Episode Transcript
[00:00:20] Speaker A: The Tudor History and Travel show is a podcast that brings Tudor History to life by exploring Tudor places and artefacts in the flesh.
You will be travelling through time with Sarah Morris, the Tudor travel guide, uncovering the stories behind some of the most amazing Tudor locations and objects in the uk.
Because when you visit a Tudor building, it is only time and not space which separates you from the past.
And now, over to your host, Sarah Morris.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Hello, my friends. Well, here we are with another episode of the Tudor History and Travel Show.
And before we go over to our location du jour Tru Tower Court, I wanted to just give you a quick update on some housekeeping.
There's only one notice for today and that's just a very quick reminder that over on Simply Tudor Tours, our fantastic summer giveaway shortly comes to an end.
There will just be, oh, I don't know, week, 10 days left for you to enter if you are interested in winning a free place on our Rise and Fall of AmberLynn Tour 2027. That's in September 2027.
Now, this free giveaway is an amazing opportunity if you love your Tudor History and of course you do, and particularly for all you Anne Boleyn lovers out there, we travel to all the iconic places associated with Anne in and around London, such as Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and of course, her childhood home, Hever Castle.
It's a fantastic week and a truly amazing adventure.
So all you need to do, if you are interested in putting your name in the hat, is to head on over to our entry page where you just need to give us your name, your email and your telephone number so that we can be sure to contact you in case you win. And that's all there is to it. Now, if you do need all the full terms and conditions, there will be a link associated with this podcast, so do make sure to check that out.
Okay. That's literally all I wanted to do in terms of housekeeping for today.
Okay. Well, the summer is certainly turning. We've had a long, hot summer here. Lots of beautiful sunshine, long, sunny, warm days, but the weather has turned and autumn is here.
But the podcast that I recorded was recorded, of course, earlier on in the summertime. And I headed on over to the east of Wales to a beautiful part of the country just outside Cracowl, where you will find Tre Tower Castle and Court. What a fascinating location this is.
It really does give you everything from medieval through to Tudor.
A really interesting location that today is managed by Cadoo, who was responsible for caring for heritage properties in Wales, and I was lucky enough to meet up with Ian Roberts, who was our guide on this podcast.
So let's not tarry any further. It's time, as ever, to buckle up and let's go time travelling.
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of the Tudor History and Travel Show.
Another beautiful June day here in Wales. You join me in the county of Powys today and we are in another Welsh adventure in time to a property that I visited probably for the first time a couple of years ago and I found it utterly enchanting and I've been hoping that I would be able to bring you the story of Tretawa Court for some time. And here, here we are today and actually we're here with our expert guide, Ian. Hello, Ian. Welcome to the show.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Borrida. Good morning.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Ah, Borrida.
Do you speak Welsh, by the way?
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Tippenbach Tip and back a little bit.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: That's fantastic. And you know what? I've been learning Welsh now for about 558 days, so I actually understood exactly what you said, but I probably couldn't say it myself. Diane, thank you very much, Dioch.
So please do introduce yourself, tell the listeners who you are and what's your relationship to Tretawa Court.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: My name is Ian and I have the privilege to be the head custodian here and have been for 16 years since I previously retired.
And I love it. It's one of those places that. That people come to and they feel that they could live here. It's got a certain je ne sais quoi a feel.
It's a beautiful spot. When we go around and we're talking about it, obviously you'll know about the castle and then the medieval courthouse. It's here because of. It's a lovely spot.
[00:05:33] Speaker C: Right, that was one of my first questions.
I agree with you entirely. As I mentioned just a few moments ago, I found this place really enchanting when I came here. It's very welcoming and I understand exactly the sentiment that one feels one could move in here.
You talked about the beauty of the spot and I'd love to start there because I agree wholeheartedly. Can you describe the surroundings around us and exactly where are we in Wales?
[00:06:03] Speaker A: I shall certainly try my best. So this is a large oval valley halfway between Abergavenny and Brecon in the eastern side of the Brecon Beacons.
And this castle is here as a controlling point along the route. The normans came in 1093, heading into Wales, the first time that they'd been into this part of Wales that we know of. They'd come in at Chepstow and along the south coast. They'd started coming in from Chester along the north coast. But this was the first time in 1093 that they started to head into central Wales.
A freebooter. Let's not bandy words, Bernard de Neuf Marche, with a group of fellow Normans, headed along. There was no roads. There were no roads. So he's following a river route coming from the Hereford direction through what's now Abergavenny, heading towards what is now Brecon, where he will defeat Rhys ap Tudor, King of Dehebarth. This part of south and South West Wales, he will defeat him in battle, set up Brecon as his capital, and those Norman knights following him pick their own spots around and they're controlling those routes. So this castle is here because it controls that route heading from Abergavenny to Berna's new capital at Brecon. And they could have built it on the Roman remains, which are about a mile down the valley, but then they would be under the eye of the slope, you know, so people could be shooting in with bows. So they come back to the middle of the valley where the castle controls the river crossings. So there are a line of trees ahead of us over there, which is the Riengoch, a tributary of the Usk, and there would be a ford over it even then. So the Normans built their castles to control crossings because that's how you control the population and how you make money.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: Yeah, they were very good at that. And I don't think I've ever touched on the fact that in Wales there are a huge number of Norman castles, aren't there? Doesn't Wales have something. There is some fact that it's got the most number of castles in Europe or something like that.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: I believe that's true, yes.
The most castles, certainly, per head of population. And in an area, I believe there are 641. Wow. Of some form or another, most of which are the remains of a ditch, part of a mound. But then there are, you know, a goodly number where there's still stonework on them. We're very fortunate here because this is not an important castle, but because of who it became owned by later on in its life, it still here hasn't been knocked around.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: Fantastic. So we are actually standing in front of a board which gives a depiction, a reconstruction, and we'll grab a picture of this, dear listeners. And as ever, there's a show notes page where you'll be able to see of the images of the things that we're talking about today.
So, first of all, who exactly built this castle? It was a Norman castle. It was built in 1093. 1093. So just sort of 30 years after the. The invasion, obviously. And you said a man called Picard. I can see that I sounded very knowledgeable there, but I'm actually reading off the board, ladies and gentlemen.
So who was he in relation to William the Conqueror? Was he. Because some people, some folk were relations to him. We don't know anything about him.
What do we know about him?
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Very little. Picard is a follower of Bernard de Neuf Marche.
So these are people who are looking for lands of their own. They're often second and third sons from Normans who. There's nothing for them in Normandy.
You know, first son usually inherits everything. And so consequently, they've signed up in the first place to come over with William and hoping to win lands and money for themselves, make their fortune. Absolutely, yeah.
[00:10:02] Speaker C: An adventurer in some respects. So he comes and he builds this castle. Can you describe what he builds here?
And then what do we see in front of us now?
[00:10:12] Speaker A: So the original castle would have been a wooden tower on a mound. So what? They may have well have been a slight hummock anyway.
There are lots of those around this valley. There are also plenty of springs. So he's positioned himself where he can see all around. And on that mound, which he may have digging out in, digging out the ditch, he's made more earth on which he puts a wooden tower. And then there is a wooden outer wall, a traditional Motten Bailey castle.
[00:10:41] Speaker C: And that's fairly standard, isn't it, for Norman castles? They begin as wooden, sort of temporary wooden structures to begin with.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yes.
Very few people ever move around with that stone enough to build one. So, yes, you. You arrive as they did when William came over and built Pevensey Castle. The first one, you know, it's prefabricated and they would have cut down trees here. They may well have had some wood with them, but that would have only been marching a bit like the Romans, you know, before, who would be carrying posts and things like that. So they would have brought some items with them, but the rest is collected from the local environment.
And then, yes, the first tower built that way, put up, and then over time, it becomes stone.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
And that's what we've got today. We can still see that round stone tower with some of its defensive walls. So it has survived remarkably well.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Yes, I think, as I mentioned, because of who it becomes owned by, nothing changes. Once it reaches its ultimate size and expanse, then it stays like that. There's no other reason for it to be missing. In this particular instance, as I mentioned earlier, lots of castles are then used for. The stone is used elsewhere. And so you just get the remains of a ditch and a bit of fallen stone. But here, the village was already here, and therefore they didn't need it.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: Right, okay. And. And the castle remained on private land of the manor house that was built next to it. I guess so. So it wasn't robbed out by.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Not quite.
[00:12:16] Speaker C: Not quite.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Not quite. So it put me.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: So in this particular instance, the castle, the Picards who built it eventually die out.
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Their last child, a girl, marries into the Blowitt family of Raglan. And from that point, whoever owns Raglan is lord of the manor here. So the owner of the castle owns the land on which the house is built.
However, during the wars of the Roses, that's William Herbert, the chief Yorkist in Wales.
And he gives the site here next to the castle, because he's not using it. He gives that to his half brother, Roger Vaughan, and it's built as a show house.
It's a statement to get people to think, if I support York, maybe I could get something like this in an area that had been part of the Duchy of Lancaster. So the people who lived around here would be used to supporting the other team, if you like.
[00:13:11] Speaker C: Okay. Right. Oh, well, we're going to get into
[00:13:13] Speaker A: that more, aren't we?
[00:13:14] Speaker C: I'm sure we are.
Sa.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Sam.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: William, before we talk about the family and the kind of. The next chapter, which is the building of the manor house here, I'm drawn to the castle and the ruins. And one of the things I'm passionate about doing is helping people read historic buildings, be they castles or manor houses, with being able to look out for certain features that we see over and over again and being able to interpret them. So with that in mind, are there some features in this castle that we might go and see that tell us a little bit more, maybe specifically about this castle, but more generally about how to read a Norman castle.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: I believe that there are the different types of building that come along with the different periods of the castle structure. So I mentioned that the original tower is wood, 1093. It then becomes what is called a shell keep, where everything is built around the courtyard and a well that's dated between 1150 and 1180.
When that one is destroyed round about 1233, by another Norman, funnily enough. And I'm sure we'll touch on that later. But then the later tower is built over the well as an extra line of defence. But they use the features of the previous castle. Some get filled in, some get used elsewhere and some are used again. So the kitchen is the same for both buildings.
And then you'll see staircases and things like that.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: Well, why don't we just wander over.
Lovely. Stroll across the meadow and maybe you can point some of these out in a bit more detail and we can grab some images along the way.
Just going down the bank.
Trying not to break my ankle.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: No, try not to do that. It's a flood mound. It's a, it's a berm put in for stopping the flooding into the house. Funnily enough, it's not very old. 1919 80s.
[00:16:25] Speaker C: Right.
Well.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: But I am glad that you're here on a day like this because it. Yes, on a, you know, a sunny day, it's lovely. You look around the valley and you do see why it's here. Yeah, the castle. Okay. Slightly different to the house. It. It holds a defensive position and controlling. But the house, it really is all about the view.
[00:16:49] Speaker C: And it's so genteel, isn't it? The house? I, I can just imagine what getting up in the morning, opening the windows. The picture. Peace. You can hear a little bit of cars today from a distant road. But back then, just, just peace and quiet and these staggering views. Hills all around us.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: It is true. It's. It's an elliptical shape of valley.
There's plenty of sight. We're in a dark skies area as well. So at night time the stars are out.
Yes, it is a beautiful spot.
And as we approach the castle here, maybe the first thing you notice actually is do you see all the holes? You know what those are, don't you?
[00:17:33] Speaker C: For the construction, I believe. Isn't that where they put like the scaffolding in, around. So that's a good point. I like the fact that you're pointing out. Just describe again what you're pointing to.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: So roughly four to five feet apart, all the way up the walls are square holes in the stonework that don't go right through. They're just like indentations, like a stone is missing.
And they're usually referred to as put logs or put logs. They are for your scaffolding. And I remember a visitor here asking me once, but why have they not been filled in?
And I looked at them and I thought just for a moment that's a good point. Why haven't they been filled in? And then of course I thought about it and of course, every building.
Every building was lime washed.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: And so consequently you needed to leave the scaffolding holes there to put your scaffolding up next year to top up the limewash. And so also 4 or 5ft apart above each other, you think, oh, they could use those to climb in, but actually you can't because once you've got your hands in one hole and your feet in another, you can't reach anywhere else.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: So it wasn't a defensive breach in any way. It wasn't making the castle more vulnerable. It was because we do forget, we so easily forget that these buildings were often lime washed or whitewashed or even painted, you know, so they were very visible. We were in. Where were we yesterday? God, I've just forgotten where we were the other day.
Chirk Castle.
We were at Chirk just yesterday and they were saying that that was also white and it would have stood. Stood like a beacon looking out over there.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: If you look back at the house from here.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: The court you see above the window.
[00:19:14] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: That was lime washed everything out.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
Right. Okay, so let's, let's go and explore
[00:19:20] Speaker A: the triangular holes that you. You can actually see.
[00:19:23] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: That there is a shape in the wall.
Does that remind you of anything?
[00:19:29] Speaker C: It reminds me, and I don't know whether I'm right, but it's a place for birds to nest.
I don't know.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Oh, you mean like a dovecot? No, no, but it is attached to the wall of the castle. It's a chimney. It's the chimney breast.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: I see what you mean. Sorry, I thought you meant the. Oh, I see. So, yes, you've got the chimney breast that you can see it sticking out from the wall, pointed and. Are you saying they're like vents?
[00:19:54] Speaker A: So. So that is the little triangular bits, not the square holes for the put log. So there are triangular slots which are for venting, for letting smoke out, because the kitchen is under there. And originally it was underground. It's the bottom of a building. So they needed to find extra ways to get the smoke out.
[00:20:12] Speaker C: The smoke out and a little bit
[00:20:14] Speaker A: of extra light coming in, down.
[00:20:16] Speaker C: Well, that is something that I've just learned.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: And again, you can also see that the windows are all up on the first floor. So there's the. The lower part of the wall is battered so it slopes.
And then the windows are up on the first floor. There are no doorways on the first floor. When we're inside. That is the same as well.
[00:20:36] Speaker C: So we also learnt at Chirk Castle that the walls sloping out were to prevent siege engines getting close to the castle wall. So another defensive feature.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yes, it makes the wall thicker, so it helps take the weight of anything that's above. And yes, it provides a sloped surface. So were it a battering ram, were it a stone, anything like that, it's going to be harder for it to fix its position.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Right, great. So we're standing right next to this huge tower.
What kind of. Do you know how high. I'm sure you know how tall it is, Ian.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: About 35 meters.
[00:21:11] Speaker C: Right, 35 meters. So we're standing at the foot of it, gazing upwards. What do we need to go and see or look at next?
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Well, from where we are stood on the mound, we're just by the gatehouse into the original shell keep, with the tower inside that. Looking behind us, we're actually looking at the outer bailey and we have a dip at the foot of the mound before it rises again into there. This is often referred to as the midden. So this is where water would. Your rubbish would go in it, your excrement, things like that, and then it would be washed out. And if you can just see here under the wall, because the wall has come gone from here, you can see that that's the top of an arch.
[00:21:50] Speaker C: Oh, you can, yes, absolutely.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: So that is where the water would run back out and then into the moat.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: Onto the moat.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Well, the stream here is formed into the moat.
[00:22:01] Speaker C: Right. I say. Because you would very easily miss that. Absolutely. Because, you know, obviously there's very little bit left. So that's a really interesting feature. Excellent.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: And you can't see that at this side, because this is a part of the wall that we rebuilt in the early 1900s and therefore it's gone.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: Yeah. So in this direction we have the large, sort of larger outer bailey, where all the service offices would be for a castle.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Normally, things like the. Yes, if there was a priest here, he would have a house. There would be one for the smith. You know, people who follow the Lord. His men at arms would have their little cottages here within the outer bailey. The horses would be out here. The inner part here is just what's on the mound. That's the lord's house, if you like. The castle is the lord's lodging. Everybody else is out here. And then the locals who come up, they build their cottages around the outside of the castle because they're looking to either trade, be safe, whatever it is.
There is that. This is what happens at castles. The local population sort of gravitates in towards them because there's money to be made, there is defense, you know, so
[00:23:19] Speaker C: if there was, if there was a threat, the villagers would retreat inside the walls and they.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: They would. While allowed to by the lord. Okay, so we'll separate that slightly. With the first Normans arriving here, obviously the native Welsh are out there. They're not necessarily going to be invited in, but once they form their village and they become part of the lord's household, if you like, they look to him for leadership, they look to him for protection.
And they will trade with him, they will do his wood cutting, they will provide stuff that he wants for the benefit of being protected. Maybe the odd coin, food.
Yeah, it's a trade off, absolutely. You know, the feudal system as it becomes.
[00:24:02] Speaker C: So we're going up through the. Up some steps in through the gatehouse.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: We are. And what's in front of us, actually, you see some wooden planks. This is an oubliette. It covers where the drawbridge would have dropped down. It's a capture pit, if you like it. Also, when the drawbridge is up, means there's a hole in front of you. Again, you can't run up and batter the gates or the drawbridge, which. A battering ram, because there's a hole in front of it.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: Yeah, brilliant.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Excuse me.
[00:24:28] Speaker C: It's very. This particular mot and the surrounding walls is very enclosed, isn't it? It's, it's. It's a very tight structure. But is that because, as you said, things were developed over time here?
[00:24:41] Speaker A: It's true, they were developed over time. And you've got to remember that when the original Shell keep was built, they hadn't thought, they did not think. Know that the later period would put a great tower down over the well in the middle of it. So it was never intended that way.
There were.
There was an L shape of buildings within the Shell Keep wall with the rest making a courtyard which had the well in it. The most important part for it. Every castle needs water. You know, you can bring in stores, but you can't carry that amount of water that you need for everybody.
So therefore they're built either on springs or by watercourses.
[00:25:23] Speaker C: So this tower was built how long after the Shell Keep was built?
[00:25:30] Speaker A: The Shell Keep is built. It's the style of between 1150 and 1180.
And I mentioned earlier to you it was like Cardiff, Clifford's tower in York, that sort of style.
But the tower was begun at some point after 1233, when Richard Marshal, son of the great William Marshal, the greatest knight in the realm.
Richard, like his father before him, was Lord of Pembroke. But although a Norman, he was an ally of the native Welsh of North Wales, Llywelyn Abjorwydd, Llywelyn the Great.
And he comes eastwards from the Carmarthen Chavans, knocking off castles en route. Those that didn't accept the growing power of Llywelyn, and this is no exception, he actually got as far as Hay and Wy before he was sent by the King. He had to go to look after his lands in southern Ireland, which is where he died the following year, 1234. And the Picards sued to Llewelyn to get their castle back. So sometime around about 1234, 1236, something like that, they were given the castle back.
And then they started the construction of the tower. And whatever was left in here from the Shell Keep, they were the ones who knocked it down and built this. And it's quite funny in a way, because the great tower is the style that William Marshal bought back from the continent in 1200 and Pembroke is the first one. But because he's the greatest knight in the realm, everybody copies him, of course. And so then you suddenly get a plethora of castles with round towers.
[00:27:02] Speaker C: Yeah. It's wonderful. It's a magnificent building. Can we go and have a look inside?
[00:27:06] Speaker A: We can indeed.
[00:27:07] Speaker C: This way.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Come this way. So you see where this stonework is here? This is where a staircase went up. We have a current wooden one taking us through a hole in the wall. But the hole in the wall is about 6ft lower than the actual staircase would have been, right?
[00:27:24] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: And when we look up now, do you notice that line in the stonework?
[00:27:30] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Form sticking out like a ledge?
[00:27:33] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: It's called stringing.
[00:27:34] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: And it's at the top of the batter.
And then from there the tower goes straight up. But that is actual floor height for where the staircase used to come up. And not like ours, running straight in through the hole in the wall, but coming up at an angle round the wall. So again you could hugging the wall so that anyone above you could see you coming up the stairs and drop stuff on you. And then again, you couldn't run up with a battering ram and hit the door in a straight line.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: Everything is thought through, isn't is through hard experience.
No doubt.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Indeed. So here, as we stand at the break in the wall, we can look up and there is actually it's gated off, but that is the staircase going up to the top floor. And you notice again, it's on the inside edge of the castle, the thinnest part of the wall facing the outer bailey, so that it's further for any stones to be thrown up because it's a weaker part of the wall. It's further from the general public.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Right. So it's not solid wall, it's a hollow wall, which makes it a weaker hall.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: Indeed. So you can see this is a great angle to actually look at it, because the bit on the outside of the staircase you can see is about 2 foot thick, as it is 2 to 3 foot thick on the inside, whereas where we're standing, we're talking about three to four meters thick.
[00:28:53] Speaker C: You're right, yeah. No, really good point, actually.
So. And of course, the lord of the manor would always live on the upper floors. You know, you usually don't you, when you have towers like this.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Yes. Where we're standing currently is a basement.
[00:29:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: And again, the great thing about a tower like this, where it's virtually complete, is that you can look up and you can see where all the floors were and you can also see the remains of plaster on the wall. Lime washing and plaster looking up.
[00:29:25] Speaker C: Yeah. There's quite a bit of it, actually, isn't there?
[00:29:27] Speaker A: There is, yeah. Because it's protected from most of the elements. You know, the. The lime wash that we talked about as we came over to here has gone from the outside, but inside it's still here.
[00:29:39] Speaker C: Now, what I would normally interpret, I don't know, you'll tell me if I've got this wrong. But we've got. Looking up here, we've got two. We've got. So this is the basement, we're underneath the first floor, second floor, three floors here in this tower, a basement and then three floors above, three living floors, basically.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Three living floors, yeah.
[00:29:58] Speaker C: And we've got two. I can see two surviving fireplaces.
There's got. The biggest one is on the first floor above us. It's. It's quite ornate. But the. The one above it is a smaller version of. So I'm thinking that this tells me that the first floor was probably the main living area. And I'm imagining above that might have been the bedroom, for example. Am I on the right sort of lines there?
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Close. Okay, Close. Okay. So remember that the castle, whether it's shell keeper, whether it's in here. The first idea when you live here. Yes, you're quite right about further up your living rooms. But this one is the great hall. So the one, the one with the big fireplace is actually. It's not just a living room, it's an open congregational room for when, if they lost the outer bailey, if they were forced to retreat into the tower, if he's having a feast to mark the arrival of his new wife or his first son or whatever, that is the room it would take place in. So this is a general room, open to the public, the great hall, and that is why it has that massive fireplace.
[00:31:04] Speaker C: And then above that would be a privy room for the Lord.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Correct. So that is his solar, which is nothing to do with the sun.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: No.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Okay. It comes from the French word seul, to be alone.
So it is what in the 18th or 19th century, in a house like over there, we'd call the withdrawing room. It's where you retreat. You go, thank you very much for coming.
[00:31:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I've done the public space.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: I want to be in private time with you. Thank you. Private time. Thanks for coming.
[00:31:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: So that is what it's for. And in fact, it does actually have an exit out there, which when we walk around the. Outside the tower, you will see that there is a.
A roof line and a doorway halfway up the tower. That is because there was a bridge there over to the outer wall so that he could walk out and take the air and then turn around and walk back into the tower. Or if they were under attack and they lost the outer wall, they could retreat across it, drop the bridge down into the killing area.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: You know what's interesting, actually, I think I'm rolling on to my knowledge of Tudor houses, which is I'm on much firmer ground there.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:09] Speaker C: And actually it's the same sequence of rooms in a Tudor manor house or great house palace. You have your public space, your great hall, and then you have the progressive series of rooms that become smaller and more and more private, the number depending upon the particular size of the house. Are you talking about a gentry's manor house? Are you talking about a palace? So the number varied, but you move on to a privy chamber and a bedchamber and a closet. So. But in that instance, it's developed on so that it's a sequence of rooms in a row. Here we've got the same sequence, but they're stacked on top of each other within the tower. So it's the same sort of thing.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Yeah, right, it is. And when we look back at the previous castle and we talked about the first wooden tower and then a shell keep so where again, when we go outside of the tower and look at where the staircase was in that original shell, keep, keep building, then you'll get that a similar flow.
But castles go out, they spread out, seem to spread out width wise to cover as much ground area as you need it to. When you can't go any further that way, you go up.
[00:33:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: And this is no different. So the advent of the Round Tower just gives you another, a greater viewing platform from higher up to look at your lands and for everybody to see you. Because it is not just. It's about control.
So it's about letting your public out there know who's in charge. Yes, I'm here. I can see all of you and you can see me. Come pay your taxes.
[00:33:46] Speaker C: Yeah, brilliant. Okay, well I think that's, I think that's a good appraisal of the tower.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: But I was just going to say that you'll notice there is another staircase just looking at this because we are in the cellar. So if you can imagine above my head where we've said about the Great hall and the fact that the staircase outside would come in at Great hall level, you can see that you would actually walk across and if you needed your stores, your food or your water from the well, then someone would come down those stairs and into here. So that staircase still remains the one up. Going further up to the rooms unfortunately doesn't exist further up anymore, but this one. And I'm going to touch on this really because of what happens with the staircase when it arrives here. Obviously the people who are listening to this can't see this, but come and look. But I want you, if you can, to tell me why do you think that We've got this nice smooth stonework here and then we've got this rough stonework here up from about 6ft up to about 10ft.
Then it's smooth and plastered stone again right to the top.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: Okay. So I don't know, but I immediately imagine there was some kind of vaulted ceiling in here that would have taken up that amount of wall space to create.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: You're helped by the fact that you can see the doorway. So you can see this is here. So the doorway is the correct height, but it comes in here.
There are a couple of clues.
These stones here underneath the fireplace that you can see are starting to curve up and also there are beam holes where there must have been a frame.
Then they completed the vaulted ceiling. But again you can see looking further up that the other floors don't have that. There are just massive Space square beam holes in the walls for wooden floors. So yes, this was a vaulted ceiling. Helps take the weight of everything that's above, protects you from down here and
[00:35:52] Speaker C: keeps everything cool, I would imagine as well with the stone.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And if every. If anybody does burrow their way, mine their way into the castle to here, you'll have noticed from the position of the staircases that hopefully the people upstairs will know they're being attacked. But the. The people who mine their way in have got to go up that staircase one at a time to great hall level where hopefully they will receive the full weight of the guard's attention, which they would then have to fight their way across to the other side of the tower to be able to climb up to take the upper levels. Everything is done.
[00:36:27] Speaker C: Everything is. It's not just random, is it? Not at all very as I say, probably through hard will nexus experience of.
Anyway, I'm just noticing that there's no obvious. Well here now I take it still beneath our feet.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: It's beneath our feet. A foot or so beneath our feet. Covered over long. Covered over.
[00:36:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: You know, when you asked about, we talked about the staircase going up and the relative thickness of the wall on that side. You'll also notice that the fireplaces are one above the other directly with a sloping back wall.
This is so there's only one flue, a narrow hole that goes right up to the top. But the heat from the lower ones almost starts to preheat the wall at the back of the one above. But it's just one narrow hole in the wall going up one flue again to keep it as strong as possible.
[00:37:16] Speaker C: Yeah, clever.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: And there's no fireplace on the top floor. There's no sign of it. It's not like it's been filled in. There is no fire there. So if that was a separate bedroom, they either didn't need the fire, they decided not to have it, or it is most likely to be his treasure room.
So whereas in the shell keep the room under his.
There's a storeroom under his great hall. One for the kitchen, one for his treasure. Here, obviously the cellar is taken up with the well and his foodstuffs, so his strong room is probably on the top.
[00:37:50] Speaker C: Fantastic. That was much fun. I love puzzles. It's great.
So I just want to encourage people to, you know, to. To really think about reading buildings when you can come, when you visit them and learn how to read the different elements of them. Because it does make. It is like solving a puzzle and it's much More interesting, I think.
[00:38:17] Speaker A: Sam.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Sa.
[00:39:08] Speaker C: Sam
[00:39:34] Speaker B: sa.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: So we're walking around here.
We're now directly below the doorway that I mentioned.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: In the middle of the tower. And you can see it has a triangular roof.
[00:40:23] Speaker C: It's like a gate positioning.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Yes. Like a gable.
[00:40:26] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Which allow them to walk over to the wall. Or as I say, if they lost the outer wall, they could run back over there and set fire to. Or just drop the bridge down into here.
One of those features. As we come around. We're now underneath the solar of the shell keep, which is why the fireplace is six feet up the wall.
And there's a sign here that says solar above. But you can see that there are the shape of doorways either end of
[00:40:53] Speaker C: the wall and a fireplace.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: And a fireplace all bricked in. Because as I mentioned outside, when they turned the shell keep into a great tower, they try to fill up all the holes and make the shell keep wall a blank curtain wall as blank as possible.
And those archways. But you think. But they're pointing outside. They don't. They don't fit for doors. They're actually not for doors. So they would. They were alcoves with an arrow slit so that someone could shoot and allowed light in. Because where we're standing is the storeroom that I mentioned. So the solar. His room is above his living quarters and his treasure room is below.
[00:41:29] Speaker C: I see.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: Okay. Which no one else can get to.
And then over here, there are more archways filled in that would have had arrow slits. But from an archaeological historical point of view, we can also see a massive bread oven.
[00:41:45] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: So again, very simply, we can tell which is newer because obviously it seems simple, but those archways are filled in. And they must have been filled in before the bread oven was put here.
[00:41:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Right.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: So there was no. This is. This is a siege oven size. So this is for baking bread that would feed everybody in the castle if they were under siege. As opposed to your little bread ovens that people. People still have in their cottages and houses today, which are for a family size. This would take 30, 40 loaves at a time.
[00:42:16] Speaker C: Yeah. So you're seeing, basically it's a flat platform. But then you can begin to see, can't you, the curve, the typical curve of the bread.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Imagine a beehive made of stone. It's like a chiminea that you would have in your garden today.
[00:42:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: It has a. It's. It's like a massive pizza oven. It has a little hole at the front.
And what happens every day is the same. So it has a wooden door which is soaked overnight.
Then they know exactly how much wood in there to get it to the right temperature. And then when the wood has burned down, they rake out the ash, put the bread in, put the wooden door in, seal that up with leftover dough. When the dough on the outside of the door has gone off, it's become like bread rolls, so nothing's wasted.
So they take that off the door. They can chop that up and use it. It is actual bread. The door is dried out. They take that out, that can be soaked, ready for tomorrow's baking. Because this happens every day. And then you take out your loaves.
[00:43:10] Speaker C: That's amazing. I actually didn't realize about the sealing up. A, I didn't realize they soaked the door, but that makes a lot of sense.
And B, I didn't realize about sealing it up. So the fact that the dough cooks tells them that the bread inside is also.
That is ingenious. That is ingenious.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: I thought he's like that.
[00:43:30] Speaker C: That is my fact for the day. Thank you, Ian.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: And. And where you just stopped just to the side of that. So you can see this was a circular staircase.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Like the one in the tower. But it's all been filled in for this bit at ground level to stop people breaking in.
[00:43:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: But this actually shows you, because I mentioned there were no doors on ground level outside the tower. So out here, where the tower now is, we're in a storeroom here. There was a staircase up, so you came onto a landing up about here. And then you. Again, you'd be coming down this staircase to go into the storeroom and the kitchen, or upwards and left to go into the great hall. And to your left you can see another roof line of the great hall.
Or you go up the stairs and turn right to go into the Lord's chamber. So it's separated that way.
[00:44:24] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's.
Yeah. If you don't know what you're looking for, it's very confusing. But when you sit here and you, you know, you. You talk us through this, like, now I understand, you know, what's actually happened here over layers of time.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that and that.
[00:44:43] Speaker C: Because I remember coming here, because before going. I don't understand.
I don't really understand, but now I do understand.
Yeah. So did they. Did this kitchen.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:44:52] Speaker C: Basically still survive?
[00:44:54] Speaker A: Yeah, they still. You noticed when we were in the tower, there was no kitchen. There is. There is no kitchen area. So apart from. I suppose you could roast something on the fire in the great Hall. But otherwise everything else is done in here and then there. At some point they may well have taken a staircase case up into there.
[00:45:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Whatever room might have been where we are stood now, which obviously will not help your. Your listeners. You'd have to be a viewer.
But then we can come into what would be a small kitchen.
[00:45:22] Speaker C: Small kitchen.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: And here is the fireplace. And I mentioned the triangular holes from outside when we look. So they're the vent holes that allow.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: Just studying into the actual. Just looking up the circular chimney. And you can see those little holes. Yeah. That Ian was kind of talking about.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Yep. Slit windows up off the first floor. So they're well above the ground level outside to allow air and light in, but no one to climb in.
[00:45:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
And what are these then? So we've got some alcoves, haven't we, that are sort of hewn into or laid into the wall, three next to each other. Are they just storage things?
[00:45:58] Speaker A: They are storage spaces.
[00:45:59] Speaker C: Right, okay.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: They're effectively cupboards.
[00:46:01] Speaker C: Yeah. They're you fitted cupboards.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:46:05] Speaker C: Not quite, but yeah. And this over here, this looks like a structure. So on the other side we've got a circular semicircular structure that's wedged into the wall.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:15] Speaker C: What was that going to be?
[00:46:16] Speaker A: Can you notice anything else about it?
[00:46:18] Speaker C: It's got a flue or something.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: It does it like a smiley mouth.
[00:46:22] Speaker C: I think there was something on here and I think you, you, you. It drained away stuff. That's what I think.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Go to the top of the class. Yeah. It's a sink area.
[00:46:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: And. And your hot liquid and stuff. When you're in here, there's nowhere else to put them. They get tipped down there. And when we're outside, when we go back outside the shell keep and you look there, you'll find the other smiley mouse on the wall outside.
I love that one.
I have to say, specifically, children love it when they come here and it's the sort of thing that.
[00:46:52] Speaker C: Yeah. It just helps you start to build up a picture of the kitchen. You can see how it's being used and how it works. I have to say, though, in comparison to some of the great cheap kitchens, this is quite a tiny space. It must have got very hot in here when that fire was roasting away.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: And there's a floor above you and the great hall, so you are totally enclosed.
[00:47:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: But again, remember, most of the time the kitchen is for. If he's having a feast, this sort of thing. Most of the time it would be cooking a Food for one family. And when we were stood in the tower and we were stood in the basement, looking at where the vaulted ceiling is, the one question I would have asked you, when I asked you about the vaulted ceiling, one of the things that we do with families and groups when they come around is I love to ask how many people lived here? And the numbers go astronomic.
People will say, oh, 50, 100, and then you have to bring them back down a bit. And I remember the one child who said one, and I wanted to say, well, you're the closest, because actually it's the lord is him and his family. No one else is in the tower. That is their house.
Everybody else lives out there.
So they only come in at meal times, maybe. And certainly under siege, they would be in here the rest of the time. They have their own food at home, they cook in their own houses. So this does not need to be massive.
[00:48:07] Speaker C: Brilliant. Well, I. I know I'm the Tudor travel guy, but I've really rather enjoyed that foray into medieval castle architecture. And I hope that listeners, that this is going to inspire you when you next encounter a castle, to look out for some of these features and read the castle for yourself. But having said all that, I think we really should roll forward in the centuries and head back towards the later manor house. And perhaps, Ian, when we get over there, you can tell us when that switch occurred.
We hinted at it before, I think we touched on it, but perhaps we could go into that story in more detail.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: I shall certainly do my best.
[00:50:02] Speaker C: So we're heading back across the really pleasant meadow. I hope people can hear the bird song. It's such a.
Such a peaceful spot.
And maybe you can pick up the story then of this manor house.
When is the house that we're looking at now and walking towards, when was that actually built and by whom?
[00:50:24] Speaker A: So I mentioned William Herbert, chief Yorkist in Wales, Lord of raglan, round about 1450.
He gives the site here to his half brother, Roger Vaughan. Roger is the youngest of three Vaughan boys from Breadwardene, which is on the Radnorshire Herefordshire border, just to the north of here.
They're friends as well as half brothers. They have. They all have the same mother, different fathers. So William Herbert's father is William A.P. thomas, the Blue Knight of Gwent.
And his tomb is in St. Mary's in Abergabini.
[00:51:02] Speaker C: I've seen that.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: The marble tombs there with a lounge.
[00:51:07] Speaker C: Yes, thank you very much. Just climbing the little hill.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: Yes, With Gladys, the star of Abergabenny So that is the mother of all of the boys.
And so he. His first wife had been Elizabeth Blowitt. So after she'd been married into the Berkeleys, she then remarried as widows often were.
She then married William A.P. thomas and then Raglan was left to him. And his second wife then was Gladys.
And so from that point, William Herbert, their son, at some time round about 1450, gave this spot as part of the Duchy of Lancaster. I mentioned earlier that people were used to supporting the other team. He gives Roger, the youngest of the previous three boys and the closest to him in age, and they were friends. He gives him this spot to build a show house.
So what you're looking at is a structure far beyond what most people would have had. When we go inside, you're going to see a kitchen more in the size of the one you've been. It's twice the size of the one at the castle. There is the flow of room, there is the show to the public and then there is his own private rooms at the end, following that flow that you mentioned.
We're standing here now and, yes, you can hear the birds and a tiny bit of road noise, but when we look around and you see the colour and the shape of the hills, you.
It's almost impossible to describe how peaceful and lovely it is.
[00:52:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: Even when it snows here, it's brilliant.
[00:52:37] Speaker C: I can imagine it is. Snow has a particular peace about it and quietness, I suspect. It's gorgeous. So the thing that was coming into my mind, you would say it's built around 1450. So we're just heading towards the wars of the Roses, of course. And you were talking about the locals being used to supporting the House of Lancaster, the Duchy of Lancaster. So how did they. Do we know how the locals felt about having a Yorkist arrive in their backyard?
[00:53:04] Speaker A: Well, Roger doesn't appear to have been threatened in any way, or there were other reasons that they would have been accepted. Anyway, as I say, they're local, so they would be known. They are the grandsons of the celebrated Davy Gam.
So who supposedly is the idea for Captain Flewellyn in Shakespeare's Henry V?
So he is a local man at arms, a supposed porter of the House of Lancaster, and he saved Henry V's life from a late French charge at the Battle of Agincourt, died on the battlefield and was knighted. So he was known around the area. He's also. He was also the personal enemy of Owain Glyndua. So we're talking about a very anglicised area, if you like. Even then, compared to the more north, north and west you go, obviously this is more, more your cymrag, your Welsh people. And the language still does that. So most of the people around here, while there are many more who now speak Welsh, the accent and stuff is very different to how you would get it in North Wales. The feeling is very different.
[00:54:15] Speaker C: Yeah. So what do we know about. Do we know anything else about Roger Vaughan, the man who arrived here to. To basically build and occupy the first
[00:54:25] Speaker A: manor house, he seemed to have been a great entertainer.
So when he designed his house and it follows a typical medieval plan, an L shape which funnily enough is very similar to the L shape within the shell keep wall, except in size, it's two or three times the size of the castle.
[00:54:45] Speaker C: So let's, let's talk about the sort of development. Am I right in. In saying that there was a sort of more modest house to begin with and then it got enlarged or is that not quite right?
[00:54:55] Speaker A: That is certainly possible when we came into the courtyard, the L shape, the side to the north that has the balcony on.
[00:55:04] Speaker C: Should we go and have a look at it?
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Do you want to look back at that? Okay, we'll just wander back through the. We're actually by the herb garden here. We have a recreated medieval garden that we will walking through back to the courtyard.
[00:55:15] Speaker C: And the roses are beautiful, aren't they?
[00:55:20] Speaker A: And then it will go to honeysuckle and white grapes over the autumn and winter. So it is a living, breathing garden. It keeps going all the time. If we just step through back into the courtyard. So what we're looking at here is a balcony on the outside of the north range.
It is a very typical. Try to ignore the west bit. And you mentioned about a two periods of house. And you're quite right. It's possible that there was something where the north ranges a separate house before.
[00:55:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:55:51] Speaker A: Similar to various places along the border between England and Wales. The one that springs most readily to mind is an English heritage property called Stokesie.
[00:56:00] Speaker C: Oh yes.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: If so, if you imagine we've got an off center door, we've got a solar to the right, although with an external staircase where it's. So see it's inside and we've got a kitchen at the left hand end.
There's just no defensive tower because the castle is 200 yards across the grass. It's certainly possible given the shape of the doorway and one of the windows, which appear to be of an earlier date, that there could have been a building there.
[00:56:26] Speaker C: Like a hall house. A whole house, early sort of late medieval hall house, right in from the
[00:56:31] Speaker A: 1300s, if there was. Certainly by the time you get to 1450, there are two things that could have happened. Glyndore, passing by on his way to Burncrick Howell, was told to siege the castle and the Barclays, who owned it at the time in Gloucestershire, were told to defend it. Whether they did or not is a moot point, but the castle itself doesn't appear to have been attacked, so they probably didn't guard it at all. They probably left the gates open and Glyndor might have spent the night before. Before attacking Crick Howell. It's possible. It's one of those things we'll never know. Or if there was. If he wanted to sort of keep the people in the castle there, he may have burnt whatever was here, so that there may have been a ruined building just here.
[00:57:13] Speaker C: I see.
[00:57:14] Speaker A: But when we get to 1450 and this is the bit we now have to say in our guidebooks and when we're talking public, this is the bit we can prove.
It seems that Roger Vaughan turned up here, went, loved the valley, love the view. Not quite sure about that bit. If there was a building there and so it got altered, it was turned into this medieval L shape and where we came from the garden, there were actually two roof lines in the wall for service buildings that used to be there and. But he joined it to whatever was here.
It was then re roofed completely. And if that was a hall house like Stokesie, then there would not have been a balcony, there'd have been no floor inside. But he could certainly have altered it that way. So if it was just the bottom of a wall and with a doorway in it, he could have put the balcony on it, put the floor in, turned it into living quarters, completely updated it, re roofed, which is why the oldest roof beams on both sides of the house are that date 1450-55. Wow.
[00:58:11] Speaker C: Wow. I just would just make a note for those people. I always have to be very careful when I'm saying hall house.
I'm talking H, A double L.
Yeah, hall house, ladies and gentlemen. And the reason I say this, we have in the past, if you're interested in learning more about how to read a hall house, we did a podcast episode at the Wheels and Downland Museum specifically on that topic and we will put a link in the description if you wanted to pick that up and learn more about that particular phase of building.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: Anyway, just going to say you mentioned the Wealden down which is a fantastic place. But I can also tell you, because some of us went there to look at this. There is a wonderful lady there whose name, unfortunately, I can't remember, but she uses one of the houses. So if people are interested in the brewing and baking. I mentioned the bread oven over at the castle.
They gave us an absolutely fantastic day on how to brew and bake in the period and on a fire, obviously, for a single house size rather than castle size, but fascinating.
[00:59:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:16] Speaker C: They're brilliant there, aren't they, for their living history demonstrations. And they do do courses as well.
[00:59:21] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:59:22] Speaker C: If you want to go and learn how to do some of these older crafts.
[00:59:26] Speaker A: Yes. And St Faggins in Wales does the same down by Cardiff.
[00:59:29] Speaker C: Okay, right. St Faggins, I have not been. All right.
[00:59:33] Speaker A: Yes. Museum of Welsh Life. Yes.
[00:59:35] Speaker C: Right, thank you.
[00:59:37] Speaker A: So buildings from around Wales, when they. That are of some form of architectural, historical usage, they're so important, they sometimes have been knocked down or they need to be removed from where they are. They get rebuilt at St Fagans.
[00:59:52] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:59:52] Speaker A: Everything from a 15th century church, complete with wall paintings, you know, they're out.
[00:59:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:59:57] Speaker C: I've just added another destination to my
[01:00:00] Speaker A: Iron Age house, a Victorian shop complete with everything in it. I mean, it's. It's one of those fascinating places.
[01:00:06] Speaker C: Right, we've got to go. Right. We really must concentrate on what we're doing.
We've gone down a couple of rabbit holes, which is fine. That's absolutely fine. So.
So what does happen when the wars of the Roses come along?
Because we've got a Yorkist family.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:00:24] Speaker C: In Wales we have Henry Tudor threatening invasion. What's going on for the family around that time? How are they navigating this period?
[01:00:35] Speaker A: It's difficult for everyone. Of course, I mentioned earlier again, it's a feudal system, so people who work on the land work for the lords, the knights and dukes, earls, whatever they are.
With this area being part of previously the Duchy of Lancaster, the people at time, the same time of Agincourt, 1415, were following people like Davy Gam off in the train of Harry of Monmouth. And Glyndour's uprising had only just finished, so there was no body, no end of the war, so to speak.
And Henry didn't trust most of Wales to provide the archers that he needed, but he wanted the best. So he used his time title as Duke of Lancaster to take under the feudal system, people from Duchy of Lancaster land. So that's a strip from sort of down the Kidwelly Way up through the Carmarthen Chavannes to Hay on Wyr and Skenfrith Grosmont.
And so there were still about two and a half thousand, but maybe not like the five or six thousand that would have been earlier in the Hundred Years War over in France at the time of Crecy and Poitiers.
So those were still needed. And the people around here would have seen changes in lords.
But the area running north from here up the borders is Yorkist country. Any Yorkist leanings? They're people in the Mortimers and the Mortimers are in the backgrounds of the Dukes of York.
So they're also people who have a long standing potential disagreement with the ruling monarch, whatever that is, again from the Mortimer period.
And the Marcher lords, you know, going right back to Bernard Deneuf, Marche, William Fitz Osborne, people like this, they are coming into Wales to cut out their own swathe and they sit alongside the native princes.
People were used to following different lords in different areas at different times because whoever owned the land, whoever they supported, the people on that land were, would end up going off to war as a spear carrier or an archer to go and join in with the border area here running northwards is Mortimer country. It's people who have a, in their minds and the minds of the lords who control the area, they think, oh, well, if I need troops, I can go there because they'll support me because of who I am.
And Edward, Earl of March, as he is then, before he becomes Edward iv, is over in the border countries trying to raise troops when his father is killed at the Battle of Wakefield and his younger brother Edmund.
And so the Lancastrians come wandering over thinking they're going to get an easy victory. They've killed the main man, now they're just off to mop up the other sun. And in fact there's a great battle at Mortimer's Cross and it's a huge Yorkish victory when they didn't expect it.
And it's things like that when they happen because of the local lords and who they are and people support them. You know, as I mentioned, this part of being part of the Duchy of Lancaster, you'd have thought they were used to supporting the sitting King, the son of Henry V, but in this particular case they were certainly open minded enough that they didn't, you know, try to capture Roger or kill him or whatever. He became an important man in his own right.
[01:03:54] Speaker C: And was Roger at the Battle of Morton Cross?
[01:03:57] Speaker A: He was at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross and he supposedly Led out Owen Tudor for execution in Hereford town square afterwards, which is what starts the feud, the bloody feud between himself and Jasper Tudor.
[01:04:13] Speaker C: We've got to go into this.
So we have Owen Tudor is captured, Battle of Mortimer's Cross, taken to Hereford, pretty much just taken out and executed the following day. Really do we know for sure it was Roger Vaughan who let him out? What's the source? What's the source for this story? Legend?
[01:04:35] Speaker A: I wish I could tell you.
I did read it at some point and I've sort of come across it. It's mentioned in part of the guidebooks and that, and so I've never thought to question it again. I have to be honest, I did read it somewhere. It might be in Evans, wars of the Roses, a book that came out in about 1915.
I would need to go back and double check it now. But as I say, we've always talked about it that way, from my predecessors to me, the story that's been handed
[01:05:02] Speaker C: down and then you went on to say that that started the feud. Tell us more about that.
[01:05:08] Speaker A: Well, in a time where during the wars of the Roses, it's, you know, family against family, and because of the feudal system, yes, all the people can be taken in, but sometimes individual families were really were at loggerheads such that, yes, because of the execution of Owen, Jasper quite rightly took it personally.
Jasper, most people may know that is the uncle of Henry Tudor, who later becomes Henry vii.
So that in a country like Wales, which it doesn't have many people who are important as far as the English are concerned, there is the fact that Roger can be introduced to the king, can be knighted, as he is in 1465.
These are important moments generally within Wales, as I mentioned, there are not many Welsh people in positions of importance with the sitting king, the reigning aristocracy.
Some people may be interested to think, well, going back to William Herbert, why is he so important? Okay, he's a drinking companion of Edward iv. He's grown up with Warwick the Kingmaker, working alongside him, learning about ruling and things like that. But it's because, like his father before him, he is the steward of the Duke of York's lands. Again, a lot of people probably don't realize when they talk about the wars of the Roses, it affects actually everywhere in mainland Britain, really, because all the major lords have lands dotted around that they've inherited by marriage, whatever it is.
And so, you know, along the borders I mentioned the Herberts, they're also in part of the Duke of York's family, the Mortimers, are part of the Duke of York's family.
When William Herbert is steward of South Wales on behalf of Edward iv, he is, you know, fulfilling all the criteria of his function and people look to him for leadership. And so the idea again of a show house like this, people would. Nobody else would go, oh, let's turn up and kill Roger, because we're Lancastrian. They go, actually, we'll just let it lie for a bit. We'll see the way the wind's blowing. And this is usually referred to as a khlis.
So like the native palaces, Akhlis, a court.
So like the Llewelyn Abjowas, Lisa Aberfrou, you know, it's a place where people come together. It's where they will find out the local news what's happening elsewhere. So it's not just a court, like handing out a sentence, it is a central meeting place, similar to a prince would have. So this is where people would be going, oh, we're not going to muck about with Roger, you know, we'll.
We'll give him his due.
He's a relative of the Herberts and that makes him really important amongst the aristocracy. And then when he gets knighted, he joins that aristocracy.
[01:08:02] Speaker C: So Tretawa Court here and Roger Vaughan here at Tretawa Court, really, it's a local place of power, of administration, of gossip, news, a meeting place as well as a. An administrative place for keeping law and order and so on and so forth in the area.
[01:08:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:08:25] Speaker C: So you were saying, though, that Jasper Tudor kind of had a. Took revenge on Roger. What. What happened.
[01:08:36] Speaker A: So we need to move on a little bit. I'm sure we'll come back in time later on as we go around the house. But to move to the crux of the matter, in 1471, Battle of Tewkesbury, about an hour to the east of us.
Big Yorkist victory. The end of the wars of the Roses as far as they were concerned at the time. So Margaret of Anjou and her son Edward of Lancaster are captured.
Edward is executed or dies on the battlefield the following day, same day, or the day after that in London, Henry VI will die in the Tower. All of a sudden, Edward IV is now sole king and there's going to be 13 years of peace. But the reason the battle took place there is reigns had forced the Lancastrian army, which was trying to join up with Jasper in South Wales, to come up from Bristol because they couldn't get across. They came up the other side of the river and to Gloucester. Gloucester, Gloucester's gates were shut. So they ended up coming to the crossing at Tewkesbury, and that's where Edward's army, coming from the Midlands, caught up with them. Those who were trying to escape across the river would be fleeing down this side to try and get to Jasper. And Roger was one of those sent to chase them, try and capture them. We don't know how, but it appears that he ran into Jasper outside Chepstow and was summarily executed himself.
[01:09:57] Speaker C: Right, okay.
[01:09:58] Speaker A: But it was a big moment in Wales. I mentioned about the fact that there were very few people in Wales with the sort of power over the border and even recognized Lancastrian poets of the time, Hugh Cuycloud, Lewis Glencothi, you know, people who came here, they actually wrote to Jasper and said, did you have to kill him? Could you not sort of ransom him? Could you not lock him up, do something? Because we've now just. The orcas have just won, whatever you think of, and we've just lost a Welshman in a form of power, you know, and to be fair, Roger had always looked after those poets. So, you know, when he was giving his feasts here, they would get a new robe, they'd be feasted royally. They.
It was one of those places to be. And so, yes, so you were talking
[01:10:45] Speaker C: about, you know, he's a very good entertainer, Roger.
I think now we should perhaps go inside and explore his house and maybe talk a little bit about this cultural side, because it's quite an interesting aspect of this, reading about the poets that used to come here.
[01:11:00] Speaker A: And so, yes, we can do that.
[01:11:03] Speaker C: So can we go inside and have a look at the house and we can explore.
Sa.
[01:12:33] Speaker A: While we've stepped through into the garden, I'll just point out these two roof lines that are here.
And you talked, and we talked earlier about the shape of the L shape of the house. So in a medieval house, we've got an L shape and two service buildings here. And as an entertainer, we don't know exactly what these buildings were, they're long gone. But this one, with its own doorway through to the kitchen, and it had an upstairs room, which may have been for a servant to come down and stick, start the brewing and baking every day, like they did at the castle. So that happens every day. The one this side, we don't know whether was a stable, but it also could have been a massive wash house because as an entertainer, there would be all the linen to clean and stuff like that. But these buildings, long gone, are the ones that when we're here now, you see, replaced by the recreated medieval garden.
[01:13:17] Speaker C: I see.
[01:13:18] Speaker A: Because we don't know what the buildings were.
[01:13:20] Speaker C: Right. And are we going to go.
[01:13:21] Speaker A: We are now going to go through what may have been been the brew and bake house.
[01:13:25] Speaker C: Okay.
Through a lovely Tudoresque door, I have to say, gorgeous Tudor arch the way.
[01:13:31] Speaker A: Okay. Into the kitchen.
[01:13:34] Speaker C: Oh, a lovely space.
It's beautiful, isn't it?
This is more.
[01:13:39] Speaker A: Right.
[01:13:39] Speaker C: Akin to. I think the thing that's. That first jumps out to me is the kitchen and then the three doorways that I guess would have been the central corridor leading through. Through to. I'm guessing from what I know, through to the great hall and then the pantry and the buttery on either side. It's kind of that classic arrangement that you get. It is in medieval or early Tudor house.
[01:14:00] Speaker A: When we came in from outside, you may have noticed that there's a slight ramp and that is where we're standing, which is a beautiful flagstone floor. But that is in itself 17th century and later farming period.
So the original floor in here is about a foot below us and it would be a packed earth floor, as you would expect in somewhere like this. And so the three doorways which make you people think that. Oh, they must have been small then. No, they're actually. It's because the floors, they're the right height door. It's the floors come up.
[01:14:28] Speaker C: No, that makes a lot of sense.
[01:14:29] Speaker A: And yes, you were quite right, the three doorways. So to the left there we have the pantry from the French word, from pan for bread, dry goods. And the other side is the buttery. Nothing to do with butter because the butter churns in the pantry.
This is where they store the wine and water butts or barrels.
[01:14:48] Speaker C: Perfect. Yes.
[01:14:50] Speaker A: And you'll see that some of them in there have got metal hoops around them. That's because they're wine from the continent, so they've been transported on a ship to here. Whereas the ones with willow hoops round they are. They'll be small beer, Methyglin, which is a type of.
It's a type of brandy.
[01:15:10] Speaker C: Right.
[01:15:11] Speaker A: Made with honey.
[01:15:12] Speaker C: Oh, I didn't realise that.
[01:15:14] Speaker A: Mead brandy.
[01:15:15] Speaker C: Is that peculiar to Wales, the willow and the. Or is it?
[01:15:18] Speaker A: I believe not. No, just where they. They haven't had to travel. You don't need to either. The barrels may have been used from something else, but then they're being reused as if the metal's gone. Perfect. You can use wood.
Funnily enough, here in the kitchen. We've even got. I've always thought of it as quite a new thing, but barrel chair and you think. I think in my head, barrel chairs, surely they're much later than that. But of course they're not broken. Barrels get used for many things and have been for centuries and centuries.
[01:15:45] Speaker C: Is that right?
[01:15:46] Speaker A: So there are wood. We have seen wood block cuts, you know, wood cut blocks for printing, where they show, you know, a barrel chair similar to that one.
[01:15:56] Speaker C: So how authentic, apart from the floor which has been raised, how authentic is this room in terms of the materials? We're seeing the wooden screen there and you know, the rest of the plaster fireplace, windows and so on.
[01:16:08] Speaker A: Some of the plaster is new. That was redone when it was decided in 2008-10. We had to reroof. And from what we found from radiocarbon dating the beams, dendrochronology doing the repairs was the fact of being able to date it at 1450-55 where the earlier guidebooks had suggested. One half of the building was earlier, much earlier 14th century.
We can't prove that. But then it was decided to make, put this back the west range to how it would have been at the height of its power. So there was a little bit of lime washing done.
The only change in here, funnily enough, was if you'd come in the 80s and 90s, you'd have leant on a handrail in the room above looking down into the kitchen, because a medieval kitchen is full height somewhere for the smoke to go. But in the 17th century they put in this beam they put on a floor, as you see it now, four bedrooms above.
[01:17:06] Speaker C: I see.
[01:17:06] Speaker A: Right. That had been taken out back in the 1930s when the building came to the state, because that's not how it would have been. But we now do weddings upstairs in the room upstairs. So we've had to put a floor back in from a health and safety point of view.
But you can tell the difference between that and the 17th century beam that's in the middle of the roof.
And in fact you can see the different periods of that screen with the three doorways in. So some of it you can see has been repaired. That's 1950s.
The darker stuff, which has witch marks in it is.
[01:17:42] Speaker C: We were. Sorry, very excited. I love witch marks.
[01:17:46] Speaker A: Right. So these witch marks actually help date the wood.
[01:17:50] Speaker C: Are these the burning?
[01:17:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:17:52] Speaker C: Can I tell you a little story?
[01:17:54] Speaker A: Please do.
[01:17:56] Speaker C: I was told off last year for calling them witch marks.
[01:18:00] Speaker A: Right.
[01:18:00] Speaker C: They're not actually witch marks, they're apotropaic. Marks. Because I was told by an expert that witch marks are what you find on people.
[01:18:09] Speaker A: Right.
[01:18:09] Speaker C: And apotropaic marks are what you find. Find on buildings. So daisy wheels, burnings, VVS, etc. So I try and stay true to that now because I was definitely told that that's how it is.
[01:18:25] Speaker A: And I can thank you because you just reminded me of that. I couldn't remember how to say it.
[01:18:29] Speaker C: Apotropaic.
[01:18:30] Speaker A: Apotropaic.
[01:18:31] Speaker C: I spent the whole of last year practicing how to become effortlessly apotropaic.
[01:18:39] Speaker A: Apotropaic. I've heard the term before, but I couldn't remember it. And for most people who come in showing them something like that and saying it's a witch mark.
You mentioned earlier about this being a manor house. Lots of people say that technically it's not.
[01:18:55] Speaker C: Right.
[01:18:55] Speaker A: It's not a manor house because Roger is not lord of the manor. The title goes with the castle. So this is a palace for the period. It's a private house. It's not a manor house, technically speaking, a palace. It's a palace for the period. You don't think everybody lived in something this size?
[01:19:12] Speaker C: Wonderful.
[01:19:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:19:13] Speaker A: It's the equivalent of a palace.
[01:19:14] Speaker C: Yeah, wonderful.
[01:19:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And everything that's in here has been made by traditionally trained craftsmen, traditional tools and methods. It's just made new so that we can use it. The good thing about coming here is that it is a.
Has the potential to be a living, breathing property again. And in fact, we have living history groups who come here who cook on the fire in the kitchen.
They use the items. There was a program on S4C wareh called Ellis back in 2014, which was filmed here with people living the Tudor lifestyle. They put 17 people to live here for four weeks.
[01:19:55] Speaker C: That's wonderful. I love the recreation. It just helps you really get into it. So do we go through to a great hall this way?
[01:20:02] Speaker A: We do. We can follow through here.
[01:20:05] Speaker C: Yes, please do. Let's go.
Oh, sorry.
[01:20:09] Speaker A: Up a ramp into the servery, which has two sides. There is the ewery side. So this is from ewer, from O for water. So this is where the bowls, liquids and stuff. Stuff for the feast are stored. And there is a table, four legged, as they often are, not always with a writing slope on it. And a very decorative chair which is where the steward of the kitchen sits. And on here would be a wax tablet.
[01:20:41] Speaker C: Can I sit down?
[01:20:43] Speaker A: Of course you may.
[01:20:44] Speaker C: Thank you.
[01:20:45] Speaker A: And on that wax tablet would be written down in order. What is going through to the feast so that he can cross it off when it comes in. You see, there are prep tables here, so when it comes from the fire, it is plated up on the serving tables.
We've got examples here of a calf's head. We've got a pike, we've got a suckling pig.
There were actually eels hanging in the kitchen, not real ones, of course. They'd be gone off by now, but he would be able to cross off that list. And of course it's on a wax tablet, because paper is far too important to waste. So exactly like the Romans did all those centuries before, at the end of the feast, you can just melt the wax and clear it again and you've got the same for tomorrow.
[01:21:28] Speaker C: So would somebody then take what they'd written and put it onto paper, or is it just. No, it's just a tally that's just
[01:21:34] Speaker A: come out of what's coming through.
[01:21:35] Speaker C: So it's not going into household accounts or anything like that.
[01:21:38] Speaker A: Not like that. And on this side we have what is called the nappery.
And you will know that, like the nap. I do the nap of the cloth. So this is where all the linen for stuff, where it's been washed. And we talked about there's a possibility of being a wash house outside, but this is where all the napkins, all the linen would be stored, ready to go into the great hall on the tables.
[01:22:01] Speaker C: And can I just ask, how do you know that these spaces were used like that? Is that just because you're.
There's a record in some way, or that this is how all manor houses like this. I know it's not a manor house.
[01:22:18] Speaker A: You're correct. This is how houses like this historically are used. The layout of rooms, while it was a bit like the garden, the individual parts might change the layout, positioning of rooms, but they fulfill the same functions.
So it follows on from other houses elsewhere.
What. Sometimes what remains are left in here. So we know that these walls weren't here when I first started here and came here. They'd just been replaced in 2010 because of where they worked out that the walls had been. Making sense of the three doorways that you talked about in the kitchen previous to that, when there was no security ceiling to the kitchen, this was just an open space.
So we hadn't separated at that point out to pantry and butter it. But experts in their field, like Charles Kightley, look at this area and work out what must have been where.
[01:23:16] Speaker C: Yeah. So should we go through to the great hall?
[01:23:18] Speaker A: You notice the offsetting here, one doorway from the servery to two doorways into the great hall. So the people sitting there can't see directly.
[01:23:28] Speaker C: Oh, yes, of course, yes.
[01:23:29] Speaker A: And this bit that we're standing in currently is the screens passage.
[01:23:33] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:23:33] Speaker A: So we have a doorway looking westwards towards the castle.
We don't have a doorway that side. We have a window which apparently is halfway through the wall. And that is because that is where the medieval front door would have been.
[01:23:45] Speaker C: Okay, right.
[01:23:46] Speaker A: Which moved in the 17th century.
[01:23:48] Speaker C: I see. That makes a lot of sense because normally that's what you would have from the courtyard, the doorway coming into the screens passage, straight into the great hall. That's what you would normally see. Oh, what a lovely space.
I've forgotten how lovely this is.
It's beautiful, isn't it? And so we're looking. Describe the room for us, if you would, Ian.
And what's here?
[01:24:09] Speaker A: We are in a room that is roughly 8 meters square.
It is the great hall.
We have a raised dais at the north end with a fireplace, large fireplace to our left, west facing.
And then there are.
We've set it for a feast, a lunchtime meal in 1470. So there are two lower tables with wooden and local pottery, so brown clay, local South Wales ware on these tables. And then there's a top table which has a damask cloth, it has painted legs, because this is a rich man's house. And that's one of the ways you showed how rich you were by painting your furniture. And then it has Venetian glass, it has pewter, it has white bread, manchet loaves, it has brass candlesticks holding nice beeswax candles. Whereas on the lower tables you've got iron candlesticks holding smelly tallow candles.
[01:25:23] Speaker C: So it's all about status, isn't it?
Your positioning, what's in front of you, what you're eating off, the light that's provided for you, your literal position, height in the hall. It's all about status.
[01:25:37] Speaker A: Correct. And I mentioned that this is taken from a lunchtime feast. It's supposedly on, you know, a couple of. They're expecting Roger back after the Battle of Tewkesbury. And so it's been laid out for a lunch where he's actually going to thank his retainers, the people who worked for him. So not the same status. That is why we've been able to use this lower status stuff on these tables.
Whereas obviously, when he was trying to get merchants, other lesser knights or whatever, to join the house of.
To get them, then he Would be packing the tables with more like the utensils that are on the top table.
[01:26:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Depends on who's in here. Now, you talked about he entertained a lot and I was curious about the fact that poets converged here. How did that come about? Why did it become such a cultural centre? And who visited here?
[01:26:26] Speaker A: There would certainly William Herbert would have come. And a side point to that is, is that the young Henry Tudor was put to grow up with William Herbert. So he would almost certainly have visited here as a child.
[01:26:40] Speaker C: You think so?
[01:26:41] Speaker A: He would have been, because he would have been working as a page within William's household. That's what people did when children reached. Boys reached seven. If they were from a noble household, they'd expect to be put in another household of a similar echelon, if you like, where they would learn how to a page for seven years and then a squire for seven years until hopefully by the time they were 21. Some point after that they would hopefully be knighted, come into inheritance, whatever it was.
Whereas girls might stay at home till they might be promised in marriage. There might be contracts or something, but certainly they would expect to be married by the time they were 15 to 18.
[01:27:22] Speaker C: I'm really excited that you think that Henry would have been here. You know, I'm a fully signed up member of the Henry VII's Appreciation Society.
[01:27:32] Speaker A: I better stand the other side of this tent because I'm a Richard iii, if not innocent, is completely misunderstood.
[01:27:39] Speaker C: You're the second Ricardian that I've had to encounter this week.
It's an interesting thought, though. Oh, that's really interesting because it does give. It does give the direct link to the Tudors as well, because I know from my reading, and I think you were saying earlier, the actual family themselves were not at the Tudor court, they were local gentry who managed the area. But nevertheless, now we have a link. Now we have a direct route to Tudor royalty.
[01:28:06] Speaker A: We do. And again, another side point to that. When you think about the Battle of Bosworth, the route to Bosworth, when Henry lands and when he heads to the Midlands, he doesn't go by the direct route, he doesn't come through here because this is Vaughan territory and he probably doesn't see the need to risk any serious resistance. So he marches up towards Aberystwyth and then across into the Midlands rather than come through here. And that is the Vaughan's being here. He's going to be part of it. Obviously, Roger's gone by then, but his son Thomas is still here.
He's A big supporter of Richard iii. Why he's not at Bosworth, probably because he's here defending, waiting for Henry, but Henry bypasses him.
[01:28:57] Speaker C: So, yeah, Wales did have a bit of a history of. You're going to put this better than me, Ian, you know, I mean, it's a very lyrical country, isn't it?
[01:29:08] Speaker A: Praise poetry is a term that is usually used. So there were plenty of poetry. People down the ages have been musicians, poets, speakers.
Doesn't matter what it is, it all fulfils a function that teaches people history, it gives them news, all of these sorts of things. So this is no exception. I call this a Klees Elliot. So this is where people would come to get the news, also where people would come to be entertained. And so you would also want those entertainers.
Welsh praise poets, there's a particular type of poetry where they speak in terms of praise, if you like. So, and I mentioned that Hugh Kite Lloyd and Lois Lincolthe are seen as Lancastrian poets, and yet they needed to earn a living and so they were not averse, they didn't feel conflicted in any way in being invited here to be put on a sheepskin covered block to take a seat in front of the fire. And then at a certain point they would stand up and they will have written poetry of that style, which they would recount to the people here. And there would be plenty of references within that praise poetry to the sons of the snake, because the Vaughans are. That one of their symbol is the snake and that in itself is not. You'd think now, oh, I don't want to be called a son of a snake, but in the period, it is extremely praiseworthy. They claim descent from a legendary chieftain called Morethig Warwyn, meaning white neck, who supposedly was born with an adder round his neck.
So this is the Vaughn, this is the Voorns themselves. And people.
The idea of surviving that is most likely an umbilical cord, but surviving that in a period where there's no hospitals, no doctors, nothing like that.
So the wise women would have helped you, you know, witches would have helped you through that.
And it's hereditary.
It certainly caused a shock to two Vaughan ladies visiting from the States because they had been born, that they didn't know that story, they were just researching their history.
They came here.
And so, yes, the snake is seen as. It's a symbol of wisdom.
It's in the Bible, you know, it's not evil, it's not speaking with forked tongue, anything like that. Sort of a More modern colloquialism. It's to do with wisdom.
[01:31:35] Speaker C: So these poets would wander around visiting different places. They would get paid for paid, they
[01:31:42] Speaker A: would get clothed, they would get fed. So you might get a nice new robe, right?
[01:31:47] Speaker C: And so all you needed to do was to create some good poetry that flattered your lord, your host, and maybe even conveyed news, as you say, within the poetry as well.
[01:31:58] Speaker A: Because the poet, of course, he would be invited. He would have a certain social standing. He would be able to talk to the Lord and the Lord would get. Because the poet is the one who's doing the wondering. He's bringing the news.
[01:32:09] Speaker C: Yes, indeed, you know. Interesting. Interesting, Sam.
Okay, so what else can we explore?
[01:33:19] Speaker A: Okay, well, while you're here, of course you can sit. The nice thing about this hall is you can sit on the benches that everything here, like in the kitchen, is made to be used. So when you sit there, you can imagine.
[01:33:31] Speaker C: I can't eat the potty.
[01:33:32] Speaker A: No, you can't. No, you can't eat that.
That is wax.
But everything that you see on here. So it's lovely. I mentioned the damask cloths on there. Here on the. On the top table, on the lower table, you notice that we've got unbleached linen. You've got wooden spoons. You've got the brown Malvern, South Wales ware, the type of pottery.
Smelly tallow candles. This is what people generally would use in their own houses. You'll notice. Yeah, wooden cups. We do have horn ones as well, which we bring out for special occasions. You'll notice there's wooden spoons.
There is no other cutlery on the table.
[01:34:13] Speaker C: Yes, that's right.
[01:34:14] Speaker A: Even on the top table. And that is because everybody carried a knife, ladies themselves. You've done your homework.
So you would. The panther would come around with his big carving knives and the joint or whatever it was, and you would choose the bit you want and he'd slice it and he'd put it on your trencher, your plate, but then you would cut it up smaller with your own knife. And the spoon is there for the pottage and for dessert. And the cloth is there for once you've licked and white it clean.
[01:34:44] Speaker C: What interests me really is why they didn't have their own spoon. If you could be bothered to have your own knife, why wouldn't you have your own spoon?
[01:34:51] Speaker A: Again, in your scrip, your pouch, you often. You would have your own spoon, right. You know, along with your knife. But we're now talking about. This is a palace. He's Proving how rich he is because he can put. We do actually have knives to put out on these tables, but we don't because of the health and safety issue. But he's showing how rich he is because he can afford to put all these on the table. So you don't have to use your own.
[01:35:16] Speaker C: I think I belong up here.
[01:35:19] Speaker A: I think you might be right. Yes.
[01:35:22] Speaker C: I think I feel much more at home.
[01:35:25] Speaker A: May I also say, congratulations, you sat in the right throne on the.
Yes.
You sat to the left of the Lord.
[01:35:34] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:35:36] Speaker B: This.
[01:35:37] Speaker C: Is this right. I mean, I'm asking genuinely, is this like, did they eat off these sort of stones?
[01:35:45] Speaker A: So that is. That is a.
That is a copy. It's a trencher.
Do you remember when we were over in the castle and we talked to the big bread oven.
[01:35:53] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:35:54] Speaker A: And I said about how they knew how much wood to put in. And then they rake the ash out and they put the bread in and they know when it goes off and they bring it out.
So when the bread comes out, it looks like this, which is a sort of. Well, it's a loaf. It's round. They did come in other shape, but mostly round and with a simple cross scraped in the top. And it's the size of my two hands.
But when it comes out, of course, a. It's hot and as it cools down.
But on the bottom is any ash that was left in.
And so they took a slice tranche across the loaf, so the underside becomes your plate, your trencher.
[01:36:34] Speaker C: Oh, I see.
[01:36:35] Speaker A: Okay. And what you're touching there in front of you is basically, it's a plaster of Paris copy because the bread would have gone off, so it's a copy.
So you've got. And the bit that's left that you eat is the upper crust.
[01:36:49] Speaker C: Yeah, Perfect.
Wonderful.
That was so interesting.
[01:36:56] Speaker A: So you're up here with white manchet loaves. So that again proves how rich you are, because you've got someone who's got nothing better to do than bolt flour through cloth to remove all as many of the impurities as possible and then do it two or three times to make it as white as possible. So whereas now, you know, we've sort of gone away from white bread. Here we are soft white and chip loaves.
[01:37:21] Speaker C: What's this for? Oh, that's the salt.
[01:37:24] Speaker A: That's your salt. So you are above the salt or not, if you're down here.
[01:37:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:37:31] Speaker C: Wonderful. Before we leave here, just one more feature that I'd love you to explain to people. What is this?
[01:37:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:37:39] Speaker C: And what was its purpose?
[01:37:41] Speaker A: So this is. It's a display cabinet.
[01:37:45] Speaker C: We've got a wooden.
[01:37:47] Speaker A: A display cabinet with a rack on top on which there is some pewter, pewter chargers, plates and some blue and white Mediterranean style Italian or Spanish pottery.
And then a beautifully decorated cupboard with a lower level shelf.
So this is a display unit again, to show your wealth. When you're sat down there, that you can. Your guests can see that the sort of thing that you would have had, that you've got it, it's spare, it's extra, it's not like what's on your table. I've got the sort of money to be able to have a full set of this stuff.
[01:38:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And it reminds me, you know, the bigger the house, when you get to the palaces, they will have these huge displays of plate, gold plates.
So I just love the fact that it does show your status, the size and the type of plate that you can put on display.
[01:38:44] Speaker A: Not only is this beautifully made, which it is, but there are a couple of features about it that are, again, not immediately recognisable. But you saw the cabinets that were in the kitchen.
So when there are most of the chests, things like that are what they call six panel chests, front, four sides, top, bottom, held together with iron nails or whatever.
But certainly that the grain arcs in the kitchen and this one are made of a style almost like if they'd had ikea, then this would have been in a flat pack because you'll notice that it's just held together with wooden pegs. There is no ironwork in it because that would rust and affect the item of furniture. So this is an item of furniture that when you went to one of your other houses, if you. You were rich enough, you took your furniture with you, your bed, table, stool, whatever. But there were some items you didn't take. So this was intended to stay. And we also know that because of this metal work that you see on the front. Can you. Do you know what that is?
[01:39:46] Speaker C: Not particularly.
[01:39:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:39:47] Speaker C: Not.
[01:39:48] Speaker A: It's tin.
[01:39:49] Speaker C: Oh, right. And you mean the fort. Right. Okay.
[01:39:51] Speaker A: The actual metal is tin. Right. And you think tin. I've got tin on a camera cabinet because it doesn't rust. So when they're not here and there's no fire and it's damp, if they could have made armour out of tint. So it wouldn't have mattered on the battlefield, except it didn't keep arrows or anything out. But if they could have, you know, that's the way I look at it. But here they're tin fittings. And there was a big tin works in South Wales, mined locally and also brought across from. It would have been brought across from north Cornwall. Trading again. It shows how rich you are. You can afford to have these sorts of fittings.
[01:40:27] Speaker C: And, you know, it's interesting, whenever you read contemporary accounts of Tudor feast, one of the features that the chroniclers often mention is the plate that's on display. I always found that quite interesting. So it was obviously something people took note of, how much plate you had and what the quality of it was.
[01:40:44] Speaker A: Most people only had what they needed, what they stood up in. You might have a second pair of clothes, you might have a chest that you could store everything you owned in. And when you lived in your own little house, you had a table and a chair, none of it painted because you didn't waste time on it and have the money to waste on painting it. It's one of those things that shows your status when you can afford to paint and to have more than one item of furniture, to have more than one chest, you know that you. You ship in your pottery from the continent. If you're Anyone in the 14th and 15th century, you'll notice from these jugs that I've just picked one up here with, has got a face and that in it. So this is Rhineland ware and so from Germany.
And again, that is the sort of thing you'd have if you could afford it.
[01:42:50] Speaker C: So the next room we're going into is we're heading at the high end of the hall. So as the lady of the house and the lord of the manor, we're heading through into another room. This would be a private room, I imagine.
We talked about this before, didn't we? You're escaping the public space.
[01:43:06] Speaker A: Yes. This is the solar for the house, as in when we were over at the castle, there is a solar there. So we're talking now about family time. There is a nice oak door here with its lovely original iron fittings. This is where the lord could say, thank you very much for coming, Goodbye. Close the door.
Family time. So this is where you've seen in the great hall that there are painted cloths and there as the colours of the house of York on tenterhooks around the wall in here. This is where the ladies of the household would have their woven tapestries, the stuff that showed how good they were at needlework, that sort of thing, because prospective suitors, families, this is where they would come to talk business.
They would see what was here and therefore be able to Gauge their worth.
[01:43:55] Speaker C: It's a lovely room.
[01:43:56] Speaker A: Above the door, as the original medieval paintwork on the beam and with an iron tenter hook still stuck in it.
Fortunately saved. Although the. Most of this roof had gone. It had fallen in because of the chimneys falling in and the roof above it.
That beam was saved because it was held horizontally within the wall.
Its faces point downwards. So, you know, it was protected in that way. And we know from the joints that were in it, we were able to rebuild the roof because we know they build them in square panels. And so consequently it made the. We were able to repair the rest of the roof actually just inside the doorway which we've come past. You mentioned marks.
[01:44:38] Speaker C: Is there another one?
What have we got here?
I've become a bit fascinated by them. Oh, so you're pulling back.
Aha. The daisy wheel. You've got a daisy wheel or a hexaform.
[01:44:50] Speaker A: There are at least two.
[01:44:51] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness, that's fantastic.
[01:44:53] Speaker A: With later scribbling on as well.
[01:44:56] Speaker C: They're all over the place. So these were meant to.
They're sort of geometric designs that have no kind of beginning or end. They were supposed to trap the.
The evil spirits. And they were often located. I'm just saying this for my dear listeners. They were often located near entranceways, doorways, fireplaces, wells, so on and so forth. That's very exciting. I'm. So I was actually going to ask you, have you got any other fake marks?
[01:45:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's why they're some of the best. That's. Well, again, that's one of the reasons that I always wanted to. When someone said to me the apotropaic word, and then I could never remember it when it came to talking about it. And I just say, do any of you remember Spirograph? If you do bear that in mind, because that's what it looks like. The daisy wheel looks like the sort of thing you drew on the Spirograph game.
[01:45:46] Speaker C: I had one as a child and it looks exactly like that.
[01:45:48] Speaker A: Yes, I'm sure many of your listeners will think, ah, I now know what we're on about. Spirograph.
[01:45:53] Speaker C: Okay, so where do we go from here? If we're the family, where would we go next for the family?
[01:45:59] Speaker A: They have their own kitchen here, which when we talked about a Longhouse and Stokesie, this may have been an area for an original kitchen, if the house, the north range, were such an early building, but it's now certainly used as a kitchen area for the family, so they didn't have to go into. Through the great hall and have the whole of the main kitchen fired up. They could do their own cooking and sitting in there.
[01:46:23] Speaker C: I see. Yes, very convenient.
[01:46:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And then there is a fireplace here and you can see where, although it is a later infill from the 17th century, originally, it would have been an extended hearth, a hooded fireplace from the 15th century.
[01:46:37] Speaker C: Beautiful. I can imagine how it would have looked as well.
[01:46:40] Speaker A: Okay. And we also. We have a recreated 15th century window, an oriel window on the east side of the building looking into the corner courtyard that was by the time it became a farm. That was a hole in the wall, as was the 17th century door that comes into the great hall that replaced the screens, passage door. They were 1960s replicas of the sort of thing that would have been in a house like that.
[01:47:03] Speaker C: I mean, it's been beautifully done and I have to say, I mean, the amount of work that's been done here to bring it back to the sense of the house, that its pinnacle is enormous, it must cost fortune.
[01:47:14] Speaker A: Raleigh Radford, who was the inspector of monuments back in the 30s, was an acquaintance of Professor Evans. So again, for those of you listening who might have been to Knossos on Crete, that idea of recreating as it might have been, that's what Raleigh Radford brought to this. This almost sort of fell into his lap while he was in Wales here doing this.
[01:47:33] Speaker C: And.
[01:47:33] Speaker A: And it just fitted. There was enough of the original house left that they could see that actually repairs could be done in a time when that didn't happen with. You know, the Ministry of Works didn't do that. There's a lovely site at Minster Lovell. Whereas.
So beautiful. Better cobbles, beautifully traced with windows, but the levels had died out.
It was a ruin. They made it safe and left it open to the public. That could have happened here, but thankfully for us now, it didn't.
[01:48:02] Speaker C: Oh, I wish this would happen more.
[01:48:04] Speaker A: And you notice we just passed a little alcove in the wall behind us, because this being a palace, there's a toilet in every room, a loo, a garderobe.
[01:48:12] Speaker C: A garderobe, yes, indeed. So we're up a steep staircase. We're going up to the first floor now.
[01:48:18] Speaker A: We've actually got some Tudor furniture in here.
[01:48:20] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:48:20] Speaker A: Actual Tudor from. Well, brought from Oxwich, which is currently closed, but we have. So we have some clothing that people can try on.
[01:48:27] Speaker C: And may I just say, just to point out the threshold.
[01:48:31] Speaker A: Threshold.
[01:48:32] Speaker C: Stepping.
Crossing the threshold.
[01:48:35] Speaker A: So.
[01:48:36] Speaker C: So for those folks that don't know, very typical Wouldn't it?
[01:48:41] Speaker A: Absolutely, yes. So it's a. It's about a 6 inch square beam laid on the floor in the doorway, forms the base of the door frame which you can see from this one. This has been a repaired one, replaced one, but that is the actual original threshold. Threshold.
[01:48:58] Speaker C: Because the floor would have been strewn with straw, lavender herbs and so on and so on.
[01:49:05] Speaker A: Certainly some lavender herbs. We're liable to think however that we've moved past that downstairs in the solar you will have seen that there were.
And in fact right the way through the ground floor of the property is the stone slabs, but they're 17th century farming replacement, some of them originally for a medieval house in the mid 1400s they would have been carpets, there would have been tiles, the sort of strewing rushes that might happen in a sort of in between house or how poorer people try to make. There would still be some scent, but there would certainly be a better floor quality than you would get in most houses.
[01:49:43] Speaker C: Would it be like a woven grass type? You know, sort of almost not like a carpet we would know today, but more like woven bundles of sort of hay, grass, whatever you want to call it, woven into like a matting rather than a strewning of straw?
[01:50:03] Speaker A: Certainly.
Again, as I started here, Charles had done some plans which included a bit like a hessian mat, a floor covering and you do see that in many places. But again, depending on how rich you were, of course you could have silks, you could actually have carpets, you know, if you had the money to get them. Yeah, not everyone would have had them and they'd have been gradiated scales but you know. Yeah, this, this floor, currently we've left all the floors as wood but again you have a six panel chest in this room. We usually refer to this one as the ladies chamber. The Lord's chamber being the one above the. The solar below so that he can hear if anything else is going on down there. So this has, this is for the lady, the lady of the household and any children that are still here.
[01:51:19] Speaker C: So we've come upstairs. What is. What would have this room be used for? Was this a bedroom?
[01:51:24] Speaker A: Yes, we say, as I say the ladies chain because the lady tended to sleep separate to the Lord in this period and obviously if she was about to give birth or anything like that, the master stay may still want female companionship of someone else. And you do get lots of illegitimate children. There is a reason for that, of course. Yes, the Lord is exercising his rights, but he's also trying to make sure that his Family survives.
Whilst you only have one wife, you do sometimes have mistresses. Accepted, not quite. Concubines isn't the right word, but you would end up. We know that Roger had at least two legitimate sons but five illegitimate ones. So not by his wife. But he. Yeah, but he set them all up with families of their own. He gave. They all had money, they all had houses around here. So they formed the basis of the Vaughns of Cathedin, the Vaughns of Mertha, Coydcurno Valley.
[01:52:25] Speaker C: Spreading your family influence, isn't it?
[01:52:27] Speaker A: Absolutely. And. And also remembering the wars of the Roses, it brings people into your family. One of his daughters marries into the family of Rhys at Thomas. So the person who welcomes Henry Tudor back in.
[01:52:42] Speaker B: And.
[01:52:42] Speaker A: And Rhys apparently does come this route, but he might have been quite safe coming through here because of the relationship with the.
[01:52:49] Speaker C: Interesting.
[01:52:51] Speaker A: With the Vaughns.
[01:52:52] Speaker C: Very interesting.
[01:52:53] Speaker A: Due to marriage.
You also notice the alcoves in the walls in that room. So that again, in the next period on, when we get to the Tudors, of course you start having. And certainly the Stuarts after that when you start having wood paneling. So we've seen the painted cloths downstairs, but when we get to that wood paneling, they don't fill in the holes. The wood paneling goes over them and that's where you start getting secret panels and things like that. And of course they don't cover over the guard robe. So there you get the start, if you like. If you needed a priest hole, for example, it's a garda robe with the door stuck on the front.
[01:53:31] Speaker C: So it got adapted.
[01:53:32] Speaker A: It got adapted.
This is again, this is Tudor furniture. Tudor style furniture come up from Oxwich. So this is a canopied bed with a trundle or truckle bed from underneath where your servant would sleep, which goes under the main bed for most of the day and then is pulled out for your servant because he sleeps with you, he guards your door.
[01:53:55] Speaker C: Is this the lord's bed chamber?
[01:53:57] Speaker A: We call this the Lord's bedchamber.
We'd hoped to have an actual hanging frame bed which is a slightly different arrangement. Hung from a hook in the ceiling, down and round the bed. That was always Charles's idea was what he wanted, but unfortunately we couldn't afford it at the time and it's never happened.
[01:54:15] Speaker C: That's pretty good.
[01:54:16] Speaker A: And one of the things that you saw in the great hall, which is the other side of the wall, the bedroom we're in has the great hall. The other side of the wall is the trefoils and quatrefoils, the plaster filled shapes at the top of the wall where they meet the roof.
So some remained, some have been, most have been replaced in the 20th century.
[01:54:38] Speaker C: Need a fragment to remain, don't you, to know what you need to build on and how to recreate the windows. Indeed.
[01:54:43] Speaker A: And there's a threshold here as well. Mind your step.
[01:54:47] Speaker C: So now we've come out onto, I think one of the most unique features is this lovely wooden gallery. Was this original then?
[01:54:54] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:54:55] Speaker A: So this is a pentis or a balcony if you like, overlooking the courtyard.
Whilst it's on this side of the courtyard and we can now see over the oriel window of the solar, that there is a section of balcony to my right as we stand here. But it doesn't go all the way along the front of the house. And that's because it appears that Raleigh Radford may have thought that there would be one here or he wanted something on top of the oriel window.
But actually there's no sign of it having been any further on across the front of the great hall.
And certainly the windows that would have been in the great hall at the time would have precluded the idea of a balcony going at this height along the front.
[01:55:37] Speaker C: Yes. Right, I see. And I mean the frontage now looks much later, the doorway looks much later.
It doesn't. They don't look like medieval or Tudor windows.
[01:55:48] Speaker A: They're not. They're 17th century copies. There is a building, a well known National Trust property in South Wales called Trudega House. So that is almost exactly the same sort of date round about 1670. But there the Morgans had the money for a red brick new build and the old medieval hall becomes the servants quarters. It's a complete quadrangle house here.
The Vaughns didn't have that. They'd virtually run out of money around about that point and so all they could afford to do was move the front door. Which is why when we were down in this greens passage, it isn't where you'd expect expect it to be.
They moved it to the center of the section facing the gatehouse. And because it's about spacing and proportion. So the windows portray that as well.
[01:56:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:56:32] Speaker A: And then opposite us on the, on the south side of the courtyard, you have what looks like a set of rooms, but actually it's the wall walk with a roof on it and windows put in the embrushes.
[01:56:43] Speaker C: So is that just almost for symmetry and display?
[01:56:47] Speaker A: It's just your guests coming in into the courtyard. Think in a three sided Italian courtyard house. But there are no rooms up there. When we, when we finish walking around, we'll have gone down there. It's just a covered corridor.
[01:58:27] Speaker C: And so we're now just going inside from the. The pentis and in a very large room. So how. What was this used for originally?
[01:58:37] Speaker A: So this is.
We talked about a longhouse originally, a borders hall house.
And if there were no floor here and we were down to the floor. Yes, it would be like Stokesie, but here certainly by the time you get to the 15th century, this becomes the guest wing. So where the grooves in the beams that you see, those are for the internal walls.
[01:59:01] Speaker C: Ah yes, I see right above my head there's a nice groove all the way along. Absolutely.
[01:59:05] Speaker A: And down. The most importantly, it's also in the beam down the wall as well.
[01:59:09] Speaker C: Oh yes, okay. Yeah.
[01:59:11] Speaker A: And then there is another beam like that and the two beams that are either end of the center part of this room. You'll also notice the remains of red stain on.
[01:59:22] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:59:22] Speaker A: So these are actually the two oldest beams on this side of the house. You also notice there is some original plaster infill. And can you see the shapes that are in it that look black. What do they look like?
[01:59:35] Speaker C: Look like leaves.
[01:59:37] Speaker A: That is exactly what they are.
[01:59:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:59:40] Speaker A: So we've got our original.
[01:59:41] Speaker C: Some original.
[01:59:42] Speaker A: So there was a freeze work that ran all the way around the roof. The idea was that you plastered your. You press leaves in, you join them up with tendrils of paint. Yeah. You know we talk about bringing the outside inside. They've been doing. The Etruscans were painting things like that on the walls in northern Italy in 2000 BC but it's a very typical medieval decoration and it's undoubtedly the sort of thing that William Morris would have seen going round old houses and had the idea for wallpaper with the benefit of course that if you don't like it next week you can take it down. Whereas it's so labor intensive.
And these survived. So even though there are holes in the plaster, those bits managed to survive.
[02:00:21] Speaker C: So the likes of William Herbert, when he came, would he be in here? Yeah, he would.
[02:00:26] Speaker A: That bedroom might have been his. With its garderobe off. It's closest to his.
[02:00:30] Speaker C: The Lord.
[02:00:31] Speaker A: Yeah, closest to his half brother. If he doesn't want to be in the drafty old castle, you know, he can hold court in here.
And then this end, the eastern end, which filled with light from a later 17th century window. It's in the position of where the 15th century was. But it's a change of window. You have another lounge area and an internally doored bedroom with its gardero off it.
[02:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:00:56] Speaker C: All your mod cons.
[02:00:58] Speaker A: Yep, yep.
[02:01:00] Speaker C: And we've got slats for windows here.
[02:01:02] Speaker A: We have got slats for windows. Some of this wall has been repaired and replaced in. And it may be that because of it was used in its last use as a farming building. And these are sort of. I see these as sort of farming type windows. So I think that they have just replaced those as they were.
[02:01:18] Speaker C: Right.
[02:01:19] Speaker A: But they would have had panels on them like this, which is why these have been. And they've copied the design of the doors. So if you imagine the door but put horizontally on the wall and runners to slide across the window.
[02:01:32] Speaker C: Yeah. You could open them, get some fresh air in. But at night.
[02:01:35] Speaker A: But at night you can close them off. In fact, these doors here, these were found piled up against the wall when they came into our hands in the 1930s. And that is an original. That's a least a 1600s door.
[02:01:49] Speaker C: 1600s is beautiful. I love touching old wood with repairs,
[02:01:53] Speaker A: later repairs done to it. But you can see it's all its
[02:01:56] Speaker C: history, though, isn't it? The gnarled bottom where it's rotted and
[02:02:00] Speaker A: all the rivets put through it. And again, in typical style, you've got vertical panels, one side horizontal, to stop,
[02:02:08] Speaker C: to hold it all together, to stop it warping. Clever, clever, clever. So now, I think now we should perhaps mention what happened to the Vaughns and the building we've already talked about. Roger Vaughan's fate quickly. Executed.
[02:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So executed outside Chepstow in 1471.
His son Thomas took over here.
The Herberts had gone at the Battle of Edgecott in 1469, William Herbert and his brother Richard were executed.
And Roger's elder brother, also called Thomas the Black Vaughan of Hergest Ridge, died at the battle or was executed afterwards.
And so the power that was here was sort of dissipating. Thomas Rogers son takes over here.
He's not at the Battle of Bosworth, as I mentioned earlier, presumably because he was here. He did cause trouble for the incoming people.
So he attacked Brecon, he attacked the castle here. Just to show that we didn't do it. That's the last time we know the castle was attacked. Caused superficial damage. And that's because castles are the sort of places where paperwork, documents and stuff are kept for safekeeping. And so he was trying to make it as difficult as possible for whoever came in to run the area on behalf of the new king that, you know, documentation would be missing or, you know, could create issues.
He'd also, by the way, he got himself knighted by Richard III for being responsible for capturing Buckingham's family in Brecon Castle in 1484. He was involved in that.
[02:03:58] Speaker C: Interesting. And that was Roger's son.
[02:04:00] Speaker A: That was Roger's son Thomas. And he was here until he died in 1492.
But he'd already by then received a pardon from the King. After the Battle of Stokefield, there was a general amnesty.
You know, people could sue to Henry Tudor and say, look.
And Thomas apparently did so. So he lived here quietly for the last five years of his life.
And then his descendants, obviously he stayed on living here. They were never as important again.
The Herberts had moved up to Powys Castle.
The Somersets, members of the Beaufort family, had moved into Raglan and then they reached the aristocracy as the Marquess of Worcester. By the time of the English Civil War, which is when Raglan gets shelled to bits, the castle here had already gone out of use, so didn't see any action.
The Vaughans whilst caught up in it. Henry Vaughan, the poet, was the cousin of the Vaughans who oversaw Vaughan Morgan, the last of the Vaughan's here, who oversaw the fascia change of the house in the 1670s. So the great poet, he and his twin brother Thomas were part of the King's forces and he was returned back to here after the siege of Beeston
[02:05:22] Speaker C: and then after that. You mentioned that eventually this place became really like a farmyard. It was used as a farm and then I guess gradually fell into a state of decay.
[02:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah, after the, after the sort of late 17th century fascia change by 1727,ish, the Vaughans had let it out to the Parrys, a large farming family around here, and then they had enough money or the Vaughans needed it, that by the time you get to 1786 they sell it outright. So from that point it becomes a Parry farm.
And then the last of the Parrys, Sarah Parry, puts it out to auction in around 1860. And Sir Joseph Baillie of the Glanusque estate across the way and was the first sort of absentee landlord. And then that was a. That continued until 1930 and it was saved for the state and a national appeal just after the Wall street crash in 1929.
People from around Wales, from an Ebervale schoolboy gave his pocket money to Sir Joseph Baillie himself. Gave a couple of hundred pounds to save it for the nation.
[02:06:33] Speaker C: That's wonderful. And that's when. And when did Cadhu Because Cadhu obviously managed the and look after and own Tretawa Corporate.
[02:06:40] Speaker A: So we are the Welsh government department but we were the Ministry of Works as like English Heritage Historic Scotland. We were all the Ministry of Works up until the early 80s and then we split into those different parts.
We still are a government department.
[02:06:55] Speaker C: Right. And as I say, you own and manage Trattao Court today. So moving on to how can people find out more about you and what are your normal visiting hours? Are you opening all year? Do you have times when you close? What can you tell us?
[02:07:09] Speaker A: Normally we are open all year for our major part of the season, the summer season as we call it. So that will be April 1st until October 31st.
We are open every day 10 until 5, last entry at 4:30 in the winter, currently we're open 5 days a week. We're closed on Monday and Tuesday so we're open Wednesday to Sunday 10 till 4 with last entry at 3:30.
[02:07:32] Speaker C: And do you have any events regularly that take place every year just in case people are thinking, oh, I'd quite like to go to that.
[02:07:40] Speaker A: We do. We have a living history group here who generally hear on the third weekend of every month in the main part of the season, so April to October we have events from groups who come maybe once a year so that people like the Harrington Company or the.
We've had a lady here doing a group doing dancing. We've had so the 17th century footnotes come here very regularly.
We've had music, we have plays, we have two plays this August. So if people want to see Shakespeare out on the grass between the house and the castle, we have Romeo and Juliet by the Duke's Theatre Company from Brighton. And when we have the Lord Chamberlain's Men doing Othello at the end of all Lovely.
The best way to find out is actually to go to the Cadoo website.
So literally type into your browser Cadoo Cadw and look up on there. It has the most up to date information.
[02:08:43] Speaker C: Just before we finish, we've talked quite a lot about Raglan Castle. How far away is Raglan from here? Could you do them in a day or.
[02:08:53] Speaker A: We do. I mean it's 8 miles from here to Abergavenny and it's 10 miles the other side of Abergavenny to Raglan.
[02:08:59] Speaker C: So what I'm going to say to people is Raglan is an astonishing ruin, fascinating building and of course you can argue it was one of the childhood homes of Henry vii.
And I've written about Raglan Castle, dear listeners, so perhaps we'll put also a connection to there too. But I'm thinking about if you were in the area, what would be a great way to spend the weekend or a very busy day or a lovely leisurely weekend would be to visit Raglan to go to the church St. Mary's Samaris in Abergamenny.
[02:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah. The primary church.
[02:09:33] Speaker C: To see the.
An absolutely wonderful set of medieval tombs associated with the Herbert family.
[02:09:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[02:09:41] Speaker C: And then obviously come here, Trisha Tower, because it is absolutely delightful. What a wonderful way to spend a historic weekend.
[02:09:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Can't think of anything people do. I mean, you've seen the grass, the greenery outside, the big. There's large amounts of grounds for a period. You know, we're not famous like Caerphilly or Carnarvon or Conway or something like that, but on the opposite side of the coin we have that quiet peacefulness. We're never hugely chock full of people.
You can bring a picnic, you can sit out on the grass outside.
It is just a lovely place to come.
[02:10:17] Speaker C: Plenty of space, plenty of space. We've been wandering around, it's been open today, but there's plenty of space to breathe and take in the atmosphere and do a little bit of transporting yourself and your imagination as to what you're doing.
[02:10:29] Speaker A: I'm glad we've impressed you.
[02:10:30] Speaker C: You certainly have. So I just want to say thank you, Ian, for being such a wonderful and generous guide today.
[02:10:36] Speaker A: It was my pleasure. Love it. Love it, but love doing it. I could spend more time doing this, but, you know, generally when we have an open doors day or something like that, which happens a lot in Wales usually, then when I do guided tours on the, you know, a couple of times per day on those days, you know, for groups coming round, it's not always possible to do guided tours. But you know where I can. I do.
[02:10:58] Speaker C: So you're only here till the end of August, aren't you?
[02:11:01] Speaker A: I am. I retire at the end of August.
[02:11:03] Speaker C: Well, you've obviously done some great service to this place, so once again, thank you very much.
[02:11:09] Speaker A: My pleasure.
[02:11:11] Speaker B: Well, my friends, that is all from today's episode. It is of course, a massive thank you to, to Ian Roberts and to Cadoo for allowing me to record on site at Tretauer.
Well, it's time for me to head off on this year's Rise and Fall of Amberlynn tour. And don't forget, if you want the chance to win a free place on next year's tour, check out the link associated with this podcast. There you will find the all the necessary information you need to enter. And if you've already entered or are going to, good luck. We will be drawing the winner when I am back From Tour around 12th September when the competition closes, and we'll be getting in touch with the lucky winner very soon after that. So keep an eye on your inbox, as I said at the top of this recording, and listen out for that telephone call.
I hope I'll be speaking to you and seeing you on the road again soon. Okay, until next month, Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Tudor History and Travel Show.
If you've loved the show, please take a moment to subscribe, like and rate this podcast so that we can spread the Tudor love.
Until next time, my friends. All that remains for me to say is happy time traveling,
[02:13:05] Speaker C: Sa.
