s e l t s a C Top 10
Brush up on your history before venturing out this summer, and keep a few facts up your sleeve in bid to really impress the kids...
Beaumaris Beaumaris has been deemed as the most technically perfect castle in Britain. Featuring
Bodelwyddan
classic proportions and perfect
Bodelwyddan Castle is situated close to Glan Clwyd Hospital
symmetry, Beaumaris was built
near Rhyl. Originally built around 1460 by the Humphreys family
according to Edward I’s ingenious
of Anglesey as a manor house, Bodelwyddan’s most important
‘walls within walls’ plan on the
association was with the Williams-Wynn family, which
Isle of Anglesey. Work began in the summer of 1295, overseen
extended for around 200 years from 1690. It is now a Grade
by Master James of St George, but was never officially
II* listed building and is open to the public as a historic house
finished due to lack of funds. Work finally came to a halt in
museum with some very impressive gardens. And if you can’t fit
1330 – with the castle still not built to its intended height – by
everything in in one day, you can always stay at the castle hotel,
when a whopping £15,000 had been spent.
which has recently undergone a £6 million renovation.
Caernarfon Caernarfon is
Chirk
another of Edward
Chirk Castle was built on
I’s Welsh fortresses
the Welsh-English border
and, like the
in order to keep the Welsh
location of all of
under English rule. Again
his defences, the
the location of Chirk Castle
site of Caernarfon
was chosen extremely
castle was shrewdly
carefully in order to make
picked. The former site of a Norman motte and bailey
the most of its defensive abilities. Construction began in 1295 on a
castle and, before that, a Roman fort, Caernarfon is
rocky escarpment at the head of the Ceiriog valley, and contained some
one of the most impressive castles of its time. The
impressive feats of engineering. Chirk Castle had the most up-to-date
original design includes polygonal towers, with
defences for the time, with round ‘drum’ towers that allowed archers
Eagle Tower being the most impressive of these,
a wide firing field creating a ‘killing zone’ where the fields of fire
as opposed to the more traditional round towers.
overlapped. However, despite the courtyard well being is 28.5 metres
Edward’s son, the first English Prince of Wales, was
deep, it only held 300mm of water in the bottom and therefore could
born in Caernarfon castle in 1284 – and just under
probably only support a garrison of 20 to 30 men. Good job then that
700 years later, in 1969, the investiture of the current
slyly hidden murder holes enabled what few men there were to drop
Prince of Wales, HRH Prince Charles, took place here.
missiles down on invaders...
NWM 2022 Page 39
