The Story of a Famous Castle

In 1468, a little over 500 years ago, one of the strongest and most famous castles in the world was captured. The name of this castle was Harlech. Harlech had been besieged before, but this particular attack was one of the last battles of the savage Wars of the Roses, which were struggles between two noble English families for the throne. One of these was the House of Lancaster and its emblem was the red rose; the other was the House of York and its emblem was the white rose. Soldiers of the Yorkists besieged the castle, which by then was the last one in all of England and Wales held by the forces of Lancaster.

Many Welshmen took part, and the siege inspired a song which is still well known. It is the battle song of the Welsh and is called "Men of Harlech." The melody is often used today as a high school or college song with different words, of course, but the Welsh in those days sang, in their own language:

"Men of Harlech, in the hollow, Do ye hear, like rushing billow Wave on wave that surging follow Battle's distant sound? 'Tis the tramp of Saxton foemen, Saxon spearmen, Saxon bowmen, Be they knights or hinds or yeomen, They shall bite the ground!"

Harlech Castle had been attacked, off and on, for more than seven years. When it finally surrendered in 1468, there were about 50 able-bodied persons left in it. One of these was a twelve-year-old-boy who was destined to become King Henry VII of England.

Harlech Castle stood, and still stands, on the west coast of north Wales, which is now part of Great Britain. Even in 1468 Harlech was nearly 200 years old. The building of castles in England had begun another 200 years before that, and even earlier in other parts of Europe. Thus it is now about 1,000 years since men began building castles.

This structure is an example of castle building in its greatest period. When Harlech was begun in 1285, men had had several hundred years experience in building, defending, and besieging castles. Like many other castles in Britain and in other countries, Harlech was placed on the most easily defended site, and was designed to withstand the best weapons the attackers had in those days before the use of gunpowder in cannons.

Harlech Castle was built on a rocky summit, about 200 ft. high This in itself made it difficult and discouraging for anyone to attack. On two sides, the west and the north, were steep, rocky cliffs, at the foot of which were marshes and the sea, although the water does not now come as near the castle as it did then. A deep ditch, filled with water, was dug around the other two sides. This ditch, or moat, was from 30 to 60 feet wide. Because of its site, Harlech was constructed almost square! The great castles of this period were more or less square or rectangular, but all were shaped so as best fit the land on which they were built.

The main part of the castle-within the high walls and towers-occupied less than half the total area. The steep, rocky ground on the west and north was an open space, without buildings, and was called the outer ward, or outer bailey. It was not even entirely surrounded by walls and some of the fortifications in this area were not built until long after the main part of the castle. There was a water gate so that supplies could be brought by sea as well as by land.

Outside the main wall of the castle and about 30 feet from it was another wall only a few yards high, known as the outer wall, or outer curtain. It was the first line of defense on the south and east and was built low so that the soldiers on the main walls and on high towers could fire their weapons over the heads of the defenders on this outer wall.

The main defense of the castle, the inner wall or inner curtain, was very high with great round towers jutting out at each corner. All of this was made of large stones, or masonry work. The main entrance was on the eastern side of the castle and everything about it was planned to make it impossible for attackers to get into the castle through the gate. First of all, on the far side of the moat was a small stone fort known as a barbican, although the one at Harlech no longer stands. Beyond this was a bridge over the moat, partly of stone, with a drawbridge that could be raised from the castle side of the moat.

Just on the castle side, an outer gate was built, it too being a small fort in itself. Beyond this, and forming part of the main wall of the castle, was a gatehouse, the dominant feature of the whole castle. It was three stories high and was designed as the residence of the constable, or commander, of the castle, with living rooms on the upper floors and storerooms in the basement. In fact, if there should be treachery in the garrison of a castle as there sometimes was, the commander and those faithful to him could use the gatehouse as a fortress against those holding the rest of the castle. The gatehouse was two elongated twin towers with roofed-over passageway between. This gatehouse had a portcullis at either end. A portcullis was a large gate, made of a wooden frame covered with iron sheets, with spikes at the bottom. It was suspended by chains so that it could be raised or lowered-and dropped on the heads of attackers if they got caught under it. Both the walls of the gatehouse and the roof over the passageway had slits so that any foe who got inside the portcullis could be fired upon from all directions.

The roofs of the gatehouse and the corner towers were almost flat and were covered with lead. The tops of the walls, both the low outer ones and the high inner ones, were embattled, which means that they had gaps in them at the top through which the defenders could fire and then duck behind the adjoining higher piece of wall. The effect was something like a row of giant teeth, with every other tooth missing.

The area inside the main walls of such a castle as Harlech was called the inner ward. In most castles it was not as big as usually imagined. At Harlech it was about 160 by 130 feet, not as long either way as a football field. In the inner ward, and built against the sides of the walls, were the domestic buildings used by the people who lived in the castle. At Harlech the bakehouse and the chapel were built against the northern curtain. The chapel had a lean-to roof with an arched wood and plaster ceiling. Here too, and partly built into the wall, was the well which supplied the garrison with water. Against the west wall were the great hall, the buttery and pantry, and the kitchens. The great hall was like an ordinary house of the period, set down inside a castle. It was the center of domestic life where the people had their meals and spent their leisure time. It was 60 by 27 feet. The granary was on the south wall, with a large cellar beneath because a castle had to be able to store enough food to feed the garrison for many months. Otherwise the garrison in the castle might have to surrender even though the attackers had not been able to get inside the castle.

Harlech Castle had a second gate, on the north, called the postern. This was not as elaborately constructed as the main gate, but was placed where it was difficult to get at it at all. Such gates were sometimes used by a garrison to escape if a castle was about to be captured. They were also used to let messengers, spies, and scouts in and out.

This is a brief description of Harlech Castle. It took a great deal of time and money, and men and materials, to build it. The English kings thought it was worth it because for many years, especially after the Normans conquered England in the eleventh century, these English kings had been trying to control the area known as Wales, and the inhabitants, the Welsh people. They won and lost many battles, but they never succeeded until the thirteenth century when Edward I was king. Edward had tried and failed in 1257, before he was king. He was only 18 years old then, but he was already a skillful commander of troops. He became king in 1272, and between 1277 and 1282 he finally succeeded in conquering Wales, although the Welsh revolted many times after that.

Even though Edward I crushed Welsh resistance and proclaimed Wales to be part of the English king's dominions, he knew he would have to use force to keep the Welsh subdued. The best way to do this in those days was to build large, strong castles which rebellious nobles and their followers could not capture. The castles also served as central strong points which could house well-trained troops who could use the castles as their headquarters and could go out from them to put down any uprising.

Therefore, Edward started to build the most imposing and powerful castles the British Isles had ever seen. There were eight of them in north Wales : Builth, Flint, Rhuddlan, Conway, Caernarvon, Beaumaris, Aberystwyth, and Harlech. In most cases, although not at Harlech, a whole town was included within the plan of fortification. Edward's son, who was to become King Edward II, was born in Caernarvon Castle and in 1301 he was proclaimed Prince of Wales, a title it has become customary ever since to confer on the heir to the British throne.

It took skill and experience to supervise the building of these massive structures, and Edward employed experts for the work, particularly one man known as Master James of St. George. In accounts of the cost of building these castles he is called "the master of the King's works in Wales." Probably Eward met him in Savoy, where Master James had acquired his skill and experience. He was a man of both technical and administrative ability. As salary he received three shillings a day which was a large sum at that time.

The old records show that to build castles, such as Harlech, it was necessary to bring from far and near masons, carpenters, quarrymen, diggers, smiths, and carters. Dwellings and workshops had to be erected for the men, and there might be as many as 400 masons working at once to build the walls and towers. In all more than 1,000 men would work for three or four years to build a castle like Harlech, and hundreds of shiploads or cartloads of materials would have to be brought to the scene. Work on Harlech began about 1285 when the ditch in front of the castle was cut in the rocks, but it was not finished until about 1290. By that time more than 8,000 pounds had been spent. In all, King Edward spent about 80,000 pounds on his castle building in Wales, a very great sum in those days. Today it would probably cost at least $2,000,000 to build such a castle as Harlech.

Even these powerful castles did not keep the Welsh from revolting against English rule. While Eward I was still king and after he had built Harlech and other castles, several of them were besieged. In 1295 Harlech was besieged by the Welsh under Madoc ap Llewelyn. Although the garrison numbered only 37 men they held out until they were relieved. It was necessary to bring help by sea because the attackers had cut off the castle by land.

Harlech Castle was involved in the last and most serious of the Welsh uprisings against the English, which cane more than 100 years after Edward I thought he had conquered the country. The Welsh hero who led this fight, and whose name above all others is associated with Harlech, was Owen Glendower, who was born in 1354. In 1400, angered by a personal grievance against an English lord for which he could get no satisfaction, Glendower began to attack the lands and castles of the English in Wales. Almost before he knew it, he was leading a general Welsh rebellion and met with much success. He was proclaimed Prince of Wales and in 1401 attacked Harlech. The attack was beaten off when more English soldiers arrived to help the garrison.

In 1404, Glendower again attacked Harlech. The English garrison in the castle thought the commander, William Hunt, was going to surrender Harlech to the Welsh. So they seized Hunt and imprisoned him. Disease and desertion began to weaken these defenders and finally the garrison was reduced to 20 men. At this point Glendower got the English defenders of the castle to surrender by giving them a sum of money. This, incidentally, was not an uncommon procedure when a castle's garrison thought they had done their duty but were on the verge of being defeated.

Glendower then made Harlech his capitol, summoned a parliament to meet there, and used it as his family home. In 1408, however, the English laid siege to Harlech with a force of 1,000 men and subdued it, taking Glendower's wife among the prisoners. As the war went against him, Glendower fled to the mountains, which are many and rugged in Wales. No one really knows what became of him, except that he probably died in 1416. Though this last attempt to establish Welsh independence failed, it turned out that one of Glendower's cousins founded the family from which Henry VII, the first Tudor King of England, was descended.

By the end of the fifteenth century castles like Harlech were no longer of great importance for their original military purposes. In some cases they came to be used as jails for criminals and debtors. Parts of most of the castles had become ruined through lack of care. By the sixteenth century all the buildings in the inner ward at Harlech were completely ruined, and three of the four corner towers were roofless. The northeast tower was still roofed because it was used as a jail and was now known as the Debtor's Tower. The gatehouse was roofed and was used as the judge's lodgings when court sessions were held at Harlech during reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Harlech was attacked and defended just once more after the famous siege of 1468. That was in the Puritan Revolution, near the middle of the seventeenth century, when the king and his followers were fighting the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell for control of the British government. Harlech was held for the king by Colonel William Owen and successfully withstood one siege by Cromwell's forces, but a year later it had to surrender.

Much of Harlech Castle still stands today, looking down from its height on the Welsh country and the sea. It is a roofless and floorless ruin, which perhaps is not surprisingly after almost seven centuries, but it can be visited and examined, and it is still an inspiring memorial to the history of Wales.

One enters Harlech from Castle Green across a modern causeway over the moat to the main gatehouse. The Ministry of Works of the British Government, which now has custody of the castle, recommends that visitors climb the Garden Tower first. This is the name now given the tower on the southeast corner. From this tower one can walk around the top of the walls, past the Weathercock Tower on the southwest and the Chapel Tower on the northwest to the Prison, or Debtor's Tower. In doing this a person gets a fine idea of the general plan of one of these great Edwardian castles. The Garden and Prison Towers each has a round dungeon, lighted by narrow slits, and originally entered by a trap door from the room above.

This story of just one castle of the thousands that were built in Great Britain shows the important part castles have played in the history of the country. The same thing is true of many other countries. Castles such as Harlech are not just great buildings of stone. Nor are they something out of a fairy tale or make-believe story of knights and war. They were erected for very practical purposes at the order of kings and nobles, and by the work of many ordinary people. The struggles to defend and capture them were not just meaningless battles started for the honor of individual knights and the love of beautiful ladies. Rather, castles were the scenes of noble and ignoble deeds that expressed the desires and purposes of nations and important people in those nations.