Harlech Castle

Harlech Castle sits on a crag of grey-green sandstone some sixty metres above the coastal flats of Cardigan Bay, with the mountains of Eryri behind it and the sea spread out in front. It is a textbook concentric fortress: an inner ring of high curtain walls and four round corner towers, wrapped in a lower outer wall, all dominated by an enormous gatehouse whose twin D-shaped towers once guarded a passage closed by three portcullises. Few castles anywhere make such a clean geometric statement, and few have such a setting.

Edward I ordered it in 1283, in the wake of his campaign against the last native princes of Wales, and it was largely finished by the end of 1289 at a cost of about £8,190. The work was directed by Master James of St George, the military engineer from Savoy who also built the king's castles at Conwy, Caernarfon and Beaumaris; the round-headed doorways and other details at Harlech echo buildings in his homeland. When it was built the sea lapped much closer, and a fortified stairway still runs down the rock from a water gate, which let the garrison be supplied by boat during the Welsh rising of 1294–95.

The castle then changed hands repeatedly. Owain Glyndŵr took it in 1404 and made it his home and headquarters, holding a parliament there in 1405, until English forces starved it into surrender in 1409. In the Wars of the Roses a Lancastrian garrison held out from 1461 until August 1468, a siege long linked to the stirring song "Men of Harlech". During the Civil War it was the last Royalist fortress on the mainland to give up, in March 1647, after which Parliament ordered it slighted. Its romantic ruin later drew painters including J. M. W. Turner and Paul Sandby. Since 1986 Harlech has formed part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Edward I's castles and town walls in Gwynedd.

Getting there

The castle overlooks the small town of Harlech, whose station on the Cambrian Coast Line lies at the foot of the rock. The nearest city is Bangor, about 41 km to the north. The closest airport in a straight line is the Isle of Man (IOM), across the Irish Sea, so the practical choice is Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL), about 100 km away, from where the journey continues by road or rail.