Pen y Clawdd Castle

Pen y Clawdd Castle stands in Llanvihangel Crucorney, five miles north of Abergavenny in Monmouthshire. It is a circular mound surrounded by two moats, about twenty-eight metres across and two and a half metres high. The site lies between the rivers Usk and Monnow, on ground that rises gently above the valley. A scheduled monument since 1950, it is recognised as a defensive medieval motte built after the 1075 Revolt of the Earls. The mound’s shape and position suggest it once supported a wooden tower or palisade. The castle’s origins are uncertain, but Roger de Hastings may have built it in the 11th century. By 1349 Walter de Kymbard held the site for half a knight’s fee from Laurence de Hastings, Earl of Pembroke and Baron Abergavenny. Archaeologists surveyed the mound between 1999 and 2001, then excavated in 2002 and 2003. Their work revealed traces of a large rectangular stone building that had burned and partly collapsed. Some of the fallen stones appear to have been reused when Pen-y-Clawdd Court was constructed nearby. Pen-y-Clawdd Court, a Grade I listed manor house, overlooks the mound with its stable, cowshed and barn, all Grade II listed farm buildings. The whole group sits in a rectangular enclosure about 150 metres by 135 metres, possibly the remains of the castle’s bailey. The farm buildings date from the 18th and 19th centuries, while the court itself was extended in the 16th and 17th centuries. Visitors can walk around the grassy mound and view the moats, then look across to the old farmyard and manor house beyond.