Trefesgob Castle

Trefesgob Castle stands on a low grassy mound in the village of Bishton, near Newport. It is a simple earth-and-stone motte left from the Middle Ages without the usual surrounding bailey wall. Most such mottes in Wales were raised between the late 11th and the later 12th centuries, dug from local soil and rock and ringed by a ditch. The Normans brought this style of defence from France and the Welsh quickly copied it. Cadw keeps the site on its list of scheduled monuments under number MM128. The greatest concentration of these mottes anywhere in Britain lies across the historic borderlands known as the Marches—Shropshire, Cheshire, Herefordshire, Powys and Flintshire.