Introduction

The substantial remains of Denbigh Castle and its walls represent an important slice of Anglo-Welsh history, and are truly beautiful to visit on a sunny day when the castle walls and the surrounding landscape are bathed in bright, lovely light. It is thought, partly because of the original name Dinbych meaning ‘little fort’, that a previous castle, along much more modest lines, had been on the site at least from the 12th century.  The new castle at Denbigh was built by Edward I (1239-1307, reigning from 1272).  It was started in 1282, and given to Henry de Lacy to complete and defend in the same year.  It survived the 1294 rebellion by Madog ap Llywelyn, the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr in 1400 and held out under siege for six months during the Civil War in 1646, before being slighted at the end of that war in 1659.  The ruins attracted a number of painters, examples of whose work are shown towards the end of the post.  On a visit to the town, and making it a good day out, there are also impressive heritage sites to see in Denbigh, some of which I have included in the Visitor details at the end of the post.

It is probably impossible to fully understand Edward I’s castles in Wales without getting to grips with the longstanding conflict between the English Crown and the Welsh princes in the 13th century.  I did my best to summarize the background in a post on this blog in which, as well as discussing the conflicts, I have tried very hard to distinguish the different generations of Welsh princes from one another coherently, which is something of a challenge due to their repetitive naming conventions.  Apart from a short introduction in the next paragraph, all my comments on Edward’s military strategy, and the reasons for it, are on that post, and are not covered here.

Denbigh Castle was Edward I’s sixth castle in Wales as he headed relentlessly west to subdue Wales.  His castles at Flint, Hawarden, Rhuddlan and Builth (unfinished) in the northeast, and Aberystwyth in mid-west Wales were already underway, all started in 1277. Henry III and Edward had been troubled throughout Henry’s reign by rebellions in Wales, masterminded by Llywelyn ap Gruffud, known as Llywelyn the Last (not to be confused with Llywelyn the Great, his grandfather).  Several treaties had failed to achieve long term peace, and although the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267 looked as though it might hold, Llywelyn ap Gruffud was labelled an outlaw in 1276, and war was declared in 1277. A peace was brokered, marked by the Treaty of Aberconwy of November 1277, but although Edward had every reason to believe that the new treaty might secure peace between England and Wales, he was taking no chances and began to build a series of castles in northeast Wales, beginning at Flint in 1277, with Rhuddlan Castle started later in the same year.  These costly and invasive measures were vindicated in 1282 when war broke out again, instigated by Dafydd ap Gruffyd, Llywelyn’s brother, whom Llywelyn joined in the new uprising.  Both were killed during the war, and peace lasted until 1294 when a distant cousin of Llywelyn’s, Madog ap Gruffud, again took up arms against Edward, marking the last of the 13th century attempts to regain both lost territory and lost dignity.

Why here? The location of Denbigh Castle

Strategic importance of the castle

Denbigh Castle was built on a Carboniferous limestone outcrop overlooking the flat plain of the Vale of Clwyd and the lowlands of the Clwydian Range of hills, rising to 468ft (142m) above sea level.  There may have been an earlier castle on the same spot.  From the point of view of visibility of the surrounding landscape it is an excellent site for a castle.  The Dee estuary lies over the hills to the northeast, and the River Conwy to the west.  The Conwy marked a natural border between east and west Wales, a border that was a frequent bone of contention between the Welsh princes of Gwynedd and the English crown, as the Welsh attempted to push west in the face of the determination of the English crown to hold them safely contained in the west.   

Denbigh lies in what was Rhufoniog, one of the so-called Four Cantrefi, four areas of north Wales that Henry III wrested from Wales and were allocated under the Treaty of Woodstock in 1247.  Following grievances with the English governorship of the Four Cantrefi, Llywelyn the Last took up the cause against Edward I. Following Llywelyn’s surrender, Rhufoniog had been granted under the 1267 Treaty of Montgomery to Llywelyn’s treacherous brother Dafydd ap Gruffudd, together with Dyffryn Clwyd, but Dafydd rebelled against Edward.  Llywelyn threw in his lot with his brother, and was killed in battle in 1282.  Dafydd was captured and then tortured and killed in 1283, after which the cantrefi reverted to the English crown, a source of bitter resentment for the Welsh. 

Edward granted land in Wales to favoured supporters, and allocated Denbigh to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, together with the cantrefi of Rhos and Dinmael, the latter having been wrested from the rulers of northern Powys.  These three regions were combined to become Denbigh, a massive English footprint in northeast Wales.  Henry de Lacy certainly set out to make the most of his new possession, evocatively expressed by R.R. Davies:

Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln: in his new, vast lordship of Denbigh not only did he create a brand new manor (with a brand new name) for himself from forfeited and other lands, grant out sizable estates for his followers and servants (including his chamberlain and his cook), establish two studs for his horses, and carve out parks for his pleasure and stock them with deer from Cheshire; but he also declared majestically that the new land measurement to be used in Denbigh was to be a perch of twenty-one feet as gauged by the length of his own foot.

Edward’s chain of castles, the so-called ring of iron, consisted of both both fortifications and a communication network.  It was put to the test not only during the Middle Ages but in subsequent the early 1400s and the 17th century, highlighting the strategic importance of each castle. 

Economic potential of the area

Edward’s castles were not standalone constructions.  Communication networks were vital for a peripatetic king and court, but also for the movement of troops and the commercial viability of new settlements.  Each castle connected to Edward’s growing network of roads and was accompanied by a new town. Areas in which castles and their towns were located had to be economically viable to attract English settlers to potentially volatile locations.  Additional benefits were low rentals, exemption from tolls, and, in the case of Denbigh and some other towns, Edward granted the town a monopoly.  The towns were monetized, using coinage for purchases, rather than the traditional Welsh system of exchange.  Edward established mints at Rhuddlan and elsewhere to enable the urbanization of Wales.

Denbigh was one of the few castles built by Edward that was not a port, and did not have river access to a port.  However the land was suitable for agricultural activities and livestock rearing.  Cattle prefer good quality grazing, but sheep, which are less fussy about their food source, could be converted not merely into meat and dairy, but sheared for the thriving 14th century trade in wool and inexpensive cloth centred in nearby Ruthin.  Stevens says that the in the Denbighshire lordship of Dyffryn Clwyd, “the lord’s demesne [productive land attached to the manor] flock numbered 2,000 – 3,000 and the aggregated tenant flocks nearly as many, with several private flocks numbering between 100 and 240.”  In Dyffryn Clwyd it is known that weaving on a piecemeal basis in farmsteads supplemented other income.

The design

It is thought that the castle was designed and its build overseen by James of St George, who was responsible for Edward’s most spectacular castles in Wales.  It was built mainly of local limestone, with some components built in local yellow and Triassic red sandstone.  For the Green Chambers, the two-storey building with chambers over a wine cellar and meat store, a different type of sandstone was sourced from a site 16 miles (25km) north of the castle.

Today, as in Edward’s day, the castle was approached primarily via the Burgess Gate, which sits along the town walls, north of the castle.  This is a thoroughly substantial piece of architecture with the power to intimidate and impress as well as to defend.  Its original portcullis has long gone but when you stand beneath the arch you can see the carefully cared square holes in the masonry above you, which shows where the portcullis was raised.  The mechanism that operated it was on the first floor.

Passing through the gate and heading uphill brings you to the castle, with St Hilary’s tower on your left.  St Hilary’s was a chapel with a tower at its west end dating to the early 14th century, only two decades after the castle was founded, and was altered a number of times, but the church itself was taken down in 1923.  The chapel had fallen out of use when a new church was built in the town beyond the walls in 1874.  The tower with its contemporary west doorway and its 15th century battlements are all that remains to commemorate the church.

The castle is still fairly awe-inspiring, but must have been magnificent when towering over the valley, particularly when compared to the smaller and less solidly built Welsh castles.  L.A.S Butler describes three main phases of construction work.  Initially what are now the outer defences on the south and west were built to provide a defensible enclosure within which the main building activity could be carried out.  Once the outer defences were completed, the castle was built on rather more massive lines.  The curtain walls are taller and thicker, and were interrupted by hexagonal and octagonal towers, the postern gate almost opposite the main gate and a hidden passage called the sally port allowing pedestrian movements during times of siege.

The entrance to the castle proper is an extraordinary construction consisting of three octagonal towers, on a triangular plan, with internal passages and staircases. It was protected by a portcullis over a ditch, and contains a statue in a niche above, which may be a later addition depicting Edward II (1307-1327).  Following the attack of 1294 additional protective walls were added, with semi-circular towers at weak points.  The areas between these outer walls and the later inner walls are referred to as mantlets and offered additional protection to the completed castle. Construction work continued after the attack, both to undertake repairs and to complete most of the original design.

Today the castle walls surround a large green area along the edge of which are the foundations and partial ruins of a number of structures essential to the castle, including two wells, a great hall, apartments, a kitchen with two splendid 16ft (5m) wide fireplaces, a combined treasury and muniments tower, and a pigeon house.  The open area of green grass, the ward or bailey, was once the place where troops could muster and train, and might be used for storage.  Interestingly, Neaverson comments that the well sunk into the Carboniferous limestone would have been unreliable, with the many joints in the rock allowing water to escape, and notes that there were medieval records describing this problem.

For information about the building process involved in Edward’s early castles in Wales, see my post on Flint Castle, which quotes former mayoress Vicky Perfect’s excellent research on the subject.

The town and the walls

The town

Like his first Welsh castle and town in Flint in 1277, the new castle-town at Denbigh,  was Edward I’s replication of a French “bastide” of the sort he had already built in Gascony, in which both the castle and the town were planned as a single entity, each supporting the other.  These new English castle-town arrangements were deeply unpopular in Wales because the land appropriated from the Welsh for the town and associated land-use was reserved for the English, part of Edward’s plan to undermine the Welsh occupation and domination of key strategic places.  Pioneer settlers were expected to help defend the town should it come under attack, but were granted commercial privileges as incentives in these troubled areas, and might attract those who were unable to generate similar opportunities in more peaceful places.  

One of the primary activities of the new settlers was agriculture. The Welsh inhabitants were ousted and English settlers were given the most productive land.  Other settlers would have been traders and middlemen, sourcing luxury goods and other desirable produce and goods from elsewhere for sale both to the castle and townspeople.  Service industries will also have grown up, like grain mills, blacksmith forges and tanners, as well as food outlets such as butchers, bakeries and breweries and would all have been vital to a successful town.  A church and courthouse would have been essential, and would have required their own officials.

Once the land within the town walls had filled to capacity with homes and businesses, other buildings grew around the exterior of the walls, forming a very large settlement site.  Butler says that the original layout of the town in c.1282 incorporated 63 burgesses (a free citizen of the borough) each with its own burgage plot (property and attached land held by ownership or tenure).  By 1305 only 52 houses were within the walls and up to 183 were outside, the latter taking advantage of the flatter land and the easier access to water.  By 1476 there were 276 burgages beyond the walls.  A tile kiln dating to the 14th or 15th-century was found during the 1930s during building work.  15th century records refer to town routes including High Street, Beacon’s Hill, Pepper Lane and Sowter Lane, and during both late 15th and 16th centuries craftsmen included a draper, glovers, shoe-makers, mercers and weavers.  Leland, writing in the 1530s, comments that the walled town was largely abandoned in favour of lower land beyond the walls where water could be accessed and “maany welles” had been established.

All that remains of the medieval town within the walls is the tower of St Hilary’s Chapel, started in the early 1300s.   Beyond the castle walls, the CPAT survey dates the cruck-framed Friesland Hall House (later the Old Castle Arms and now Bryn Awelon) to the 14th century.  The same survey states that The Plough in Bridge Street was originally an L-shaped timber-framed building with a medieval rock cut cellar below.  An outlier in the medieval town was the Carmelite friary dating to c.1289.  In the current town all the other ordinary wood-built buildings will have been replaced many times over, although some of the stone cellars may date to the late-15th century during the War of the Roses, when townspeople may have decamped from within the town walls after Jasper Tudor burned the town in 1468 (about which more below).

In 1536 the Act of Union promoted Denbigh to one of four administrative capitals in Wales. Surviving buildings from the reign of Elizabeth I in the 16th century are the courthouse of 1571 and the incomplete church of 1578, both built by Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, who was granted the lordship of Denbigh in 1563.   The courthouse was built in the lower town, whilst the new church took advantage of the empty spaces within the town walls.  Dudley appears to have done very little to restore the castle.  A 1610 map of Denbigh by John Speed shows only a handful of building, including the two churches, within the town walls, and a sprawling town beyond, with the 1289 Carmelite friary (the only one in Wales, and marked on the map as “The Abbey”) on the outskirts.

The walls

The walls were built to contain the new town and were started at the same time as the castle.  Unlike Flint’s long-gone rectangular town walls, Denbigh’s loop around in an irregular sub-circular shape, enclosing enclosing c.9.5 acres (3.8 ha), again supplied with defensive towers, offering good views over the surrounding area.  Access into the town was via two main gates in the walls, the Burgess Gate mentioned above to the north and the Exchequer Gate to the west.  You can walk a section of the walls, but you need to pick up a key to the gate from either the library or the castle shop.

The castle under attack during the reign of Edward I

In September 1294 a distant cousin of Llywelyn the Last and Dafydd ap Gruffudd, named Madog ap Llywelyn, made one last- ditch attempt to repel the English before Owain Glyndŵr’s attempt over a century later.  His reasons were not simply territorial but had much to do with the English tax burden of 1/15th imposed on the region.  Madog successfully captured a number of castles, including Denbigh, forcing their defenders to retreat, but only three months later Madog was forced out of the castle, and by April 1295 the castles had been restored to the hands of their English lords.  The plan might have worked had Edward, who had mustered an army on the coast for action in Gascony, and should have been absent when the revolt took place; unfortunately for the rebels, bad weather delayed departure and Edward temporarily abandoned his campaign in Gascony and headed for Wales.  Madog was taken to London where he was held in captivity, probably until his death in around 1312.  For those in the Wrexham-Chester area, Madog was buried in Gresford All Saints’ Church (described on this blog here), where his tomb, showing an effigy of him in armour with his shield, can still be visited.  Gresford Church is very well worth a visit in its own right.

Back in the wars after Edward I

Owain Glyndŵr’s Rebellion (1400 – c.1410)

By 1400 the castle had passed through a number of hands under the reigns of Edward II (reigned 1307 to 1327), Edward III (reigned 1327 to 1377) and Richard II (reigned 1377 to 1399).  In 1399 Henry Bolingbroke became Henry IV and ruled until 1413, and one of the earliest challenges of his reign was the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in 1400.  Glyndŵr was the last Welsh national to claim the title Prince of Wales, which had actually been conferred on Edward I by his father Henry III.  By this time the lordship of Denbigh had passed into the hands of the Mortimer family, but Roger Mortimer died in battle when his son Edmund Mortimer was a minor.  Henry IV therefore appointed Henry Percy to take charge of Denbigh, together with other administrative responsibilities in the area.  In 1400 Glyndŵr attacked the town of Denbigh, although apparently did not attempt to take the castle.  Percy, popularly known as Hotspur, planned a rebellion of his own and was interested in forming an alliance with Glyndŵr.  Fortunately for the king, Hotspur died in battle in 1403.  The preservation of the castle was possibly due to a strategic marriage between Sir Edmund Mortimer (young Edmund’s uncle) and Glyndŵr’s daughter Catrin in November 1402.  As Denbigh was part of young Edmund’s inheritance, the agreement to preserve of Denbigh’s castle from destruction might have been part of the marriage negotiation.

The War of the Roses (1455 – 1485)

Still in the hands of the Mortimer family, who supported the Yorkist cause, Denbigh Castle became the target of Jasper Tudor, who had been granted the role of constable (high official) of Denbigh, but was unable to fulfil the role until he gained access to the castle.  He made his attempt first in 1460, when he successfully took the castle for a number of months before being ousted, and again in 1468 when he failed to take the castle, but breached the town walls and set fire to the town.  The castle was again repaired after the end of the war, and as mentioned above, it appears that the area within the town walls was abandoned rather than rebuilt.

The English Civil War (1642 – 1651)

The slow decay of the castle under the earl of Leicester continued unchecked until the castle suddenly resumed strategic importance during the English Civil War, beginning in 1642, when it had to be made fit to garrison 500 royalist soldiers.  This task was allocated to Colonel William Salesbury of Rhug near Corwen (whose colourfully decorated Rhug chapel is now one of the real gems of north Wales).  Butler says that although off the beaten track in terms of the main centres of fighting, Wales was nevertheless under threat.  Its relative proximity to Chester proved useful in 1645 when Charles I’s royalist siege of Chester was unsuccessful, and the king headed to Denbigh, staying for three nights, as a royalist force assembled at the castle prior to making another attempt on Chester.  Charles and the additional royalist force were attacked by Sir William Brereton and Sir Thomas Mytton, and were defeated in the land around the Carmelite friary on the outskirts of the Denbigh town.  Within the castle, Colonel Salesbury remained under siege with 500 men from April to October 1646, only surrendering when he received a written command to do so from Charles I.  Following a brief royalist reoccupation in 1659 the castle was slighted (demolished) by the parliamentarians to prevent it being of any further value to the royalists.  It instantly became a source of very useful building material, and no attempt was made to restore it under Charles II when the crown was restored to the throne in 1660.

Denbigh Castle in Art

All of the artworks here were painted in the 18th century, a period when an interest in the Classical ruins of the Mediterranean had also turned British artistic eyes towards ruins on the doorstep. Each  of the paintings has its own very distinctive personality, but all are part of a tradition that responded to the ruins of grand buildings, particularly castles and abbeys, as symbols of a lost grandeur, fallen kingdoms and abandoned dreams.  The Romantic fascination with aesthetically-pleasing icons of loss and decay also highlighted the inevitability of entropy as something sympathetic and pitiable.  Although unimpeded by the facts and figures behind these vast structures, there is a sense that the artists of the 18th century were finding their own way of grappling with the past.  The result was often poignant, usually striking, evoking magnificence and beauty blended with regret, redefining castles in their 18th century setting as something not merely benign but infused with a certain special value conferred upon them by their very antiquity.

 

Final Comments

Denbigh Castle ticks all the boxes as a part of the story of Anglo-Welsh conflicts in the 13th century, as an excellent example of James of St George’s architectural imagination, and as an imposing and impressive component of Edward I’s chain of castles in north Wales.  There are sufficient structural remains still visible within the castle walls to understand some of the key features regarded as necessary to the running of a castle in times of both peace and war.  Denbigh Castle also demonstrates how medieval castles could be adapted for use during the English Civil War.  As a ruin it inspired a number of 18th century artists who appreciated it more for its sense of the romantic than its military past.  As a visitor destination it offers lovely views over the surrounding landscape, and provides the opportunity to explore a small multi-period market town which has a great deal to offer in terms of its architecture and its personality. There is even an annual plum festival in autumn, which this year was held on 7th October, and which we only just missed.  At the castle, don’t miss the stairs in one of the gate towers up to the upper walkway, which gives you a birds-eye view over the interior of the castle and down into the town, across the valley and into the hills.  

Visiting

First you need to check the opening times on the Cadw website. Particularly in autumn and winter, the site is only open on certain days.  There is an entry fee unless you are a member of Cadw or an affiliated organization (again, check the Cadw website for up to date information).  If you want to walk the town walls you will need to collect the key, available with a refundable deposit from either the library in the town or in the castle ticket office and shop. The library is currently shut on Thursdays at time of writing (October 2023).

If you want to park at the castle, it has a dedicated car park that you can find by following the occasional signage, and the access to which is at What3Words address ///craftsman.obstinate.explain.  Instead of going straight to the castle we followed a leaflet, available to download from the Northeast Wales website, which took us around all of the key sites of Denbigh town (some of which are mentioned at the start of this post), so we parked behind the High Street and walked up to the castle after visiting other sites.  There are lots of other parking options that are well signposted.  A great and detailed source of information about the town is the official Cadw analysis of the town’s heritage, Denbigh: Understanding Urban Character, available for download as a PDF.  At the castle there is information signage, but if you want detailed information it is best to do the reading in advance.  There is a comprehensive Cadw guide book by L.A.S Butler dedicated to the castle, which is stuffed full of information with some really excellent maps and illustrations and is available from the castle shop, or from the usual online retailers.

There is plenty to see in the town itself.  As well as the castle and walls, medieval sites include the Burgess Gate (once the main gateway through the town walls), St Hilary’s Chapel tower (the remnant of the early 14th century church), and the ruins of the Carmelite friary dating to c.1289.  The CPAT survey dates the cruck-framed Friesland Hall House, otherwise known as Bryn Awelon with a 14th-century doorway in its southern side to the medieval period, as well as The Plough in Bridge Street, which was originally an L-shaped timber-framed building with a medieval rock cut cellar below.  Elizabethan buildings from the 16th century include the Earl of Leicester’s courthouse (now the library) and his ambitious but incomplete 10-bay church, and there are other survivors of the 16th and 17th centuries in the town.  The attractive town has plenty of substantial and Georgian homes and Victorian civic and residential projects that bring to life the wealth and confidence of the former market town.  Be sure not to miss the fabulous statue of Dr Evan Pierce on his 72ft (22m) Tuscan column.  

For those with unwilling legs:  Please note that there are pros and cons with the castle and the walls.  For the castle, I would suggest that you will miss getting up close and personal with some of the castle’s key features because many of them require going up or down slippery stone steps.  On the other hand, if you confine yourself to the grass you can still see down into most of the features and up to others, and you will still get an excellent sense of the castle’s perimeter and personality, and the views over the surrounding landscape are simply spectacular in good weather.  The upper rampart walk, reached via an original stone staircase, could be a potential difficulty, although there is a solid metal banister to grip.  The town walls are also risky when there has been even a little rain due to the unavoidable shiny stone-work underfoot and the very real potential of slipping.  I would say it is well worth the visit even if you cannot do it all.

Sources

Books and papers

Butler, L.A.S. 1990, 2007 (2nd edition). Denbigh Castle. Cadw

Davies, J. 2007 (3rd edition). A History of Wales. Penguin

Davies R. R. 2000. The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343. Oxford University Press (https://academic.oup.com/book/7027 requires institute access)

Morris, M. 2008. A Great and Terrible King. Edward I and the Forging of Britain. Penguin

Neaverson, E. 1947.  Mediaeval Castles in North Wales. A Study of Sites, Water Supply and Building Stones.  the University Press of Liverpool, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

Stephenson, W. 2019. Medieval Wales c.1050-1332. Centuries of Ambiguity. University of Wales Press

Stevens, M.F. 2019. The Economy of Medieval Wales 1067-1536. University of Wales Press

Walker, D. 1990. Medieval Wales. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks

Websites

Cadw
Denbigh Castle
https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/denbigh-castle
Denbigh Town Walls
https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/denbigh-town-walls
Denbigh: Understanding Urban Character (PDF)
https://cadw.gov.wales/sites/default/files/2019-05/Denbigh-%20Understanding%20Urban%20Character_0.pdf

Castle Studies Group
CSG Annual Conference Proceedings, Wrexham 2015, Individual Site Summaries. CSG29 2015 Wrexham Conference.  Castles of North East Wales – Denbigh.  Journal no.29 2015-2016.
http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/page153.html
http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/CSGJournal2015-16X8-pp1-120Final-Denbigh-58-89-low-res.pdf

Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust
Denbighshire Historic Settlements (index)
https://cpat.org.uk/ycom/denbigh/denbigh.htm
Denbigh
https://cpat.org.uk/ycom/denbigh/denbigh.pdf

Ancient and Medieval Architecture
Denbigh – Castle
https://medievalheritage.eu/en/main-page/heritage/wales/denbigh-castle/

Enjoy Medieval Denbighshire (PDF) leaflet
https://www.northeastwales.wales/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/medieval-denbighshire.pdf