Medieval Castles of England and Wales by Bernard Lowry;

Author:Bernard Lowry;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781784422158
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK (Trade)
Published: 2019-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Drained of its water, the extent of Kenilworth’s mere is now hard to reconstruct. To the left of the twelfth-century great tower are, firstly, the Earl of Essex’s lavish Elizabethan apartments and, to the left of these, the medieval great hall.

In Edward I’s Welsh wars his might was brought to bear against the small Welsh castle of Dolforwyn above a fording place of the Severn, and on the opposite bank of the river to the royal castle and walled town at Montgomery. The eruption of hostilities in 1277 gave Edward the opportunity of proceeding against Llywelyn’s provocative castle. Siege engines were laboriously brought up to the castle’s walls, one being transported by the Sheriff of Hereford’s men from Wigmore Castle. Excavations have revealed missile damage to the castle’s great tower although it was the shortage of water (many Welsh castles had no well but relied upon a rainwater cistern) that sealed its fate. No help arriving, the castle surrendered after a siege lasting just over a week. The badly damaged castle was repaired like other captured Welsh castles and put into royal service.

Another Edwardian siege was of Newcastle Emlyn Castle in 1288 when a siege engine was brought in sections on four carts towed by oxen and accompanied by cavalry and soldiers, with four hundred beach boulders being brought by packhorse for the engine from Cardigan, blacksmiths and woodcutters accompanying the siege train to make bridges and hurdles for the assault.

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