Dolforwyn Castle

Every other significant castle in Powys was built by a Norman, a Marcher lord or an English king. This one was built by a Welsh prince, deliberately, to make a point, and the point cost him a great deal.

The provocation

In 1273 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd began building on a ridge above the Severn, four miles from the royal castle at Montgomery. He also laid out a borough beside it.

The English crown told him to stop. The regency government of the young Edward I sent an explicit order: cease work, the site is within the king's lordship, and no licence has been granted. Llywelyn's reply survives in substance and it is not conciliatory — he pointed out that he was building in his own principality, that the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267 had recognised him as Prince of Wales, and that he needed nobody's permission.

He carried on building. The borough was intended to draw trade away from Montgomery, which made it a commercial as well as a military challenge.

The loss

It lasted four years. In the campaign of 1277 Roger Mortimer besieged it and the garrison surrendered, reportedly for lack of water. Mortimer held it afterwards and the castle passed through English hands for the rest of its working life, decaying from the fifteenth century.

Five years after that, Llywelyn was dead near Builth and the principality with him.

What is there

A long narrow ridge-top enclosure with a rectangular keep at one end and a round tower at the other, a hall, a well and a cistern, laid out to fit the ridge rather than to any imported plan.

It was excavated over two decades from 1981 by Lawrence Butler, which is why the walls are consolidated and legible. Before that it was almost entirely buried and largely forgotten.

The borough beside it never took root. Its outline is faintly readable in the field to the west, which is worth ten minutes with the plan.

Why it matters

Welsh princes generally adapted existing sites or fortified what they took. Dolforwyn is a new build on a new site by a Welsh ruler at the height of his authority, and its architecture is a Welsh interpretation of contemporary castle-building rather than a copy of it.

It is also a dated political statement. There are not many buildings in Wales where you can point at the masonry and say that it was put there specifically to annoy the king of England, and that the king noticed.

Visiting

Cadw, free, open access. Park at the bottom near Abermule and walk up; it is a steep field path and takes about fifteen minutes.

The view explains the siting immediately: the Severn valley, Montgomery, and a long way into England.