following the overthrow of Edward II and the Despenser family. Repairs were carried out around 1338-1339, and again after 1343, when Edward III’s son, the Prince of Wales, took possession of the castle. He permitted Dryslwyn to remain under the control of the local Welsh nobility, provided the revenues were paid into his treasury.
During Owain Glyndŵr’s Welsh uprising in the early 15th century, Dryslwyn was surrendered to rebels in 1403 by the then constable, Rhys ap Gruffudd. Later that same year, King Henry IV marched through the Tywi Valley, but there was no records of Dryslwyn being captured. After Prince Henry assumed the governorship of Wales and command of the forces fighting the rebels in 1406, English control gradually returned to many parts of the rebellious areas. Many of the rebels were eventually pardoned, including Rhys ap Gruffudd, who surrendered to the king in 1409. The castle itself almost certainly fell into disuse at that time, perhaps as a result of deliberate destruction by Glyndŵr’s retreating forces. From then on, it began to fall into ruin, although it was recorded in official grants until the early 16th century. Significantly, it played no role in the Yorkist-Lancaster war and was not mentioned in records in connection with it.
Architecture
The castle was built on a defensible, isolated hill overlooking the valley of the heavily meandering and widely flowing Tywi River, into which many smaller tributaries flowed. It occupied the southern, rocky promontory of the hill, where high, steep slopes descending to the river protected the castle from the south. The western and partially northern slopes were also inaccessible, and the only more convenient approach was from the gently sloping northeastern part of the hill. During the digging of trenches and ditches and leveling of the terrain, building material in the form of limestone was extracted from the hill, some of which was melted to obtain mortar for the walls. Imported red sandstone was also used for architectural details.
The earliest castle, dating from the second quarter of the 13th century, consisted of defensive wall situated at the highest point, built on an irregular pentagonal plan, with a cylindrical tower (keep) on the eastern side, projecting only about one-third of its circumference from the adjacent curtain walls. The defensive wall was battered. A wall-walk hidden behind the parapet, likely functioned in the crown, due to the considerable thickness of the curtain walls, without the need for a widening by wooden porch. The gate was located in the northeastern corner, secured by a nearby tower. This was a straight and narrow passage typical of Welsh castles, preventing entry on horseback. Furthermore, a smaller postern operated in the southern section of the wall, accessible via a few steps carved into the floor of the courtyard. On its outer side was a platform providing access down the hill and on to the river crossing.
The cylindrical keep measured approximately 12 meters in diameter. Its lower walls reached up to 3 meters thick, slightly widened at the base compared to the upper sections with a batter (similar to Dinawfr, Skenfrith, and other Welsh-English keeps). Originally, the tower contained at least three storeys, with wooden stairs leading to the first floor from the northwest. This area featured a small stone extension in the form of a buttress, to which the stairs were attached. These could be easily dismantled in the event of a potential threat and the need to isolate the keep from danger. Access to the lower storey was originally through an opening in the floor of the upper storey. This dark room, with a stone-paved floor, served only as a storeroom and pantry, or perhaps as a prison. Later, probably in the 14th century, a new portal was made to the ground floor directly from the courtyard level. The second storey of the tower may have served as an entrance hall, while the uppermost storey was likely residential.
The internal buildings of the small courtyard originally consisted of a stone, rectangular great hall and a small, initially wooden, then stone kitchen, both located in the southern part of the castle, so that the kitchen was adjacent to the eastern section of the longitudinal southern wall of the hall, but not directly connected. Additionally, the northern corner of the hall and the defensive wall was cut off by a transverse wall, creating a small room, perhaps used as a prison cell. Its chamber was recessed below the courtyard level, and the door opened from the outside. The southern part of the courtyard, near the postern, was used for economic purposes. To the southeast, a quadrangular building with a clay floor and half-timbered walls may have been added to the stone hall, leaving only narrow passages to the southern postern between it and the tower and defensive wall. Even before the construction of the half-timbered house, a section of straight wall was built southwest of the tower, likely separating the northern representative and residential section from the southern economic part of the castle. Unusually, the latter was located at the rear of the castle, not near the front gate.
The great hall was located on the first floor, above the ground floor, whose massive pillar supported the fireplace above and the wooden ceiling. A raised podium for the lord likely stood at the western end of the hall, while in the eastern part, behind a timber screen, was a vestibule with two opposite entrances leading to the main courtyard and the rear economic yard. In the 1280s, the building was rebuilt: the lower floor was lowered, its slit openings were bricked up to strengthen the structure, and after reinforcing the hearth pillar, an additional floor with a flat ceiling was created. A transverse wall also separated the western, two floor part of the building. At that time it had two entrances: a portal on the north side at ground level and a staircase leading down to the basement. A stone groove was created at the base of the building wall, serving as a drain for rainwater flowing from the entire courtyard.
In the mid-thirteenth century, Rhys ap Maredudd expanded the outer bailey on the north-eastern side (later the middle ward) and strengthened the entrance gate to the upper ward. Initially, it was an ordinary doorway in the wall, closed by a bar and flanked by a keep. Due to the slopes of the hill, it was reachable from the outside on stone steps. After the extension, an unroofed foregate with a portcullis and a door was added. The portcullis was lowered in stone guides, while the door was mounted on iron hinges placed in holes in the wall. From the south, the foregate was adjacent to a small stone platform formed of a short section of the wall connecting to the main perimeter and the keep. On it were discovered relics of a small fourteenth-century half-timbered building, probably a place from where the guard could control entering the castle. A blocked window opening suggests that earlier, probably before 1287, a stone building was in its place. In addition to the watchtower, there were also stone stairs leading to the platform and to the crown of the defensive walls. One of the stairs led from the defensive wall-walk, probably straight to the adjacent cylindrical tower, others to the upper part of the foregate, where the portcullis mechanism had to function.
Around the mid-13th century, the buildings in the upper ward were also transformed, with the addition of a new eastern wing (great chamber), located perpendicular east to the hall. Initially, it had one floor, then two in the later 13th century, separated by a flat ceiling. It was built on an elongated quadrangle with a diagonal southern wall, as this formed part of the perimeter wall. Stairs led to the upper floor from the north side of the building, while the southern part of the house incorporated the older riverside postern. With the construction of the eastern wing, the postern likely fell into disuse, but it may have been repurposed after the construction of a tower with a chapel on the outer slope. Along with the construction of the eastern wing, the kitchen was modified, its eastern wall being rebuilt as part of the new wing. The northwestern corner of the kitchen was reinforced internally with a pillar, a new, high-quality mortar floor was laid, and the kitchen was connected to the hall by a stone staircase.
In the later years of the 13th century, the castle’s defensive wall on the south side was thickened and raised, and a series of living quarters were added to fill the space between the great hall and the southern curtain wall. As a result, virtually the entire courtyard was built over, leaving only a narrow space on the north side. The remaining elements of the upper ward were latrines on the eastern side, near the keep. These were inserted into the rebuilt eastern curtain, where they were accessible via a short spiral staircase. Two drains with chutes facing downhill had stone superstructures with wooden seats. In the southeast corner, the aforementioned quadrangular tower with a chapel was erected. It was a quadrangle projecting beyond the perimeter of the walls, on a platform that had previously housed the entrance to the postern. Its upper-story walls were pierced with three narrow, pointed windows.
The southern wing, dating from the second half of the 13th century, housed living quarters on two levels separated by a flat, wooden ceiling. Its lower level, due to the elevation of the ground by a clay, was at the same level as the middle level of the great hall building after the reconstruction. Lighting in the southern wing, facing the Tywi Valley, was provided on two levels by large windows pierced in the thickened southern wall and flanked by side stone benches set in recesses. The rooms on each level were divided by two transverse walls, the easternmost of which separated the area of the former free-standing kitchen. Perhaps the eastern room located on the ground floor took over its function at that time.
The middle ward had an irregular shape, close to a pentagon, measuring approximately 70 x 30 meters, made of short, straight sections of wall. No traces of the lower gatehouse were found, so the entrance had to be a regular portal opened in the eastern wall. It was flanked from the north by a significant thickening of the wall, probably created after the siege of 1287. In the crown of this thickening there could be a defensive platform, giving the whole look similar to the tower. The oldest internal development was made up of an oblong building in the western part of the courtyard, traces of basement houses from the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century were also discovered at the northern wall. The remains of ceramics found indicate its residential and economic functions. The gate to the upper castle was preceded from the south by a rocky elevation, originally slightly higher, but reduced during the English occupation.
At the end of the 13th century, another north-eastern ward (lower castle) was built, fortified with a 1.8-meter-thick stone defensive wall, preceded by a ditch from the north. The entrance led through a four-sided gatehouse from the north. It had only two floor, with the lower gate passage accessible on a timber bridge (perhaps a drawbridge) over the ditch. The passage itself was secured by two portcullises and two doors, placed in a set portcullis plus a door at both ends of the gate. At the back of the building, the vaulted corridor led up the stairs to the upper floor room, where there were probably mechanisms supporting the portcullises. The courtyard of the lower ward was built up with economic houses (stables, warehouses, granaries, garrison quarters), located at the inner faces of the defensive walls. A large building stood out from the west of the outer ward, but its purpose remains unknown.
On the northern side of the castle, at the foot of the hill, a small town developed, protected by a ditch 5 meters wide and about 2.5 meters deep, and a defensive wall into which the west gatehouse led. It probably had two floors with a small guard room above the gate passage, closed with a portcullis and wooden door. The stone fortifications of the town were erected at the end of the 13th century, in the 1280s on the initiative of Rhys ap Maredudd or by the English after conquering it in 1287. Within the town in the first half of the fourteenth century there were at least 34 houses, as well as granaries, pantries and other economic buildings for animals. The houses were small constructions, 10-11 meters long and 4.6 meters wide. In the lower part they were made of stone, above half-timbered (the wooden frames were filled with wattle and clay, and the whole was probably whitewashed to protect against water), while the floors were made of beaten clay, and the roofs were covered with thatch or shingle.
Current state
The largest of the castles erected by native Welsh people is today a poorly preserved ruin. Only the south-west corner with the south wall has survived from the castle, in which remains of windows and fragments of a four-sided tower, originally housing the chapel, are visible. The remaining buildings show only the foundations reaching in the highest places up to a few meters, uncovered during archaeological excavations. Fortunately, Dryslwyn was not excavated in the 19th century, or even in the first half of the 20th century, so the ruined parts of the castle have survived underground until the professional and well-documented archaeological works of 1980-1995, and as a result, Dryslwyn remains one of the best known native Welsh castles. The ruins are under the care of Cadw and are open to the public.
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