Caerphilly Castle

Listen first. Water laps softly against grey stone. Ducks paddle past the walls, and somewhere a gull calls over the town. Under your feet, the path is damp and gritty. Ahead, a great mass of towers rises straight out of the lakes, as if the castle grew from the water itself. This is Caerphilly Castle, and that water is not decoration. It was one of the main weapons the builders used.

The castle was begun in 1268 by Gilbert de Clare, a powerful Anglo-Norman lord. People often called him Red Gilbert, probably because of his red hair. He held large lands in south Wales, and he wanted to stop the Welsh prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd from moving south. Llywelyn was the most powerful Welsh ruler of his day. Caerphilly was Gilbert's answer to him — a fortress so strong that attackers would struggle even to reach it.

The rivalry was real and violent. In 1270, Llywelyn's forces attacked the building site and damaged the early works. Gilbert did not give up. He started again, and he built on an even greater scale. The castle you see now grew out of that contest between two ambitious men. For a few years, these hills sat on a tense frontier between Welsh and Anglo-Norman power.

Here is the first surprise. Caerphilly is one of the largest castles in Britain. It is often described as second in size only to Windsor Castle. Many visitors arrive expecting a ruin of modest size. Then they walk the full circuit and realise how much ground it covers. The stone walls, the earth dams, and the lakes together spread across a huge area, much wider than the central towers suggest.

The design is called concentric. That means one ring of walls stands inside another. Attackers who broke through the outer wall would find themselves trapped between two lines of defence. Defenders on the higher inner wall could shoot down over the outer wall at the same time. Caerphilly was one of the earliest great examples of this idea in Britain. Several of the famous castles in north Wales followed a similar plan a few years later.

Now look again at the water. The builders dammed the local streams to create broad artificial lakes around the castle. These lakes kept siege towers and battering rams away from the walls. They also made it very hard to dig tunnels underneath, because a tunnel would simply flood. The long dam walls on the eastern side were fortresses in their own right, with towers and gates. Water, earth and stone worked together as one system.

The second surprise is the tower that seems ready to fall. At the south-east corner of the inner ward, one great round tower tilts sharply outward. It is often said to lean further than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Locals tell a popular story that soldiers tried to blow it up with gunpowder during the English Civil War, in the seventeenth century. That tale is folklore. Many historians think ground subsidence may be the more likely cause. Either way, the tower has stood at that angle for a very long time.

In the early fourteenth century, the castle passed to Hugh Despenser the Younger. He was a close favourite of King Edward the Second, and he was widely hated by other nobles. Despenser spent heavily on the castle. He remodelled the Great Hall into a grand space for feasting and display. In 1326, Edward and Despenser fled into Wales as Queen Isabella's forces closed in. The castle was besieged. Despenser was captured and executed, and the king soon lost his throne.

After those dramatic years, the castle slowly lost its military purpose. Over the centuries, parts of it fell into ruin. Stone was taken away for other buildings, and the lakes drained and became marshy ground. For a long period, the great fortress was a quiet shell. Sheep and weeds took over spaces where knights and servants once crowded. The castle you see today owes much of its shape to a much later rescue.

That rescue came from the Marquesses of Bute, a wealthy family that owned the castle. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they paid for major repairs. The fourth Marquess carried out especially large works in the early twentieth century. Masons rebuilt walls and towers, and the lakes were later flooded again. In 1950, the castle passed into the care of the state. Today Cadw, the Welsh government's historic environment service, looks after it.

As you walk inside, look closely at the walls. In many places you can see a difference between older medieval stone and later repair work. Some sections are rough and weathered. Others are sharper and more even. This mix is part of the castle's honest story. It shows medieval builders, later ruin, and modern masons all working on the same site. The Great Hall, with its tall windows, gives a strong sense of how the rooms felt when they were full of people.

Step back outside the walls and look at the town around you. Caerphilly grew up beside its castle, and the two still sit very close. Shops, cafés and homes line the streets just across the water. The town also gave its name to Caerphilly cheese, a crumbly, mild white cheese. A cheese festival called the Big Cheese has been held here, often with the castle as its backdrop. Medieval stone and everyday Welsh life share the same view.

Before you leave, pause on one of the paths beside the lake. Watch the reflections of the towers move on the surface when the wind picks up. Notice the leaning tower again from a distance, and the long line of the eastern dam. Seven centuries ago, this water was meant to keep people out. Now it brings people in, to walk, to sit, and to look. Take one last look at the grey walls in the soft Welsh light as you walk away.