CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS AN ACCOUNT OF CAERPHILLY CASTLE.1

1. DESCRIPTION.

CAERPHILLY is by very much the most extensive castle in Wales, and is reputed to cover, with its outworks and earthworks, about thirty acres.

The castle owes its celebrity to its great extent, and to the peculiar manner in which one of its towers has been thrown out of the perpendicular, by the forces employed for its destruction. It possesses few associations with historical events. But one sovereign is certainly known to have visited it. It is not, like Kidwelly or Cardiff, the head of a feudal honour or lordship, nor is it surrounded by any franchise or barony. It has not even received the barren dignity of conferring a title of honour upon any of its numerous possessors. It has been celebrated by no bard, and even mentioned only by one.

Neither does Caerphilly possess many sources of intrinsic interest. It boasts not the architectural decorations of Caernarvon, the commanding position of Conway, or the picturesque beauty of Raglan. It is simply a ruin, of great extent, and possessing that sort of rugged sublimity which is inseparable from an assemblage of lofty walls and massive and partially overthrown towers, neither bosomed in woods, nor mantled, to any extent, with ivy.

Caerphilly stands upon that wide tract of debateable ground between England and Wales, which was so long contested by both nations under the title of "The Marches," and which, beneath the Normans, had its own customs and its governors, known as the LordsMarchers.

The castle, though in the Marches, is within the Welsh

1 A portion of the following Paper is taken from a Memoir upon Caerphilly, by the same author, published in the West of England Journal, in 1835-6.

border, being about a mile from the river Rhymny, the boundary between Monmouth and Glamorgan, and, since the reign of Henry VIII., between England and the Principality, in this direction.

The castle is placed in the midst of a valley, open on the east towards the Rhymny, and divided on the west from the valley of the Taff by the mountain ridge of Mynydd Mayo. North and north-west, at a greater distance, is the concave crest of Mynydd Eglwsilan, and on the south, the long and well-known elevation which separates the hill-country of Glamorgan from the plain, and is intersected by the ravines of the Taff, the Rhymny, and the Ebbwy. This ridge is locally known as the great Garth and Caerphilly mountains, and, on the road from the castle to the sea, is crowned by the ancient Celtic stronghold of Môr-graig.

Caerphilly stands therefore in a vast basin. The traveller who wishes to see it to advantage, should descend upon it soon after sunrise in autumn, from one of the surrounding heights, when the grey towers of the castle will be seen rising out of an immense sea of mist.

The whole basin is a part of the Glamorganshire coal field. The mineral has long been worked on Caerphilly mountain, where it appears on the surface, and the castle is chiefly constructed of the fissile sandstone of the neighbourhood, which appears to have been quarried from a large excavation by the road side, near ChapelMartin.

Along the base of the mountains, and extending some way up their skirts, here, as in all the vallies in the neighbourhood, lie vast deposits of gravel and sand, composed in part of the debris of the neighbouring rocks, but chiefly of rolled pebbles, supposed to have been brought down from the northern hills by diluvial agency.

I propose, in the following pages, first to describe the position and details of the castle, and afterwards to state its history, as far at least as it is known to me.

First, of the ground on which the castle stands :Near the centre of the basin already described is a

bed of gravel, of considerable extent and thickness, the surface of which has been deeply wrought, by some natural process, into a series of furrows and eminences.

A narrow tongue of slightly elevated ground, the termination of a low peninsula of gravel, projects eastwards, and, by its projection, divides a swampy flat of considerable breadth into two portions. These are contained within irregular gravel banks, similar to, though somewhat higher than, the central peninsula. The southern is shorter, and almost parallel to it; the northern is prolonged, and curves around its point, until it is separated from the southern only by an inconsiderable gorge. The swamp thus assumes something of the figure of a horse-shoe.

South of the peninsula, the Nant-y-Gledyr, a large rivulet, flows from the south-west, across the swamp, through the gorge, to join the Rhymny.

North-east of the peninsula a smaller spring, partly indeed fed by the Nant-y-Gledyr, flows across a part of the northern swamp; and, north of this again, another spring contributes to the same swamp. Naturally, these waters seem to have found their way, by a depression or gorge, to the north-eastward, into the Nant-y-Gledyr, outside of and below the upper gorge already mentioned. The tongue of land thus guarded was well suited for the purposes of defence, supposing the peninsula to have been converted, by a cross-trench, into an island. Water was abundant, pasturage at hand, and the morass would form a secure front. There is, however, no evidence that the spot was occupied by the Welsh, though it has been thought, with great probability, that the stronghold of Senghennydd was here situated.

Under the Normans, the surface of the ground underwent considerable alteration. The bed of the Nant-yGledyr was dammed up at one gorge, and the northern waters at the other, and the two divisions of the swamp thus formed into lakes.

Advantage was taken of a narrow and curved ridge, which proceeded from the root of the peninsula, to divide