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Caerphilly
Highlights
The interior ruins
Caerphilly Castle, covering an area of 30 acres, is the largest castle in Wales,
and one of the biggest in all of Britain. It was built from 1268 by Red (as he
was known after the fiery colour of his hair) Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester,
in an effort to assert his claim to the disputed territory of upland Glamorgan.
This quick tour of Caerphilly reveals how much had changed since the 12th century,
when great towers or keeps were fashionable. When castles were laid out from
scratch in the 13th century, master masons and their patrons preferred an 'enclosure'
model, which allowed them greater freedom to experiment with new designs. The
hall, the chapel, the kitchens and stables were now arranged around a courtyard,
and all this was surrounded, or 'enclosed', by a circuit of high walls. Caerphilly
is considered to be the earliest and finest example of the true regular concentric
fortification in the British Isles.
The transcript from the Voiceover on the Video:
“Now this is the very centre of Caerphilly Castle and in the 12th century
this is where you would expect to see a great tower or a keep, and if you look
around me here you see there's nothing. In the 13th Century the idea of the keep
has gone out the window. Keeps are seeing as being vulnerable and also very restrictive
in terms of design.
Well as here in the 13th century we have got a courtyard you can see you’ve
got domestic accommodation spread all the way round. Now you protect that in the
13th century not with a keep but by building a big set of walls around the outside.
Now those walls are punctuated as you can see not by square 12th century towers
but by round ones.
Now some people think that is because they are simply more fashionable, other
people including I think the people who built them think it's because they were
stronger.”
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