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castle in Criccieth, North Wales
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Criccieth Castle (Welsh: Castell Cricieth; Welsh pronunciation: [kastɛɬ ˈkrɪkjɛθ]) is a ruined thirteenth-century castle in Criccieth, Gwynedd, Wales. It is located on a rocky headland overlooking Tremadog Bay and consists of an inner ward almost surrounded by an outer ward. The twin-towered inner gatehouse is the most prominent remaining feature and survives to almost its full height, as does the inner curtain wall. The outer curtain wall, the inner ward buildings, and the castle's other three towers are significantly more ruinous, and in places survive only as foundations.
The castle was begun in the 1230s by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, the prince of Gwynedd, who probably built the inner ward and gatehouse. It was extended by his grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, who probably constructed the outer ward. The castle was captured by Edward I of England in 1283 during his conquest of Wales and afterwards repaired and improved, work which included heightening the towers and inner gatehouse. The castle was besieged in 1294–1295 during an unsuccessful revolt against English rule by Madog ap Llywelyn, and further repairs took place under Edward II in the early fourteenth century. It was captured in 1404 during another unsuccessful revolt, led by Owain Glyndŵr. It may have been burnt after the latter attack and was certainly ruinous by the 1450s. Until it was destroyed the castle was frequently used as a prison, housing high-status prisoners of the princes of Gwynedd and Scottish prisoners of Edward I.
The castle was subsequently left to decay, and was considered a romantic ruin by the time it was sketched by J. M. W. Turner in 1798. It was sold by the Crown in 1858 but returned to state care in 1933, after which extensive consolidation and archaeological excavations took place. The castle is now maintained by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh Government, and is open to the public. It was designated a grade I listed building in 1949, and both the castle proper and its outer defences are scheduled monuments.
The only other castle site near Criccieth is a motte at Dolbenmaen, approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) north of the town, which may have been built by the Normans in the eleventh century but was soon occupied by the Welsh. Dolbenmaen was probably the administrative centre (maerdref) of the commote of Eifionydd, and the motte is associated with the court (llys) of the commote's rulers. Eifionydd's administrative centre was transferred to Criccieth in the 1230s, when Llywelyn ap Iorwerth built the current castle; prior to this the only structures in Criccieth were the parish church of St Catherine and its associated buildings.
It is probable that the inner ward of the current castle was built by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth in the 1230s and the outer ward between 1255 and 1282 during the rule of his grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. In 1239 Dafydd ap Llywelyn, the son and heir of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, imprisoned Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and Owain Goch ap Gruffydd, his half-brother and half-nephew, at Criccieth. It is probable that the castle was used to house them. Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ap Iorwerth is also described as "Pendefic crukyeith", or 'Lord of Criccieth' in a contemporary eulogistic awdl poem by Einion ap Madog ap Rhahawd. The castle is again recorded as a prison in 1259, when it housed Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg, a prince of Deheubarth who rebelled against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. One of the last Welsh records of the castle is a letter from Llywelyn ap Gruffudd to Edward I, sent from Criccieth in 1273 or 1274.
By March 1283 the castle had been captured by the English as part of Edward I's conquest of Wales, and the king visited in that year and in 1284. Between 1283 and 1292 the Pipe rolls record that £332 was spent at the castle, and the final expenditure for this period may have been closer to £500. This mostly consisted of improvements to existing structures, particularly the towers, which were heightened and had ground-floor doors inserted. External stairs were also constructed to give access to their first floors and the wall-walks. These changes brought the castle up to date militarily by making each floor of the towers a self-contained defensive unit. A borough was established next to the castle in November 1284; it had 23 burgage plots, the same number as Caernarfon, but does not appear to have been walled.
In 1283–1284, when the Welsh castles were particularly well-manned, the Criccieth garrison contained 30 homines defensabiles (garrison men), 10 baslistarii (crossbowmen), 15 residui (residents, including sentinels, a doorkeeper, and caretaker), 1 attilliator (superintendent of arms), 1 capellanus (chaplain), 1 cementarius (stonemason), 1 carpentarius (carpenter), and 1 faber (artisan). Sir William Leyburn was the constable and paid £100 yearly.
In 1294 Criccieth was besieged as part of a revolt against English rule by Madog ap Llywelyn. The revolt took Caernarfon Castle and sacked the town, and the castles at Harlech and Aberystwyth were also sieged. The garrison at the time consisted of Sir William Leyburn, who was still the constable, 29 men, and 41 townsfolk who had taken refuge in the castle. The siege was lifted in April 1295 and the castle resupplied by sea from Ireland. After this the castle was again used as a prison; further repairs took place between 1307 and 1327 under Edward II, which included raising the gatehouse a second time. Nevertheless, when Edward the Black Prince commissioned a survey of the castle in 1343 it was again dilapidated and in need of repairs which would cost £96 in total. The same document names the castle towers as the great tower, "sister (cistern) tour", Leyburn tower, and "le gynnetour". The English archaeologist Bryan O'Neil identifies these as the inner gatehouse, south-west tower (which contained a cistern), south-east tower, and north tower respectively. From c. 1359 to 1381 the castle constable was Syr Hywel y Fwyall ('of the Battleaxe'), who may have commanded a corps of Welshmen at the Battle of Crécy and certainly fought for Edward III at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356.
The castle's downfall came in the first half of the fifteenth century, when it was destroyed by fire. The walls of the inner gatehouse, south-west tower, and south-east tower are burnt red, and a layer of burnt material has been found during excavations in each. It is probable that the fire occurred in 1404, when the castle was captured during the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr and, according to a document of 1450, "totally destroyed". Nevertheless, that same document enlarged the castle's garrison and does not mention repairs to the structure, so it is possible that the revolt did not cause total ruin. If this is the case then the fires took place not long after 1450, as there are no further references to the castle being used as a fortress and no record of constables being appointed after Glyndŵr's sacking. The adjacent borough also suffered; it was described as "clene decayed" by John Leland, who travelled through Wales between 1535 and 1545, and by Thomas Pennant in c. 1784 as a "poor borough town".
Criccieth is the subject of four colour studies by the Romantic artist J. M. W. Turner, as well as one full watercolour depicting salvage on Criccieth beach with the castle in the background. The sketches were undertaken when Turner visited the coast of North Wales in 1798, and the watercolour dates from 1835. Turner took some artistic licence with the latter, depicting the cliffs higher than in reality and depicting the sea in an unlikely position according to the usual pattern of Criccieth's tides.
It is possible that some restoration work took place under the Crown before the sale of the castle in 1858 to William Ormsby-Gore, 2nd Baron Harlech, and Lord Harlech certainly undertook some restoration work in 1879. More work took place in 1933 before George Ormsby-Gore, 3rd Baron Harlech, placed the castle under the guardianship of the Office of Works. The state carried out extensive consolidation of the fabric, and the castle was excavated under the supervision of Bryan O'Neil; prior to these excavations much of the outer ward and part of the south-east tower were buried. Some parts of the site may have been covered deliberately, as the north tower contained "modern" bricks and china and there was a local tradition that it was infilled in the nineteenth century to prevent children playing in the remains. The castle is now maintained by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh Government, and includes exhibits and information on Welsh castles as well as the 12th-century Anglo-Norman writer Gerald of Wales. It typically receives between 42,000 and 48,000 visitors per year; this number dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 31,527 people visited in 2021.
Since 2024, Cadw have used the Welsh name "Castell Cricieth" in English.
The building sequence of the castle is the subject of debate and relies heavily on analysis of the surviving fabric; the Welsh building work is poorly documented, and although English accounts of expenditure on the castle survive they do not record what the sums were spent on.
An early attempt to date the castle by observing its fabric was made by the antiquarian Thomas Pennant in his 1784 Tour in Wales. Despite Edward I being the "supposed founder" of the castle, Pennant would "entertain no doubt" that Criccieth was built by a native Welsh prince because of the similarity of the inner gatehouse to Dolwyddelan Castle. He did, however, incorrectly believe that the rounded outer faces of the gatehouse towers were an Edwardian addition. A more thorough survey of the castle by Harold Hughes, published in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1905, gives some idea of the state of the castle before it was excavated later that century. The above-ground fabric was obscured by ivy, modern restoration, and a cairn, and much of the outer ward and the south-east tower were buried. This made it difficult to ascertain the date and original plan of the castle, particularly that of the outer ward – for example, Hughes speculates that what is now identified as the south-east tower may have been a gateway.
When Criccieth was placed in state care in 1933 extensive archaeological excavations were begun, under the direction of Bryan O'Neil, and continued until shortly after the outbreak of World War II. During this time the buried portions of the castle were uncovered and many objects were recovered; a significant find was a crucifix made of gilt bronze and Limoges enamel, found in the western inner gatehouse tower and now in the collection of Amgueddfa Cymru. O'Neil concluded from these discoveries that there were three primary building phases: the first dated to the early thirteenth century and included most of the inner ward, the second was dated to c. 1260 and included most of the outer ward, and the third consisted of later additions to the first two phases undertaken by Edward I and Edward II after the English capture of the castle. O'Neil's identification of three building phases is widely accepted, and together with the excavations forms the basis of the contemporary understanding of the castle. The academic debate has since shifted to identifying which parts of the fabric belong to which phase. In his 1970 guide to the castle, C. N. Johns suggested that the outer ward predated the inner ward; however, this theory was not supported by later historians and Richard Avent reverted to O'Neil's building sequence in his 1989 guide. For his part, in 1983 Avent thought it likely that the north tower was English work, but by 1989 considered Llywelyn ab Iorwerth to be the more probable builder.
The source for the design of the inner gatehouse has been another topic of debate. There is consensus that Beeston Castle in Cheshire was the primary source, a theory supported by archaeologists including Richard Avent, Laurence Keen, and Rachel Swallow. Beeston was built in the 1220s by Ranulf de Blondeville, an ally of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, and is broadly similar to Criccieth. It was built on a crag and its inner gatehouse consists of two D-shaped towers, each containing a chamber with two arrowloops facing the approach, and a gate passage guarded by a portcullis and a pair of doors. There are differences: Criccieth has three arrowloops to each guardroom, had a stone–vaulted gate passage rather than a wooden ceiling, and its towers were longer and similar to apsidal keeps. Similarities have also been noted between the Criccieth gatehouse and that at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, also built by Ranulf de Blondeville; with Montgomery Castle in Powys, which was attacked by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth in 1228 and 1231; and with White Castle in Monmouthshire. The second and third castles were associated with Hubert de Burgh, a marcher lord and major power in South Wales. Whatever the exact inspiration for the gatehouse, the result, according to Avent, is that at Criccieth "the latest advances in military technology" are combined with the "somewhat haphazard Welsh castle building style".
The castle occupies a rocky headland on the coast. It is almost concentric, with an inner ward surrounded by an outer ward on all sides but the south-east. The inner ward forms an irregular six-sided enclosure and contains a twin-towered gatehouse on the north side and a tower on the south-east. The outer ward is roughly triangular, following the shape of the headland, and contains towers in the north and south-west corners and a modest gatehouse in the south-east. The landward side of the castle is defended by two ditches.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Criccieth Castle”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.