Wales · Partial ruin
Old Beaupre Castle
Hen Gastell y Bewpyr
Old Beaupre Castle is a medieval fortified manor house near Cowbridge in Wales, now a Grade I listed ruin managed by Cadw. The surviving fabric includes a three-storey gatehouse and an ornate three-tiered ashlar Renaissance porch, with large roofless ranges arranged around a grassed middle court. The site combines 14th-century hall elements with extensive 16th-century remodelling.
Its prime
1600
Today
Partial ruin
As it stood in 1600
What Old Beaupre Castle looked like in its prime.
A long, narrow complex of rough grey local stone ranges arranged around three courts, entered from the south through a three-storey gatehouse and a projecting pale ashlar Renaissance porch. The porch rises in three stacked tiers with flanked columns (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian), strapwork decoration and heraldic panels above a Tudor-arched doorway. Surrounding curtain walls are massive and buttressed; inner ranges are largely roofless with large mullioned windows, exposed fireplaces and grassy middle courts.
Its story
The story of Old Beaupre Castle.
Old Beaupre is a fortified manor house outside Cowbridge, its 14th-century hall elements extensively remodelled in the 16th century. From about 1300 until the 18th century it was owned by the Basset family, whose heraldry is set on panels of the ornate three-tiered ashlar Renaissance porch, its columns rising in ascending order from Doric to Ionic to Corinthian.
Little work was carried out after the 16th-century alterations, and the Bassets' fortunes declined after the English Civil War. At the beginning of the 18th century the inheritance passed to the Jones family, who preferred the smaller, more convenient mansion of New Beaupre; Old Beaupre was sold in 1709, by then in disrepair with only part still habitable. The Grade I listed ruin, a three-storey gatehouse and roofless ranges around a grassed middle court, is now in the care of Cadw and can be visited free all year round.
Step inside
11 places to explore in 1600.
The record describes 11 distinct spots at Old Beaupre Castle, including 3 interiors: passage through the tudor arch into the middle court, fourteenth-century great hall (roofless), west range living apartments and stair. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Old Beaupre Castle.
The families that held Old Beaupre Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Basset
Owned by the Basset family from c.1300 until the early 18th century.
Nearby
