Conway Castle - Conway, Wales (CADW)
Built between 1283 and 1287, Conway was one of a series of castles established in North Wales by King Edward I to secure the newly conquered principality. It appears that it was originally intended to be the shire town, but in the end this position was bestowed on Caernarfon. Edward I was always a decisive conqueror and within four days after his arrival at Conwy, after the capture by the English of the Welsh stronghold of Dolwyddelan, he was making arrangements to fortify the position. The castle was to be built with a two-part plan, the more public areas towards the land and the King's private apartments overlooking the river mouth. A strong dividing wall between the two halves provided a further layer of defence for the King when he was in residence. The surrounding walled town was also part of the original conception, providing a safe area for the townsfolk as well as the garrison.
Conwy remains one of the best examples of the major achievements of medieval defensive architecture, despite the rapid decline in repair that occurred only fifty years after its completion. There are recorded structural problems with the roofs in 1321, rotted wooden trusses caused by lack of repair to the lead over the Great Hall and elsewhere throughout the castle. By the following year, Conwy was not fit to house the King. Worse followed and a survey carried out following the grant of Wales to Edward, the Black Prince in 1343, showed how badly in need of radical repair the whole castle was. Three years later, major reconstruction work was at last carried out. Fifteen stone arches were substituted for the rotted wooden trusses supporting the Great Hall ceiling. You can still see the remnants of this radical change. Unusually for such an old castle, the repairs in 1346 were the only major work ever carried out after the castle's original construction. Minor repairs must have been an ongoing problem for so large an expanse of stonework and timber, but the result is that the ruins today are very largely from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Following the Tudor accession to the English throne in 1485, the need for a defensive stronghold reduced substantially and Conwy continued its slide into disrepair. By 1627, the whole building had become unstable and dangerous to enter. A survey taken at the time states 'the leads being decayed and broken above and almost all the floares fallen down'. The castle was sold, following this pessimistic survey, for £100 to Edward, Lord Conway of Ragley, Warwickshire, who was Charles I's Secretary of State. In due course, his son and heir looked seriously at the possibility of repairing the castle to become his principle residence. However, the Civil War intervened and in 1645, the castle was occupied and repaired somewhat by John Williams, a native of Conwy who was then the exiled archbishop of York. Pinning all his hopes on the Royal cause, he was disappointed to have wasted his time and money and changed sides, joining the Parliamentary besiegers of Conwy in order to spare his home town from destruction. In 1655 the Council of State ordered that Conwy, as so many other castles, was to be slighted in order to prevent it being used against the Parliamentarians. This is most likely to have been the source of the large breach in the Bakehouse Tower, known as the 'broken tower' until its repair in the nineteenth century by the railway company. The third Lord Conway sold the lead and timber of the castle in 1655, after it was returned to him following the Restoration. A once magnificent and impregnable fortification was fit only for dismantling.
In 1826, Thomas Telford's road bridge, now such a feature of the approach to Conwy, was opened, followed by the tubular rail bridge in 1848. Conwy's still splendid castle and walled town were brought to a wider public's attention and moves to preserve them were afoot. In 1876, the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, John Henry Parker, with the consent of the people of Conwy, 'restored at his own cost and expense the floors of the high tower in the medieval walls of the said town ... to keep and maintain the said high tower clean and in a fit state for visitors who may wish to inspect the same and to sit there or to sketch therein or therefrom'. From this time onwards, through the various people and organisations responsible for the upkeep of the castle, Conwy has indeed been a popular place to visit and to illustrate. It sits in a picturesque landscape, now majestic, now louring according to the weather and, together with Edward I's other North Wales castles, was inscribed on the World Heritage list as a historic site of outstanding universal value.