Cardigan Castle

The first motte-and-bailey castle at Cardigan, of about 1093, stood a mile from the present site, and was probably raised about the time the Norman baron Roger de Montgomery founded the town. In 1110 Henry I took Cardigan from Prince Owain ap Cadwgan as a punishment and gave the lordship and the castle to Gilbert Fitz Richard. After the first castle was destroyed, the forerunner of the one that stands now was built by Gilbert Lord of Clare.

The castle passed to Gilbert's son, Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1136. In the same year Owain Gwynedd led the defeat of the Norman rulers at the Battle of Crug Mawr; the town of Cardigan was taken and burnt, but the castle itself was held, defended by Normans under the command of Robert fitz Martin.

The Normans recovered the castle and it was held for Earl Roger of Hertford, but in 1166 Rhys ap Gruffydd captured it, and in 1171 he rebuilt it in stone. In 1176 the first recorded eisteddfod was held at the castle. After Rhys died in 1197 his sons Maelgwn and Gruffydd fell out over the inheritance: Maelgwn handed his brother over to the Normans and sold the castle to King John.

The castle was afterwards held for William Marshal. Llywelyn the Great captured Cardigan in 1215, and at the parliament held at Aberdyfi in 1216 he made it over to the sons of Gruffydd ap Rhys of Deheubarth. William Marshal the Younger recaptured it in 1223; in 1231 it was taken for Llywelyn again by Rhys Gryg and his allies, and Llywelyn held it until his death in 1240. It then fell back into Norman hands, and in 1244 Earl Gilbert of Pembroke rebuilt it, adding town walls for further protection. It is the remains of that rebuilding that still stand overlooking the river.

The castle was badly damaged during the English Civil War in Wales, and until the eighteenth century it was used only as a prison. Between 1805 and 1808 its owner, John Bowen, had Castle Green House built inside the castle walls, and a front range was added to the house in 1827.

In 1940 castle and house were bought by a shipping magnate, and his daughter Barbara Wood moved into Castle Green House with her mother. The house slowly fell into disrepair and was allowed to decay further by the owner, to the point where the outer castle walls needed supporting. Miss Wood occupied the castle for almost sixty years, through attempts by the local authority to take it over in 1971 and the declaration of Castle Green House as unfit for human habitation in 1984. She left in 1996 to be cared for in a nursing home and, faced with six years of nursing costs, put the castle up for private sale in 2001.

Ceredigion County Council, which owns the castle still, bought it in April 2003 and repairs began as part of the regeneration of Cardigan; Castle Green House appeared on the second series of the BBC's Restoration in 2004. The castle opened to the public on 15 April 2015 and held a concert that July. It is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled monument, with a heritage centre and education facilities, accommodation, rooms for hire, an open-air concert area, and a restaurant named 1176 after the Lord Rhys's eisteddfod. The grounds, with their pleasure gardens and kitchen garden, are designated Grade II on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.