Haverfordwest Castle

Haverfordwest is believed to have been a Danish settlement before the Norman conquest of West Wales in 1093–94, and Pembrokeshire records point to an Iron Age hill fort on the castle's site, although nothing physical survives at the present location to bear that out. In 1108 the Flemish settled in the area to protect the main Norman stronghold at Pembroke Castle from Welsh raiders coming down from the north.

Who raised the castle is disputed. The great majority of accounts make it a Norman stone keep and bailey fortress founded in 1120 by the Englishman Gilbert de Clare, Marcher Earl of Pembroke, with a few placing the work in 1110 or 1113; Pembrokeshire records insist instead that it was built by Tancred the Fleming, husband of Gwladus, the aunt of Gerald of Wales, which would make the original town and castle Flemish rather than Norman. Either way, it was Gilbert de Clare who appointed Tancred's son, Richard fitz-Tancred, as castellan. The castle is believed to have been attacked for the first time in 1135–36, unsuccessfully, by Gruffydd ap Rhys, Prince of Deheubarth.

Henry II gave the castle its first royal visit in 1173, passing the town on his way back from a trip to Ireland. In 1188 Gerald of Wales recorded visiting it with Archbishop Baldwin during the progress around Wales preaching the Third Crusade that Richard I would lead to the Holy Land, and he records that part of the castle was already in use as a prison. By 1200 many of the original timber buildings had been replaced in stone, including a rectangular north-eastern tower serving as the keep. Robert fitz-Richard, son of Richard fitz-Tancred, had by then established Haverfordwest Priory, to which he retired in 1210; in that year King John passed Haverford on his way to sail for Ireland and crush a rebellion by the Normans there.

In 1213 John persuaded William Marshal, who had inherited the surrounding Marcher Earldom of Pembroke in right of his wife, to garrison the castle in return for an exorbitant sum of money, though Marshal was already extremely wealthy. Through the 1210s Marshal replaced most of the original timber walls, towers and gatehouse with stone, and by 1220 little of the first castle was left; all that survives today of the 1120 establishment is the large square keep in the north-east corner of the inner ward. The scale of that rebuilding was likely a response to the persistent attacks of the period. In 1217 Llywelyn Fawr, Prince of Wales, threatened Marshal, and in 1220 he burned the town, though he failed to take the castle.

The town was rebuilt greater than before and grew quickly through the 13th century as a commercial centre, helped by its position at the centre of Pembrokeshire and by its naval links. In 1248 Humphrey II de Bohun acquired the castle, and in 1257 he resisted an attack by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Gwynedd, remembered as Llywelyn the Last. In 1265, during the Second Barons' War, the castle was taken by William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, but in 1274 royalty intervened and granted it back to the de Bohun family, to the next generation in Humphrey III de Bohun.

Edward I and Queen Eleanor of Castile visited the castle for the first time in 1284, during a royal pilgrimage to St Davids, and Eleanor was said to be in love with it. Four years later she borrowed what was a huge sum in those times to buy the castle from the de Bohun family, and loaned £407 to rebuild it fully and complete its transition into stone. The reconstruction was on a massive scale and was finished in 1290, shortly before her death, and the castle was long known as the Queen's Castle at Haverford. Much of what remains, the extensive curtain wall included, dates from that work. The castle stayed in royal possession after Eleanor died and was granted out to a succession of wealthy tenants.

It passed through many owners in the 14th century; Edward, the Black Prince, held it from 1359 to 1367, and from 1381 to 1385 it belonged to the Crown, which paid for restoration works. Those works told in 1405, when the castle was strong enough to fend off an attack during Owain Glyndŵr's war of Welsh independence. The town walls on the high ground near the castle also did much to protect it from invaders, though nothing of them remains.

By the 16th century the castle had become dilapidated, and it was re-fortified during the English Civil War. In 1644 it is documented as occupied by the Royalists, who abandoned it after mistaking the noise of cows for a Parliamentary army. It was recaptured and held for the King for a year, and finally surrendered after the nearby Battle of Colby Moor. In July 1648 Oliver Cromwell sent letters to the castle ordering it to be destroyed and threatening to imprison the townsfolk unless it was demolished; the letters were unearthed only in 1986 and are on display in the town museum.

The derelict medieval castle was converted into a prison in 1779. A new prison building was erected within the castle grounds in 1820, mainly within the inner bailey, with capacity for 86 prisoners, and in 1878 the remaining inmates were transferred to the gaol at Carmarthen. The building afterwards served as a police station and as council offices, and now houses the town museum, where a cell door, leg irons and the original lock from the castle gate are among the objects displayed. An extensive archaeological excavation was carried out at the castle in January 2008, and in 2010 there were plans to put the prison building on the market, with new council offices to be built in the Prendergast area of Haverfordwest. The castle is operated by the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and is open to the public; it is protected as a grade I listed building, as a scheduled monument since February 1986, and as a National Monument of Wales.