PRESENT CONDITION.
The castle, in its present condition, assumes a very different appearance from that described as its original state, although enough remains to bear out the description.
The eastern, or main front, is in good preservation. The masonry of the three northern buttresses is but little injured, although between them and the curtain are deep fissures, evidently the work of gunpowder, aided by the presence of a long window on either side. The mine was evidently sprung at the gorge of these buttresses, but the quantity of powder introduced has not been sufficient to overthrow them.
Most of the smaller buttresses on the southern flank are unhurt, but the two at the southern extremity are laid prostrate, with their connecting curtain, 15 feet in thickness, forming a chasm, through which the Nant-y-Gledyr takes its undisturbed course. The object of this destruction, which was permanently to empty the lake, has been gained. It is now a meadow.
The lower story of the grand gatehouse, and the piers of its bridge, are in tolerable order; but the upper chambers of the former are much battered, and the staircases rendered inaccessible, above a certain height, by the absence of the newels, and the fracture of the stone steps. The great pier stands alone, but the outer semi-pier is encumbered with cottages. The outer and eastern moat, now of no great depth, is still marshy. At its northern end the sides are cultivated; towards the southern, cottages are built in it. Between these two portions, north of the pier, is the modern entrance, passing through the water gate, now a battered hole 11 feet wide: near it a door has been opened into a sort of cavity below the lower story of the gatehouse, used as a cart hovel. The foundations of the southern curtain, being in the moat, are tolerably perfect. Those of the northern, elevated upon a bank of earth, are much battered.
The tête-du-pont, in which the southern curtain terminates, has suffered considerably. The curvilinear wall between the towers is levelled to a breastwork, and the side of the portal towards the lake has been blown quite away, as has been also the entrance and part of the floor of the neighbouring D-shaped tower.
The northern limb of the bifurcated wall, proceeding from the postern, has been blown out of the perpendicular; and, although there is no great danger of its fall, the loose stones adjoining its fissure are a source of danger to the antiquary who may attempt to scale it. Cottages are clustered against the outside of this wall, and its re-entering angle is occupied by a pigstye.
South of the castle, west of the tête-du-pont, the land on the back of the lake is partly in tillage, and partly occupied by cottages; on the north, to the west of the sally-port, the wall between the outer and second moat is reduced to a line of foundation. The peculiar thickness of this wall, where it has served the purpose of a dam, is well seen. The outer moat has, in this direction, been encroached upon by the Nant-Garw road, which tops its counterscarp for about 100 yards. The mill is levelled to the ground. A dry watercourse, and the tunnel enlarged into a breach, still mark the ancient exit of its waters. The drainage of the lake was, of course, fatal to the mill. The modern miller of Caerphilly has removed to the outside of the great southern breach, where he takes advantage of the Nant-y-Gledyr.
The horn-work covering the western entrance remains in excellent preservation, and its revetment, except where in part quarried, is nearly as sound as ever, although its gatehouse and western pier, if ever they existed, have been destroyed. They were probably of timber. The moat, to the west of the horn-work, being still in wet weather the channel of a rivulet, is overgrown with reeds and aquatic plants; to the east or castle side it is swampy in wet weather; and on the south is the bed of the ancient inundation, now a plain of sward, across which a path leads to a spring.
Along the exterior line of defence to the north-west, the redoubt, fosses, and adjacent earthworks are obscured by young trees and brushwood, by the effects of tillage, and by the buildings of the castle farm.
Entering the castle by the east water gate, the wall parallel to the curtain which formed the back of the northern or stable gallery is seen on the right, levelled nearly with the soil, and, consequently, all regular access to the buttress chambers is thus cut off.
The counterscarp of the inner moat is in ruins, choking up the moat. All vestiges of the eastern drawbridge between the grand front and the middle ward have disappeared.
The flanking towers of the eastern gatehouse of the middle ward are destroyed, that on the south completely, and that on the north very nearly so, the ruins of the singular building attached to it having prevented its entire destruction.
At the opposite or western extremity of this ward, the gatehouse is in rather better condition. The portal has been broken away below, but the hollow semi-piers connecting it with the horn-work remain. The front of this gatehouse, of great thickness, is perfect, and is garnished with a pair of chimneys; its inner part has been destroyed. The windows in the front are the only vestiges of the upper story.
On the north front of this ward the curtain is much shattered by the fall of the inner towers, and, as all the bastions have been ruined and blown up, their exact line of boundary is scarcely traceable.
Upon the southern side, the wide lake and the strength of the outbuildings have, in some degree, preserved the curtain, but the doorway of the water gate, which opens in it, is much injured. A few feet below its sill, a long black stain marks the height of the water in former times, and gives about 9 feet as the average depth of the lake.
The gallery, kitchens, &c., which occupy this side, are much injured; but in front of the great oven a portion of the parapet remains, here about 12 feet high, and furnished with a loop.
The tank remains, though nearly choked up with stones and brambles. Since the fall of the adjacent wall of the bastion, its position has been insecure. Recently its wall has cracked, and, unless repaired, it may be expected soon to fall into the moat.
Ascending from the eastern gatehouse, across a mass of almost untraceable ruins, the central ward of the castle is entered.
With the exception of a partial breach on the northern side, the curtains of this inner ward have suffered but little, and the height of the parapet and rerewall may still be inferred, by the projections at its junction with the towers.
The eastern gatehouse has been separated by a blast into two portions; of which the inner, towering to a prodigious height, still remains tolerably perfect; while the outer, broken into fragments, has crushed the lower gatehouse beneath its weight, and still encumbers it with its ruins.
The western gatehouse has been more fortunate; the staircases, however, are broken and irregular, and the vaulting injured. Through the floor of its central apartment a hole has been broken into the vaults of the portal, and of one of the lodges beneath.
In the floor of the Braose or triforial gallery are two large holes which open upon a staircase and passage below.
The buildings within the court have suffered severely. The hall is covered by a temporary roof, but the structure of its ancient roof is apparent from the remaining corbels. The pavement has been long removed: the sills of the windows have been cut away, and the tracery and mouldings which adorned them are broken and defaced.
A window and door at the east end have been shattered into one, and the vaulted passage leading to the offices is a shapeless and rugged hole.
The vaulted roof of the kitchen is broken, but enough remains to display its original structure. The steps of the water-gate gallery have been removed, but the vaulted roof is but little injured.
In the great court a depression in the sward indicates the ancient well. It has lately been opened a few feet down, but nothing of importance was discovered.
The four bastion towers of this ward deserve special notice, since it is the position of one of them which has conferred upon this castle much of the notoriety it possesses.
That these four towers have been mined and blown up with gunpowder, at some period when the effects of that agent were well understood, is evident on inspection. The mine has been sprung near the centre of each tower, and has produced effects, differing in degree only, upon each. That on the north-east is altogether levelled, on the outside, entirely to the ground, crushing in its descent the very bastion on which its foundation rested—on the inside, the door and a portion of wall, as high as the curtain, only remain. The destruction of the north-western tower has not been by any means so complete. Only a third of its outer circumference has fallen, and the rest, deprived indeed of its floors, remains as firm as ever. The portion which has fallen lies in fragments upon the neighbouring bastion.
At the south-western tower the mine has operated outwards; the whole of the outer portion has fallen upon the bastion and into the ditch, but the inner strip connecting it with the rest of the building, and containing the entrances to the several stories, has been protected by the outbuildings on its southern side, and is unshaken.
The last, or south-eastern, is the celebrated leaning tower, the obliquity of which has been much exaggerated, and absurdly accounted for. In the case of this tower the mine has exploded in a contrary direction from the rest, and the inner portion, with the adjoining curtain, has been thrown into the court, while the outer portion remains standing, although the force of the explosion has thrown the mass out of the perpendicular, so that it overhangs its base, towards the south-west, nine feet. The parapet at its summit remains quite perfect, and is the only one in the castle that is so.
The neighbourhood of these four towers, and the intervening gatehouses, upon which the force of the gunpowder has been chiefly employed, is a chaos of ruins; subverted masses of the gallery, staircases, the vaulting of large portions of the chambers themselves, lie in confusion upon the ground; and the thin mantle of vegetation which has enveloped them, although it adds much to their picturesque beauty, increases in no slight degree the difficulty of accurately comprehending their original disposition.
Throughout this immense building the iron work, even to the staples of the doorways, has been removed; nor is there any lead to be found in the sockets of the window-bars.
The hewn stone forming the door-frames, window-cases, newels of the well-staircases, and in some instances the stairs themselves, have been rudely wrenched away, with damage to the walls, for the purpose, probably, of converting them into lime.
Portcullises, stockades, doors, with the roof of the hall, and every particle of timber in the place, have long been removed. Every staircase, gallery, and chamber is pervious to the rain, and exposed to the pernicious force of the frost, yet such and so durable are the materials, and so firm the mortar with which the whole is cemented, that time and weather alone have produced but trifling injuries upon the pile, compared with the wilful destruction of the hand of man.
Before arriving at any general conclusion respecting the age of Caerphilly, it will be proper to make a few remarks upon certain details, on which those conclusions in some measure rest.
And first of the doorways. With certain exceptions shortly to be enumerated, the doorways throughout the building are of the same general character. The arches are “drop,” that is to say, they are obtusely pointed arches, whose centres lie below their spring. This is obviously the best form of the pointed arch for the portals of a castle, and it is that usually employed in the military structures of the Edwardian period. With the same exceptions, the arch-mouldings are composed of a five-sided rib, upon the front and widest face of which a smaller rib, of the same figure, is placed. This pattern of rib-moulding is also very commonly employed in castles.
The principal portals, together with the doors leading from the first story of the towers upon the ramparts, are defended by portcullises, working in a D-shaped groove. This groove passes up as a chase or slot into the chamber above; but there is no evidence of the sort of contrivance employed in raising the portcullis. The portcullis, however, might have been raised by mere manual exertion, and a bar thrust across would be sufficient to retain it securely when raised. The sills are destroyed, so that it does not appear whether the points of the portcullis were received into, or had worn, small holes in them. Besides the portcullis, the larger portals are provided with a chase, but without side grooves, intended, as is presumed, to allow of the use of a sort of wooden frame. Also, in the main portals are four or five square holes or meurtrières in the arch, through which beams to form a stockade might be dropped. It may be observed further that although some of the portal passages are of considerable length, yet the ribs of their vaults are all transverse, never passing diagonally from an angle towards the centre, in the manner employed at Caldecot and elsewhere, to vault a compartment of such passages.
There appears to have been more than one kind of drawbridge employed in this castle. In some places, as at the great gate, and at the passage in its gatehouse tower, the bridge, when drawn up, fitted into a depression, so as to lie flush with the upper wall, from whence, therefore, its length may be inferred. In other cases it simply rested against the wall, making a projection. It seems always to have been long enough, when up, to cover the gateway.
The method of hanging the bridge also varied. On the sides of some of the portals a stone has been inserted, into which the horizontal pivots of the bridge (of iron, from the small size of the pintle or hole) fitted; but, connected with the place for the gudgeon or pivot is another groove, which passes up at an angle of forty-five degrees for a few feet, and then passes on horizontally for a few more. It appears as though this were a contrivance, when the bridge was raised, for throwing its lower end upwards and forwards, so as more effectually to shield the upper part of the door, to present an oblique surface to missiles, and, by making the bridge lean back against the wall, to remove the strain from its chains or ropes, and to prevent it from falling, even should they be broken. It may be, however, that into these grooves fitted some lever, or other contrivance for working the bridge; where they occur, there are no holes above for the passage of the drawbridge chains into the portcullis chamber. Similar grooves are seen in the upper gatehouse at Chepstow.
The defences of the great, or water, postern are singular. The grooves, which in other cases form the portcullis slides, here stop abruptly a little above the arch. They are too deep for the hinges of gates, and were probably filled by a defence similar to a portcullis, but which was received into a cavity below. Indeed, as there is only a lofty wall, and no chamber above the postern, the regular plan was inadmissible.
There is a further contrivance for the defence of a gate, consisting of a sort of shoot, opening obliquely downwards from the sill of a window, employed in two places in this castle; one over the door of the eastern inner gateway, and the other over the door of the north-west principal bastion tower; in both cases evidently with a view to the defence of the towers when the enemy had gained the inner court.
The battlements and parapets throughout the castle are of a very plain description. They are massy and flat topped, the coping being a rough slab of sandstone. The height and thickness, together with that of the rerewall and the width of the rampart walk, may be always deduced from a careful inspection of the walls or towers against which they terminate. The parapet and rerewall are usually of the same height, and nearly as high as the top of the doors leading to them.
The embrasures are contained within parallel sides, and bear a small proportion to the merlons, which latter are each perforated by a loop. These details may be seen upon the summit of the leaning tower, or, more conveniently, upon the northern curtain, toward the north-west bastion tower. It is evident, from the unfinished character of the battlements, and the flat undressed coping, that they were intended to be masked by an exterior gallery, or brattice of wood, resting on the stone corbels which still remain. For this reason there are no machicolations in stone, or devices for dropping missiles through the floor of a projecting parapet—a contrivance which adds so materially to the grandeur of the towers of Warwick, Raglan, and Cardiff. Over the eastern middle gateway, the parapet has a false machicolation, or slight projection, supported upon a table of corbel blocks, but without apertures, or a projection sufficient to admit of any.
The windows, with certain exceptions, are either loops, or, if larger, of a very plain character. In the hall, however, and in the large rooms of the two inner gatehouses, they are very wide and lofty, and have been highly ornamented. The two latter rooms are so much injured, and the windows so mutilated, that it can only be said, that what little remains of ornament are seen resemble in style the more perfect ornaments of the hall. The oratory attached to the eastern inner gatehouse has a vaulted roof, divided into two square compartments, supported by transverse and diagonal ribs. The two windows towards the south are long and narrow, without a mullion, and trefoiled; their mouldings are only an exterior chamfer. There are some other windows in the gatehouses, looking towards the interior, which are much shorter, but otherwise resemble this. The four hall windows are lofty and well proportioned; they open to within four feet of the ground.
The exterior moulding of the windows is completely gone; that of the door was discovered by removing the grass about its base.
The interior mouldings of the windows are extremely rich, owing to the reduplication of the bands, to occupy the great thickness of the wall. The angles of the mouldings are, at two depths, removed, and their place occupied by a hollow groove, in which the pomegranate ornament is placed at intervals, making up the circle by its projection. Beyond each of these bands of pomegranates are pilaster strips, filleted at their angles, and surmounted by small angular capitals: within is a handsome ogee canopy, enriched with crockets and finials, in a very pure style.
The door has a good internal drip, but its inner moulding is composed of only one band of ball flowers. The outer mouldings are rich. There are three bands of pomegranates, which no doubt were continued, as in the windows, round the arch; and between them are two rows of small disengaged columns, with the circular concave pedestal. Of these only the pedestal remains.
The fourteen corbels upon which the beams of the roof rested are composed of three short clustered columns, connected by their posterior half, and separated by a fillet and bold hollow; above they are crowned with a neat cap moulding, and below, they rest upon three projecting busts, of which the central is the lowest and largest. A fillet runs up the centre of each of these columns, and, pausing at the abacus, is continued up the capital, and finally dies in the astragal. Corbels, of somewhat earlier date, but in general appearance resembling these, may be seen in the keep at Chepstow.
There are no decorations remaining about the fireplace. The plain stringcourse along the east end of the hall, returned from the corbel of the chapel window, is perfect. A base tablet is seen at the west end of the north side, but it is destroyed along its length.
A long window in one of the staterooms resembles, though on a much larger scale, the windows of the oratory already described. It appears, however, to have been trefoiled, with a quatrefoil above the head.
There are two small polygonal apartments on either side of the inner western gate, in the vaulted roofs of which a plain diagonal rib rises from a corbel at each angle, and meets its fellow in the centre. The corbels have three flat faces, and terminate in a point, which rests upon some animal, in every case wantonly defaced. They appear to have been lodges.
Caerphilly presents as little architectural decoration, in proportion to its extent, as any castellated building in Britain.
Generally, its series of concentric defences, and the general disposition of its constituent parts, resemble those of Harlech and Beaumaris. The plan of these concentric castles is very peculiar. It is unlike the earlier Norman castles, in which the keep was the principal feature, and in which comfort was sacrificed to safety; and it is also unlike the later castles, which possess not only large interior, but large exterior, windows, as at Sheriff-Hutton, and in which there is no building to which the name of keep could be attached.
Nor is the style of architecture employed at Caerphilly less characteristic of its age; the drop arch, the perfectly plain rib, the general absence of decorations and armorial bearings, the plain battlements, and the absence of machicolations, indicate generally the same period.
The columns of the hall doorway, the concave moulding of their pedestals, the triple cluster of columns forming the corbels of the roof, their bell capitals, and light cap moulding, are due to the Early English style, which prevailed from 1189 to 1307.
On the other hand, the pomegranate moulding, the rich, though chaste and somewhat stiff, canopies of the door and windows, the little pilasters in the windows with the pentagonal capitals, the ogee arches, and the plain fillet running up the columnar corbels of the roof, are marks all belonging to the Decorated style, which prevailed from 1307 to 1377.
The mixture of these two styles, very common in English buildings, denotes a period varying according to the preponderance of either, and in the present instance may legitimately be referred to the latter quarter of the thirteenth century, when the Decorated style was beginning to supersede the Early English. Instances of this transition, and of the ball-flower, or pomegranate, moulding, may be seen round the inside of the choir of Bristol Cathedral, and on the outside of the south aisle of Keynsham Church.
The earlier alterations at Chepstow, and more particularly the oratory attached to Martin’s Tower, and the columnar corbels in the keep, may be cited as of an earlier date than Caerphilly, having been evidently placed there before the decline of the Early English style.
The internal evidence of the building, which would place its date about the end of the reign of Henry III., agrees with the evidence of records cited hereafter, in which the castle is referred to, in the year 1272, as having been lately erected by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford.
Before this period, mention is occasionally made of the castle of Senghenydd, which, from its having been taken, retaken, and more than once utterly destroyed, was evidently a place much contested, but of no great magnitude or passive strength. After the erection of Caerphilly, Senghenydd Castle is not again mentioned. It is therefore not impossible that Senghenydd Castle was a rude fortification of timber and undressed stone, upon the peninsula afterwards occupied by Caerphilly.
Caerphilly having then certainly been founded by Earl Gilbert a little before 1272, the question arises as to whether the whole of it was then built.
The inner ward, its curtains, bastions, gatehouses, with all their contents and appendages, are of one date. The south wall was always of its present height, and therefore always intended to support the roof of the hall, the walls of which are bonded into it. The gatehouses are evidently part of the original plan, and the long windows of the staterooms, and those of the oratory in the inner gatehouse are, in their form and mouldings, precisely similar.
It appears that the curtain connecting the north-west bastion tower with the west gatehouse was originally as low as the northern curtain, but that a sort of gallery, and its superincumbent rampart, have been added. A cluster of buildings has also been added on the outside of the south curtain, at the angle formed by its junction with the south-west tower.
The general design of the middle ward, and most of its buildings, are clearly of the date of the inner ward. The western gatehouse, however, appears to be of somewhat later date; the false machicolations, the holes for the portcullis chains, the chimneys rising above the parapet, and the less durable character of the masonry, seem to indicate this. The walls, moreover, by means of which this gatehouse is connected with the curtain of the inner ballium, though of the same age with the former, are not bonded into, and are separated by fissures from, the latter—a tolerably sure indication of difference of age.
It is not improbable that the whole exterior line of defence on the east, and the horn-work on the west, were the last parts of the castle completed. They form, however, parts of the original design, since, had the ground on which they stand been left unoccupied, the castle would not have been tenable.
With respect to the redoubt, it is perfectly evident, from its appearance, that it was thrown up, not only when gunpowder was in general use, but when the science of fortification was pretty well understood. It seems, like the earthworks at Donnington and other castles, to be of the age of Charles I.
The injuries received by this castle are similar to others at Corfe and elsewhere, known to be referable to the same period of civil strife in which the battle of St. Fagan’s, and the occupation of Cardiff, prove the men of Glamorgan to have taken an active part. Nothing, therefore, seems more probable than that the redoubt should have been thrown up hastily by one party for the defence of the castle, and that the dismantling of the whole should have been perpetrated by the other, to prevent such a defence being practicable in future. Though history has afforded no clue as to the one of the contending parties to which either proceeding is to be referred, there can be no doubt but that the blowing up of the towers was the work of the Parliament.
There seems no reason to suppose that the works of Caerphilly were never completed. The flanking towers on either wing rest upon the lake, and the horn-work is a sufficient defence in the opposite direction.
About three-quarters of a mile from Caerphilly, on the Rudry road, are the ruins of the “Van,” or “Ffanvawr,” the ancient and very stately manor-house of the Lewis family, the direct descendants in blood, and the heirs in heritage, of Ivor Bach, on whose land Caerphilly was erected.
Most of the outer walls of the house, and a curious old dovecot, remain standing. They are of the age of Elizabeth or James, but much of the hewn stone employed in the windows, doorcases, quoins, and stringcourses of the lower story, are either of oolite or Sutton stone, and are very evidently a part of the spoils of Caerphilly. Most of these stones have been worked up, and their original ornaments destroyed, but one long stringcourse of Decorated date, evidently much earlier than the wall in which it is embedded, extends along the west front of the house.
These stones could not have been removed from Caerphilly earlier than the reign of Elizabeth, in which reign, or rather in that of Henry VIII., the castle was used as a prison. Probably the central parts were so occupied, and the parts allowed to be spoiled were those connected with the east front. In appropriating the stones of Caerphilly to the erection of their manor-house, the Lewis family, from whom the ground was originally wrested, may have committed a breach of taste, but none had a better moral right to help themselves from that source.