Well welcome to places to seem Wales and today we're at another castle. We do have
over 600 castles in Wales so there's a lot on to see. This is Coity Castle which
is in the village of Coity which is really close to the centre of Bridgend
South Wales and it's only about five miles from Ognore Castle which we went
to at the end of last year I think so the link for that one's down below.
Anyway some history, let's get started. The castle was founded by the Norman
knight Sir Payne 'the demon' de Turberville. He was one of the legendary
12 Knights of the Glamorgan. In AD 1100 it was just a basic earthwork castle but
the stone keep and outer curtain wall were added later in the 12th century.
Major renovations took place to the castle in the late 14th and early 15th century
after Owen Glyndwr laid siege to the English, "The =Bells" The renovations
included stone vaults which replaced the earlier timber structures and this
is a central pier, an octagonal pier which supported the vaults so quite
prominent. You can see the way the level's been raised as well. I did have some
detailed notes about the castle which I made beforehand that being Wales,
it's very windy today, luckily I'm sheltered here by the keep,
but unfortunately they blew away. So we're now in the inner ward of the castle and that
is the keep that's rectangular building there. Obviously they needed a well
within the enclosure to get some water.
You can still see many of their original design features. It's quite funny because
there's been a bit of a mishmash of rooms and styles where they added bits on throughout
the centuries. That's definitely a later addition, it's a big stone chimney. You can
see some of the strange features look at this here, obviously that goes up there
in an arch and this, but there's like a wall here so and that's been added later
or moved just beyond this is the moat a big ditch cut away. So this
room was the kitchen, again you can see where things have been moved things have been
bricked up like, back there be a big arched doorway that's been bricked up.
This room was the original Chapel of the castle.
You can see how much rain we've been having it's a bit flooded today. Well I'm in the
inner ward. I'm gonna go out through the east gate
and have a look at the external defences there's a big moat around the inner ward.
I don't know if it was just a ditch or ever full of water maybe you know, if you
do comment below but at the moment it's a steep-sided ditch. Let's go take a look.
So that was Coity Castle near Bridgend South Wales. It's free to get in it's
really easy to get to. It's literally five minutes from the M4 motorway. It's open
10:00 to 5:00 I think maybe a bit less in the winter have a look on the CADW
C A D W website they look after a lot of the castles in Wales, the link's below,
for their opening times. Anyway we'll see you next time on places to see Wales