Rhuddlan Castle

Long before Edward I's masons arrived, Rhuddlan was already a contested seat of power. The town began as a Saxon burgh founded by Edward the Elder, and from it the Lords of Rhuddlan governed the Perfeddwlad — the lands of north-east Wales — on behalf of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, the last ruler of all Wales. When the Normans pushed into Gwynedd in the late eleventh century, the site changed hands repeatedly between the Princes of Gwynedd and the Earls of Chester; Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, driven out at one point by Harold Godwinson, fought his way back to retake the town. In 1086 Robert of Rhuddlan, a supporter of William I, raised a Norman motte at Twthill, just south of where the present castle stands; its remains survive there still.

Edward I chose Rhuddlan for a new castle in 1277. That July, at the outbreak of his war against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, he left Chester to establish an advance base at Flint, where work began on Flint Castle, then pushed his army along the coast with naval support from twenty-five ships of the Cinque Ports fleet. By August he had moved his forces on to Rhuddlan, supplying them, as was his custom, by river. Three months later the town passed to the English Crown under the Treaty of Aberconwy.

Work on the castle began at once under Master Bertram, a Gascon engineer, before responsibility passed to the Savoyard master mason James of St George, who remained in charge until building work stopped in 1282. Rhuddlan was planned as a concentric castle with a distinctive 'diamond' layout: unlike Flint, Harlech or Beaumaris, its twin-tower gatehouses sit at the corners of the square baileys rather than along the sides. Construction accounts from the period show it was the major building project the English Crown had under way in the late 1270s. To keep the garrison supplied even under siege, the course of the River Clwyd was straightened and dredged so that ships could reach the castle along a man-made channel; a three-sided moat closed off the approaches by land, and further earthworks were raised in 1280–82.

Rhuddlan briefly served as a royal household as well as a fortress: Edward's eighth daughter, Elizabeth, is presumed to have been born there in 1282, the same year the castle was finished. That year the Welsh rose against Edward's settlement, and Rhuddlan itself was besieged, holding out until relieved by an English force led by the future Amadeus V, Count of Savoy — though the town below the walls was badly damaged in the fighting.

Two years later, in 1284, the Statute of Rhuddlan was signed at the castle following the defeat of Llywelyn the Last, who had attacked it without success. The statute ceded all the lands of the former Welsh princes to the English Crown, introduced English common law, and allowed Edward to appoint royal sheriffs, constables and bailiffs to collect taxes and enforce English law across Wales; the counties of north-west Wales were placed under the Justiciar of North Wales. Welsh law continued to be practised locally even so, and it was not until 1536, when the statute was repealed by the Laws in Wales Acts, that English common law became the exclusive legal system in the country.

The castle was attacked again during the Welsh rising of Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294 but was not taken, and it remained in English hands through the following century. Richard II broke his journey there in 1399, on his way to Flint, where his rival Henry IV would take him prisoner. The following year, forces of Owain Glyndŵr attacked Rhuddlan; the town was badly damaged again, but the castle held. By the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, with its military and administrative importance fading, the castle's condition had begun to deteriorate.

Rhuddlan was garrisoned by Royalist troops in the English Civil War and remained a stronghold for Charles I well after the Battle of Naseby, until it was taken by Parliamentary forces under Thomas Mytton following a siege in 1646. Two years later, Parliament had the castle partially demolished to prevent any further military use. By the time Thomas Pennant passed through in 1781 and recorded the names of its towers — 'Twr-y-Silod', the Grain Tower, and 'Twr-y-Brenin', the King's Tower — it was already largely ruined. Substantial masonry survives today, in the care of Cadw.