Tretower Court

Tretower Court, Llys Tre-tŵr, grew out of the site of the castle beside it, and is a rare case of a castle giving way to that other medieval form, the fortified manor house; it is a rare survival too, having escaped destruction in war, partial damage or slighting, and wholesale redevelopment. The first work went up in the early years of the fourteenth century, while the castle site was still in use. The north range is the oldest part, its masonry, fireplaces, windows and projecting latrine tower pointing to a date perhaps as early as 1300. The building of that date had a central ground-floor hall open to its high roof, a solar and a private living room, and the hall probably served as the local court where fines and tithes were paid.

In the early fifteenth century, during Owain Glyndŵr's revolt against the new king Henry IV, the building stood under a very real threat from Welsh forces. Tretower Castle was listed as a defensible stronghold for the king in 1404 and, under Sir James Berkeley, held off an attack; that assault was presumably aimed at the castle, and the Court escaped serious damage. The same year an English force led by Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, fought a Welsh army of Glyndŵr's at the Battle of Mynydd Cwmdu nearby, came close to taking Glyndŵr himself, and took his banner.

The Welsh fell back down the valley of the Usk, then laid an ambush for the pursuing English and engaged them in a skirmish below Craig-y-Dorth hill near Mitchel Troy. The English army was chased to the walls of Monmouth, and by the Annals of Owain Glyn Dwr, "Here the more part of the English were slain and they were chased up to the town gate". Less than a decade later the Court was the meeting point from which the local contingent of Welsh archers left for service in France under Henry V, and contributed to the English victory at Agincourt.

In early times the castle was held by the Picard, or Pychard, family, who had gained extensive lands in Herefordshire for assisting William the Conqueror; members of the family were Sheriffs of Hereford and married into several great landed families. Sir William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, held the Court, the castle and the manor before about 1450, when he gave the property to his half-brother Sir Roger Vaughan. It stayed with successive generations of Vaughans for the whole of its heyday.

Vaughan became the richest commoner in Wales at the height of his career, and he set about at once refurbishing and developing the Court into one befitting a prosperous man, leaving broadly the building seen today. He modernised the north range by inserting a floor above the hall to make it two storeys, and added a new west range that doubled the accommodation. He was on the Yorkist side in the Wars of the Roses, fought at Mortimer's Cross in 1461 and afterwards led Owain Tudor to his execution at Hereford. He quelled a rising in Carmarthenshire in 1465 and was knighted soon after. In 1471 he pursued Jasper Tudor following the Battle of Tewkesbury; Tudor captured him instead, and he was beheaded at Chepstow Castle.

Sir Roger's son and heir, Sir Thomas Vaughan, carried the work on through the last quarter of the fifteenth century, adding the battlemented wall, the wall walks and the gatehouse that closed the courtyard. Further improvements came in 1630 under Charles Vaughan, sheriff of Brecknock in 1622 and again in 1636, who put in cellars, a new stair and an alternative entrance. The Court went to his son Edward, who died without issue, and the estate passed to Edward's sister, Charles's daughter Margaret of Maes-y-Gwartha, wife of a Thomas Morgan. It then ran through a few more generations with no further improvement, either to the fabric or to the fortunes of those living in it.

The property was sold in 1783, the Vaughans moving to another of their houses after a marriage, and the Court passed to a series of tenants. Rooms that had been residential were adapted as stores and barns and given over to animals, part of the house becoming a piggery. By the early years of the twentieth century it was in danger of collapse, the roof in particular, and what maintenance there had been was piecemeal, concealing the origin, age and value of the medieval structure.

In 1929 the Brecknock Society appealed successfully for the government to buy the building. It was saved and restored for the nation in the 1930s and is now in the care of Cadw, Welsh Historic Monuments, listed Grade I, a scheduled monument and a National Monument of Wales. The Court is open to the public, and holds events and interpretive re-enactments in season.