Qualla: Pennard Castle

Pennard Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eiona Roberts from Wales, CC BY 2.0. The thing that drove people out of Pennard Castle was not a Welsh army or an English king. It was sand. Sometime around the turn of the fourteenth century, the dunes along the southern Gower coast began to advance inland, and over the following decades they swallowed fields, settlements, and a church called St Mary's that had once stood beside the castle. The Braose family had only just finished rebuilding the timber fortifications in stone, complete with a fashionable twin-towered gatehouse copied from Caerphilly. By 1650 the place was described as desolate and ruinous, half-buried, and surrounded by sand. The dunes are still there. They are still moving.

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Image: Eiona Roberts from Wales | CC BY 2.0

Pennard Castle: A Norman Ringwork on a Limestone Spur

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit john bristow, CC BY-SA 2.0. Henry de Beaumont, Earl of Warwick, conquered Gower for the Normans in the early years of the twelfth century and parcelled out manors to consolidate his hold. Pennard, perched on a limestone spur above the mouth of the Pennard Pill stream and the white sand of Three Cliffs Bay, ...

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Image: john bristow | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pennard Castle: The Braose Stone Rebuild

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Davies, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sometime in the early thirteenth century a stone hall replaced the timber building on the same spot, built from red-purple sandstone with white limestone detailing. Around the turn of the fourteenth century, while the castle was in the hands of William de Braose and his son of th...

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Image: Nigel Davies | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pennard Castle: Buried by Sand

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ceridwen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Braoses may have built Pennard in stone as a replacement for their castle at Penmaen, which they had just been forced to abandon to encroaching dunes. The decision did not buy them much time. Within a generation or two the same dunes that had swallowed Penmaen began to overru...

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Image: ceridwen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pennard Castle: What Survives

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0. The remaining southern wall collapsed at the start of 1960. An archaeological survey followed in 1960 and 1961, and urgent masonry repairs in 1963 were paid for jointly by the Ministry of Public Building and Works, the Gower Society, the golf club, and a public appeal launched by...

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Image: Graham Taylor | CC BY-SA 2.0