Castles
Motte-and-bailey earthworks, stone keeps and the fortified houses that replaced them.
Site · castle
Montgomery Castle
Built in 1223 on a rock spur, host to the treaty that recognised a Prince of Wales in 1267, and pulled down on parliamentary orders in 1649.
Site · castle and manor house
Tretower Court and Castle
A Norman round keep and a late medieval manor house standing in the same field, ninety seconds apart. Nowhere in Wales shows the change more plainly.
Site · castle
Dolforwyn Castle
The only castle Llywelyn ap Gruffudd built from scratch, raised in 1273 in direct defiance of the English crown and lost four years later.
Site · castle earthworks
Builth Castle
Edward I spent a fortune here between 1277 and 1282 and not one stone of it is left. What survives is the best set of castle earthworks in Powys.
Site · castle
Bronllys Castle
A circular stone keep on a Norman motte, complete to three storeys, and one of the best-preserved round keeps in the Marches.
Site · castle and house
Hay Castle
A Norman gateway, a Jacobean mansion built into it, two catastrophic fires, forty years of dereliction, and a restoration finished in 2022.
Site · hillfort and castle
Castell Dinas
The highest castle site in England or Wales, at around 450 metres, built inside an Iron Age hillfort that was already ancient when the Normans arrived.
Site · earthwork
Mathrafal
Medieval Welsh tradition names this the royal seat of Powys, alongside Aberffraw and Dinefwr. What is in the ground is a Norman ringwork.
Site · defensible tower
Talgarth Tower
A stone tower standing beside the bridge in the middle of a market town, built when a merchant needed somewhere to retreat to and not much else survives of that idea in Wales.