The Great Castles of North Wales

Approaching Conwy Castle from its overflow parking lot, your view is blocked by a high railroad embankment with a long pedestrian tunnel beneath it. This turns out to be a good thing. Now the castle can simply spring upon you, its massive southern wall bathed in light. It rises as a black monolith flanked by giant towers, emerging organically from bedrock that erupts from the greensward. From this view, you can get some of the feeling that a 13th-century Welshman might have felt when he first saw this castle in its glory. You can understand what the English king Edward I “Longshanks” wanted it to be when he built it in 1287.

It’s a terror weapon.

Two centuries before Edward built Conwy, Duke William of Normandy invaded England to become King William I “The Conqueror,” and his Norman vassals seized English and Welsh estates alike. In Wales, these new Norman lords took over estates primarily in the south and along the borders (“marches”) with England. These “Marcher Lords” came and went, sometimes enlarging their lands, sometimes getting their clocks cleaned by the natives. In the 1210s there was a great deal of clock-cleaning, as rebellious English barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, then got him involved in a protracted civil war that would lead to his death in 1216. In the confusion, a resurgent Welsh nobility had the chance to get some of their own back.

Past Welsh revolts had failed, dissolving into internecine conflicts that were easily exploited whenever the English monarchy managed to get its act together. This time it would be different. The prince who ruled Wales’ mountainous northwest, an unconquered region known then and now as Gwynedd (pronounced gwinneth), became the unchallenged leader of unconquered Wales. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, known as “Llywelyn the Great,” used diplomacy and war to unify the Welsh nobles under him and take lands from the Marcher lords. In 1218 King John’s successor, Henry III (then 11 years old), acknowledged Llywelyn as “Prince of Wales.” Skillful politics and carefully considered warfare kept the title and lands intact, to be inherited by his son Dafydd, then his grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, “Llywelyn the Last.” It was Llywelyn the Last who lost all of Wales to the English king Edward I, and got himself killed in the process.

After Edward Longshanks had received Llywelyn’s head from his killers, he built four great castles in the heart of Llywelyn’s principality: Conwy, Harlech, Caernarfon and Beaumaris. They were among the largest and most sophisticated castles ever built.

Conwy. Northwest Wales is dramatically mountainous, and at Conwy these mountains extend to the sea’s edge. The north-flowing Conwy River marks the eastern border of the mountains, a wide tidal slash that has long been a barrier to trade and conquest; behind it, the princes of Gwynedd had long been safe. Mostly, the Conwy River is edged by muds and marshes, but at Conwy a hard mountain ridgeline runs straight to the river and disappears under its waters. This is the narrowest point at the river’s mouth, and the only practical crossing for miles. It was here, in 1283, that Edward’s men started work on the first of the four castles.

Up through the 1950s, this eastern approach to Conwy presented one of the finest views in Britain. The castle rises straight out of the water, a looming hulk framed by massive bare cliffs, with a charming walled town hugging its downstream side. Thomas Telford’s delicate 1826 suspension bridge links it with the eastern shore, a graceful span whose castellated towers complement the castle. The railroad crosses behind Telford’s bridge on an 1848 tubular structure whose castellated piers are larger and clunkier than Telford’s, but still attractive. The castle, the town and the two bridges made for a stunning set piece—but Telford’s 8-foot-wide bridge could not handle the traffic, and a new bridge opened beside it in 1958. It’s not an ugly bridge, but some of the grandeur is gone.

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