*Walwern, or Tafolwern, near Llanbrynmair, in Montgomery, may have been a Welsh castle. It is first mentioned in 1163, when Howel ap Jeuav took it from Owen Gwynedd, who may have been its builder. The motte is marked in the O.M. on a narrow peninsula at the junction of two streams.
1169. *Abereinon, in Cardigan.—Built by Rhys ap Griffith, Henry II.’s Justiciar of South Wales. “A circular moated tumulus, now called Cil y Craig.”[997] (It is marked on the 25-inch O.M.)
1177. *Rhaidr Gwy.—Also built by Rhys ap Griffith, no doubt as a menace to Powys, as this castle was afterwards sorely contested. It is a motte-and-bailey castle, the motte being known as Tower Mount.[998]
All these castles are of the motte-and-bailey type, and prove the adoption by the Welsh of Norman customs.[999] It will be noticed that in the first instances they were built by men who were specially under Norman influences. But probably the fashion was soon more widely followed, although these are the only recorded cases.
The contribution made by the castles of Wales to the general theory of the origin of mottes in these islands is very important. Leaving out the seven castles attributed to the Welsh, we find that out of seventy-one castles built by the Normans, fifty-three, or very nearly three-fourths, still have mottes; while in the remaining eighteen, either the sites have been so altered as to destroy the original plan, or there is a probability that a motte has formerly existed.
[CHAPTER X]
MOTTE-CASTLES IN SCOTLAND
The Scottish historians of the 19th century have amply recognised the Anglo-Norman occupation of Scotland, which took place in the 11th and 12th centuries, ever since its extent and importance were demonstrated by Chalmers in his Caledonia. Occupation is not too strong a word to use, although it was an occupation about which history is strangely silent, and which seems to have provoked little resistance except in the Keltic parts of the country. But it meant the transformation of Scotland from a tribal Keltic kingdom into an organised feudal state, and in the accomplishment of this transformation the greater part of the best lands in Scotland passed into the hands of English refugees or Norman and Flemish adventurers.