Ruperra Castle

Ruperra Castle, also known as Rhiwperra Castle and in Welsh as Castell Rhiw'r Perrai, was built in 1626 by Sir Thomas Morgan, steward to the Earl of Pembroke, at Lower Machen in what is now the county borough of Caerphilly. It was one of the first of the mock castles to be built in Wales.

In 1645, shortly after the Battle of Naseby, Charles I spent two nights at Ruperra. The royal coat of arms was added to the decoration of the south porch in consequence, and the public footpath from Rudry to the castle is still known as the King's Drive.

The castle was bought as his home by the wealthy John Morgan, known as "the merchant", for £12,400. He was unmarried, and on his death in 1715 Ruperra was consolidated into the Tredegar estates of the Morgan family. Fire destroyed the house in 1785; it was rebuilt, and thereafter — particularly in the 19th century — served as the home of the heir to the estate.

Godfrey Morgan, second son of the 1st Baron Tredegar, was born at Ruperra and went on to survive the Charge of the Light Brigade. During his tenure he undertook significant development, adding three new lodges and, in 1826, a now-listed iron bridge that carried a carriage way through Coed Craig Ruperra and across the Rhymney to Lower Machen Church, where the family and their servants attended Sunday services.

After the death in 1909 of the army officer turned politician Colonel Frederic Morgan, his eldest son Courtenay Morgan, 1st Viscount Tredegar, began a programme of refurbishment. The main house saw only minor adjustments; the larger works were a new stable block replacing the one destroyed by fire in 1895, a new reservoir and pump house in the deer park, and a power house fitted with duplicate steam-driven generators, dynamos and boilers. The 1840s brewhouse, laundry and dairy range was converted to house the estate's staff.

Courtenay succeeded to his uncle's estates in 1913 and took up residence at Tredegar House, which made his son Evan Morgan, later the second Viscount Tredegar, a potential occupier of Ruperra. A poet and noted eccentric with links to Aldous Huxley, Lord Alfred Douglas, Augustus John, Nancy Cunard and H. G. Wells, Evan preferred his London home and left Ruperra to deteriorate; having grown up there, he is said to have refused to sell it to William Randolph Hearst, whose lover, the actress Marion Davies, wanted a home in South Wales.

By 1935 the Morgan fortune was in decline. For all the money invested in the property, the family seat and main home remained Tredegar House, with Ruperra used as a weekend hunting lodge. The whole 3,000-acre estate was put up for sale, its contents either moved to Tredegar House or sold in a three-day auction.

Unstaffed and effectively abandoned, Ruperra was taken over by the British Army at the start of the Second World War, as many other large estate houses were, and in 1941, under military control, it was destroyed by another fire. It was left to deteriorate after the war. In 1956 John Morgan, the sixth and final Baron Tredegar, sold the castle together with its surrounding agricultural land to the Eagle Star Insurance Company during his liquidation of the Morgan estates.

Ashraf Barakat bought the castle in 1998 and tried to revive the sport of polo in Wales. A planning application to build nine residential flats within the building failed, following the discovery of roosting greater and lesser horseshoe bats on the premises; he then applied to demolish the building and put housing on the site, and permission was refused. In September 2010 he offered the castle for sale at £1.5m with 14 acres, and a further 16 acres optional; it sold in about July 2014.

Ruperra was listed Grade II* in May 1964 and scheduled as a monument in September 1976, and is also a National Monument of Wales. In 2022 Cadw placed the castle's gardens and park at Grade II on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales. It remains privately owned and its condition continues to deteriorate: in November 2023 inspectors found the building structurally unsound and in imminent danger of collapse. The Ruperra Castle Preservation Trust, a charity, is working towards its restoration.