Bronllys Castle

 I was called in to Bronllys Hospital for my third Covid jab yesterday.

It was quite a bit busier than when I was there for my second jab in the summer, but the queue was moving pretty freely and everyone there was friendly and helpful.

The bus got me there just before my 1.40pm appointment, but as usual there was a long time to wait for the bus back to Hay, so I decided to walk down to Bronllys Castle, and from there into Talgarth.

Bronllys Castle is a tower, set above a small river on the road into Talgarth, near the Riverside International caravan park.  The site is managed by Cadw, and is free to enter.

Next to the tower is a large private house, presumably built when the tower was no longer used as living accommodation, and which mostly looks Victorian now from the road.  It's built on what was originally the inner bailey of the castle.

There are lots of steps:

There's a basement cut into the motte, and more steps inside the thickness of the wall to get to the top - the top floor was added in the fourteenth century.

I ate my sandwiches and drank my flask of coffee on one of the window seats at the bottom of the first flight of internal stairs.  While I was having my lunch, a family arrived to explore the tower, and climbed right to the top.

I went up after they'd gone - there are good views from up there up and down the valley.

Here's one of the window seats - the large windows show that the tower was built more for comfort than for defence.

Here's another window, and the fireplace at the top of the tower.

And here's the doorway to the en suite toilet for the top floor.

Not much seems to have happened at Bronllys, apart from a story that Gerald of Wales tells in his Journey Through Wales.  Mahel, Earl of Hereford, was at the castle when a fire broke out, and was killed by falling masonry.  I've also heard a version of the story in which Earl Mahel was unpopular locally, and the falling masonry may have been helped on its way....

The motte was built by Richard FitzPons, with a wooden tower, not long after the Norman Conquest.  The stone tower was built by Walter de Clifford III, who belonged to the same family as Fair Rosamund, who was the mistress of Henry I.  Walter de Clifford I, her father, built the castle at Clifford near Hay.