The Biggest Castle in Wales Caerphilly Castle

Today we are visiting Caerphilly Castle. This is the largest castle in Wales covering an area of around 30 acres. It was built by Gilbert de Clare in the 13th century to conquer Glamorgan. It has the most elaborate water defences in Britain. It's famous for its large gatehouses and because it introduced concentric castle defences to Britain. Work on the castle began in 1268 following Gilbert's occupation of the north of Glamorgan. The castle was largely built at an amazing rate over the next three years. Gilbert's Welsh rival Llywelyn ap Gruffudd burnt the castle in 1270 but Gilbert prevailed and managed to complete the castle and took control of the region. The centre of the castle sits on an island surrounded by a number of artificial lakes and contains luxurious accommodation. As you enter Caerphilly you get to see how the concentric thing works much more clearly. You come in through the east gatehouse, the east outer gatehouse to be precise and then you've got an inner moat to go with your massive outer moat. Once you've come in through that you reach another gatehouse and then another one here. This tower has, as you can tell, something of a lean on it. Apparently the lean of this tower is greater than the lean of the leaning tower of Pizan. I don't really know quite why it's still standing. It doesn't really look like it ought to be but I'm taking a leap of faith and I'm standing basically where it will, I should imagine, eventually fall. I mean you can tell that it leans out a long way because where I'm standing now, which is a good several feet from the wall, I'm getting dripped on by the top of the tower. It leans out far enough that it drips here. Standing behind the tower might give you some clue as to just how much it's leaning. I don't think that catching it on film really does it justice. It's really hanging out there. Behind me is a trebuchet, a siege engine that is used to lob bits of rock and flaming things into the castle to either knock bits of the walls down or to cause as much carnage as possible and if fire got into a castle then that was pretty catastrophic because there's an awful lot of wood in it. This slightly more slender looking beast behind me here is what is called a perrier and a perrier is used for quick fire rounds. It's got a slingshot on it that you can draw back and ping. So you've got your rapid fire and you've got your big punch. Gatehouses, gatehouses everywhere. Caerphilly Castle is inundated with them. This is one behind me, there are a load of them over there. In fact, basically if you approach the castle from any direction, chances are you're going to hit a gatehouse and it's not really surprising. Although this was quite a defensible looking structure and the moats and the lakes and what have you made it incredibly defensible, it was also somewhere that was really quite luxurious and if you're going to have somewhere that's really quite luxurious it would be a bit of pain in the neck if anytime you wanted to go in and out of it you had to walk all the way around the thing and that's a bit of a pain in the neck. Much easier to have a gatehouse here and a gatehouse there and a gatehouse there. So gatehouses, gatehouses everywhere. So I'm in one of the rooms, the East Gatehouse. In this room they've got a flight of stairs that goes up quite a long way I would say. I wonder where these lead? Before you reach the roof you come out onto this which is a walkway that goes around the inner ward. Now I'm not going to go this way just yet, I'm going to go up to the roof first because this place is a maze and if you go off in a tangent you end up missing parts. So I'm going to methodically go upstairs then come back down and then do the walkway. I made it to the roof! Finally, the stairs are long. When you get up here the views aren't as vast as most other castles you see, you can't see that far over the landscape but what you can see is quite a way over the castle and that's quite something because you get a bird's eye view of what's going on down below. So roof! I'm going to make the most of the fact that I'm on the roof because yes, you work to get up here. Just over halfway up the steps or a little way down is this walkway and I am going to see what's on the other side. There are some spectacular views over the walkway of the moats and lakes and ducks and swans and geese. The inner ward is really quite interesting because there's this real mishmash of styles. You come in through the inner east gate and the inner east gate is really nicely finished off, it looks really well polished, in fact it could almost look new. But on the other side you've got the inner west gate and that's all raggedy and falling apart. And then you go past the great hall and the great hall is a lovely building, it's got these massive windows, it's got lovely polished stone on the outside and I suspect that they felt that they could have those big windows there because on the other side of that is the south tower so it's protected from there as well. But next to the great hall you've got the apartments and again that's all raggedy and tumbled down. So yeah in this very small area you've got lots of different building styles if you will and through the ruins now you can just see the towers over there, the one that's leaning. This is a lot of the point of this place, it's all about lavish living and entertainment and this is lavish. That's one hell of a fireplace isn't it? I mean it's kind of artificial now, it is a projection but in its day that would have kicked out some heat. The wooden structure you see behind me, that is a minstrel's gallery and the idea is you stick your musicians up there and they can play and entertain and take advantage of the fact that the acoustics in here are really quite something. Stick your musicians up there, they can be heard down here throughout the hall without you and your chums sitting and chatting too loudly. It's a great idea, I mean basically it's the forerunner of the modern day stage. So off the great hall you've got this, basically a set of posh apartments on the ground floor. This is where the servants would have been and then upstairs that is where Gilbert de Clare and you know the posh folks would enjoy the riches of life. It had glass in the windows, I mean we're talking you know end of the 13th century here and glass was quite expensive. It's got some really ornate stonework around it so you can tell it's very lavish. If you've got the money to do this sort of thing you are a very very very wealthy individual. Gilbert de Clare was obviously doing very well for himself, thank you very much. This really is incredibly well made this place, I mean it's lavish, it's defensible, it's lovely, it's everything you want in a castle. I hope you don't have a problem with stairs and specifically spiral stairs because they are everywhere in this place, which isn't a problem, I'm pretty sure it's keeping me fit. But all the steps are worth it because you end up seeing rooms like this. This is part of that main gatehouse and it's amazingly lavish, I mean it's really nice in here. See what I mean, it's vast. And it's worth bearing in mind that what we're actually standing above now is the drawbridge room so up here you're pretty safe. I mean you're in a castle that's pretty much within a castle that's within a castle surrounded by you know moats and lakes and I mean other than the people who are already inside you don't have to worry too much. Oh and did I mention the spiral staircases? You go just a little way up the stairs and you come into this quite interesting little circular room. There are little alcoves off the side of it, they go into rooms with windows that you can shoot from because there are archer slits in them. Apart from that window there, they're all archer slits and this is just off the main inner ward so you've got this separate tower that comes off here and it's got a roof so this is it. It sticks out, it's here for this room and then the stairs go further up and presumably to the roof. So I've come to the highest point that I can reach in the west tower and as you can see it's got a roof which is the roof I'm guessing of the circular room that Jo's just been in and although you could go slightly higher there's a gate with a lock which means that I can't go any higher. I'd like to go up there because I'm guessing that the views from there are fantastic. The views from here are pretty good too.