Dolwyddelan Castle

Before Dolwyddelan existed, Tomen Castell — a small rectangular tower on a rocky outcrop above the Afon Lledr — may have been built by Iorwerth Drwyndwn to assert his authority amid the unrest that followed the death of his father, Owain Gwynedd, in 1170. Tradition holds that Iorwerth's son, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, was born in the later castle, but the older tower is the more likely birthplace.

Llywelyn, ruler of Gwynedd, probably built Dolwyddelan itself between 1210 and 1240, on land at Ffriddgelli, one of the ten hafodydd — summer cattle pastures — belonging to the princes of Gwynedd in the Lledr valley. It was sited to guard the road from Nant Conwy to Meirionydd, which then ran along the valley side close to its west wall. The rectangular keep resembles the towers Llywelyn built at Castell y Bere and Criccieth; it stood freestanding at first, until Llywelyn added the curtain wall soon afterwards. The tower on the west side of the enclosure was raised later — its dressed stone suggests a late thirteenth or early fourteenth century date — and may be the work of Llywelyn's grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, who built comparable towers at Criccieth and Dolforwyn, or else was added after the English capture of the castle in 1283, when a surviving account mentions the construction of a camera, or lodging, at Dolwyddelan.

The siege that brought Dolwyddelan into English hands on 18 January 1283 did not last long, and it is possible the constable negotiated a surrender rather than fight it out. Edward I's forces refortified the castle at once, supplying it with a siege engine built at Betws-y-Coed and garrisoning it with troops issued white material from Ireland and white stockings as winter camouflage.

Between 1283 and 1292 the castle was repaired and a new bridge and water mill built in the valley below. English troops held Dolwyddelan until at least 1290, when Gruffudd ap Tudur, the Welsh constable appointed in 1284, was still in post — but the castle's military importance had already begun to fade, and little more is recorded of it for the next two centuries.

In 1488 Maredudd ab Ieuan, of a family from the neighbouring commote of Eifionydd, purchased the lease of Dolwyddelan and repaired it. According to the History of the Gwydir Family, compiled by his descendant Sir John Wynn between 1590 and 1614, Maredudd's own kin were notorious for their feuds, and he moved to Dolwyddelan both to extend his influence and to put distance between himself and his relatives. The country around the castle was itself unruly — it had shortly before been occupied by Hywel ab Ieuan ap Rhys, described as a "captain" and an "outlaw" — and although Maredudd built a new house nearby at Tai Penamnen, he may have valued the older castle as a more secure residence. He is credited by some with heightening the keep, though the historian Richard Avent considers this work more likely to have been Edward I's, and thinks Maredudd instead preferred the roomier chambers of the west tower.

Dolwyddelan passed into the Gwydir estate when Maredudd bought Gwydir Castle around 1515, and it remained part of that estate until the estate was sold in 1895.

By the eighteenth century Dolwyddelan was a ruin that drew the attention of artists and antiquarians: Samuel and Nathaniel Buck engraved it in 1742, and Moses Griffith painted it in 1788 for Thomas Pennant's A Tour in Wales. In 1816 the artist Edward Pugh suggested in Cambria Depicta that one of the towers had collapsed around 1810, and a rough sketch made in 1799, possibly by J. M. W. Turner, may also show the castle. By the mid-nineteenth century the keep itself was breached, with a large V-shaped gap torn from its northern wall.

Between 1848 and 1850 the keep was restored and partly rebuilt by Peter Drummond-Burrell, 22nd Baron Willoughby de Eresby, a distant descendant of Maredudd ab Ieuan, whose work raised the keep to its present height and added its battlements. The castle passed into state guardianship in 1930 and is now managed by Cadw; it was designated a grade I listed building in 1997.