Discussion:
The following sections are also available to download in PDF format.
Early history of the town
Of all Edward's walled castle-towns in Wales, Caernarfon is perhaps the most celebrated and renowned. Yet, it was a rather small town compared with the others, seemingly under-sized for its massively-built town walls and the spectacular castle that literally overshadows it. As at Rhuddlan and Beaumaris, there was an existing town in place at Caernarfon before the reign of Edward. Prior to Edward's castle, an earthen motte stood on the site, built around 1090 under the Norman earl of Chester, Hugh of Avranches.[73] By Edward's time, this Norman settlement was in Welsh hands and was a port with a borough court.[74] In this context, the situation at Caernarfon was similar to that at Llanfaes situated on Anglesey, across the Menai Strait from Caernarfon, where a Welsh settlement had also preceded the foundation of the new town of Beaumaris. At Caernarfon, then, those who came to build Edward his new town on the banks of the Seiont river, on a commanding promontory overlooking the Strait, were making good use of an established settlement site with already existing trading links, and with the remains of an earlier Norman castle providing a ready basis on which to build their new castle.[75]
Work began on the walled town and castle in the summer of 1283, following the second Welsh war of 1282-3 as English forces moved west into the heartland of Snowdonia. During June and July, these preliminaries included digging the 'new moat' for the castle, and demolishing existing houses to make way for the town and its defences, as well as creating a timber palisade around the whole site to protect it and its workers.[76] Taking the timbers away from the houses took 20 men five days, while the palisade around the building site had originally been made for use in the town defences of Rhuddlan but under the king's orders was brought to Caernarfon as it was more urgently needed there.[77] During July, a Master Mannasser de Vaucoleurs was responsible for the earthworks, and work at this preliminary stage clearly encompassed both the town and the castle, the whole enterprise being overseen from the start by Eustace de Hache, a household knight, along with a clerk of works, John of Dunster.[78] Hugh of Leominster and Roger Cosyn succeeded Dunster as clerks during late 1283 and 1284, but of the castle construction at Caernarfon compared to the near-neighbours of Conwy and Harlech little is known of 'the identity of the principal masters employed in the formative stages', excepting that Walter of Hereford was the mason employed during the later stages of its building in the 1290s.[79] Arnold Taylor marshals documentary evidence to make a case that the architect-mason Master James of St George had an important role in the early design of Caernarfon castle (together with Master Richard, the Engineer, of Chester), also pointing out architectural similarities between Caernarfon and the castle at Conwy, where Master James was certainly at work.[80]
Between August 1284 and November 1285 emphasis shifted from the castle towards constructing the town's walls, gates and towers, as during this period more than half the annual expenditure on building work at Caernarfon went on them.[81] Having already dug the outer earthen defences, work on the town's walls began. This was in the week of Monday October 9 1284, and it has been suggested that this occasion 'may conceivably have been timed to coincide with a formal presentation by the king of the borough's charter', when Edward was himself at Caernarfon on October 10 and 11.[82] The charter itself had actually been witnessed earlier, at Flint on September 8, when equivalent charters were issued to the new towns of Flint, Rhuddlan and Conwy.[83] It was issued using the same terms as Conwy's charter, which in turn was based upon the laws of the city of Hereford, and included in it were the usual borough privileges of Edward's towns in Wales, such as the right of burgesses to choose two bailiffs and present them to the mayor (who was also constable of the castle), as well as the right to have a merchant guild.[84] The borough charter was granted just over a year after the initial groundworks were started therefore, including the earthwork defences dug around the town, but before the town walls were built. This first year was probably also the time the streets and building plots were set out on the ground, a process that is not itself documented. That this was done with some precision in mind is shown by the fact that the town's original burgages were all to conform to a standard size, sixty feet broad by eighty feet deep.[85] In the case of Caernarfon, then, it is clear that the town was created in physical form before its legal foundation as a chartered borough.
Outside the town's defences further work was going on between May and November 1285. A new quay was being constructed from timber and earth, the latter dug from the ditch around the castle, while to the east of the town a large mill-pond was created, the King's Pool.[86] Certainly the quay would help promote the town's commercial function. This is also the time individual burgesses are first recorded in Caernarfon, when some nine months after the date of the town's charter, two burgesses, William Faucil and Bernard de Weisak, sought the king's protection.[87] A full list of the town's burgesses was compiled a few years later in 1298, following a Welsh uprising under Madoc ap Llywelyn which had seen the castle and town of Caernarfon burned, and some destruction of the town walls occur.[88] During 1295 and early 1296 Caernarfon's walls were rebuilt under the architect-mason Walter of Hereford.[89] Meanwhile, as part of his overall duty securing the king's peace in Snowdonia, the King's Justice, John de Havering, drew up a list of the town's burgesses and the property they held.[90] The town was by then over ten year's old and was clearly attracting new burgesses who had presumably come to take up burgage plots for building houses and workshops. Some early inhabitants were those directly involved in the preliminary setting-out and building work, including Masters Mannasser of Vaucoleurs, Hugh of Leominster, and Walter of Hereford.[91] The total number of burgesses recorded in the 1298 rental is 57, and some surnames reveal the sorts of places they had come from, including overseas but more typically the English midlands and Welsh borders.[92] Not all held a whole burgage. Some had halves, showing that sub-division of the original plots had already begun. Later surviving property transfer deeds from the fourteenth century show an active property market was at work within the framework of pre-existing burgages, and the 1298 rental itself shows evidence that plots were soon changing hands as burgesses left and new ones arrived.[93]
From its inception, then, and despite the interruption caused by the Welsh attack on the town in 1295, Caernarfon was a successful urban venture. By 1295 it was a walled town, with a quayside for ships, and with a borough charter and around 60 burgages conforming to a standard dimension. About half the size of its close neighbours and contemporaries of Conwy and Beaumaris it was by comparison a relatively small borough, but in contrast the castle at Caernarfon was the most impressive and enduring symbol of Edward's conquest and settlement of north Wales, imbued with an imperial iconography that connected him and his empire with that of ancient Rome and its emperors.[94]
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Design and plan of the town
Within the circuit of walls, Caernarfon's town plan comprises a grid of streets forming elongated blocks. The axis of the grid is High Street and at either end it had the town's two main gates, Exchequer Gate in the east and Golden Gate in the west.[95] Three other streets were placed across High Street, and each of these terminated at the walls.[96] These three are approximately in parallel with each other and may have been interconnected by means of a street that ran just within the town wall providing access to its five landward-facing towers.[97] The three cross streets define four central street-blocks, each large enough to accommodate a double line of building-plots facing each street. There is no discernable rear access to these plots. Along the two outer streets (Shire Hall Street, Church Street, and Palace Street, Northgate Street) there is just a single line of plots, so the street-blocks here are half the depth of the four central ones. So, six street-blocks in all were provided within the walled town. The plots within these six blocks were orientated to face the three cross streets, except those along the main axis of High Street where they are turned by ninety degrees to face onto it instead.
The overall plan of Caernarfon is thus quite a simple gridded layout, but although its plan is regular in form it is not perfectly geometrical. There are some irregularities that spoil its symmetry. The three cross-streets, for instance, do not intersect with High Street at perfect right-angles but are skewed slightly. The streets are not perfectly straight either, and the blocks of plots that they encompass are also each slightly different in size and shape, some being more elongated than others. These irregularities are usually explained in terms of the town's site having physical constraints.[98] There are other factors to consider though, relating to the process of the town's initial design and planning. This includes the timing of when the various elements of the town's plan were laid out, and who was involved. Fortunately, early documentary evidence is available at Caernarfon to examine these issues and see if the design for the town was adapted to meet local requirements.
Looking at the layout of Caernarfon's streets and street blocks overall, those to the north side of High Street appear to be differently shaped compared to south of it. The cause of this difference seems to be due to the curvature of the northern line of the town wall, which shortens the length of Northgate Street compared to Palace Street, and lengthens Church Street compared with Shire Hall Street. With their different lengths, the northern stretches of the three cross-streets produce more oddly-shaped street-blocks than those between High Street and the castle ditch to the south. It looks, then, as if the town walls were laid out on alignments that spoiled the symmetry of the street pattern, reducing the overall regularity of the six street-blocks. Could this be because the town's street-plan was designed by one individual, and its walls and defences by another? Had there been an 'ideal' design for the town which had to be adapted to suit the circuit of the town walls? One way to explore this further is to see how well the town's original burgages of sixty-by-eighty-feet fit into the actual layout of the six street-blocks.[99] The answer is not well at all in those blocks north of High Street affected by the line of the town wall. Here, for example, the block between Church Street and Market Street tapers inwards at its northern end, making it impossible to fit in the burgages of the documented size - the block is too narrow to contain two plots back-to-back - whereas at its southern end there is ample room. Along Northgate Street far fewer standard plots can be accommodated than in the street-blocks just to the west because the street is shortened by the wall. However, to the south of High Street, where the wall is not an influence, ten standard-sized plots fit comfortably in the blocks between Palace Street and Castle Street, and Castle Street and Shire Hall Street, showing that these were laid out to dimensions suitable for holding the sixty-by-eighty-feet plots.[100] With this in mind, it seems most likely that the original design for the town was for the four central-blocks to hold ten plots each, with the narrower outer-blocks each holding five, giving a total of 60 plots in all (ie. 4 x 10 + 4 x 5). This of course is very close to the 55 recorded burgages in the 1298 rental.[101] It points to an 'ideal' plan being drawn up with two sets of four equal-sized street blocks placed within a grid of streets.
The area covered by the 'ideal' pattern of regular street-blocks is at odds, however, with the actual plan on the ground. It seems that the town plan was adapted to make the street-blocks fit into the area encompassed by the circuit of walls (an area of just over ten acres). This involved turning plots to face High Street, and making the blocks north of High Street less regular in form than those to the south, resulting in plots either larger or smaller in size than the standard burgage. A mismatch between the town's plan and the walls implies that two individuals were responsible for them, one laying out the streets and the plots, and the other working on the walls and defences. From what we know of the individuals engaged at Caernarfon in the preliminary work during summer 1283, it is possible to see perhaps Mannasser de Vaucoleurs or Richard the Engineer setting out the circuit for the town's defences, looking to fulfill the need for a tight and defensible circuit, while someone such as Eustace de Hache or his clerk John of Dunster, both men with more of an administrative mind, was concerned with the town layout and matters such as how best to accommodate the maximum number of burgages within a given area. At a size of sixty-by-eighty-feet, sixty-burgages could have been accommodated by the simple gridded arrangement of streets chosen for the town, but the defences evidently took precedence over having a perfectly ordered pattern of streets and plots. Perhaps, then, what we are seeing in the plan of Caernarfon's is a sign that there was a compromise between those dealing with the town's future commercial and economic needs and those dealing with its military and defensive needs. The decision-making for this work would have to have been done at the preliminary stage, when the site was being cleared, ditches dug, and palisades put up. Indeed, the positioning of the two town-gates in the wall could not have been done without due consideration for the placing of the streets, especially the line of High Street, and in the setting out of the oblong-shaped street blocks, even if in the end these had to be made to fit with where the defences ran. Though this still leaves the question of why Castle Street was not made to line up with the gate of the castle, unless the castle had a different designer?
While the town's plan within the walls was in place by the time the borough received its charter in 1284, some new developments continued to occur outside. One of these was the quay created in 1285, along the wall on the north-side of the town. It is shown as a tidal creek on Speed's plan of the town of 1610, but subsequently became infilled. The former outlines of it are preserved by the streets of Bank Quay and Turk Quay. The creek was fed by a small stream (or streams) flowing down from the mill pond, the King's Pool. The dam across this pool was built in 1305, together with a sluice for a new mill outside the East Gate, and the works of the new mill appear in the account roll of Thomas de Esthalle, the king's chamberlain in north Wales at that time.[102] Also here was a multi-arched bridge across the river, leading into the town from the east up to the main East, or Exchequer Gate which housed the exchequer for north Wales.[103] The market place for the town lay outside the walls to the east where more space was available, with closer proximity to the quay.[104] Reference to it appears on the reverse side of the 1298 rental roll, and certainly there were houses located in the suburbs outside the walls by the later fourteenth century.[105] There were also some minor changes within the walls after 1284 though none disrupted the town plan. For example, a chantry chapel dedicated to St Mary was founded in 1307 just inside the north-west corner of the walls and placed on a burgage held by Henry de Ellerton, a mason working under Walter of Hereford.[106] For the town's burgesses Llanbeblig remained the parish church, however.
The adaptation of the town plan and the working out of a layout to combine defensive and commercial functions shows the skill of those involved in setting out Caernarfon during 1283 and 1284. The impact on the town plan of the 1295 Welsh attack seems minimal, and besides by then the plots and streets were demarcated, and property holdings defined in legal terms. The close attention to detail shown by burgesses to the boundaries of their property in the town is demonstrated in surviving transfer deeds of the fourteenth century.[107] These contain measured out distances as well as the names of those whose property they abutted. One such deed, of 1334, granted half a burgage which lay between the plot of Reginald of Trentham on the one side and the king's highway on the other, a corner plot.[108] The townscape of the walled town of Caernarfon was thus relatively unchanging through its earliest years, and indeed once set in place the lines of streets and plots that made up its town's plan appear to have remained largely intact right up to modern times, so that even today the dimensions and traces of the town's original burgages can still be picked out.
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The town as it is today
The town walls and castle at Caernarfon are designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Their worldwide historical and architectural significance is thus recognised and celebrated. The walls still contain the streets and plots that were laid out at the time of the town's foundation. They, too, need to be seen for their importance, for both town and castle were combined together as one entity. The defences and gates of the walled town put up after the Welsh attack of 1295 are well-preserved too, and for much of the circuit maintain their original heights and appearance.[109] Vehicular traffic still runs through the eastern gate. Indeed, looking through the Exchequer Gate down High Street, it is possible to gain some impression of the view that confronted those who entered the walled town seven hundred years ago. True, the building façades along the streets are now largely nineteenth or twentieth century date, but the rhythm of streets and plot frontages relates to the visual sense of the town's original layout.[110] What is striking is the clear view provided from one end of the town right through to the other, along High Street to the Golden Gate opposite. From its main entrance gateway it is (and was) possible for the visitor to immediately take in the size of the whole town, but there is no sight of the castle, which remains hidden to the left, and only comes clearly into view after turning into Castle Street from High Street. The castle then, which certainly dominates the town's skyline, does not loom quite so large within the actual confines of the town walls.
Despite the well-preserved architectural remains of the town's walls and castle, and the fossilised plan of streets and street-blocks, there are areas within the walled town that were redeveloped in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This caused some plot boundaries to be lost, especially in Shire Hall Street and Church Street. Victorian terraces replaced earlier buildings, and in recent archaeological excavations the effect of this has been plain to see, with little trace of medieval levels surviving below ground. This was the case for the area redeveloped for the Shire Hall in the 1980s. Elsewhere in the town excavation has revealed fragmentary foundations of medieval buildings, but overall the potential looks disappointing.[111] This is in contrast to outside the town wall, where the remains of the bridge into the town was well-preserved beneath the modern street, and probably the same would be true of the area of the quay should that be fully investigated sometime in the future.[112] As in Edward's time, the walled town today still serves commercial, judicial and administrative functions, but the main focus of the modern town now lies outside the medieval town walls. The population of the built-up area of Caernarfon in 2001 stood at nearly 10,000.[113] In 1300 Caernarfon was small compared to its neighbouring castle-towns of Conwy and Beaumaris. Now the reverse is true.
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References:
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.77-8.
- Lewis, Mediaeval Boroughs, p.46; K. Williams-Jones, 'Caernarvon', in R.A. Griffiths (ed.), Boroughs of Mediaeval Wales (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1978), p.75.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.77-8; RCAHMW, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Caernarvonshire, volume II: central, the cantref of Arfon and the commote of Eifionydd (HMSO, London, 1960), p.115.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.79-80.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.31, 79.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.79-80.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.81-82, 86-89.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.100-101.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.82. In this period, a total of £3040 5s 6½d was spent on the new works.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.82.
- CChR 1257-1300, p.278; CWR, p.289.
- CChR 1257-1300, pp.277-78.
- Lewis, Mediaeval Boroughs, p.63, citing Minister's Accounts of 1305-6 (PRO: SC6/1170/4).
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.83.
- CPR 1281-92, p.177.
- T. Jones Pierce and J. Griffiths, 'Documents relating to the rarly history of the borough of Caernarvon', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 9 (1937-9), pp.238-40; Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.85.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.86-89.
- Jones Pierce and Griffiths, 'Early history of the borough of Caernarvon', p.236; Williams Jones, 'Caernarvon', pp.80-1.
- Williams Jones, 'Caernarvon', pp.80-1.
- The total number of names listed on the rental is 62 (PRO: SC12/17/86), but five names appear to have been added, suggesting the 1298 number was actually 57 burgesses. Jones Pierce and Griffiths, 'Early history of the borough of Caernarvon', pp.238-40. By 1305 the total figure was down to 53, Williams Jones, 'Caernarvon', pp.82-3.
- Jones Pierce and Griffiths, 'Early history of the borough of Caernarvon', pp.241-46. One such transfer (of the 1330s?) involved a plot measuring 20 by 85 feet, this being a third of the width of the original burgage size, and just a fraction deeper. Manuscript alterations made to the 1298 survey show which burgesses had changed.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.78-9.
- These names were current in the fourteenth century. Alternative names were also used: West or Water Gate for Golden Gate, and East or Great Gate for Exchequer Gate. Two smaller postern gates were also present, one stood at the south-west corner of the circuit, close to the castle's Eagle Tower, and the other, the Green Gate, was at the southern end of Hole-in-the-Wall Street (hence the street-name). Soulsby, Towns of Medieval Wales, p.90; RCAHMW, Caernarvonshire, ii, pp.150-55.
- Later, in modern times, they were cut through the walls.
- The course of this 'intra-mural' street is suggested by unnamed lanes in the north-eastern corner of the walled town, as well as by the line of Hole-in-the-Wall Street.
- Soulsby, Towns of Medieval Wales, p.90.
- Field measurements of the street-blocks and plot-frontages were taken in 2004. See 'Data downloads'.
- Indeed, some plot-frontages in the town still measure sixty-feet wide and eighty deep.
- 59 were in existence by 1305.
- RCAHMW, Caernarvonshire, ii, p.158; Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.91; E.A. Lewis, 'The account roll of the Chamberlain of the Principality of North Wales from Michaelmas 1304 to Michaelmas 1305', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 1 (1923), pp.256, 269.
- For the bridge see, RCAHMW, Caernarvonshire, ii, p.153; Excavations: Anon., Eastgate Street, Caernarfon, archaeological watching brief (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report 361, 2000); A. Davidson and D.Rh. Gwyn, Eastgate Street, Caernarfon, archaeological assessment (G1368) (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report 202, 1996); on the Exchequer gate see Williams Jones, 'Caernarvon', p.78.
- Soulsby, Towns of Medieval Wales, p.90.
- Jones Pierce and Griffiths, 'Early history of the borough of Caernarvon', p.241; Williams Jones, 'Caernarvon', p.84.
- Williams Jones, 'Caernarvon', p.82; RCAHMW, Caernarvonshire, ii, pp.123-4.
- Jones Pierce and Griffiths, 'Early history of the borough of Caernarvon', pp.241-46.
- Jones Pierce and Griffiths, 'Early history of the borough of Caernarvon', p.242.
- For more on the castle and walls, see RCAMWM, Caernarvonshire, ii, pp.124-156; see also www.coflein.gov.uk
- RCAHMW, Caernarvonshire, ii, pp.156-58
- Excavations: D.M.T. Longley, 'Rescue excavations at 29 High Street, Caernarfon, Gwynedd', Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society 61 (2000), pp.41-53; Anon., 11-13 High Street, Caernarfon, archaeological evaluation (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report 118, c.1994); Anon., Excavations at 29 High Street, Caernarfon, interim report 77 (G1122) (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report, c.1993); A. Davidson, Boundary wall at 9 Market Street, Caernarfon, archaeological assessment (G1685) (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report 409, 2001).
- See Anon., Caernarfon Bank Quay watching brief September 1994 (G1239) March 1996 (G1398) (Gwynedd Archaeological Trust report 205, nd.).
- 2001 census covering the wards of Peblig, Seiont, Menai and Cadnant that make up the town.
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