I finally made it to Caerphilly Castle today. Caerphilly is the second-largest castle in Britain, built in the 1270s by the Marcher Lord “Red Gilbert” de Clare (a very nasty character according to Wikipedia).
King Edward returned from the crusades, having hit upon the brilliant idea of building a castle with concentric defenses, only to find that Gilbert de Clare had beaten him to it. Caerphilly makes extensive use of water defenses as well as three gatehouses with two moats between them. It also has a tower that out-leans the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower looks as if it’s been cracked in half. The theory proposed by the castle history video in the information center is that the Roundheads tried to demolish it during the Civil War in the 1640s. The more likely explanation put forth by Wikipedia, in the absence of hard evidence that the castle was intentionally slighted, is simply that when the original moats drained, the ground shifted.
The current water defenses are very shallow—they look about two feet deep in most places. They were dug in the 1950s. In fact, disappointingly, much of the castle is a reconstruction by the Marquess of Bute (yes, him again). The dearth of informational plaques in fact makes it difficult to tell which parts of the castle are authentic and which are Victorian reconstructions.
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More Caerphilly photos now that I’ve sorted out the photo storage issue:
Above is the central part of Caerphilly. The castle is so large that it’s impossible to get it all in one frame; I took this photo from a section of the outer defenses.
Notice the grate in the water. I’m not sure exactly how the moat worked, but the castle is up on higher ground, so there must be a fair amount of plumbing that goes into keeping it filled.
Below is the footbridge to the second gatehouse (the body of water is the inner moat, and you can just see a sliver of the outer moat on the far side of the bridge).
Below is the view of the great hall through a window in a mysterious little side room that reminds me of a cell. I’m not sure why one needed a window overlooking the hall. If it was smaller, I would say it was a spy hole; if it was bigger, I would say it was a minstrel’s gallery.
Incidentally, the tapestry on the back wall—I don’t have a better picture of it—shows three women from Caerphilly’s history. On the left is Alice, the “Green Lady,” clothed in the green of her husband’s envy after he had her lover put to death. Her ghost is said to haunt the castle. In the middle is Joan, the king’s strong-willed daughter, who was the very young second wife to Gilbert de Clare. When Gilbert de Clare died, she married a lowly squire in his household, much to her father’s chagrin. Her father had the squire, Ralph de Monthermer, thrown in prison in Bristol, but he eventually relented and the couple lived happily ever after (until she died in childbirth). On the right is Eleanor, who commanded the castle during a six-week siege until help arrived.
I had two more photos for you, but I haven’t quite got the hang of this resizing thing and they’re both mysteriously sideways with no way to correct the orientation.