We were going to Conwy and visit the Castle (£4.70/Person) and Plas Mawr (£5.10/Person) and Conwy Suspension Bridge


CONWY

At Conwy one of die most magnificent medieval castles ever built towers over one of the world's most complete medieval walled towns. Designated a World Heritage Site, the whole site is in a remarkable state of preservation. Within the walls, the old town is a delight with its tangle of streets and varied shops, pubs and restaurants. A tunnel opened in 1991 carries the A55 under the Conwy estuary and has provided some relief from the heavy traffic that once clogged the town — until then all traffic had to pass through narrow arches in the town walls.

Conwy Castle is situated on a rock that overlooks the River Conwy and its estuary, and commands wonderful views of die whole area. Begun in 1283, the Castle's construction was largely finished by die autumn of 1287 and, compared with other of Edward's castles, is of a relatively simple design, relying on its position rather than anything else to provide a defence against attack. The town was walled at the same time and, today, the walls still encircle the vast majority of Conwy, stretching for three quarters of a mile and including 21 towers and three gateways. The castle was also built to be a suitable royal residence. It was used twice by Edward I: once on his way to Caernarfon where his son, the first English Prince of Waleswas born, and again in 1294, when trying to put down the rebellion of Madoc ap Llewelyn. In 1399Richard II stayed at the Castle before being lured out and ambushed by the Earl of Northumberland's men on behalf of Henry Bolingbroke, the Duke of Lancaster, who later became Henry IV. Conwy was also given the attention of Owain Glyndwr during his rebellion, his men burning it to the ground.
As with other castles further east, Conwy was embroiled in the Civil War. A Conwy man, John Williams, became Archbishop of Yorkand, as a Royalist, sought refuge in his home town. Repairing the crumbling fortifications at his own expense, Archbishop Williams finally changed sides after shabby treatment by Royalist leaders and helped the Parliamentary forces lay siege to die town and castle, which eventually fell to them in late 1646.
The town developed within the shadows of its now defunct fortress and slate and coal, extracted from the surrounding area, were shipped up and down the coast from Conwy. As Conwy's trade and links grew with the outside world, the town fathers approached Thomas Telford who planned a causeway and bridge in 1826. The elegant Suspension Bridge(National Trust) replaced the ferry that previously had been the only means of crossing the river so tose to its estuary. This suspension road bridge, its design sympathetic to its surroundings, was soon followed by the construction of railways and by the side of Telford's bridgestands the Robert Stephenson designed tubular rail bridge of 1846. Both builders breached the town walls in styles that complemented the town's architecture and the two structures are still admired today. At the entrance to the bridge the Toll House has been restored and furnished as it would have been a century ago.
Bridges, however, are not the only architectural gems Conwy has to offer. Plas Mawr, an Elizabethan town house on the High Street, is one of the bestpreserved buildings from that period in Britain. Built for die influential merchant Robert Wynn between 1576 and 1585 the house has an interesting stone facade and more than 50 windows. Plas Mawr (the name means Great Hall) is particularly noted for its fine and elaborate plasterwork, seen to striking effect in die glorious decorated ceilings and friezes and in the superb overmantel in die hall. The authentic period atmosphere is further enhanced by furnishings based on an inventory of the contents in 1665. The house came into the possession of the Mostyn family during the 18th century and in 1991 was given by Lord Mostyn to the nation.
Close by is Aberconwy House(National Trust), a delightful medieval merchant's home that dates from the 14th century and is the oldest dated town house in Wales. The rooms have been decorated and furnished to reflect various periods in the house's history and the property is the only medieval house to have survived six turbulent centuries of the town's history.
Occupying part of die site of a 12th century Cistercian Abbeythat was moved to Maenan by Edward 1, is St Mary's Church. This abbey church became the parish church of the borough created by Edward and some interesting features still remain from that time though there have been many additions over the centuries.
It is not surprising that the town and the surrounding area have strong links with the sea and Conwy, like many seaside towns, has a traditional mermaid story. Washed ashore by a violent storm in Conwy Bay, a mermaid begged the local fishermen who found her to carry her back to the sea. The fishermen refused and, before she died, the mermaid cursed the people of the town, swearing that they would always be poor. In the 5th century, Conwy suffered a fish famine and many said that the curse was fulfilled.
St Brigid is connected to another fish famine story. Walking by the riverside carrying some rushes, she threw the rushes upon the watet. A few days later the rushes had turned into fish and, ever since, they have been known as sparlings or, in Welsh, brwyniaid — both meaning rush-like. On the quays de die fishermen still land their catches and, from here, pleasure boat trips can also be taken. Nearby, in between terraced housing, can be found what is claimed to be Britain's Smallest House; measuring 10 feet by 6 feet. It seems that its last tenant was a fisherman who was 6 feet 3 inches tall and, presumably, also a contortionist.


Conwy Castle

A History of Conwy Castle

Before the Castle


On the surface, the origins of Conwy are very simple.The castle was established on a new site in the spring of 1283, as part of a ring
of new English fortresses encircling the Welsh heartl and of Snowdonia in Gwynedd. Its construction can be attributed directly to the wishe ; of the king of England, Edward 1, newly victor ous in his second campaign to subdue the prince of Wales,Llywelyn ap Gruffudd(d. 1282). Although these statements are true enough, the conflict that led to Edward's conquest of Wales had begun long before his accession, arising out of a'Iong-standing dispute between the Plantagenet kings of England,
John (1199-1216) and Henry III (1216-72), and the princes of Gwynedd, notably Llywelyn ab lorverth (d. 1240).The area in which the new castle came to be built had already played an important part in these events.
Llywelyn ab lorwerth, also known as Llywelyn Fawr — 'the Great' — had come to enjoy considerable power over much of Wales. Although related to John through his marriage to the king's illegitimate daughter, Joan, relations with the English monarch were at best strained and at worst broke out into open warfare.Yet ultimately neither John nor his successor, Henry III, cha lenged the prince of Gwynedd successfully. Llywelyn maintained a castle at Degannwy (first established by the Normans in the eleventh century), set on two rockt' outcrops on the eastern bank of the river Conwy.Traces of masonry and earthworks can still be seen there today. After Llywelyn's death in 1240, Henry III was quick to exploit dissent between his sons, Gruffudd (d. 1244), who was illegitimate, and Dafydd (d. 1246), who had been proclaimed sole heir.With Gruffudd imprisoned in Criccieth Castle,Dafydd sought to strengthen his own position. But when Henry III invaded north Wales in 1241 and supported Gruffudd's cause, Dafydd was forced to surrender his prisoner to captivity in England, from which he never returned. During this episode, Degannwy Castle was severely damaged on Dafydd's orders before it could be captured by the English. In 1245, Henry III again mounted an invasion to force Dafydd's submission, during which the Cistercian abbey at Aberconwy was pillaged. Dafydd died in 1246 and in the aftermath of the conflict Henry III rebuilt Degannwy Castle as one of the most powerful royal strongholds in Wales. A town, with its own charter, was also established below the castle — a forerunner of what was to happen on the opposite bank of the river.The fortunes of the Welsh were at a low ebb, but with the emergence of a powerful new prince of Gwynedd, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd,

grandson of Llywelyn ab lorwerth, Degannwy was again under threat. Determined to repel the English, the Welsh eventually starved the garrison at Degannwy into surrender in 1263 and an Llywelyn's orders the castle was finally destroyed. Four years later, Henry IH officially recognized Llywelyn as prince of Wales.After the accession of Edward 1 in 1272, relations with Llywelyn soon turned acrimonious again.The Welsh prince's refusal to do homage to the English king culminated in the war of 1276-77, in which Edward's victory was rapid
if ultimately inconclusive. Faced with concerted land attacks from Chester, Montgomery and Carmarthen and against Anglesey by ship, Llywelyn was forced to agree a peace settlement with Edward l's emissaries at Aberconwy Abbeyin November 1277. Besides accepting a huge fine, he conceded the lands east of the river Conwy to the English, and was left only with Snowdonia and Anglesey. Edward I sealed his success
with a campaign of castle building at Builth, Aberystwyth, Rhuddlan and Flint.

The War of 1282-83

Edward's second campaign, of 1282-83, proved more decisive. Resentment at the imposition of English law in Welsh matters and the high-
handed behaviour of royal officials led to outbreaks of violence in the spring of 1282, notably a surprise attack against the English garrison at Hawarden Castle by Llywelyn's treacherous younger brother, Dafydd ap Gruffudd (d. 1283). Faced with the difficult choice of fealty to the English Crown or loyalty to his brother and his people, Llywelyn sided with Dafydd, a move that led to national revolt.To this, Edward I's response was as determined as before and, even more than in the war of 1277, the king employed an overwhelming force, with an estimated 700 or 800 cavalry and over 8,000 foot soldiers in his army at any one time. In the autumn of 1282, English progress was slow and suffered numerous setbacks, but in December they won a major

success when Llywelyn was killed in a skirmish near Builth.The capture of Aberconwy came in the spring of 1283, made possible by thesubmission of the Welsh garrison of Dolwyddelan Castleby 15 January, which gave the English control of the Conwy valley.This allowed the royal party to move along the coast to Aberconwyon the western bank of the river, where Edward 1 established himself on 13 March. For the time being, this was to be his command centre for military operations against Dafydd, still at large in Snowdonia. Surviving accounts show that from these earliest days, Edward planned the construction of a new castle and town to be built as a single operation.The new town was to take its narre from the abbey ofAberconwy; the castle, however, was known as Conwy from the outset.
Edward stayed at Aberconwy until 9 May, probably occupying one of the buildings formerly belonging to Llywelyn, close to the Cistercian abbey in which Llywelyn ab lorwerth and his sons were buried.The abbey itself was pressed into service, mostly as a temporary place of secure storage for the royal wardrobe , while more permanent buildings were being prepared to the south. Clearly, the decision to build a new castle on the high rock facing the river was taken almost immediately: as Iittle as three or four days after Edward's arrival, woodcutters, diggers and tools were being sought to excavate the rock-cut ditch around the castle. However, as early as May,an account also mentioned 'a stockade to enclose the town of Aberconwy', the first explicit reference to an urban settlement in the vicinityThe other significant changeconceived and discussed in these first weeks was the removal of the monks to a new site at Maenan, 8 miles (13 km) up the Conwy valley on the eastern bank of the river. By September, the General Chapter of the Cistercian order had granted consent for this move, and the king's master mason, James of St George, was sent to Maenan to arrange the transfer of the site to the monks.The new abbey was apparently ready for occupation within a year.
During the summer of 1283, Edward gained a major symbolic victory at Aberconwy when a group of Welshmen presented him with the Croes Naid,an important relic of the True Cross,which had long been held by the princes of Wales.This preceded the king's effective triumph an 22 June 1283 when the fugitive Prince Dafydd was captured. He was later condemned to be drawn, hanged, disembowelled and quartered, with his head displayed beside Llywelyn's anthe battlements of the Tower of London.

In the Statute of Wales, issued at Rhuddlan an 19 March 1284, the north Wales territories conquered in the war of 1282-83 were divided into three new counties:Anglesey, Merioneth and Caernarfon. Each was to be administered by a Sheriff, under the authority of the justiciar
of north Wales, effectively the king's chief minister in the region. He was to be based in Caernarfon, where a new castle and town were likewise under construction. However, a preliminary draft suggests that this was not Edward's original wish.When works an the new castle and town began, the intention had been that Aberconwy should itself be the administrative centre of a new county.

The Construction of the Castle

The Progress of the building work an the castle and town walls is comparatively well documented in contemporary royal accounts, though several gaps in the records remain.The records moreover identify by name many of the key individualsinvolved in the building project, notably Sir John de Bonvillars (d. 1287), later constable of Harlech Castle, who held overall authority for the works, and James of St George (d. about 1308), mason and engineer, sometimes described as 'master of the king's works in Wales'. Such entries attest to a significant presence in the administration and labour force, often in very senior roles, of foreigners recruited by Edward 1 from the territories of his kinsman, Count Philip of Savoy (d. 1285) — now parts of modern France, Italy and Switzerland. Also of Savoyard origin were Otto de Grandson (d. 1328), Edward l's most trusted friend and later justiciar of north Wales, William de Cicon (d.I310/11), who in October 1284 was appointed the first constable of Conwy Castle, and the master mason, John Francis. Other important figures mentioned in the accounts were English, including the carpenter, Henry of Oxford, and Richard of Chester,'the Engineer', cited in connection with both landscaping and building works.
Taken together, the accounts and the surviving masonry show that the buildings were raised at astonishing speed using labour drawn from almost every part of England. During late 1283 and 1284, the towers and curtain walls of

the castle were raised as a matter of priority to establish a defensible outer shell and by November 1284, £5,800 had been spent, a massive sum equivalent to perhaps £15—£18 million today. Only a month previously, Edward had appointed the first constable, with orders
to retain a garrison of thirty men. By the autumn of the following year, the curtain walls were clearly standing to their full height. Only when they were thus advanced did work begin on the buildings within the castle itself, including the hall and chambers for the king and queen. During 1285, the stone defences of the town were also under way, starting with the most vulnerable landward sections along the northern and western sides. In 1286, as the works to the castle were coming to an end, a second section of the town wall was also nearing completion.The wall running along the southern flank, containing a gate to the Gyffin watermill, was finished and connected to the first work at the south-west corner of the town by the end of September.
Unfortunately, no detailed documentation survives for late 1286 or 1287, but these years must have witnessed the effective completion of the works, with the construction of the eastern town wall along the bank of the river Conwy.The total cost of the castle and town walls amounted to around £15,000, equivalent perhaps to £45 million today.
Edward I is known to have stayed only once at his completed castle, and then in less than

ideal circumstances. In December 1294 and January 1295, while attempting to quash the rebellion of Madog ap Llywelyn (d. 1295) a distant relative of the Gwynedd princes Edward found himself cut off from the mass of his forces by floods and was forced to spend Christmas in Conwy Castle.The chronicler,Walter of Guisborough, describes a compellingly miserable if slightly implausible — scene, with
only a single barrel of wine left for the whole garrison.'They were saving this for the king, but he refused it, saying "In hardship, everything must be held in common, all of us must have exactly the same. As God an high watches over us all, 1 am the start and cause of all this, and 1 should do no better than you." Immediately afterward, Almighty God came to their aid: the floods abated, the whole army crossed to the king, and all of them now put the Welsh to flight.' On 2 February 1295, it was to Conwy that the newly elected archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Winchelsey (d. 1313), came through stormy weather to seek the king's confirmation of that office after his consecration by the pope; the castle was clearly deemed suitable for such an important meeting. Likewise in April and May 1301, the future Edward II ( 1307-27) stayed in Conwy, rather than at his birthplace, the still-unfinished castle at Caernarfon, to receive homage as prince of Wales.

The Fourteenth Century

During the reign of Edward II, the fortunes of Conwy Castle went into a steep decline. By the time of a survey in 1321, Conwy, like other royal castles in north and south Wales, was defective in many regards.The timbers and lead roofs of its buildings were giving particular concern, which experience would show to be a perennial shortcoming, but potentially even morealarming was the state of its armoury. Most items were in poor condition: only ten out of thirty crossbows were usable, and all of the twenty-one bows listed were without bowstrings. Most of the stores of grain, wine and the contents of the larder were also rotten.
In the early 1330s, it was reported that none of the king's castles in north Wales would be habitable if Edward III (1327-77) should go there. Although some repairs did take place, little improvement was recorded in a second survey of August 1343. In this year, the royal clerk Sir William of Embleton, was commissioned to arrange the transfer of royal possessions in Wales to Edward, prince of Wales, later known as the Black Prince(d. 1376). Once again, Conwy Castle contained quantities of rotting and useless ammunition, made for weapons either missing or unserviceable, together with rusted mal coats and odd piecesof decaying plate armour.The great hall and its service buildings, two drawbridges, the granary, a stable and a total of eighteen rooms withinsix towers were 'weak and ruinous', and a 'tower outside the poltern of the said castle, an which the security of the castle greatly depends' had been left unfinished.The implication is that the English were lucky that Conwy (like the other castles in north Wales) was unchallenged during this period: it could not have been defended for long.
Under the Black Prince, some attempts were made to bring the castle's buildings back to an acceptable condition.The prince's chamberlain of north Wales, Sir John of Weston, ordered repairs in 1346-47, especially to the great hall range in the outer ward, which were carried out by the prince's mason, Henry of Snelston. Entries in the Black Prince's register refer to the arches made of sandstone brought from Chester by boat, of which only one survives in the great hall range: these were evidently needed toreplace the failing timber roof structure of the original thirteenth-century building.Though the documents only mention the hall, this repair programme must have encompassed or been extended to the royal apartments in the inner ward, where the remains of similar arches can also be seen.
The survival of documents from the late fourteenth century is poor; nevertheless, there are hints that by the 1390s the castle had been

allowed to lapse into decay again, with 'various defects' being present. Despite the defects, more than once during August 1399, necessity led Richard II (1377-99) and courtiers loyal to him to seek refuge at Conwy from the forces of Henry Bolingbroke,the exiled duke of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV ( 1399-1413). The chronicler, Jean Creton, an eyewitness to events in the royal party, later described several scenes of the increasingly harried Richard in the castle, most vividly an embassy to the king from the aged earl of Northumberland, Bolingbroke's loyal supporter. Almost certainly in the chapel in the inner ward, Northumberland took an oath in the king's presence, swearing on the consecrated Host that he and Bolingbroke meant no harm to the king. Creton concluded 'alas, his blood must have run cold at it, for he knew well to the contrary', and two days later, having tricked him into leaving the castle, Northumberland handed the king to his enemies in whose captivity he was later to die at Pontefract Castle.' The Rebellion of 1401

If the events at Conwy were calamitous for Richard II, the first years of his successor, Henry IV, saw disaster for the castle and the town.
In September 1400, the first seeds of rebellion were sown when Owain Glyn Dwr was proclaimed prince of Wales. Ostensibly caused by a boundary dispute, the rebellion was based on long-held grievances against English rule and the desire for an independent Welsh principality. After five days of insurgency a firm and rapid response by the English king appeared to have nipped the revolt in the bud. But although
mang Welshmen were pardoned, a series of statutes and decrees issued against the Welsh in March 1401 led to further unrest.Then, in an apparently isolated and daring incident on Good Friday (1 April) 1401, when the garrison of Conwy was at prayer, two of the unpardoned rebels and cousins of Glyn Dwr, Gwilym and Rhys ap Tudur, took the castle 'through the guile of a carpenter claiming to be about his usual job, who killed the two watchmen'.

The brothers and their adherents held the castle against the English for around three months, but eventually negotiated its surrender having at last secured their pardons, partly at the expense of some of their own comrades. The delay in reaching a settlement had been caused by disagreement among the English about what terms to allow, largely because the Welsh rebels had sacked the town.The townspeople of Conwy (still overwhelmingly with English names) later petitioned the prince of Wales, the future Henry V ( 1413-22), for compensation making two particularly eloquent, if suspiciously extravagant, claims:
'Item, the said rebels completely burnt down all the houses in the town of Conwy together with the bridges, gates, exchequer and the dwellings of the justiciar and chamberlain there, causing damages to our lord prince and the burgesses of the said town at £5,000:

'Item, the same rebels took all the records then in the exchequer of our lord prince there and the said lord's account rolls, the hundred and court rolls of the sheriff, witness papers and parcels of bills for the repairs of Conwy Castle, with various other indentures and muniments, a damage to our lord prince of £10,000:
The loss of the records, though grievous to the historian, is most unlikely to have cost twice as much as the burning of the town and its buildings. The Welsh rebels' capture of Conwy, though shortlived, proved a rallying cry to their compatriots
to join a revived widespread insurgency under Glyn DWr'sleadership during the next few years.
The garrison of the castle was reinforced during the most unsettled years of the War of the Roses(1455-85), between the houses of Lancaster and York; otherwise little is recorded about its fortunes.


The Tudors and Stuarts

For much of the fifteenth century and the first years of the sixteenth, detailed information about the castle is lacking. However, in the 1520s and 30s during the reign of the second Tudor king, HenryVIII (1509-47), the castle and town walls were substantially repaired.The accounts make it clear that the castle was then used as an armament store and prison for petty felons and debtors. However, payments for repair and redecoration of the former royal apartments in the inner ward and the 'Prince's Hall' in the outer ward suggest that some kind of residential or administrative use was planned. Perhaps Henry intended that a future prince of Wales should stay here, or his illegitimate son, theduke of Richmond (d.1536), or, more likely, the Council of the Marches, which visited Conwy in 1541.
Despite the efforts spent in maintaining the castle at this time, Conwy lay far from the centre of political power, and with monarchs of Welsh descent an the throne, the need for the huge castles of north Wales became less and less apparent. lndeed, in 1586, the antiquarian and traveller,William Camden (d. 1623), recorded that with its castle, walls and beautiful setting, Conwy 'rnight deserve the narre of a small city, rather than a town, but that it is but thinly inhabited:This notwithstanding, the town remained a desirable location for local families of wealth and standing, as exemplified by Robert Wynn (d. 1598), who built the fine townhouse of Plas Mawr in the 1570s and
80s. In the early seventeenth century, Sir John Wynn(d. 1627) could still characterize the town dwellers of the district as the lawiers of Caernarvon, the marchants of Bewmares and the gentry of Conway'.
Conwy Castle finally passed out of royal ownership in 1627, two years after the accession of Charles 1(1625-49). Edward, first Baron Conway (d. 1631), Secretary of State to the king, purchased the castle for £100 and an 26 June
1627 adopted the title Viscount Conway of Conway Castle. A detailed survey taken in that year shows that this purchase was in large part symbolic; the castle was very near to ruin.The surveyors reported that building after building in the castle was either collapsing or missing completely, and even where lead roofs had survived, the wooden floors were generally unsound. After Lord Conway's death in 1631, his son, Edward, second Lord Conway (d. 1655), under the impression that the defects could be repaired without enormous charge if they were sonn dealt with, entertained some hopes of putting the castle in better order. However, this assessment proved to be optimistic. In the event, it would take a large outlay of funds to make the castle habitable, a task that fell not to him, but to a native son of Conwy, John Williams, archbishop ofYork (d. 1650).

Archbishop John Williams and the Civil War

Williams returned to his birthplace in 1642, aged 60, a year after his enthronement as archbishop, and resided in a large house in Chapel Street where, until the building's demolition in 1950, a fireplace bore the date 1642 and the monogram 'IY' (Johannes York). As a royalist,Williams was determined to defend the castle and the area for Charles I against the forces of parliament, organizing a local militia and procuring supplies by sea from Ireland. In 1643, the king wrote to the archbishop:'you having begun at your own
charge to put the same into repair, we do heartily desire you to go an in that work, assuring you that whatsoever moneys you shall lay out upon the fortification of the said castle shall be repay'd unto you:The king also promised that no other officer would be set overWilliams until his debts had been repaid. For this reason, the archbishop was gravely affronted when, in January 1645, Sir John Owen (d. 1666) was appointed governor of Conwy. Owen's high-handed manner instantly brought the two into conflict, coming to a head an 9 May, when he and his soldiers broke into the castle and, despite the archbishop's protests, confiscated the stores, including chattels left there for safe keeping by local sympathizers.

Disenchanted with his fellow royalists,Williams now turned to the parliamentarians, who had previously mocked the spectacle of an armoured archbishop in their pamphlets. In August 1646, it was with information from Williams that the parliamentarian commander, Major General Thomas Mytton (d. 1656), attacked Conwy.The town was soon taken, but the castle held out until November, even after Charles 1 had permitted its garrison to surrender Conwy was one of the last three castles in the country to be taken.

Slighting and Dismantling

Although hostilities had ceased, it was decided that Conwy Castle should remain operational, and it was essential that damage inflicted in the siege be repaired by the parliamentarian governor, Colonel John Carter.The castle was still potentially useful as an emplacement for artillery, and as a place of security for prisoners. However, this resolution was short lived. In 1655, the Council of State ordered that Conwy should be 'slighted', or made indefensible, a fate that befell many other fortresses. lt seems most likely that the enormous hole in the masonry of the Bakehouse Tower was made at this time; later tradition suggested, probably unjustly, that this damage resulted from pilfering of stone by the local inhabitants.
The final ad in the reduction of Conwy Castle to ruin came in the summer of I 665.The third Lord Conway (d. 1683), to whom the castle was returned after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, could find no use for it. Determined to realize as much of his asset as possible, he sent his agent,William Milward, to salvage the castle's ironwork and the lead from the roofs. Milward wrote several times to his employer about the frustratingly slow progress of the works. He found great difficulty in recruiting experienced labourers, particularly for the dangerous business of removing lead from the roofs, whose rotten timber beams had never properly been maintained, even by Archbishop Williams and Colonel Carter. Eventually, he sought the help

of a man from 'Blewmarris (Beaumaris) that hath taken downe one or two castels alredye.'Those workmen Milward did find were subjected to threats of retribution for damaging what was still seen as a royal castle.The leading local inhabitants were doubtless equally offended by Milward calling the area 'a beggarly cuntrye', and on at least one occasion they threatened him with pistols. Milward complained that in addition to harassment of his labourers, pilfering of materials was widespread; he dealt with this by ordering that torches were to be burned at night inside the castle to Show any would-be raiders that the site was manned. But in spite of all these setbacks, the works went on and within months, the castle's buildings were completely unroofed. Compared with many other castles, the fabric
of Conwy had escaped relatively unharmed. Nevertheless, it was inescapable that its history as a habitable site had come to an end.

Artists and Antiquarians

The ruined castle now began to exercise a fascination for travellers and artists. Antiquarians and topographers such as
Francis Grose(d. 1791 and Thomas Pennant (d. 1798) wrote detailed and informative descriptions of visits to the castle. Some of the buildings had already received imaginative names such as 'Twr y Brenin' (the King's Tower) or 'Queen Elinor'sToilet' (the chapel in the inner ward). Celebrated artists such as Paul Sandby(d. 1809), Moses Griffith (d. 1819), Julius Caesar Ibbetson(d. 1817),Thomas Girtin (d. 1802) and J. M.W.Turner (d. 1851) recorded the appearance of the castle and town as they then were.
Several of their works are all the more evocative today because many of the most

prized vistas of the castle have changed since the 1820s, with the coming of new transport routes to Conwy, particularly the bridging of the river immediately east of the castle.The first of these was Thomas Telford's suspension bridge of 1826, carrying the main Chester to Bangor road across the river to run through the town. At the same time, an additional gate was driven through Tower 10 of the medieval town walls for the road to leave the town and head westwards. From 1848, Robert Stephenson's tubular bridge brought the Chester and Holyhead railway below the south wall of the castle, into the town through a new arch in thetown wall and out again via a tunnel underneath Tower 11. Since 1958, a third bridge has stood beside them carrying the modern road into the town from the direction of Llandudno.All of these factors helped to bring more visitors to Conwy so that gradually tourism was placed an a firmer footing. In 1865, the castle passed from the possession of the Holland family — who had leased it from the marquesses of Hertford, descendants of the Conways — into the care of the mayor, bailiffs and burgesses of Conwy.Twenty years later, when the office of constable was once again united with that of the mayor (as Edward I had originally stipulated), the castle came completely under the control of the town corporation.Through the second half of the nineteenth century, some restoration works were carried out for the benefit of visitors. Parts of the town walls were restored at the expense of John Henry Parker(d. 1884),Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Bakehouse Tower in the castle was restored at the expense of the London and North Western Railway Company.The town corporation also carried out smaller works of conservation in the castle.

The Twentieth Century

In the second half of the twentieth century, the understanding, conservation and presentation of the castle and town walls at Conwy were revolutionized through the work of Arnold J. Taylor( 1

held in the Public Record Office (now the National Archives).These allowed him to trace the careers of many of the craftsmen who built the Welsh castles, notably James of St George, master of Edward l's works in Wales.
lt was Taylor who first realized that Master James, John Francis and several of their colleagues hailed from the county of Savoy (now parts of France, Italy and Switzerland). Here, castles and urban defences such as Chillon, Saillon and Yverdon still attest to their expertise in castle building before Edward I recruited them in the late 1270s. Having explored the monuments and archives of Savoy, Taylor further argued that the castles of Wales incorporated 'Savoyard' features of design and construction, such as the forms and dimensions of windows, arches, battlements and fireplaces, and the use of ramped scaffolding during building.This combination of detailed and wide-ranging documentary
work with dose examination of the monuments set a new standard in research of this kind that has rarely been equalled since.Taylor's work on Conwy and the other Edwardian castles of Wales still forms the core of current knowledge and exercises a marked influence on present research.
Taylor and his colleagues were equally anxious to improve the visual impact of the town wallsand successfully negotiated the removal of various unsightly modern buildings, in particular those that obscured the wall along the north-west side from Tower 5 to Tower 13, which can now be seento impressive effect.The walls themselves were conserved and long stretches of the wall-walk once again opened to the public, a scheme extended in recent years with a new section from the Upper Gate to Tower 17 opened in 2006. Moreover,in 1980, it wasTaylor's vigorous opposition to a planned new road crossing of the river Conwy beside the castle that was largely responsible for the alternative scheme of a road tunnel beneath the river, which now bypasses the town centre.In 1986 the medieval fortifications in their beautiful natural setting received due international recognition when they were designated part of the World Heritage Site of 'The Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd.' Conwy Castle and town walls are now cared for by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh Assembly Government.

A Tour of Conwy Castle


The Exterior of the Castle

For sheer visual impact, even in its ruined state, Conwy Castle has few rivals among the medieval fortresses of Europe. Among the most impressive views of the castle is that seen from the top of the watchtower (Tower 13) on the town walls. From here, it appears as a dense cluster of battlemented towers standing out against the background of the river Conwy. But for many, it is the view from across the river Conwy that defies comparison, with the castle set against the mountains of Snowdonia, ancient heartland ofWelsh princes . lt is hard not to believe that those who first planned and built the castle were driven to create something visually magnificent as well as militarily strong.

The form of the castle has neuer been hidden from an onlooker outside its lofty walls. From most angles, especially from the north and south, it is easy to appreciate that Conwy Castle is roughly rectangular in plan, with a rank of four towers spaced regularly along each long side. The south wall contains a pronounced outwards bow, no doubt the result of the builders following the contours of the rockt' outcrop on which the castle was built. Four of the towers those nearest the river — bear small round turrets, a feature absent elsewhere in the castle. They were built in this way because they overlook the inner ward of the castle, where the royal apartments were located.While there would be a good military reason for providing watchtowers from which sentries could guard this most sensitive part of the castle, it seems just as likely that the turrets were designed to allow the royal standard to be flown when the king or the prince of Wales was in residence at Conwy.

All around the castle's exterior, there are indications of the uses to which the rooms inside were put. Many of the openings are narrow slits
loops which were originally protected by iron bars that made the rooms secure, but very dark [I].The settings for these bars can still
be seen in the surrounding sandstone. Other windows indicate something more comfortable. All of the towers contain at least one and usually several large rectangular windows, which

originally had stone mullions (vertical bars) dividing them into two parts, or lights [2].These windows, invariably with stone window seats, helped make the rooms light and airy, and provided pleasant alcoves for their occupants to sit in and talk, or for clerks to work in daylight.
The outlets for latrines are another reminder of the practicalities of daily life; they can be seen in the curtain walls beside most of the towers. Those on the north side facing the town and the river Conwy were set low, immediately above the natura) rock.These chutes were potential weak points in the castle's defences, places where a particularly determined intruder could climb into the castle. For this reason
they were protected by masonry covers: one remains in place at the foot of the north-west tower [3]. On the south side, the outlets are designed differently, as stone projections at high level, corbelled out from the wall with their seats overlooking a sheer drop to the rocks
of the Gyffin far below.

Other small details are also best seen from outside the castle.The round towers in particular show clear evidence of the way in which the castle was built, with diagonal lines of small square holes running upwards in a spiral
pattern [4].These 'putlog holes' indicate where the horiZontal timber beams of the builders' scaffolding (the putlogs) were set in the stonework, creating ramps by which the labourers could haul their materials to the wall-top.This type of scaffolding was most unusual in England and Wales, and its appearance at Edward l'sWelsh castles, including Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris, has been interpreted
as a legacy of foreign craftsmen in the labour force. Certainly, similar ramped putlog holes can be seen on numerous buildings in Savoy, the homeland of Edward l's master of works, James of St George, and several of his most important colleagues. Some of the best examples can be found at the castles of Chillon, Saillon, Saxon and La Bätiaz (Martigny), all in modern Switzerland.
Savoyard influence has also been cited to explain another detail at Conwy, notably on the

south-west tower. Like the fortification at San Giorio, now in Italy, the Conwy battlements were decorated with three finials on each upstanding section or merlon [5].These spikes of rough stonework, were not limited to the towers; a few traces can also be seen on sections of the curtain wall, though the battlements here are generally less well preserved.The towers of the castle (but not
the intervening wall-walks) were also equipped with arrowloops in the centre of each merlon, alternating between two levels: this enabled crossbowmen on the parapet to command both the near and middle distance around the castle [6].
Several different interpretations have been proposed for the lines of square holes that appear below the battlements of the towers and wall-walks, as well as on the town walls [7].The simplest suggestion is that they were drain outlets, very necessary in the castle, although on the steeper sections of the town walls such drains would have been superfluous. Another idea, previously favoured by scholars, is that they contained the horizontal beams for wooden fighting platforms, sometimes called brattices or hourds, projecting externally from the walltops. A third more picturesque interpretation, suggested by building accounts for some of Edward l's other castles, is that the holes were for logs, supporting round shields (targes) painted with the royal arms.This is inspired by a biblical image from the Song of Songs (chapter 4, verse 4) in theOld Testament. Although the idea of decorating the exterior of a castle may seem unacceptably frivolous to the modern mind, it was entirely characteristic of thirteenthand fourteenth-century castle builders to temper practical military considerations with thoughts of aesthetics and symbolism.
The same concern for appearances (and biblical imagery) also lies behind the most startling feature of the medieval castle: its walls were originally white. Evidence for this white covering (a lime render) can be seen in many places around the castle, notably at the castle's entrance (the west barbican gate and north-west tower), and also inside the castle, particularly at the eastern end of the outer ward. Although functional as a waterproofing agent, this type of decoration, known an numerous contemporary castles and most famously the White Tower of the Tower of London, would have completely altered the appearance of Conwy.Were we to imagine the castle with gleaming white walls, heraldic banners, painted window shutters and shields hanging from the battlements, the present gaunt and intimidating exterior would turn into something recognizable from an illuminated medieval manuscript.

The Outer Gate and West Barbican ( 1) - ( 2 )

The modern bridge across the road from the visitor centre leads to the path that winds up the slope to the outermost gate of the castle. The medieval approach from the town wasmuch more direct.A steep ramped causeway ran up from the present Castle Street to a dry ditch in front of the castle's outer gate . Only the last few feet of this masonry ramp still survive.The gap between the ramp and the gate was spanned by a pivoting wooden drawbridge, the axle for which lay slightly below the present decking in the gateway.The modern path passec under the site of the drawbridge, turns to approach the gate and leads through a rough opening broken through the side wall of the projecting gateway.
The arch of the medieval outer gate was secured with a portcullis, the slots for which can still be seen to either side of the opening.The outer

gate seems to have been open to the sky and the mechanism for the portcullis may have been contained in a small hut above the arch, reached by stone stairs to either side of the entrance passage. The entrance facade was also ornamented with two small turrets, large enough for a sentry apiece, but not capable of serious defence.
The path continues upwards, past the remains of a doorway that closed the inner end of the gate-passage, into a narrow enclosure or barbican, under the shadow of the two huge towers at the western end of the castle.The barbican was an ideal place in which an attacker could be held at bay between the outer gate and the entrance to the castle proper Even in peacetime, however, a visitor to the castle could not fail to be intimidated by the scale of the defences. Most striking was the line of 'murder holes', or machicolations, projecting beyond the parapet of the main curtain wall between the two western towers. Supported on elaborate multi-tiered stone corbels, these allowed soldiers on the wall-walk above to drop stones or other projectiles onto anyone attacking the main gate below.The Conwy machicolations are thought to be the earliest surviving examples of such a feature in stone anywhere in Britain, and are certainly among the most ostentatious.The castle's main entrance through the west wall was itself strongly protected, with two wooden bars across the opening, then a portcullis and finally a pair of timber gates opening inward, secured by drawbars.
The barbican offers impressive views westward, across the rock-cut ditch and along the town wall, with the scenic Gyffin valley beyond: the three small turrets at regular intervals in its wall would have made ideal lookout posts.

The Outer Ward ( 3 )

This part of the tour explores the buildings in the courtyard and three of the four towers, which contain reconstructed spiral stairs. Each building and tower is described individually, and you may wish to return to the courtyard before moving an to the next building.
The outer ward is the larger of the two wards in the castle and the more accessible from the town.Though now an open
courtyard, mostly laid out as a lawn, this was a much narrower space in the Middle Ages flanked by large buildings, several of which have since been lost. Despite the slightly cramped area, the outer ward should be imagined as a hive of activity, often busy with the castle's officers, soldiers, servants and craftsmen, as well as the townspeople of Aberconwy, for whom the castle was their centre of administration. In contrast, the inner ward at the far end of the castle was intended as a more private residence for the king, the queen and the most important members of the royal household.The division of the wards at Conwy closely resembles the layout intended for Caernarfon Castle, though it was never completed there. At Conwy, however, the buildings were finished as planned and their configuration is clearer than at any medieval castle in Wales or England.

The Main Gate ( 4 )

The two towers at the western end of the castle now stand apart from each other, but, like numerous other castles of the period, theywere originally linked to form a large gatehouse. A missing builc ling, running between the towers, was still standir though in ruinous conditionin 1627, when it was described as two upper storeys above a 'Iow dark roome' to either side of the gate-pas sage.The lost building, probably in stone at ground level and timber framed above with a lead-covered roof, contained porters' lodges at ground level, and guard rooms, with the mechanism to raise and lower the portcullis on the first floor immediately over the gate. An aditional entrance to this room was provided from the wall-walk above, with a stairway running down through the curtain wall to the room over the entrance passageway.
Close examination of the surviving structure indicates that t he two towers of the gatehouse were designed slightly differently. Although both had two storey s of chambers over basements, it is notable that the southern tower is better provided with freplaces and latrines.The designers of the castle almost certainly intended different functions for the two towers.

The North- West Tower ( 5 )

The north-west tower could be entered at ground level only by passing through the porters' lodge. Its basement was unheated and dimly lit by narrow slit windows (one of them later blocked); it was probably used for the castle's stores. On the two upper fioors, the tower contained same concessions to comfort — fireplaces and large two-light windows with stone seats - but it possessed only one latrine situated in a small room in the thickness of the curtain wall reached from the spiral stair.The latrine was approached through a small antechamber containing a blocked-upflue or vent in ts roof The two upper chambers contain traces of wall plaster.

The South-West Tower

In contrast, the south-west tower had its own entrance in a small courtyard, reached by passing through the main gate and climbing the steps an the right. lt may have been intended as the residence of an important figure, such as the constable of Conwy, who commanded and paid the castle's garrison. However, the courtyard that contained the tower's entrance was itself a busy thoroughfare, leading to a common latrine; likewise the latrine serving this tower's uppermost chamber could be entered from the main wall-walk, allowing little privacy. lt is
perhaps more likely that a section of the garrison used part or all of the south-west towerAs originally constituted in 1284, the garrison was to contain thirty soldiers, of whom fifteen had to be crossbowmen, together with a chaplain, blacksmith, carpenter, mason and an engineer to maintain the weapons.This was the same size as the complement at Harlech and ten men fewer than at Caernarfon and Castell y Bere.

The basement of the south-wert tower served as a bakehouse and contains a bread oven an its eastern side.This greater emphasis an domesticity can also be seen in the upper rooms in the tower: its fireplaces are larger than those in the corresponding tower to the north. The first-floor room was additionally provided with a small lobby within the thickness of the wall, leading to a latrine.This lobby, though rather dark, lay behind the flue of the bread oven and may have been agreeably warm.The room above was also provided with access to a latrine in a.stone-built hut at the level of the wall-walk.
Climbing to the top of the tower, two pieces of evidence for the form of the battlements and roof survive.Throughout the castle, there are signs that each merlon (the upstanding part of a battlement; the gap between two merlons is called a crenel or embrasure) was topped with three rough pinnacles. Most have lost one or more of them, but the best-preserved examples are to be seen an this tower.The wall-walk also contains an upstanding kerb with gutters running outwards.This is most likely to relate to the early roof structure of the tower, although it is not entirely clear what form the roof would have taken. A previous suggestion that the towers were capped with high conical roofs now seems unlikely; the roofs were probably low pitched so that to an onlooker the pinnacled merlons formed the skyline.

Chapel ( 7 ) and Great Hall ( 8 )

A range of stone buildings runs along the southern side of the outer ward. Built against the south curtain wall, its curved plan follows that of the outer wall.The main rooms in the range lay at the level of the courtyard, lit by rectangular windows in the south curtain and by three elaborate traceried windows facing the courtyard. Underneath this level, part of the rock was quarried away to create basements, accessible from the courtyard by a stair at the western end.The main entrance to the building,

formerly covered by a timber porch, lies towards its eastern end, up three steps.
This range was originally partitioned into two or more smaller spaces and included some of the most important rooms in the castle. A
document of 1343 mentions the 'king's great hall in the castle and a cellar under the said hall', and these were certainly among the rooms in this range. However, the space at the eastern end,to the left of the entrance from the courtyard, has been identified as one of the castle's two chapels.The chapel would have been flooded with light from two windows in the southwall, one of the three windows towards the courtyard, and a large and elaborate traceried window in the east wall.There was a stone altar below the east window, the bare of which is just discernible within the arched recess. A timber screen or partition would have divided the chapel from the rest of the range.

The central part of the range was the great hall.The great hall of a royal castle was used for banquets and ceremonies, and would also typically hast court hearings. Under the Charter of the town of Aberconwy, issued by Edward I in 1284, the constable of the castle was also mayor of the town and was authorized to imprison criminals in the castle 'in cases of life and limb'.
lt is no coincidence that the tower leading off the great hall contained the most secure rooms in the castle, ideal for imprisonment.
lt has also been suggested that there were two further partitions, dividing the remainder of the building into two more rooms.This is based an the presence of three large fireplaces, one in each of the side walls and one in the wall at the western end. lt is certainly unusual (though not unknown) for a medieval room to have containedthan one fireplace and the suggested arrangement is very plausible, but any evidence for the actual partitions has been lost through later changes to the roof structure of the building. Such a compartmented plan might help to make sense of a confusing reference in 1286 to 'building... a pantry next to the small hall in the great hall'.

This range also contains evidence for one of the most dramatic alterations made to Conwy Castle:the reconstruction of the roof in the late 1340s.The original roofs of Edward l's buildings were covered in lead and supported an timber arched braces.Traces of several of the corbels that supported the timber trusses can still be seen in the masonry. By 1321, these roofs were in poor condition; fourteen years later the state of the leadwork and rotten timbers had become critical.The solution adopted in 1346-47 by Henry of Snelston, mason to Edward, the Black Prince — who had recently been granted the castle with the principality of Wales — was to replace the timber roof structure with a series of eight stone arches spanning the range. Only one of these arches now survives intact, in the former chapel, but projecting stubs of masonry Show where the lost arches formerly sprang from the walls.The arches were dressed with Cheshire sandstone, shipped from the quarries to the castle. These reconstructed roofs survived, often in poor condition, until the seventeenth century, when the castle was finally reduced to ruin.

Prison Tower ( 9 )

On the south side of the great hall, almost opposite the entrance, is an unobtrusive doorway leading from a window reveal into the southernmost tower of the castle, known as the Prison Tower.The name is appropriate: although the two upper floors contained fairly comfortable rooms with fireplaces and windows fitted with stone window seats, the lower levels of the tower were more stark, designed with security in mind.
From the passage from the hall, a stair runs down to a doorway before turning sharp left to another doorway — the entrance to the ground-floor room.This room was different from the courtyard-level rooms in the other towers: its doorway was set some 4 feet (I.3m) above the floor level of the tower, difficult to reach without a ladder. Previous imaginative descriptions have evoked the disorientation of a prisoner thrown down unexpectedly into the darkness of the room.The door could have been sealed from outside by a wooden drawbar.

This room is firmly identified as the 'dettors chambre' in several accounts of the 1530s, when numerous repairs were carried out to improve the prison accommodation.The partial blocking of the 'gret wyndoo' at this level, still visible, is mentioned in these accounts, which also 'speak of repairs to the floor, hooks and hinges for the doors and a wooden bed frame for the prisoners.The inmates can have been
no worse than petty criminals.
Much more chilling, however, is the pit beneath this room, described in 1534 as 'the doungeon under the dettors towre'. More than one account speaks of the need to clean this room, which seems generally to have been filthy.The dungeon, 12 feet (3.Im) deep with sheer walls and only a tiny window high above the floor, has no door: prisoners must have been let down by rope through a trap door in the floor above. lt was perhaps this trap door that received a lock in 1534, making an already forbidding prison unbreakable.

Kitchen ( 10 ) and Kitchen Tower ( 11 )

On the north side of the outer ward, opposite the great hall range, stood a series of buildings now reduced to low stone footings at ground level.These structures, built against the northcurtain wall, are interpreted as service buildings. The 1343 survey of the castle included a
report an 'the kitchen, brewhouse and bakehouse under one roof', stating that this roof was already ruinous and would need £60 to repair it.This item, coming between similarly damning accounts of the king's great hall and the drawbridge connecting the outer and inner wards, almost certainly refers to these buildings. The household ordinances of Edward 1, written in 1279, only four years before the construction of Conwy Castle, stipulated that there should exist two kitchen organizations, one to serve the king himself and the other comprising 'the cooks of the kitchen of the household': the latter must have been based in one of these rooms. A more private kitchen was located in the royal apartments.
Little more is said about these buildings in the castle's accounts.The kitchen was evidently still standing in 1535-36, when Arthur Sclater was paid for covering its roof with 100 slates. In 1627, surveyors found that this roof (now lead covered) had collapsed and was lying an the ground. One room in the eastern part contained an old manger and had apparently been converted into a stable.The

positions of the walls dividing one building from the next can still be traced, but beyond this little can be seen today and it is not possible to see where hearths or bread ovens once stood, nor the trough that was ordered to be excavated in the 'hall's kitchen' in 1307-08.
The only ground-level door into the adjacent tower in the north curtain wall lay inside this range.The function of the tower must have been closely connected to that of the building, hence the narre, Kitchen Tower.This tower contains an unheated basement, perhaps a larder or some other storeroom, with two chambers above. Both of these upper rooms have large and well-preserved fireplaces. However, the spiral stair has not been restored, and these rooms are best seen from wall-walk level.


The Well ( 12 ) and Middle Gate ( 13 )

As the path leads downhill towards the far end of the outer ward, look out for several triangular stones in the pavement edge.These are coping stones, perhaps from a crenellated parapet to the great hall range.They were set here during restoration works in the second half of the twentieth century.
The path ends in one of the most complex areas of the castle, the division between the outer and inner wards. Because the inner ward contained the royal apartments, it could be sealed off from the outer courtyard and defended separately if necessary.

The natural rock was quarried away to create a dry ditch. lt was originally bounded to the west by the gables of the kitchen and great hall ranges, with a solid causeway between them crossingthe ditch. On the right-hand side of the causeway stood the castle's well. On the opposite side of the ditch rose the massive stone expanse of the cross-wall that separated and defined the two parts of the castle.This wall contains a single small door, now called the middle gate. lt was given additional protection by a small guardhouse or turret on the outer ward side, and could be completely secured by raising a drawbridge that ran parallel with the face of the cross wall to rest on the far end of the causeway, as shown in the reconstruction drawing.
The original layout is hard to visualize today because some features have disappeared, such as the drawbridge house and the drawbridge itself. Although in need of repair by the midfourteenth century, the wooden bridge was still a feature in the 1520s, when Dafydd ap Tudur Llwyd and his servant received 2s. 4d. for'makyng anewe brigge to entre into the ynder (inner) warde of the said castell'.This was to be the last replacement of the bridge, which evidently needed repairs almost at once. In 1532, labourers began to fill the gap with rubble so that the causeway led all the way to the middle gate.This is the arrangement that we see today.The sloping edge of the pit, however, is still visible in the masonry on the east face of the well.
The castle's well is 91 feet (27.7m) deep, and fed by a spring and water filtering through the rock from the ground surface above. In
the original design, the well rose incongruously from the bottom of the rock-cut ditch with freestanding masonry on two sides. In 1525,
an account includes slates for two pitches of a roof-covering over the well, one batch of which had not been delivered from Ogwen in
northern Snowdonia at the time of the account. In the generally critical survey of the castle in 1627, the well received the favourable comment 'water enough and singuler good'.

The Inner Ward ( 14 )

Beyond the causeway, the middle gate leads through the cross wall into the eastern part of the castle, the inner ward. lt was here that between 1284 and 1286, the master mason, James of St George, the master carpenter, Henry of Oxford, and the engineer, Richard of Chester, built a suite of apartments for Edward I and his queen, Eleanor of Castile(d. 1290).The inner ward was a private enclosure for the most important members of the royal household, and contained not only imposing chambers for royal residence and ceremony, but also rooms for the household officers and service rooms for the storage and preparation of food.
The royal apartments stood an the first floor around two sides of an open courtyard.The east range contained one large room; the south range was divided into two.Timber stairways originally rose from the courtyard to two upper doors: one beside the middle gate and the other directly facing it.
Behind the ranges stood three of the corner towers of the inner ward. Recent research has shown that these towers mostly contained service rooms, rather than chambers of the royal apartments.They were designed with ingenious passages and stairways by which servants and officials could enter the apartments unobtrusively to attend an the king and queen.The main exception to this is the north-east tower, the Chapel Tower, in which Master James built a beautiful chapel for the royal household, complementing the larger chapel adjoining the hall in the outer ward. On the ground floor of the ranges were more service rooms, including the king's kitchen and cellars.The fourth tower, the Stockhouse Tower, contained three storeys of

rooms and was the only tower not connected to the royal lodgings.There was also a timberframed structure built an stone footings an thenorth side of the courtyard, not directly accessible from the ranges: this may have been the 'granary', mentioned as needing repairs in 1343.
Beyond the inner ward, a postern led out into the royal garden in the east barbican. There was also a path down to a dock an the foreshore, enabling supplies (and visitors) to enter this part of the castle directly from a boat.
The surviving masonry and the thirteenthcentury works accounts show that the buildings in the inner ward were erected in several phases. Understandably, Master James was anxious to raise the castle's curtain walls and towers first, and the residential buildings were only begun in 1284/85 when these defences were well under way.Though it was always the intention that the towers should communicate with the apartments, the layout of the rooms had evidently not been fully designed, and there are several places where the later floors and cross walls sat awkwardly with earlier windows in the curtain wall.
Though parts of royal apartments from this period survive at other castles in Wales and England, including Caernarfon, Harlech, Leeds (Kent) and the Tower of London, the building at Conwy are by far the most complete. Despite being without roofs and floors, they are
otherwise little altered from their original design.
As well as their exceptional state of preservation, they are also well documented in most periods from their initial construction through to their decline and abandonment in the mid-seventeenth century.They provide a unique source of information for the changing modes of life in the English royal court.They show that from an original layout with two separate entrances, probably serving the chambers of Edward I and Queen Eleanor, the apartments were later converted into a single unit. Documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth century show that at this time it was entered only through the eastern side.The rooms became progressively more private as the visitor passed through them in a clockwise direction; in the sixteenth century they were known as 'hall/great chamber','outer chamber' and 'inner chamber', while in 1627, the terms were 'great chamber', 'presence chamber' and 'privy chamber'.
Lying far from the centre of court activity in the south-east of England, the royal apartments at Conwy were rarely, used for their intended purpose.The 1284/85 accounts mention 'the king's and queen's chambers', but Eleanor of Castile died in 1290, having spent several years in Gascony, and can only have visited Conwy as a building site in 1284: certainly 'queen's chamber' is not mentioned in any later documents. Edward himself was forced to shelter here over Christmas 1294 and early 1295. In April and May 1301 , the future Edward II stayed at Conwy to receive homage as prince of Wales. Finally, an eyewitness account of the events of August 1399, leading up to the deposition of Richard II, describes and depicts several tense scenes in these apartments while the king was in residence.These are the only known occasions when the apartments actually housed the king and his court.

The Royal Apartments

The tour will describe the various parts of the royal apartments together with the ground-floor and tower rooms that served them.The main rooms can most easily be seen from the ground floor, but the passages and stairs, which gave access to these rooms from the towers, mostly remain open.The stairs also lead to the wallwalks and the tops of the towers, from where the whole complex can be seen at a glance.

King's Great Chamber ( 15 )

The largest room in the inner ward was the king's great chamber lt occupied the first floor of the east range and was originally entered by a roofed timber stair, probably the 'oriel in the middle of the castle' built in 1286 by Master Henry of Oxford. Here, the monarch would receive visitors, work and occasionally dine in private away from the other occupants of thecastle.This room can be seen from ground level by passing through the arch directly opposite the middle gate and turning left.The term 'great chamber' was used in documents ofthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and may well have been its original name, though occasionally, as in Henry VIII's reign, the room was also confusingly known as a hall.The great chamber contains a large fireplace in its west wall, beside an elaborate window with 'St Andrew's Cross' tracery.This window, larger than the others in the royal apartments, is an original feature of the 1280s.The design of its tracery is extraordinarily progressive for its time and was once thought to be an insertion of the 1340s. However, the 1340s did see animportant alteration in this room: the replacement of the original timber roof structure with stone arches, similar to those inserted in the great hall range in the outer ward. In the great chamberand other parts of the royal apartments, the Springers for several of these arches can be

seen on one side only of the room; either they were never completed, or some of the evidence for their existence was removed during later restorations.Three large windows overlooked the garden in the barbican, with the river beyond.
The ground-floor room under the great chamber was described in 1627 as 'a large arched room used for a cellar'.Though provided with a fireplace, this room was originally used as a store, for which it was ideally situated, dose to the entrance from the dock and adjacent
to a private stair leading up to the first-floor apartments. At the north-east corner, the cellar also gave access to the ground floor of the Chapel Tower, a room that now contains an exhibition, but was originally another cellar.

Chapel ( 16 )

Leaving the cellar and turning left brings the visitor to the east gate-passage, from which stone stairs rise to either side within the thickness of the east curtain wall.That on the left runs northwards to the Chapel TowerThe stair passes a damaged opening on the left that led directly into the great chamber. Further up, where the passage becomes level, another stair on the right descends insidethe curved wall of the Chapel Tower to its cellar and a goods entrance, into which supplies could be hoisted from the path below.These two stairs, and a spiral stair to the upper levels of the tower, meet at the door into the chapel.The chapel is the most beautiful and atmospheric room in the castle, particularly since 1966, when the tower's roof and floors were recreated.The chapel served the apartments in the inner ward as a more private counterpart to that in the outer ward. During royal visits, the travelling clerics of the royal household would have officiated here, rather than the castle's own chaplain. lt remained in sporadic use at least until the sixteenth century; in 1533, Bishop Doffe was paid for 'halowyng the aulter in the castell', presumably because services had lapsed. In 1627, this was one of the few rooms in any of the towers into which one
could go safely, though later in the century it was

reduced to ruin. Antiquarian visitors thereafter interpreted the chapel either as part of the king's chamber, as the queen's chapel or as 'Queen Elinor'sToilet.The association of this tower with Eleanor of Castile, which remained into the twentieth century, has no historical basis.

The chapel is a circular room, illuminated by slit windows an the north and south sides and by three larger lancet windows in the vaulted eastern recess that formed the chancel, where the priest celebrated Mass.The chancel also contains weathered remains of decorative blind arcading around the lower walls in the form of seven trefoil-headed niches.The niches contained seats — sedilia — for the priests.The arcading formerly projected slightly into the body of the chapel and supported a wooden beam bearing a Crucifix, conceivably the 'image' bought for the chapel in 1286. Flanking the chancel were two smaller rooms. One probably served as a vestry, which was used to house the vestments; two locks were bought for its door in 1535.The other room would have been a sacristy, where the sacred vessels were stored in safety.
Following common practice in medieval royal palaces, the chapel communicated directly with the king's great chamber. Lying behind the chapel was also a small guardroom or waiting room, which contained a latrine for the great chamber. In 1627 this guardroom was used as
a buttery for dispensing wine. A narrow passage led from this room to the great chamber door.
Climbing up the spiral stair outside the chapel door, you reach one of the most interesting features to be found in any surviving medieval castle chapel complex. lt is a 'watching chamber' designed so that King Edward or Queen Eleanor could observe in private
services in the chapel below. Such arrangements prefigure similar private watching chambers, known as 'holy-day closets', attached to
domestic chapels in late medieval and Tudor houses and palaces. Similar rooms can be seen flanking the chapel at Beaumaris Castle. At Conwy, the watching chamber was even provided with its own latrine. Still higher, the room above the chapel contains a large fireplace and an impressive two-light window. lt is more domestic in character and may have served as accommodation for the chaplain.

The King's Tower ( 17 )

Returning down the main stair brings the visitor again to the east gate-passage. On its south side, another stone stair rises twelve steps through the curtain wall, mirroringthe stair to the chapel.This passage led into the King's Tower and the range of the royal apartments running along the south side of the courtyard.
Known since at least the nineteenth century as the King's Tower, it has often been claimed that it housed Edward l's inner chambers. More recent examination of the building, however, together with later repair accounts, suggests that this corner was a 'backstage' area with rooms for the most important officers of the household in the tower and a kitchen adjoining it at ground-floor level in the south range.

The rooms in the tower were linked to each other by a spiral stair and only communicated with the main apartments by narrow and dark passages.They are therefore more likely to have accommodated servants and household officers than the king or queen.The ground-floor room, adjacent to the kitchen, would have been ideal for the treasurer or comptroller who checked goods passing into and out of the kitchen. His room lay over a basement, which can only have been reached by ladder from inside the room itself, potentially a strongroom for money or valuables. The first-floor room would have suited another important official such as the steward, with a large two-light window overlooking the entrance from the dock,though like the ground-floor room, its fireplace was simpler in design than many in the castle. lt was served by a latrine, reached by a short passage and antechamber, in the south curtain wall. In contrast, the highest room in the tower was not heated and would have been most appropriate for the king's squires or pages.

King's Kitchen ( 18 )

Returning to the cross passage at the bottom of the tower, five steps lead down to the groundfloor chamber of the south range.This room is identified in the 1627 survey as the kitchen. lt had also served as such in the thirteenth century, when it was specifically the private kitchen for the king. lt is notable that the fireplace in its west wall was one of the largest in the castle, entirely suitable for preparing the king's food, while the door in the south wall to the left of the fireplace was built for clearing waste onto the rocks below.Also an the south wall, to the left of this door, two horizontal lines of shallow marks indicate where a wooden dresser and an upper shelf were fixed to the wall, perhaps in the 1530s when several repairs were carried out to the kitchen.

The King's Chamber ( 19 )


On the first floor over the kitchen lay a rectangular room interpreted as Edward l's own chamber. Here, the king would spend much of his time during the day and sleep at night.This room,with a fireplace and a latrine reached through the side of a window in the south curtain wall, could be entered both from the great chamber and from the queen's chamber to the west. By the sixteenth century, the Pattern of circulation around the apartment had changed, and thishad become the second room ('outer chamber') in a one-way sequence of increasingly private spaces, starting with the great chamber and ending in an 'inner chamber' to the west.This plan remained in 1627, when the room was known
as the 'Presence Chamber', the room in which the king's throne stood under a canopy of state, and where audiences would have been held.

Once again, this room contains Springers from the scheme of 1346-47 to insert stone arches to support the roof. In the south wall, scars in the wall plaster show the positions of the original timber trusses.The square sockets, also in the south wall, indicate the medieval floor level.The lower line of sockets probably represents an attempt to strengthen the floor after the original joist ends became rotten,
as mentioned in several documents of the sixteenth century.
The castle's designers provided additional discreet access from two floors in the King's Tower, by means of short stairs and narrow passages that emerge in the reveals of two windows in the curtain walls.This complicated design was necessary because the King's Tower contained four floors (unlike the Chapel Tower with three), none of which corresponded to the first-floor level in the main apartment. One passage rises into the south window of the king's chamber: from the kitchen door at ground level, it runs through a small waiting room and Aast the king's latrine (through a door which could be closed for privacy).The second passage descends through the east wall from the tower's first floor to the eastern window embrasure in the king's chamber. Entry would have involved an awkward climb down from the stone window seat. By these hidden passages, those in the tower could enter the main apartment and attend the monarch when required.

Queen's Chamber ( 20 )

Best viewed from the basement, entered from the courtyard, the final first-floor room in the suite is thought to be the chamber begun in 1284/85 for Queen Eleanor of Castile, but which she never saw completed. Like all the other main rooms, this was provided with a fireplace and latrine. lt also contained two large windows overlooking the courtyard, reglazed and fitted with iron bars in 1533, but retaining their thirteenth-century tracery. Eleanor of Castile was an important figure in her own right with a household often numbering 200 people (in addition to over 500 accompanying the king), and in most royal manors and castles, she was allotted a range of buildings of her own.The queen's apartment at Conwy was necessarily more compact than many.
Returning to the courtyard, the visitor can see the original entrance to the queen's chamber: a door at first-floor level in the south-western corner, remodelled, like the window beside it, around 1910.This door, originally reached by an external timber stair, led into a narrow corridor running south to the Bakehouse Tower, now with two doors both turning left into the queen's chamber. However, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents show that the plan and function of this corner changed dramatically over time.This first-floor entrance from the courtyard was abandoned, making the queen's chamber the most private area at the end of the sequence of rooms: thus in HenryVIII's reign, it was known as the 'inner chamber' and in 1627 as the 'privy chamber'.The 1627 survey mentions '2 hansome withdrawinge roomes' at the end of the privy chamber (what was the queen's chamber).The present layout of this first-floor corridor, with two doors leading into it from the privy chamber, suggests that one door served each room.The exact plan of the withdrawing rooms is unclear: either the narrow corridor was partitioned in two, or one of the rooms lay on the first floor of the Bakehouse Tower, which occupies the south-west corner of the inner ward.

Bakehouse Tower ( 21 )

The Bakehouse Tower has Bone by this name since at least the sixteenth century, on account of the large bread oven built into the wall at ground level. Descriptions of the castle alter its abandonment also sometimes call it the 'Broken Tower', because of the enormous fissure in its masonry.This was probably made deliberately in 1655, when the castle was rendered indefensible on the orders of the Council of State, though some later travellers blamed the damage on local people who had made the tower unstable through robbing of the stone. lt was repaired with new stone in 1887 at the expense of the London and North Western Railway Company; the extentof the repair can be seen clearly in the tower's interior.Above the bakehouse lay two levels of residential chambers, perhaps originally to house the ladies and officers of the queen.

Stockhouse Tower ( 22 )

At the north-west corner of the inner ward stands the Stockhouse Tower, perhaps named alter the infamous 'stocks', or foot restraints, that are mentioned in 1519, along with manacles and new locks, for the detention and punishment of criminals at Conwy.The stockhouse was evidently the lowest room, with two residential floors above. Despite this later evidence for imprisonment, the tower was probably built like others for storage and accommodation for the castle's garrison.

East Barbican ( 23 ) and Water Gate ( 24 )

Beyond the courtyard, through the east gate-passage, lay the east barbican, an enclosure overlooking the Conwy estuary. From the beginning of the fourteenth century onwards, documents mention a garden here, under the large windows of the great chamber and king's chamber. In the late fourteenth century, an account mentions vines or trailing plants, while in an early seventeenth-century drawing, it is shown as a formal garden of geometrically planned parterres (ornamental flower beds). The three small round turrets of the barbican wall were described as roofed in an account of 1301: they were probably timber backed.The garden is overlooked, like the west barbican, by elaborate machicolations corbelled out from the wall.These were highly visible from outside the castle, a sign to anyone an the river that the castle was heavily defended.
On the north side, steps ran down beside the Chapel Tower via a gate to the foreshore. At the lower level, a path ran around to the eastern side, where a dock evidently projected into the water, but Thomas Telford's suspension bridge of 1826, Robert Stephenson's tubular railway bridge of 1848 and the 1958 road bridge have now hidden it completely. On occasion, the monarch or an important visitor could use this water gate to reach the royal apartments without passing through the outer ward of the castle or the town.This arrangement would also allow stores to be brought directly to the castle by boat.

Wall-Walks and Battlements

Six of the towers in both wards of the castle contain restored spiral stairs, giving access to the tower-tops and to the wall-walks, which form a complete circuit of the castle, including the top of the cross wall that separates the two wards. In the original design, gates were fitted at this level against the Stockhouse and Bakehouse Towers, a measure presumably intended not so much for security as for the privacy of the royal apartments.The wall-walk parapets also bear distinct horizontal grooves slightly above the present walkway.These show the position of lead flashing that covered the wall-walks and carried water away from the masonryThese lead roofs were stripped out, like the coverings of the castle's main buildings, when, at the behest of Lord Conway, the castle was finally unroofed and left as a ruin in 1665.