Qualla: Cardigan Castle

Cardigan Castle: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Metcalf, fl. 1790, engraver Ralph, Benjamin, fl. 1763-1770, CC0. Picture the great hall at Christmas, 1176. Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd, ruler of Deheubarth, has rebuilt Cardigan Castle in stone and is showing it off. He has sent heralds across the British Isles a year in advance, inviting poets and musicians from Wales, England, Scotland, and Ireland to compete for two chairs — one in song, one in poetry. The winners will sit beside him at the feast. The losers will go home with a story. This, the first competitive eisteddfod in recorded history, is the moment Welsh literature acquired its annual stage. Eight hundred and fifty years later, the National Eisteddfod of Wales is still using the same idea.

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Image: Metcalf, fl. 1790, engraver Ralph, Benjamin, fl. 1763-1770 | CC0

Cardigan Castle: Norman, Welsh, Norman, Welsh

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jprw, CC BY-SA 3.0. The castle that watches the River Teifi from a low cliff above the old bridge has changed hands so often that the masonry itself reads like a family argument. The first castle here was a motte-and-bailey, built around 1093 a mile from the present site by Roger de Montgomery, one ...

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Image: Jprw | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cardigan Castle: The First Eisteddfod

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian de Ford, CC BY-SA 4.0. Eisteddfod is the Welsh word for a session — literally a sitting — and bardic competitions had been a feature of Welsh court culture for centuries before 1176. What Rhys did at Cardigan was different in scale and form. He turned a court entertainment into a public competition, ad...

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Image: Brian de Ford | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cardigan Castle: Sack, Decay, Ruin

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alex Liivet from Chester, United Kingdom, CC0. Cardigan suffered the usual castle problems. In 1199 Rhys's grandson Maelgwn razed it and sacked the town during a war of succession. The Normans rebuilt it. The town wall went up in the 1240s. The castle ceased to be the administrative centre of Cardiganshire after the Laws in W...

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Image: Alex Liivet from Chester, United Kingdom | CC0

Cardigan Castle: The Woman Who Would Not Leave

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ceridwen, CC BY-SA 2.0. From around 1940 until 2003, Castle Green House and the castle ruins surrounding it were the home of Barbara Wood and, later, of her alone. The owner allowed the property to decay so completely that the outer castle walls had to be propped up to stop them collapsing into Bridge S...

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Image: ceridwen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cardigan Castle: Open Again, After Eight Hundred Years

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit chris whitehouse, CC BY-SA 2.0. Restoration ran from 2003 to 2015, cost £12 million, and was paid for largely by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The opening on 15 April 2015 turned the castle back into a place the public could walk into for the first time in living memory. The new facilities are not what a twelfth-c...

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Image: chris whitehouse | CC BY-SA 2.0