Chepstow Castle

Welcome once again guys and today Is the last one in the series If you've made it this far you deserve a medal this is uh, chepstow castle The original castle was built in 1080 1068 i've been reliably informed So When william the conqueror was still on the throne, so, uh Yeah, one of the earliest english castles in wales on the border area obviously To keep an eye on the welsh So let's pop in Very impressive one this Very large In we go All right, thank you As we can see Quite a lot of the castle still remains So there's a concert going on at some point This staging area isn't contemporary with the early phases of the castle Very large walls here as I say One of the english castles built I say we're in chepstow. So we're near the border between england and wales here um Let's see what this says here Some fireplaces there Two floors This is the tudor great court, so this obviously is a lot later right The medieval curtain wall was built in the 16th century But it's originally built by william marshall around 1200 And he was very loyal to the king at the time Again the original castle would have been Put added onto and extended over the years And uh Eventually replaced by stone Built on the side of the river Protecting the castle from this side at least i'll tell you the remains with the into all castles This one is probably the second largest behind kirk philly at least with what remains today anyway Again i'm guessing that's going to be the original part of the castle and this In a ward, I believe it's called would have been added on to a later date Oh, sorry. I've been i've just been reliably informed That i've got it the wrong way around. This is the earliest bit And that bit was added on later As I say i'm not a medieval historian My partner there is So she knows a hell of a lot more about it than I do Maybe I should have had uh Helen do the uh Videos instead of me waffling on Talking a load of drip So this would have been The earliest ward here And that would have been the earliest castle and again the outer ward Would have been the uh Let's have a quick look out here Through the arrows, let's see Again fantastic views over the landscape Modern day chepstow there That's it. I believe there were three castles built early on along the border One here at chepstow one at shrewsbury Not too sure where the third one was but uh Would have been to the north chepstow's here in the south Shrewsbury sort of in the middle along the border very substantial timber timber holes there all the way along Okay So william was asked by the king to invade wales for him Unfortunately, william died before he could finish building the castle later in 1075 William's son Inherited it but uh He wasn't very fond of the king and rebelled against him so again this idea of Alliances changing and swapping and rather complicated political Machinations at the time And you thought politics was complicated today Just as complicated During the uh, anglo-norman period noisy seagulls As I say we are close to the coast here This was a Chepstow was a substantial port during the medieval period Would have been on the river You've got to remember as well as the rivers of the time with the highways of today It was much quicker traveling by boat and by land it certainly is very uh Substantial wasn't expecting it to be this this large actually. This is the marshall's tower It was built 1215 by william marshall the inner wars of demarce in 1662 And the castle's earlier defenses were breached to make a continuous wall walk Let's pop up onto the uh Walkway and have a look over this side Good view of the river from up here It curls around past the castle and out to the sea and a view from the other side of the river the other side of the castle Again, a high point in the landscape Power projection and a very good defensive position Onto one of the towers Where my slipskies there For your arches to shoot out of This is a view you don't normally see So actually above a gate house here And there we can see the slots for the portcullises It's quite an interesting view Don't normally get to see these things from above usually from below And I say this is the normal view we get of the uh, we were just above up there a minute ago Looking at the portcullis slots from above And again, we have the three portcullises Slots for them there So there you go There's the portcullis slots Of course wales famous obviously for its uh, Welsh longbowmen During the uh Wars against france These fellas were uh Incredibly strong Because longbows I mean they've measured some of the um Poundage from the bows found on the mary rose And it was upwards of 200 pounds For a medieval longbow And you certainly needed to be a big fella To operate one of them And the welsh were famous for it Welsh longbowmen were the best bowmen in the world at the time And obviously as well the bows were hugely made of Yew wood Which was the best wood For making the bows Okay back into the later part of the castle which I thought was the earliest part Yeah Would have been the tudor great court in later times So there we go guys. That's about as far as places these days Chepstow castle One of the english castles so again not subject to the marcher rules Built to keep an eye on welsh by the english. So thank you once again guys for listening There'll be one more video but it won't be Of the castle. It'll be one when We get home To send you a little bit about the research if you want to do a bit more yourself Which books are looked at? And so on and so forth So once again guys, thank you for coming on this journey with me to the castles of south wales We haven't even touched upon a majority of them in this series but as I say There are a great many castles in wales because of the marcher laws So thanks again guys for watching Please like comment subscribe And we shall catch you in the next video