Abergavenny Castle

The Norman lord Hamelin de Balun had a castle raised at Abergavenny in about 1087, immediately south of the town, set to overlook the River Usk and its valley and to guard the lowlands south and east of the town against incursions by the Welsh from the hills to the north and west. The motte was protected by a ditch and palisade and carried a timber keep. Soon after 1100 a stone keep replaced the wooden one, with a timber hall against its western side. The antiquary William Camden, writing in the sixteenth century, judged that the castle "has been oftner stain'd with the infamy of treachery, than any other castle in Wales".

In the 1160s Henry Fitzmiles, son of Miles de Gloucester, 1st Earl of Hereford, and lord of Abergavenny, was killed — reputedly by Seisyll ap Dyfnwal of Castell Arnallt. He left no male heir, so the lordship, with lands in upper Gwent and Brecknockshire and the castle itself, went to William de Braose, husband of his daughter Bertha. De Braose rebuilt parts of the castle and put up the curtain wall, parts of which still stand.

Over Christmas 1175 de Braose summoned Seisyll, his son Geoffrey and other leaders from Gwent to the castle, supposedly as an act of reconciliation, and had them killed in the great hall in retribution for the death of Henry Fitzmiles. His conduct, including the seizure of the dead men's land, brought sanctions: William was "retired" from public life and the castle passed to his son of the same name. In 1182 Hywel ap Iorwerth, lord of Caerleon, ordered the destruction of Dingestow Castle and had Abergavenny set afire in retribution for Seisyll's murder, the attacks carried out by Seisyll's relatives. De Braose was elsewhere when it burned, but "most of his men" were taken hostage.

From about 1190 the castle was almost entirely rebuilt in local Old Red Sandstone to make it easier to hold, with five towers set along the curtain walls and a keep. Through the fighting between English and Welsh for control of the Marches, possession of the castle alternated between the two. King John visited in 1215.

The Hastings family expanded the place across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, adding western towers that carried residential chambers; two towers, one circular and one polygonal, were probably built between 1295 and 1314 by John Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings. Those were also the years in which murage taxes were levied on the townspeople to pay for Abergavenny's town walls, and a new wall went up at the castle between the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

In 1404, during Owain Glyndŵr's rebellion, the town of Abergavenny was sacked and burned and the castle besieged by Welsh forces. William Beauchamp and his men had to be relieved by Richard of York, together with a force the Sheriff of Hereford raised at Henry IV's request. The following year the garrison stood at eighty mounted soldiers with their armed servants and four hundred archers. The fortified barbican gatehouse — called "unimpressive" by the architectural historian John Newman — may date from just before or just after that year.

No lord took up residence at the castle after the fifteenth century. During the Civil War, with the Roundheads approaching, Charles I ordered it slighted to prevent its useful occupation, and most of the buildings, the stone keep among them, were destroyed; Raglan Castle was damaged in the same way. Stone was carted off the site afterwards for other buildings.

By the late eighteenth century the ruins were drawing visitors after "picturesque" views, and walks were laid out within the walls. In 1819 Henry Nevill, 2nd Earl of Abergavenny, built a hunting lodge on top of the motte, which Newman describes as "an unsympathetically utilitarian structure, enlivened only by thin polygonal shafts at the angles"; later in the century William Nevill, 5th Earl, made a formal public garden with gazebos and walks looking over the Usk valley. The castle has been a scheduled monument since 7 July 1933 and a Grade I listed building since 5 July 1952, the lodge Grade II from the same date, with the outer wall listed from 2005 and the grounds registered Grade II by Cadw and ICOMOS as a park and garden of special historic interest. The lodge now houses Abergavenny Museum, whose displays include a saddler's workshop and a Victorian Welsh farmhouse kitchen.