Qualla: Ruthin

Ruthin: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On 18 September 1400, Owain Glyndŵr rode into this town and set it on fire. By the time his men withdrew, almost every building inside the walls was ash - everything except the castle, the church, and a few stone houses too stubborn to burn. The cause was a fence-line argument, a strip of common land claimed by Reginald Grey, the English Marcher Lord at the castle, and contested by Glyndŵr the Welsh squire down the valley. Within a generation, that argument had become the last great Welsh war of independence. Ruthin had given the Welsh their grievance and the chronicler his opening line.

Read more: Ruthin on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Ruthin: Red Fort, Red Stone

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name says it: rhudd din - the red fort - after the iron-stained sandstone bedrock that gives the castle hill its colour. The first castle began rising in 1277 under Dafydd ap Gruffydd, brother to Llywelyn the last Prince of Wales, on land granted by King Edward I in payment f...

Read more: Ruthin on Qualla

Image: Rept0n1x | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ruthin: St Peter's Square

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. John Grey, second Baron Grey de Wilton, raised St Peter's Church in 1310 on the north side of the market place. The church has a double nave and two medieval carved roofs, and behind it sits a quadrangle of old college buildings, a school, and Christ's Hospital - the almshouse Ga...

Read more: Ruthin on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Ruthin: Nantclwyd y Dre

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arwel Parry, CC BY-SA 3.0. On Castle Street stands Nantclwyd y Dre, built about 1435 by a merchant named Gronw ap Madoc - the oldest dated timber-framed townhouse in Wales. The black-and-white frontage leans gently into the street as five centuries of settling will incline a building. Seven rooms inside ha...

Read more: Ruthin on Qualla

Image: Arwel Parry | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ruthin: Gaol Street

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arwel Parry, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the bottom of Clwyd Street, Ruthin Gaol survives as a museum - a four-storey Victorian prison block modelled on Pentonville, finished in 1865 to replace the older bridewell on the same site. Only one execution is recorded here: William Hughes of Denbigh, hanged on 17 February ...

Read more: Ruthin on Qualla

Image: Arwel Parry | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ruthin: What Wales Sounds Like

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The first printed copies of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau - Wales's national anthem - came off a press on Well Street, in the building that is now Siop Nain, a tea and gift shop. In its eighteenth-century heyday on the drovers' route from Wales into England, Ruthin reportedly had a pub for ...

Read more: Ruthin on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain