Picton Castle

This part of south-western Wales belonged to the Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth until the late eleventh century. After its king Rhys ap Tewdwr was killed at the Battle of Brecon in 1093, Norman forces took advantage of the lack of Welsh leadership and seized much of South Wales. After a failed Norman revolt in 1102 in favour of his brother Robert Curthose, Henry I reorganised the land around the Daugleddau estuary and Milford Haven as the single Marcher Lordship of Pembroke.

In 1108 catastrophic flooding struck the low-lying homeland of Henry's mother, Flanders, and many Flemings sought his help. He settled the refugees in the hinterland of the Pembroke lordship — Haverford west of the estuary, Dungleddy east of it — supplementing his garrison at Pembroke Castle with a compliant and grateful populace that far outnumbered the local Welsh. In Dungleddy the Flemings settled under a man named Wizo, who built and lived at Wiston Castle and granted estates out of his land to his followers. One such mesne lord was given Picton, three miles to the south; his name is not recorded.

That Fleming's castle may have stood on a mound a few hundred yards east of the present house. In any event the present building was in place by the end of the thirteenth century, and by then in the hands of the Wogan family, who also held Wiston. How Picton came to them is unclear: perhaps a failure to beget male heirs, perhaps the marriage of an heiress to one of the Wogans. Through a marriage, possibly the same one, the later Wogans also descended from Cadifor ap Collwyn, Lord of Dyfed in the time of Rhys ap Tewdwr and a male-line descendant of the earlier kings of Dyfed. Wiston seems to have been abandoned by the thirteenth century; the Wogans lived at Picton, and their heirs have lived there ever since.

Picton began as a motte castle and was reconstructed in stone by Sir John Wogan between 1295 and 1308. The design was unusual, with no courtyard inside, the main building instead protected by seven circular towers projecting from the wall. Two of them formed a gatehouse at the east end, its portcullised entrance leading straight into the lower part of the great hall. The narrow window slits of that build were replaced in about 1400 by large windows. In 1405 French troops supporting Owain Glyndŵr attacked and seized the castle.

The Wogan male line died out in the fifteenth century. Their heiress Katherine married Owen Dunn — Owain Dwnn — and their grandson Sir Henry Dwnn had only daughters, and the estate thus came to the Philipps family in the 1490s, when Sir Henry's daughter Jane married Sir Thomas ap Philipps of Cilsant. Sir John Philipps, who inherited the castle in the fifteenth century, remodelled the building and created a new entrance that lasted until the 1820s, when Thomas Rowlands designed its replacement.

In 1611 James I, wanting to pay for his army in Ireland, sold baronetcies; Sir John Philipps paid £1,095 for his hereditary title. Parliamentary forces seized the castle in 1645, during the English Civil War.

In June 1762 Cesar Picton, a black child presumably taken from Senegal, travelled with the Philipps family from Norbiton Place in Kingston upon Thames to Picton Castle. He did not return with them to England in October, but remained at the castle, presumably to be trained as a servant. He later chose his surname, possibly on the basis of that short residence.

The estate remained with the Philipps family until the death of Lord Milford in 1823, when it was inherited by his cousin Richard Grant, who assumed the surname Philipps and was created a baronet in 1828 and Baron Milford in 1847. His heir was his half-brother, the Reverend James Henry Alexander Philipps, formerly Gwyther, who took the surname and arms by royal licence. On his death the estate passed to his son-in-law Charles Edward Gregg Philipps, created a baronet, of Picton, in 1887.

The castle and gardens are now owned and managed by the Picton Castle Trust, a registered charity. The castle has been a Grade I listed building since June 1971 and is a National Monument of Wales; the walled garden is listed Grade II, and the gardens and park are designated Grade II* on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales. The garden of over forty acres opens every day and is a Royal Horticultural Society Partner Garden. The house holds the painting known as the 'Picton Renoir', featured in a July 2015 episode of the BBC's Fake or Fortune?