How old is oystermouth castle

Edward I paid a brief visit here in December The de Braoses rebuilt the castle in stone, and most of what remains today is from that period. On the east and west sides is a high and impressive curtain wall with a wall-walk along the top.

At its north-east end this leads to a garderobe and then rises to a small tower from which the panoramic view is magnificent. This is a good place from which to appreciate the lovely south window of the chapel. On its north side the castle is enclosed by the outside walls of several residential blocks. T he castle entrance on the south side is an arched passage flanked by what were originally two half-round towers.

These have had their fronts hacked off, and the remainder patched and tidied up. Inside the castle the southern part is an open courtyard, with remains of two long, rectangular buildings against the curtain walls on either side of the entrance. The rest of the castle buildings fill the northern end. Behind the keep is a rectangular room with small windows and a fireplace in the south wall. Above this was the lord's private apartment, or solar, and below is a basement.

A narrow passage leads through the top floor of the north-west block, thought to be the earliest stone addition to the castle after the keep. The slightly more distant villages of Norton and Newton may be the oldest centres of population.

The original castle was probably just a square stone keep, perhaps with a rubble-stone outer wall. This keep still stands, the roughest-built part of the castle, and a centrepoint around which extensions were made over years. The visitors can be seen riding donkeys and are acompanied by several retainers.

The manor of Oystermouth went to William de Londres, and it was he who probably had the original castle built. The Normans did not arrive in large numbers, and castles were essential to assert their dominance, and as places of refuge.

For years or more Wales was a frontier zone. The Normans were driven out of Gower for a while in and as late as Owain Glyndwr probably controlled the whole area. In , Edward I visited the castle, and by his time it had probably grown to its current area, with a substantial gatehouse and a curtain wall enclosing a fair-sized courtyard or bailey. Within this enclosure the block of buildings around the keep had extended to the rear and the side, with other structures built against the outer wall.

Experts have identified residential areas for the lord, his family and his stewards, as well as for the more ordinary folk who acted as servants and soldiers,kitchens, storerooms and guardrooms. There must also have been a courtroom and prison - William de Langton of Kilvrough in Gower was certainly one who, in , was held captive at the castle.

The most recent part of the castle seems to be the chapel tower, with one of its fine traceried windows visible from outside. This may have been built in the midth Century, but after that it was gradually used less and less. Oystermouth was held by the de Braoses up to Alina, the last of the line, and then by her son John Mowbray and his descendants, apart from a hiatus in the second half of the 14th century when the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick were lords of Glamorgan.

The de Braoses regarded their Gower base as one of their principal seats, and there is documentary evidence that they resided for at least some of the time at Oystermouth rather than Swansea. They would have been responsible for most of the rest of the surviving masonry structures.

Alina is traditionally credited with building the chapel block, and the Decorated style architectural details of its architecture would certainly accord with her tenure of the lordship All the Mowbrays and Beachamps were absentee lords, as is reflected in the minimal additions to the fabric after the construction of the chapel block. In the post-medieval period the castle was held, still as part of the demesne of the lords of Gower, by the Earls of Worcester later Dukes of Beaufort , apart from the period of the Commonwealth when it was held by Oliver Cromwell.

There is no evidence, however, that it saw any military action and there is no clear evidence either for any building work of post-medieval date.