St Briavels Castle

St Briavels was built by royal mandate between 1075 and 1129, in a region William FitzOsbern, first Earl of Hereford, had acquired in 1067, though FitzOsbern does not appear to have built here; after his son Roger de Breteuil's revolt the district passed to the crown's forest bailiffs. Walter de Gloucester, Sheriff of Gloucester, and his son Miles made the castle the Forest of Dean's administrative centre. It sat well back from the Welsh border, seemingly built for royal governance rather than to guard the Marches; the earliest castle was a motte and bailey with a keep probably of wood.

Miles held the castle through the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda, who in 1141 confirmed him as Earl of Hereford and formally granted him St Briavels. His son Roger Fitzmiles kept it into Henry II's reign, but a falling-out with the king saw it retaken by the crown; Henry II rebuilt the keep in stone in the 1160s. The Forest of Dean supplied the crown with iron as well as game: in 1172 Henry II drew axes, picks, shovels and nails.

King John hunted the Forest of Dean each November and used St Briavels as his base, entertaining the Welsh lord Gruffyd ap Cadwallon here in 1207. A stone curtain wall replaced the timber one around 1209–11, and the castle's courts imposed a relatively large number of fines for illegal wood-cutting and the poaching of venison, the castle already doubling as a prison for those who could not pay.

After John's death the castle became the primary centre in England for manufacturing quarrels, the bolts fired from crossbows. Production began in 1228 under John Malemort, William the Smith and William the Fletcher, and by 1233 the forge turned out around 120,000 quarrels in 120 days. That capacity gave the crown an advantage over baronial rivals, arming the Marcher lords against the Welsh, and the castle was garrisoned with royal troops during Richard Marshal's uprising against Henry III in 1233–4. Under Edward I the great gatehouse, with three portcullises, was added in 1292–3 at a cost of £477.

Roger d'Amory, constable of the castle and a royal favourite, hosted Edward II here through lavish renovations before falling in the Despenser War of 1321–2; Hugh Despenser the Elder then took charge of St Briavels, and in July 1325 his keeper's deputy was attacked on the road to London, his eyes torn out and his arms and legs broken. Isabella of France seized the castle after deposing Edward and the Despensers, then lost it herself when her son Edward III took power in 1330.

Through the 14th and 15th centuries the castle passed rapidly between the crown's favourites without itself becoming a battleground: to Thomas, Duke of Gloucester; for life to Thomas le Despenser in 1397; to Henry IV's son the Duke of Bedford; then to Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, around 1445. William Herbert received it in 1467 for backing Edward IV, was executed by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who took the castle and died at Barnet in 1471; Henry VII restored it to Neville's widow Anne Neville, and on her death in 1492 it passed to Thomas Baynham.

St Briavels had long been in decline when its keep partly collapsed in 1752, the rest falling in 1777, its stone reportedly carried off locally. What remained served chiefly as a court and a debtors' prison under the Forest Law of 1217, holding people unable to pay their debts or fines indefinitely, as was then lawful across England. The prison reformer John Howard visited in 1775 and found it "greatly out of repair", with two inmates confined to one room for the best part of a year without exercise, fresh water or firewood.

In 1831 riots broke out across the Forest of Dean under Warren James; after the military dispersed the rioters, an Act of Parliament set up commissioners who investigated local grievances, turning particular scrutiny on the debtors' prison, where 397 of 402 cases brought before the court involved debts of £5 or less. Reforms followed, and the St Briavels Small Debts Court Act 1842 abolished the court and its prison, transferring the remaining inmates to Littledean.

The gatehouse and bailey buildings were made habitable again in 1906, and St Briavels became a youth hostel in 1948, a role it still holds; the moat was partly infilled and turned into a garden in 1961. Owned and managed by English Heritage, the castle is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled monument, open to the public, its huge Edwardian gatehouse still guarding the entrance.