*Bleddfa, the Bledewach of the Pipe Roll of 1195-1196, when £5 was given to Hugh de Saye ad firmandum castellum, an expression which may mean either building or repairing. An oval motte, and traces of a bailey, are marked in the 6-inch O.M.
Tynboeth, alias Dyneneboth, Tinbech,[977] and Llananno.—First mentioned in Pipe Roll of 1196-1197. There is a fine large motte in a commanding situation, and a crescent-shaped bailey, now marked only by a scarp. There are some remains of masonry, and the castle was evidently an important one. It is first mentioned in the Pipe Roll of 1196, and it occurs in lists of the Mortimer castles in the 14th century.[978] It is not far from two fords of the river Ithon. [H. W.]
These four castles are not mentioned in the Brut y Tywysogion, though the Annales Cambriæ mentions the capture of Bleddfa, Knighton, and Norton by the Welsh in 1262. They all command important roads. Knighton and Norton were boroughs.
Cardiff.
Loughor.
Fig. 43.—Motte-Castles of South Wales.
Castles of Glamorganshire.
Cardiff ([Fig. 43]).—The first castle of Cardiff was certainly a wooden one; its lofty mound still remains. It is placed inside a Roman station, and the south and west walls of the castle bailey rest on Roman foundations, “but do not entirely coincide with those foundations.”[979] The Roman fort was probably ruinous when Robert Fitz Hamon placed his first castle there, as on the N. and E. sides the bailey is defended by an earthbank, in which the remains of a Roman wall have been found buried. The area of the Roman Castrum was about 8¼ acres, and evidently the Normans found this too large, as they divided it by a cross wall, which reduces the inner fort to about 2 acres. The motte has its own ditch. The position of Cardiff was a very important base, not only as a port near Bristol, but as a point on the probably Roman road which connected Gloucester with Carmarthen and beyond.[980]