History
Tretower Castle, initially a timber-and-earth motte-type stronghold, was built after the conquest of the Welsh kingdom of Bycheiniog in the latter years of the 11th century. It was founded by Picard, one of the Anglo-Norman invaders, who was awarded the Ystrad Yw region by Bernard de Neufmarché, founder of the Anglo-Norman Brecon lordship. Picard did not utilize the ruins of the nearby old Roman fort or Welsh settlement, but established his seat in a valley that controlled the intersection of two major communication and trade routes.
Probably around 1150, Picard’s son, Roger Picard I, or his grandson, John Picard, replaced the original timber structure of the castle with a stone perimeter of the shell keep. Subsequent reconstructions of the castle may have been linked to its owners’ involvement in local politics and border wars, as with other Anglo-Norman lords in the marches. In 1233, Tretower was attacked by Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, who had allied himself with the Welsh ruler Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great). The castle was severely damaged and had to be repaired by the next Roger Picard. During the reconstruction, around 1230-1240, he erected an impressive cylindrical keep and fortified the outer bailey with stone.
In the second half of the thirteenth century during the battles with the Anglo-Normans of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last prince of independent Wales, the Picard family probably swore homage to the Welsh ruler, thanks to which the castle avoided damages and safely survived until 1282, when independence aspirations were pacified. The subsequent long period of peace caused a decrease of the military significance of the castle, as well as increased desire to improve the living conditions of its owners, who in the early period of the fourteenth century began construction of a more comfortable manor house near the castle. Despite the fact that the castle ceased to be used for residential purposes then, its fortifications were maintained in good condition. Perhaps thanks to this it was not captured during the Welsh uprising of Owain Glyndŵr that started in 1400.
At the beginning of the 15th century, the Picard family died out and after several changes of owners, the castle passed through marriage to a Berkeley family, whose main residence was in the Berkeley Castle. In 1429, the castle was sold to William ap Thomas, whose son, William Herbert, became Earl of Pembroke. In Tretower lived the half brother of Herbert, Roger Vaughan, who extended the court at the foot of the castle. Both Herbert and Vaughan were killed during the War of Roses between 1469 and 1471. The Vaughan family remained followers of Yorks, but in 1485, after the death of Richard III York in the Battle of Bosworth, they rebelled against the new king Henry VII. Henry pardoned the Vaughans in 1487, so that they could return to the castle and the Tretower court. They had a stronghold until the beginning of the 18th century, after which the castle changed owners several times, it was abandoned, and its ruin was finally taken over by the government.
Architecture
Tretower was situated in a marshy and boggy valley, on the north side of the River Rhiangoll and its numerous smaller tributaries. The original castle, dating from the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries, was a timber structure built on a truncated cone-shaped earthen mound (motte). The mound’s base measured 24 x 22 meters and was surrounded by a 9-meter-wide water-filled moat. The use of water and the soft consistency of the local alluvial soil necessitated the reinforcement of the mound’s base with stone rubble. The sparse nature of this reinforcement (it was only a thin coating on the mound’s surface) suggests that at that time there was no wall on the mound, but only a wooden palisade along the edge of the motte. The outer bailey was provided with a triangular courtyard measuring 61 x 46 meters, surrounded by wooden fortifications and a ditch.
In the mid-12th century, the castle underwent a thorough reconstruction, resulting in the leveling of the mound and the construction of a ring of stone defensive wall with a polygonal, almost circular plan. It was approximately 1.5-1.8 meters thick above a slightly wider batter with a sloping exterior façade. In the inner ward, on the southern and western sides of the wall, a residential building (solar), a kitchen and a two-story hall were constructed. The castle entrance was located in a small, quadrangular gatehouse, situated on the eastern side, with most of its structure projecting towards the moat and the outer bailey. It contained a deep pit, so entry had to be via a drawbridge. The rear section of the bridge, which blocked the passage, was retracted into this pit when its front section was raised. Above this was another story, likely containing a room for the guards, while in the crown was probably an unroofed gallery for the guards. On the northern side of the gatehouse, within the thickness of the defensive wall, were stairs leading to the gate upper floor and to the wall-walk.
The kitchen was located in the southern part of the inner ward, in a small projection, so that three of its walls formed part of the castle’s defensive perimeter, while the fourth separated it from the ground floor of the hall. A semicircular fireplace was inserted into the southern wall, flanked on both sides by narrow windows. A third window was pierced in the western wall, while the entire kitchen was covered with a mono-pitched roof, from which rainwater flowed into a channel. The adjacent building was two-story, approximately 7.6 meters long, with a ground floor for utility and storage and an upper chamber for ceremonial purposes, lit by windows decorated internally with a chevron motif. It served as a link between the kitchen and the private chambers in the western part of the courtyard. The kitchen was accessed via a staircase set into the thick wall of the western building, terminating in the ground floor of the hall, from where a door led to the kitchen.
The castle’s living quarters were located on the first floor of an elongated building, extending the entire length of the western part of the castle along a north-south line. Access to the ground floor was provided by internal stairs and a cylindrical staircase in the thickness of the southern wall, which also provided access to the wall-walk at the crown of the defensive wall. The ground floor of the western wing was originally lit by three narrow windows set in deep recesses, while the upper floor was lit by larger, semicircular windows (the southern one was decorated with a chevron motif and flanked by columns with twisted shafts). The upper floor was heated by a fireplace in the western wall, slightly projecting from the façade. There was also a passage nearby to a latrine built into the thickness of the wall.
In the second quarter of the 13th century, most of the buildings within the perimeter walls, with the exception of the kitchen, were demolished to make way for a massive, cylindrical keep. The tower had diameter of 11 meters, walls 2.7 meters thick and slightly more massive at lowest level, where a prominent batter was built, topped by a circumferential shaft that marked the level of the lowest floor. The tower may have originally been covered with a conical, slate, or lead roof. Furthermore, it was topped with a hoarding, providing an excellent field of fire thanks to small courtyard and considerable height advantage. Access to the keep was via an external wooden staircase, directly to the first floor. These stairs were located on the west side, away from the castle gate, to force any attacker who managed to break through, to pass through the section of the narrow courtyard between the tower and the curtain wall, where they would be exposed to the defenders’ fire. The stairs terminated at the tower wall in a small porch, covered by a gable roof, which left scars of the stonework. The entrance portal was topped with a pointed arch and chamfered.
The keep contained four stories, each separated by flat ceilings. Behind the entrance was another portal leading to the main room, while to the left was a vaulted staircase set into the wall’s thickness, leading to the upper floors. The first floor was lit by two windows with side benches in recesses and heated by a fireplace with chamfered jambs and a protruding hood of ashlar, set on short columns with moulded capitals. To reach the ground floor, one had to enter a window recess on the first floor, opposite the main entrance, and then descend a staircase set into the wall’s thickness. At the very bottom was a well, set in unheated room, lit only by two slits with high-set, stepped sills. The second floor of the tower was heated by a fireplace and lit by two pointed windows in deep recesses, one of which had stone seats. There was also an arched passage from the western window recess to a wooden, gabled porch leading to the crown of the castle’s perimeter wall. The top floor of the tower also had two windows providing light but no fireplace.
In the 13th century, with the construction of the keep, the perimeter walls of the upper ward were raised and pierced in their upper sections with slit-shaped loopholes. The short horizontal slits were placed at different heights in relation to the longer vertical slits (similar to White Castle), thus increasing the possibility of firing from various angles. The outer bailey was also rebuilt. Stone defensive walls were erected, trapezoidal in plan, 1.5 meters thick, reinforced at the two outermost corners with semicircular towers, approximately 7 meters in diameter, opened onto the bailey. The entrance gate to the outer bailey was likely located on the southeastern side.
Late medieval alterations to Tretower Castle were limited to the construction of a four-story timber building in the northwestern corner of the inner ward, between the keep and the perimeter wall. Inside, the individual floors were separated by wooden ceilings (with beams set in openings in the wall). The building’s primitive form suggests no specific purpose; it is only speculated that it may have served as a garrison and storage space during Owain Glyndŵr’s revolt in the early 15th century.
Current state
The castle has survived to this day as a ruin. The 13th-century keep and a large section of the surrounding 12th-century defensive wall remain, with visible sections raised in the 13th century. A fragment of the outer bailey wall also has survived, along with remnants of the southeastern and eastern towers. Unfortunately, significant portions of the gatehouse are no longer visible, nor is the entrance gate to the outer bailey, the northern section of which is now occupied by a modern farm. The castle is open to visitors from March 24th to November 4th, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
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