Historic Buildings of Radnorshire, Wales

Image right - An aerial view of Maesllwch Castle near Glasbury set in glorious parkland enjoying a commanding position overlooking the beautiful Wye Valley near Glasbury. (Now in Powys)

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See Table of Welsh Place names (Table listing where places are in Current [Post 1974/1996] Welsh Counties/Historic Counties

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The object of this project is to provide information about historic buildings in the county of Radnorshire, with links to sub-projects for specific buildings as appropriate. GENi profiles of people associated with those establishments can be linked to this project and/or to individual projects where they have been set up.

Castles, Baronial and Historic houses

... in alphabetical order

❊ Indicates an available image in Gallery attached to the project

Including Castles, Abbeys, Manor Houses, Mansions, Stately Homes, Country houses, Estate houses, Courts, Halls, Parks and other listed buildings of historic interest

Bold links are to GENi projects and profiles; others are to external websites

A

• Abbey Cwmhir Hall - an Elizabethan-style house built in 1833 by Thomas Wilson, a London lawyer who had purchased the 3,000-acre Abbeycwmhir estate. The hall replaced a smaller Tudor-style house. It is open to the public
• Aberedw Castle - ruins

B

• Baynham Hall - Grade II* listed 17th century manor house, is located in the hamlet of Michaelchurch-On-Arrow.
• Beguildy Castle - a Norman motte-and-bailey castle of which the well preserved 20-foot high motte and earthworks remain

C

• Clyro Castle - first mentioned in 1397, but may be much earlier. All that now remains is a large motte. A second motte, called Castle Kinsey and possibly built by Cadwallon ap Madog in the 12th century, is at Court Evan Gwynne just north of the village of Clyro. The site is now a Radnorshire Wildlife Trust reserve called Cwm Byddog, also notable for its veteran oak pollards.
• Clyro Court - built by Thomas Mynors Baskerville in 1839. It is said that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a family friend and visitor, with obvious consequences. Clyro Court Farm is much older, being a former monastic grange with some of the buildings dating back to the 14th century.
• Cwmhir Abbey - Cistercian abbey built in 1143. It was the largest Abbey in Wales but was never completed. Its fourteen bay nave was longer than Canterbury and Salisbury Cathedral naves and twice as long as that at St. Davids. It was a daughter house of Whitland Abbey, and constructed at the behest of three sons of Madog, the then Prince of Powys. The first community at Dyvanner, "Manor House") failed because of the intervention of Hugh de Mortimer, Earl of Hereford but in 1176 Rhys ap Gruffydd of Deheubarth re-established the Abbey on land given by Cadwallon ap Madog. Llewelyn ap Gruffudd is buried near the altar in the nave. The abbey was burned by the forces of Owain Glyndŵr in 1401. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in March 1537 only three monks lived in the abbey. The Abbey was slighted in 1644, during the Civil War, although some ruins still remain. There is a memorial stone to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Prince of Wales of direct descent, whose body is buried there.

D

E

F

G

• Glasbury Castle, north of the river Wye, was first mentioned in 1144 when it was granted (with the manor) to Walter de Clifford. In August 1233, the castle was attacked and captured by King Henry III following a baronial rebellion by the Cliffords, but little more is recorded after that, though it was still in existence in a survey of Glasbury Manor (below) dated 1561. Remains of its earthworks were visible near the centre of the village of Glasbury until housing development in the 1970s
• Glasbury Manor

H

I

J

K

L

M

• Maesllwch Castle ❊, overlooking Glasbury to the north, was built close to an original hall house of the Vaughan family which was later owned by Charles Lloyd. The house was rebuilt by the Howarths in 1715, when the surrounding park was also established. The current building was grandly conceived in castellated style by the architect William Lugar for the de Winton family in the mid-nineteenth century. In the Second World War it was requisitioned and used as a Canadian hospital and subsequently by the Land Army. Part of the castle was later demolished to reduce the costs of upkeep, but it remains an imposing private residence and a Grade II listed building.

N

• New Radnor castle - originally called Trefaesyfed, was once a considerable fortress and a significant border castle in the Welsh Marches and played its part in the turmoil, violence and barbarity of the early mediæval period typical of such a site. It may have been built by William Fitz Osbern, Earl of Hereford, who held the land by the time of his death in 1071. Soon after 1086 New Radnor was granted to Philip de Braose. It may have been at this time that ten minor castles were built nearby to strengthen the Norman hold on the district. In the aftermath of the battle of Dingestow New Radnor Castle was seized by the sons of Einion Clud of Elfael. Einion o'r Porth and Rhys ap Gruffydd of Deheubarth entertained Baldwin of Exeter, Archbishop of Canterbury and Gerald of Wales here in 1188 during their famous tour of Wales. Einion was killed by his brother in 1191 and in 1195 the Amazonian Matilda de St Valery was probably responsible for retaking the castle for her husband William de Braose. As a result the previous overlord, Rhys ap Gruffydd, returned and sacked the castle before winning the battle of Radnor against Roger Mortimer and Hugh de Say. Rhys died in 1197 and by 1200 William de Braose was back at Radnor Castle. In 1208 King John took the castle from the rebellious de Braose, only to lose it in 1215 to Giles de Braose, Bishop of Hereford. In August 1216 King John and Gwallter Clud, the brother of Einion o'r Porth, burned the castle in revenge. After the death of the last Braose of Radnor the castle was taken into royal custody, but was destroyed by Prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth in 1231. In 1233 it was illegally rebuilt by Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall and then passed to the young Roger Mortimer of Wigmore Castle. In 1264 Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, allied with Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester took and again destroyed the castle. In all, the castle had changed hands twelve times in only eighty years! On four of these occasions the castle was said to have been 'destroyed'. After the turmoil of the thirteen the century, the castle as it stood was allowed to remain in relative peace until the chaos that descended in the west at the fall of Richard II. Radnor Castle was attacked and apparently destroyed by Owain Glyndŵr and his forces during his rebellion of 1400 to 1412. Owain's forces allegedly attacked it in either 1401 or 1403, capturing the garrison of sixty men inside, whom he then hanged from the curtain walls over the battlements, then beheaded and buried nearby. It has since been proven that this story of the castle's fall and the massacre of the garrison in 1403 is a much later legend that has no basis in fact, but human bones were accidentally disturbed during excavations for church rebuilding in 1843 and as they were excavated it was noted that the skulls were piled separately to the skeletons. They were unceremoniously piled in a mass grave. By 1405 King Henry IV of England had regained the castle, garrisoned it with a new force of thirty men-at-arms and one hundred and fifty archers, under the command of Richard, Lord Grey. This force was more suitable for the defence of the castle and posed a deterrent to another attack. Radnor Castle gently fell into decay, by 1538 only one tower remained habitable and that was used as the county prison. The castle was in the care of the Earls of Pembroke in the reign of James I and then passed to Lord Powis. During the English Civil War the castle was visited by Charles in 1642 but after a siege was captured and dismantled by Parliamentary forces to prevent its becoming a Royalist stronghold again, a process known as "slighting".

O

P

• Painscastle - the castle would appear to have been built by Pain fitzJohn. The site was probably what remained of a much earlier, natirally defensible Roman fort. The ground plan is rectangular and Roman artefacts have been found at the site. Pain fitzJohn was killed by a Welsh raiding party in 1137 and Elfael in which Painscastle stands, was taken over by the native Welsh ruler, Madog ab Idnerth. The castle remained in Welsh hands until about 1195 when the area was captured by William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber, who refortified the castle. His formidable wife Maud de Braose, also known as Matilda, held Painscastle against the Welsh for a few months. In 1196 Rhys ap Gruffudd of Deheubarth defeated the Marcher Lords in a battle at Radnor eight miles to the north and also besieged Painscastle, but did not actually take it as terms were agreed. In 1198 Gwenwynwyn ab Owain of Powys raised a large army to besiege the castle, but was heavily defeated by an army led by the Justiciar, Geoffrey fitz Peter. This English army formed at nearby Hay on Wye. William de Braose fell out with King John in 1208 and was forced to flee the kingdom. King John held his lands and castles until Painscastle was apparently occupied by Iorwerth Clud, a Welsh de Braose ally, in 1215. He submitted to King John in 1216 and was granted the Lordship of Elfael until his death in 1222. The Welsh then transferred their allegiance back to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and the castle was attacked and destroyed by the Welsh. In 1231 the castle was rebuilt in stone by King Henry III and Hubert de Burgh as part of a campaign against Llywelyn the Great. In 1233 the castle was claimed by Ralph Tosny, whose family held it until the castle was taken by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd from Roger Tosny in 1265. Another Ralph Tosny was able to recover and rebuild it in 1276. It later passed to the Beauchamp dynasty's hands, Earls of Warwick. Painscastle was refortified again at the time of the Welsh rebellion led by Owain Glyndŵr in 1401 while under the Beauchamps for the King, Henry IV. Little now remains of the castle other than the massive earthworks.

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U-V

W

X-Y-Z

References and Sources

Radnorshire Specific

General

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monastic_houses_in_Wales
• http://www.castlewales.com/listings.html
• http://www.scottishcastlesassociation.com/
• http://www.stravaiging.com/history/castles
• http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Main/HomePage
• http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk
• http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/
• http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/
• http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_houses_in_the_United_K...
• http://www.britainsfinest.co.uk/historichouses/
• http://www.britainexpress.com/Where_to_go_in_Britain/historic_house...
• http://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/
• Historic Houses Association - represents 1,500 houses in the UK
• Hudson's Historic Houses and Gardens - UK - guidebook of over 2,000 houses open to the public
• The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses - database of over 7,000 houses
• Lost Heritage - A Memorial to the Lost Country Houses of England - list of over 1,700 houses
• National Trust for Historic Preservation - online database of historic houses in the United State
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_Houses_Association - http://www.hha.org.uk/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Houses_of_England

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