Rhuddlan Castle

Listen first to the river. The River Clwyd runs quietly below the castle walls, brown and slow, past reeds and muddy banks. The breeze carries the smell of wet grass and old stone. Above you, pale sandstone towers rise against the North Wales sky, their tops open to the weather. Some of the stone is warm in colour, almost pink in low sunlight. Others look grey and worn. Stand still for a moment and you will hear rooks, traffic on the bridge, and the wind moving through empty window openings.

This is Rhuddlan Castle, a few kilometres inland from the seaside town of Rhyl. Today it feels peaceful, almost gentle. But this ground was contested for centuries before a single one of these stones was laid. The Clwyd valley is one of the natural doors into North Wales. Whoever held a crossing here could control the coastal route between England and the Welsh heartlands. So kings and princes kept coming back to this spot... again and again.

The story goes back long before this castle. According to a well-known Welsh tradition, a great battle took place on the marshes near Rhuddlan in the late eighth century, fought between the Welsh and the forces of Offa, King of Mercia. Offa is the king remembered for the long earthwork called Offa's Dyke. A sad old Welsh air, often called the lament of Morfa Rhuddlan, is linked to that battle in popular memory. The details are uncertain. But the tune shows how deeply this place sits in Welsh memory.

In the eleventh century, Rhuddlan was an important seat for Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, one of the most powerful Welsh rulers of his age. He briefly united much of Wales under his rule. In 1063, the English earl Harold Godwinson attacked his court here. That is the same Harold who would die at the Battle of Hastings only three years later. So, before the Normans even arrived, this riverbank had already seen fire and war.

Now look a short way south along the river. You may see a grassy mound rising from the fields. That is Twthill, the remains of an earlier Norman castle. After the Norman Conquest, a lord known as Robert of Rhuddlan raised an earth and timber fortress there. It was a motte, an artificial hill with a wooden tower on top. Nothing of the timber survives. Only the shape of the earth remains, and it still holds the memory of that first foreign stronghold.

The stone castle in front of you came later. It was begun in 1277 by King Edward I of England, during his first war against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Prince of Wales. Edward was building a chain of fortresses across North Wales. Rhuddlan was one of the first. Its design is credited to Master James of Saint George, a master mason from Savoy, a region in the Alps. He would go on to shape Conwy, Harlech, Caernarfon and Beaumaris.

Here is the first surprise. To supply the castle by sea, Edward's workers did something astonishing. They straightened and deepened the River Clwyd over a distance of a few kilometres, cutting a new channel towards the coast. Hundreds of ditch diggers laboured for years. The aim was simple. Ships could now sail up from the sea and unload right beside the castle walls. Supplies and soldiers could arrive even if the land route was blocked. The calm river you hear today is, in part, a medieval engineering project.

Now look at the shape of the main walls. The inner ward is not a square. It is a diamond, with a tower at each of its four corners. Two of those corners carry twin-towered gatehouses, facing each other across the courtyard. The other two have single round towers. Around this inner core runs a lower outer wall, and beyond that, a wide dry moat. This is called a concentric design — rings of defence, one inside the other. An attacker who broke through the first wall would find himself trapped beneath a taller second one.

Walk towards the side facing the river and look for the remains of a riverside gate and a tower beside the water. This was the castle's link to its new channel. Boats could come close, and goods could move from deck to storeroom without leaving the protection of the walls. Try to picture the riverbank busy with timber, barrels, grain and stone. The quiet water here was once the castle's main road.

The second surprise is not about stone at all. In 1284, after Llywelyn's death and the end of Welsh independence, Edward issued a law known as the Statute of Rhuddlan. It took its name from this place. The statute set out how much of Wales would be governed from then on, including new counties organised on the English model. A building on Parliament Street in the town is traditionally linked to it, though historians debate exactly where the statute was drawn up. Either way, the name of this small town became tied to a turning point in Welsh history.

The castle did not stay quiet. In 1400, the Welsh leader Owain Glyndŵr rose against English rule, and his forces attacked Rhuddlan. The town around the castle suffered badly, but the castle itself held out. Two and a half centuries later, during the English Civil War, it was held for the king. Parliamentary forces captured it in the 1640s. Soon afterwards, the castle was deliberately damaged, or slighted, so it could never again be used as a fortress. Many of the broken edges you see today come from that decision.

Today the ruins are cared for by Cadw, the Welsh Government's historic environment service. Walk slowly through the inner ward. Look up at the open shells of the towers, where floors and roofs once stood. You can still see small holes in the walls where wooden beams were set. Notice the thickness of the walls at the window openings. Touch the stone if you like. It is rough, weathered, and cool even on a warm day.

Before you leave, step back to the edge of the moat and look at the castle as a whole. The diamond shape becomes clearer from a distance. The towers line up, then shift as you move. Then turn towards the river once more. The water still runs past, as it did when ships came up from the sea. The sounds of traffic and birdsong mix together. As you walk away, look back once more at those pale towers above the Clwyd. A king's ambition, a prince's defeat, and a valley's long memory are all still standing here, quietly, in the stone.