Carew Castle

Listen for the water first. On a still morning, the tidal river beside Carew Castle barely moves. Wading birds pick through the mud. A breeze carries the smell of salt and wet grass up from the millpond. Then you look up, and the castle fills the sky. Pale grey limestone walls rise from a low ridge, and rows of empty stone windows look out over the water. It is a ruin, but a very large and very readable one.

Carew sits a few miles east of Pembroke, on a tidal creek that feeds into the wide waterway of Milford Haven. That position was the whole point. Boats could come almost to the walls at high tide. A defender could watch the river, the ford and the surrounding farmland at once. People saw the value of this spot long before any Norman arrived. Excavations here have found traces of much older defences, which suggests the ridge was fortified in prehistoric times.

The written story usually begins around the year 1100, with a Norman lord called Gerald of Windsor. Gerald was a royal officer in south-west Wales, and he married Nest, the daughter of the last independent ruler of the Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth. Nest is remembered as one of the most famous women of medieval Wales. Her life was full of abduction, rival husbands and political danger. Many of the great families of the later Welsh borderlands traced their descent from her.

Gerald's first castle here was probably built of earth and timber. The stone walls you see today came later, mostly in the thirteenth century. Look at the eastern side, the oldest-feeling part. The towers there are massive and rounded at the base, with sloping spurs of stone. These spurs made the walls harder to undermine and harder to batter. It is military architecture. It was built to frighten people as much as to protect them.

Now turn your attention to the far side, facing the river. Here the mood changes completely. Instead of arrow slits, you see tall windows divided by stone bars called mullions. This is the north range, an Elizabethan addition. It was designed for light, views and comfort, not for defence. Standing in front of it, you can see two different centuries side by side. One belongs to a fortress. The other belongs to a grand country house.

Between those two worlds came a man who made Carew famous in his own lifetime. Sir Rhys ap Thomas was a powerful Welsh landowner. He backed Henry Tudor when Henry landed in Pembrokeshire in 1485. Henry marched to Bosworth and won the crown as Henry the Seventh. Rhys rose with him. He was rewarded, knighted, and later made a member of the Order of the Garter, one of England's highest honours.

To celebrate that honour, Sir Rhys held a great tournament at Carew in 1507. It is often described as the last great medieval tournament held in Wales. Accounts speak of several days of jousting, feasting and display, with crowds of gentry in attendance. Try to picture this quiet meadow crowded with tents, horses and banners. Rhys also remodelled parts of the castle into finer living quarters, so the building itself was part of the show.

The next major figure is Sir John Perrot. Many people in his time believed he was an illegitimate son of Henry the Eighth, though that was rumour, not proof. Perrot became a leading official under Elizabeth the First and served as her deputy in Ireland. He began the elegant north range you saw earlier. But his fortunes collapsed. He was accused of treason, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and died there in the early 1590s. The grand new wing was never fully finished.

That is the first surprise most visitors miss. Those beautiful windows belong to a house that may never have been lived in as its owner intended. The second surprise is that the castle still has residents. Its old stonework shelters bats, and several species have been recorded here. On a summer evening, you may see small dark shapes leaving the walls at dusk. They are among the few creatures that still use the building every night.

Carew also has its folklore. Locals tell a tale about a later lord, Sir Roland Rhys, and a pet ape. According to the story, the ape attacked him during a fire one night, and both of them were killed. Some say the animal still haunts the castle. Nobody should treat this as recorded history. It is a ghost story, and it has been told around these walls for generations, especially to children.

The real damage came from war and from neglect. During the English Civil War in the seventeenth century, the castle changed hands and was partly slighted, which means it was deliberately damaged so that it could not be used again. Afterwards it was slowly abandoned. Weather and time removed roofs and floors. Today the castle is cared for by the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority. Their work keeps the ruin stable without turning it back into a new building.

Before you leave, walk out along the edge of the millpond. At the far end stands Carew Tidal Mill, one of very few restored tidal mills in Britain. Its mechanism worked like a simple machine. Sluice gates trapped the incoming tide in the pond, and the water then drove the wheels as it ran back out. Near the road you will also find the Carew Cross, a tall carved stone cross from the eleventh century. It is a memorial to a Welsh king, and it is older than any stone in the castle.

So stand still for a moment and look back across the water. On the left are the heavy medieval towers. On the right are the wide Elizabethan windows, open to the sky. Below them, the tide comes in or goes out, as it did when Gerald's boats arrived here more than nine hundred years ago. Listen again for the birds on the mud. When you walk away, look back once more. From the mill path, the whole castle sits on the water's surface.