STUDIA CELTICA, XXXV (2001), 161–212 The Medieval Town Defences of Glamorgan C. J. SPURGEON Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales Introduction Nine boroughs were established within the bounds of the historic county of Glamorgan in the Middle Ages, two in the lordship of Gower (Loughor and Swansea), and seven in the lordship of Glamorgan (Aberafan, Caerphilly, Cardiff, Cowbridge, Kenfig, Llantrisant and Neath). This paper considers four boroughs which were certainly forti- fied, and one, Neath, for which there is sufficient evidence to suggest the possible line of its vanished defences. Vestiges of the town walls and a gate survive at Cardiff and Cowbridge, and at Swansea recent development has exposed a fragment of the town wall with traces of a possible tower. At these three towns the outline and characteristics of the masonry defences are well attested by early town plans and records, and largely confirmed by excavations. Kenfig was never provided with stone walls, but it still retains substantial traces of its defensive rampart and ditch. There is no documentary or phys- ical evidence for fortifications at the other four boroughs. Extensive excavations at Loughor found no trace of the suggested medieval refortification of the defences of the Roman fort.1 The nine medieval boroughs, with one exception, were founded by the chief lords of Gower or Glamorgan. The exception was the latest, Aberafan, established c.1304 by Leision ap Morgan Fychan, the Welsh lord of Afan. Eight boroughs were urban centres which developed beside castles. Cowbridge, however, was unique in Glamorgan and rare in Wales in not conforming to this pattern.2 The walled town was set on low ground half a kilometre from the pre-existing Llanblethian Castle, and its defences were prob- ably provided at its foundation to compensate for this unusual lack of protection. In castle-towns which were fortified the defences were almost invariably integrated with those of the castle, as at Cardiff, Kenfig, Neath and Swansea. Cardiff was the earliest town in the lordship of Glamorgan. Cardiff Castle was raised by William the Conqueror in 1081, when he is said to have founded the town. Coins of the Conqueror minted at Cardiff suggest urban development beside the castle. Land granted to Tewkesbury Abbey by Robert Fitzhamon, c.1102, was said to lie beside the 1 H. S. Owen-John, Annual Report, 1983–84 2 Beresford, New Towns, 183, 527–8. (Glamorgan–Gwent Archaeological Trust, 1985), 66–115. 162 C. J. SPURGEON borough (iuxta burgum) of Cardiff.3 Earl Robert (c.1113–47) granted privileges to the burgesses of Cardiff, though this is only attested in an undated recital of the liberties and customs conferred by both Earl Robert and his successor, Earl William.4 It is pos- sible that some of the privileges stemmed from a grant by Fitzhamon (ob.1107), and that the burgus recorded c.1102 was a settlement of significant size. Kenfig and Neath were the next boroughs to be established in Glamorgan, following Earl Robert’s appropriation of the western lowlands in the 1120s. Robert’s borough of Kenfig is first noticed in a charter dating to the last years of his life (1140–7).5 The land beside the town included a burgage in the west street ‘outside the gate of the town’. Already fortified, and developing a suburb for its burgesses, the town must have been established soon after the castle was founded c.1120. Neath town was established at the same time beside the castle on the east bank of the Nedd, facing the castle and lord- ship on the west bank in lands granted by Earl Robert to Richard de Granville. When Granville ceded these lands in 1130 to found Neath Abbey there is the first reference to the new town (nova villa) at Neath in the abbey’s founding charter.6 Neath was given formal recognition as a borough in the charter of Earl William (1147–83), which endowed the burgesses with the liberties and customs of Cardiff.7 Swansea was the first of the two boroughs established in Gower. Its castle and con- tiguous settlement were founded c.1107 by Henry de Beaumont, earl of Warwick, to serve as the administrative centre of his lordship. There is no mention of a town when Swansea Castle was attacked by the Welsh in 1116, but urban development had occurred before 1137–41, when a mint established there produced silver pennies bearing the name of the castle and town.8 Swansea attained full borough status with the grant of extensive liberties and customs by Earl William de Beaumont (1153–84).9 Earl Richard de Clare chose to locate his borough of Cowbridge on the old Roman road, the Portway, some distance from the existing castle of the St Quintins in Llanblethian, and conveniently placed mid-way between his boroughs at Cardiff and Kenfig. The rapidly expanding town was granted its formal charter by Earl Richard in 1254, and it was soon rivalled only by Cardiff, and was among the largest boroughs in Wales. Cardiff, Cowbridge and Swansea were the most successful foundations. They enjoyed their most flourishing periods of growth and prosperity in the thirteenth century. In 1300 Cardiff was by far the largest borough in Wales, with 421 burgages occupying its fortified enclosure of about 17 hectares (about 42 acres). Cowbridge expanded consid- erably from its foundation in 1254, with 276 burgages recorded in 1306, placing it sixth behind Cardiff in Wales.10 The defended area at Cowbridge was 5.5 hectares (13.5 acres), 3 Clark, Cartae, I (xxxiv), 37 (confirmed by Henry Cartae, IV (mlxxv), 1418; A. Ballard, British Borough I, 1106: Cartae, I (xxxvi), 39). Charters (1042–1216) (Cambridge, 1913), pp. xxx, 24. 4 Ibid., I (xciii), 94–7 and note. 8 Boon, Welsh Hoards, 49–50. 5 Patterson, Glouc. Charters, no. 68, pp. 73–4; Clark, 9 Clark, Cartae, I (cxxxviii), 136–8; Ballard, British Cartae, I (ci), 103; Epis. Acts, ii (L105), 637–8. See also Borough Charters, pp. xxxi, 19, 38, 47, 51, 54, 58, 63, Glam. Co. Hist., iii, 338. 65, 83, 89, 118, 137, 140, 145, 153, 212, 216, 238 and 6 Clark, Cartae, I (lxvii), 74–6; Phillips, Vale of Neath, 249; Glam. Co. Hist., iii, 362–4. 556–8. 10 Beresford, New Towns, 255–6, table IX.2. 7 Patterson, Glouc. Charters, no. 159, p. 148; Clark THE MEDIEVAL TOWN DEFENCES OF GLAMORGAN 163 but by 1300 its eastern and western suburbs had more than tripled the area occupied by its burgages. Boroughs experienced a steady decline throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies, largely as a result of the general fourteenth-century depression resulting from periodic famines and plague, but also due to the advent of more settled times. Boroughs like Caerphilly and Llantrisant, founded as castle-towns in less fertile or hospitable areas in the interior, were left with increasingly obsolete and under-manned fortresses. The same was probably the case for Neath and Loughor, which certainly experienced grad- ual decay in the late Middle Ages. At Aberafan and Kenfig it was the natural phenom- ena of advancing sand dunes which gradually overcame them; by the 1530s, when they were noticed by Leland, they were only little villages ‘devoured by the sands’.11 Cowbridge has the most extensive vestiges of its defences extant, comprising sections of the walls defining its south-west angle, where the base of a salient tower remains, and the South Gate. Cardiff retains only its largely rebuilt West Gate and the stub of the North Wall at the opposite side of the castle. At Swansea there remains only an appar- ent fragment of the East Wall, seemingly incorporating part of a tower. Neath displays a stump of the town wall which projects from the castle gatehouse. At Kenfig, where walls were never built, there is a considerable angled portion of the town rampart, with one section of its external ditch, which have been spared by the encroaching sand dunes. The considerable industrial and commercial development at Cardiff, Neath and Swansea explains the almost complete disappearance of their medieval town walls. Ironically, it was the serious destruction caused by enemy bombing in 1941 which indi- rectly led to a further understanding of the medieval defences at Swansea. The centre of the city was obliterated, including the medieval core, and during subsequent recon- struction many excavations were carried out that located and recorded traces of the van- ished defences. Less extensive excavations have traced and recorded a few sections of the former walls at Cardiff. Cardiff The medieval borough Cardiff Borough developed on a glacial terrace to the south of the castle beside the nav- igable Taff, and about 2 kilometres above its confluence with the Bristol Channel, where it was crossed by the Roman road, the medieval Portway. The foundation of the town of Cardiff has been attributed to William the Conqueror, who raised the large motte there in 1081.12 The site was taken over by Robert Fitzhamon in 1093 to serve as the caput of his lordship of Glamorgan. Fitzhamon’s grant of land to Tewkesbury Abbey, 11 For the development of the boroughs: Glam. Co. Cowbridge: The Archaeology and Topography of a Small Hist., iii, 333–77; M. Beresford, New Towns of the Market Town in the Vale of Glamorgan (Swansea, 1980). Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1988); R. A. Griffiths (ed.), 12 Ann. Margam, 4; Breviate Ann., printed in Arch. Boroughs of Medieval Wales (Cardiff, 1978), 1–7, 102–28 Camb. (1862), 273; Brut, B S, 83 (s.a. 1080). (Cardiff), and 262–86 (Swansea); D.