Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:22:55.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Town and Castle of Conwy: Preservation and Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

Extract

This note summarizes and expands one of the short papers communicated to the Society on 23rd February 1995 under the title of ‘New Thoughts on Some Castles in Wales’.

The paper's purpose was twofold. First, it sought to present, through a series of ‘before and after’ photographs (figs. 1-8), an up-to-date picture of the transformation effected at Conwy in the course of the last forty years, not only by the careful and conservative repair of the fabric of both components of the monument, i.e. town walls as well as castle, but also by the systematic clearance wherever possible of every kind of built disfigurement from the forefront of the medieval enceinte, so as to reveal and display anew the whole circuit of towers and curtains in an ambience worthy of Britain's most outstanding example of medieval town fortification. Closely related to the process of gradually re-establishing awareness of the monument's unity, with the walls receiving the same respect, in financial as in other terms, as the castle and the work of repair proceeding simultaneously on both, was the defeat, likewise a long and complex process, of the Welsh Office's proposal effectively to destroy the natural setting and amenity of the whole southward aspect of castle and walls alike by driving a dual-carriageway ‘express-way’ through the Gyffin valley (brazenly promoted as the Minister's ‘preferred route’) and erecting a monster new suspension bridge whose ‘goalposts’ would have overtopped even the turrets of the castle towers. The abandonment of this disastrous plan, in favour of the submerged tube tunnel under the river opened by H.M. the Queen in October 1991, was of incalculable benefit in preserving Conwy's unique character into the future. As such, it has its proper place in the present record (figs. 9-12).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

CADW, 1995. Official Guides to Ewloe and Laugharne CastlesGoogle Scholar
Clark, G. T. 1884. Medieval Military Architecture, 2 vols. LondonGoogle Scholar
Dodd, A. H. 1968. A History of Caernarvonshire 1284-1900, DenbighGoogle Scholar
Grose, F. 1772-1776. The Antiquities of England and Wales, 4 vols., LondonGoogle Scholar
Hamilton Thompson, A. 1912. Military Architecture in England during the Middle Ages, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Harold Hughes, H. 1938. ‘The Edwardian castle and town defences at Conway’, Archaeol. Cambrensis, 93, 221, 75-92, 212–25Google Scholar
Harold Hughes, H. and North, H. L. 1924. The Old Churches of Snowdonia, BangorGoogle Scholar
James, M. R. 1930. Suffolk and Norfolk, LondonGoogle Scholar
Munro Cautley, H. 1938. Suffolk Churches and their Treasures, second edition, LondonGoogle Scholar
Nairn, I. and Pevsner, N. 1965. Sussex, LondonGoogle Scholar
Pennant Rhys, J. (ed.) 1883. Thomas Pennant, Tours in Wales, 3 vols., CaernarvonGoogle Scholar
De Raemy, D. 1992. ‘Grandson-Conwy: aller et retour’ in Le Pays de Vaud vers 1300, Cahiers Lausannois d'Histoire Medievale, 6, (Bagliani, A. P.), 129–35, LausanneGoogle Scholar
Rcahmwm, , 1956. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Caernarvonshire, vol. I, EastGoogle Scholar
Roberts, E. 1960. ‘Seven John Conways’, J. Flintshire Hist. Soc, 18, 6174Google Scholar
Spurgeon, C. J. 1993. ‘St Donat's Castle a recent revised interpretation by the RCAHM Wales’, Archaeol. J., 150, 498503CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, A. J., 1950. ‘Master James of St George’, Engl. Hist. Rev., 65, 433–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, A. J., 1956. Conway Castle and Town Walls, Caernarvonshire, LondonGoogle Scholar
Taylor, A. J., 1982. ‘The Conwy Particulars Accounts for Nov. 1285-Sept. 1286’, Bull. Board Celtic Stud., 30, 134–43Google Scholar
Taylor, A. J., 1985. ‘The dismantling of Conwy Castle’, Trans. Ancient Monuments Soc, 29, 81–9Google Scholar
Toy, S. 1936. ‘The town and castle of Conway’, Archaeologia, 86, 163–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, N. 1960. Conway and its Story, DenbighGoogle Scholar
Tucker, N., 1961. ‘Bodrhyddan and the families of Conwy, Shipley-Conwy and Rowley-Conwy. Part I’, J. Flintshire Hist. Soc, 19, 6186Google Scholar
Tucker, N., 1962. ‘Bodrhyddan and the families of Conwy, Shipley-Conwy and Rowley-Conwy. Part I’, J. Flintshire Hist. Soc, 20, 138Google Scholar
Williams, R. 1835. The History and Antiquities of… Aberconwy, DenbighGoogle Scholar
Wood, M. E. 1950. ‘Thirteenth-century domestic architecture in EnglandArchaeol. J., 105, SupplementGoogle Scholar
Wyndham, H. P. 1781. A Tour through Monmouthshire and Wales, Made in the Months of June and July, 1774. And in the Months of June, July and August 1777, 2nd edition, SalisburyGoogle Scholar