Wales · Still standing
Penhow Castle
Castell Pen-hŵ
Penhow Castle is a fortified manor house at Penhow, Newport, with origins in the early 12th century and extensive additions in subsequent centuries. Built of local Old Red Sandstone, it retains a rectangular west tower from the Seymour period and a two-storey 14th–15th-century hall range, with notable Restoration-period interiors and a group of agricultural outbuildings. The building is Grade II* listed and remains a private, inhabited house often claimed as the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Wales.
Its prime
1670
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1670
What Penhow Castle looked like in its prime.
Low, compact complex of Old Red Sandstone rubble buildings dominated by a rectangular west tower with a crenellated parapet and a two-storey hall range to its east. Warm brown-red rubble walls, steep stone-tiled gabled roofs and several tall square stone chimneys form a stepped roofline. Stone-mullioned windows punctuate the hall range; a large arched timber door is set into the base of the west tower. Ancillary barns and a stable range lie to the south-west; the site sits in pasture behind a low stone boundary wall. Complete and inhabited in 1670.
Its story
The story of Penhow Castle.
The manor of Penhow was held by Caradog ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwent, at the time of the Norman invasion of Wales, before being seized by the Seymour family. The oldest part of the castle, the west tower of local Old Red Sandstone, dates from the Seymours' time, and Penhow has been claimed as the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Wales.
The two-storey hall range followed in the 14th–15th centuries. In the 16th century the manor passed to the Somersets, and in 1674 it was purchased by the Lewis family of St Pierre; remodelling in the 17th and 18th centuries refashioned the castle as a comfortable country house with what Cadw calls "exceptionally fine Restoration period interiors".
Viscount Rhondda, industrialist and conservator of ancient buildings, bought the castle in 1914. Dilapidated by the mid-20th century, it was bought and restored by the film director Stephen Weeks, who opened it to the public while living there; sold in 2002, the Grade II* listed castle is once again a private home.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1670.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Penhow Castle, including 1 interior: restoration-period principal room. 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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Recreate Penhow Castle with AI to explore it.
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Clans who held Penhow Castle.
The families that held Penhow Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Seymour
Seized by the Seymour family after the Norman invasion; the west tower dates from their time.
Somerset
The manor passed to the Somersets in the 16th century.
Purchased by the Lewis family of St Pierre in 1674.
Nearby
