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The Carmarthenshire Antiquary
TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE EARLY
MEDIAEVAL BOROUGH OF by Heather James The production of these notes has
been prompted by discussions on the evolution of Kidwelly's town plan
at the recent conference on 'Welsh Towns—their archaeology and
early history' organized by the Cambrian Archaeological Association
at Trinity College, Carmarthen, Easter 1980, and by recent small scale
excavations by the Dyfed Archaeological Trust in the former Castle Farm
farmyard, hard by the mediaeval town wall and castle moat. In January
and February 1980, trenches were cut in the former farmyard to assess
the archaeological potential of the area and gauge what damage, if any,
would be done by the proposed works for a car park. The need for a closer
examination of the town's mediaeval defences and the topographical development
within the early mediaeval town was then felt and these notes attempt
to do this. The author has of course relied very heavily on the researches
and suggestions of the editor, W. H Morris, and would like to thank
him for making his work so freely available. The first castle was built by Roger,
Bishop of Salisbury on the high knoll on the west bank of the River
Gwendraeth at the head of the tidal estuary, shortly after he was granted
the commote of Kidwelly in 1106. The present castle is largely of thirteenth
and fourteenth century work, but the excavations of Sir Cyril Fox and
C. A. Ralegh Radford in 1931 demonstrated that the present outer curtain
wall and ditch formed the original defensive circuit, and that the Norman
castle was thus of the 'ringwork' type.1 They noted in
addition the remarkable outer enclosures or baileys, set symmetrically
to the north and south of the castle covering some 8 acres. The southern,
or castle, bailey contained the original mediaeval borough. A machine
cut section up to the mediaeval town wall (see Fig. 1) showed that it
was built over a levelled off earlier earth bank massively revetted
with boulders at the rear and possibly the face, although this was not
examined in the excavation.2 This suggests that the division
into two baileys was an original feature of their construction. But
even with extensive excavation it would be difficult to prove that these
outer baileys were constructed at the same time as the ringwork. Certainly
Radford believes them to be part of an overall scheme of defence and
town plantation and contemporary with the ringwork. The Northern Bailey One cannot be sure without excavation
which of these two enclosures making up the northern bailey is primary,
but fortunately there is an unusually specific reference in the Duchy
of Lancaster Minister's Accounts of 1404-1407, (DL29/584/9242) amongst
a flurry of activity in repairing and strengthening the Castle against
another attack by Owen Glyndwr and his forces, to 'the new digging and
making of a ditch outside the east (i.e. north) gate of the Castle near
the garden of the Castle for protection, defence and safe custody'.
Since the northernmost enclosure has no ditch, it is reasonable to assume
that it is the more massive inner bank and ditch that are referred to. There is no reason to suppose that
the northern bailey, in contrast to the southern, or Castle Bailey,
was ever built upon. In more peaceful times the area outside the north
gate contained the Castle Garden. In the Inquisition Post Mortem of
Payne de Chaworth in 1282, we hear of a curtilage and garden within
the Castle7 In 1361 there were two gardens, whose fruit
and herbage was worth 3s.4d. per annum and also a dovecote. When peace
was restored after the Glyndwr uprising, we again hear of gardens in
the area. There is nothing in sixteenth and seventeenth century documents
to tell us what use the northern bailey was being put to, but there
is a map of 1789 in the Cawdor/Vaughan Map Books which shows the area.8
The two sections of the northern bailey area are described as 'The Two
Conigars'; conigar is a variant of coneygarth or rabbit warren. Mediaeval
rabbit farming is thought to have been introduced by the Normans and
used coastal sand dune sites and offshore islands for warrens. The manor
of Caldecote, near Pembrey, and part of the Lordship of Kidwelly, was,
in the Middle Ages, a profitable rabbit farm. Later we know of large
rabbit warrens in inland and upland areas. The memory of this specialised
use was preserved in the place name of a garden leased by the corporation
in 1914 on the corner of Water Street, opposite the Baptist Chapel and
alongside the lane (formerly the ditch) leading to the northern bailey.
The garden on which a shop was to be built was 'part of Conigar bach'.
In the absence of further evidence one may suppose that rabbit farming
was practised in the bailey some time in the seventeenth or eighteenth
century, at least long enough for the placename to become firmly attached
to the land. The bailey, being enclosed by banks and ditches, would
have been ideal for a warren as there were banks for the rabbits to
burrow in and ditches to stop them getting out, for rabbits, we are
reliably informed, do not like to get their feet wet.9 Springs and Streams It is important to establish the
course of these streams even when conduited, because they indicate the
natural directions of drainage and allow us to single out hollows and
gulleys that are man-made. Water Street and New Street to the Bridge
is one such channel with the hump-shaped knoll on which the Castle is
built, with its glacially deposited layers of boulder clay over the
Ordovician shale, to the east. There are two breaches in the escarpment
on the river side of this knoll which seem artificial. The first is
the lane running down from the 'Boot and Shoe' public house to the Castle
Mill, a classical hollow-way in form. It could well have originated
as a ditch fronting the southern town defences which perhaps diverted
the Bushy Lake Stream. A very early grant by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury,
between 1107 and 1115, grants land to the new priory at Kidwelly, a
cell of Sherborne Abbey.12 The boundaries of the carucate
then granted were 'from the new ditch of the new mill, by the river
which flows by the same to the house of a certain Balba, and thence
to the river running through the alder grove, to the way, and from the
way, as the river runs to the sea; also all the hill called the hill
of Salomon, as far as the aforesaid way'. This new ditch could
be the diverted Bushy Lake, (see Fig. 1) also forming a defence on the
south side of the new borough, rather than the present mill leat, since
the sense of the location indicates that the carucate lay wholly south
of the new mill itself. It is unlikely that any mill other than the
Castle Mill is meant here, at this early date. Centuries of use have
cut the gulley down into a hollow-way. The second breach is more ravine-like,
and lies south of the Castle gateway and knoll outside the gate and
is a steep track curving down onto the Castle Marsh. A pronounced track
is shown on the Buck print of 1740, which views the Castle from the
east side from the river, and this must be the present breach, although
the perspective is somewhat distorted.l3 The Town Walls The town wall now terminates in
the northwest corner of Castle Farm garden, at the point where it would
have turned 90 degrees southwards. The town wall has a chamfered face
here, which suggests that the corner may have been formed by a short
cross wall between the two long stretches (see Fig. 1). Although the
area is very overgrown it is clear that the short stretch of wall running
westwards from the wider town wall abuts it and is secondary. Although
breached by a small brick shed the narrower wall continues to a projecting,
hollow, low arched gateway. The arch is 2.6m. wide though now crudely
blocked to half its width. It is 56cm. wide, of the same stone as the
town wall, with no brick visible in its makeup. The arch is at a lower
level than the town wall and lies over the former course of the town
ditch. It is illustrated in W. H. Morris's article in 1975 and there
called the `North Gate', which he argues is one of the three referred
to by Leland.14 A different interpretation is put forward
here for the location of the North Gate and the date of this archway.
(See below, in the section on Town Gates). There is no trace of the walls
on the south west side of the Bailey, but their course is clearly detectable
from the position of the roads, the breaks of slope, and line of property
boundaries. Before the present Castle Farm was built a strip of rough
ground is shown on the 1911 1:2500 O.S. Map clearly marking the slope
of the front of the bank, surmounted by the wall above the ditch, which
is now the lane into the northern Bailey. New street was formerly Ditch
Street. If one continues the line of the track to the northern Bailey
across the graveyard of the Baptist Chapel, one sees a number of gravestones
leaning at drunken angles, having been set in the loose ground over
the in-filled ditch. Equally the angle of gravestones along a line south
west from the front of the chapel may indicate slip over the harder
ground of the wall itself. There is the shell of a ruined
rectangular building south west of the Baptist Chapel whose western
gable end lies along the line of the town wall. It is built of the same
stone as the town wall though narrower, and is probably a rebuild over
town wall footings. Most of the older buildings and boundary walls in
the Bailey are built of the same stone as the town wall and indicate
extensive robbing of the mediaeval defences. The exact line of the town
wall round to the junction with the town Gatehouse cannot be established
without excavation but its general course is clear. The walls were still
there in the mid eighteenth century and a lease of 1801 mentions a piece
of land and old wall on the north side of 'Bailey Gate' adjoining 'the
dwelling house of the said John Thomas called Boot and Shoe'. There
is now a gentle slope down from nos. 2-4 New Street to the road surface
and round to the 'Boot and Shoe' public house. From the Gatehouse, described below,
the course of the wall is much clearer. The road down to the Castle
Mill running east from the Gatehouse is set in a marked hollow-way and
the ground rises steeply on its eastern side to form a sharply angled
plateau. This bank, like the whole of the southern and southeastern
circuit of the defences, is very overgrown and derelict but there are
a number of loose stones on its slopes from the wall. The face of the
wall is detectable in the undergrowth along this steep slope and survives
in places to two and three courses. Where the wall approaches the steep
track outside the barbican, (Fig. 1) it turns westwards up the slope.
Its footings probably lie below the modern eastern boundary wall of
No. 19 Castle Street. Another wall runs down the slope to the mill leat,
and was built following a boundary dispute between Lord Cawdor and the
Borough in 1840.15 The pronounced knoll outside the
ditch and drawbridge of the main gateway was called 'Bank Shobert' in
a 1866 lease. Excavations were carried out there
in the early 1970's, but the results have not been published so we do
not know the nature or date of the circular stone structure reportedly
found there. G. T. Clark, in his history of Kidwelly castle of 1852
considered 'the barbican . . . from traces of its foundation to have
been a small circular tower. It occupied a rocky knoll on the counterscarp
of the main ditch opposite the great gateway . . it was evidently intended
to cover the drawbridge . .The work seems to have been cut off from
the other outworks by a dry ditch or covered way, leading from the river'.16
It is unlikely that this breach was made in the postmediaeval period,
rather should we consider the need for an access point here to the riverside
meadows, and the leat, a potentially vulnerable point needing defence. There may have been a postern gate
here perhaps. It is worth noting that the meadows and pastures below
the castle were valuable lands, they were held in demesne (i.e. in the
lord's hands) after much arable land had been leased out. We read in
the Minister's Account of 1444 of 'the pasture under the Castle called
the Hayne'.17 The Cawdor map shows the Hane lying on
the eastern bank of the River. We also read in these accounts of the
expenses involved in mowing, gathering and cocking the hay from the
meadows below the Castle. Even the rushes were sold, and of course used
in quantity for floor covering. The 1609 Duchy of Lancaster survey of
Gerard Bromfield mentions a Castle Fair, which was held on a 'parcell
of Commons lying on the North syde of the River Gwendraeth vechan nighe
unto the Towne Walls'.18 The river as a means of transport
and travel and its meadows and leats were vital to the functioning of
the castle; it seems unlikely that the town and castle had only one
access point from the Castle Mill. The Town Gates Our true starting point in a discussion
of the town gates is John Leland's Itinerary of 1539.21
He says that 'the old toun is pretily waullid, and hath hard by the
waul a castle. The old town is nere al desolatid, but the castle is
meately wel kept up. I saw ther iii gates, and over one of them was
the ruine of a fair town haul, and under a prison'. The town hall (Shirehall)
then is the main gateway into the town, still standing at the southern
end of the Bailey controlling access up Castle street to the castle
itself. The early nineteenth travellers, like Malkin, seem to have merely
repeated Leland or each other on the number of gates. The Gatehouse is considered, on
stylistic grounds, to be early fourteenth century in date, although
there are several periods of build and perhaps replaced an earlier structure.
It is surprising to find that this imposing structure has never been
described or studied in detail. G. T. Clark devoted a paragraph to it
in his study of the Castle. The portal has a drop arch and a portcullis
groove. The archway is not recessed at all from the chambers either
side and there is a single long chamber, the length of the gatehouse,
above the arch. The eastern side of the gatehouse has a chamfered, ashlared
corner with a slight pyramidal buttress at its base. The rear of the
chambers on this side has been destroyed. The front and side of the
western part is obscured by the 'Boot and Shoe' public house, which
is built up against it. There are later additions to the rear. Three
storeys are visible inside: a ground floor, probably Leland's prison,
a first and a second floor which forms the long chamber probably of
the shirehall. The ground floor rooms either side of the arch seem to
have been used as cottages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
and were separately owned. Our next source is one nearly contemporary
with Leland's description, a town rental of 15059, part of an extent
of manors within the Lordship of Kidwelly, published in this journal
by W. H. Morris in 1975, where two gates are mentioned.22
But before attempting to locate these gates, one should note the imprecision
in compass directions in the descriptions of properties in the mediaeval
period, since only the cardinal points are used. We have already seen
how the north gate of the castle is called the east gate. Similarly
in late mediaeval and sixteenth century Muddlescombe deeds, we have
references to properties north or south of Bower (Water) street, which
should be north-west or south-east. The early sixteenth century town
rental, edited by W. H. Morris, starts along one side of a street and
then returns to its starting point along the other. Thus the description
of the list of burgages along Bower street goes 'from the eastern part
outside the North Gate of the Bailey to Pitcroft, (the north end of
Water street) and thence on the north side (of Water street) to the
cross in Scholand', (Scholand is now Ferry road and the cross was at
its junction with Water Street). The 'North Gate' referred to would
then be across present day Castle Road, an obvious and necessary site
for a gateway across the well established track between the ferry and
the castle. This is described by W. H. Morris as the site of the west
gate, which is of course a more accurate cardinal location. By the
same argument, having listed all the burgages in Scholand, the rental
proceeds to 'Dichstrete' (New Street) and a final crossed out entry
refers to one burgage which is now a garden near the west gate
of the Bailey. The west gate must thus be the town Gatehouse at the
lower end of Castle Street. Where, then, was Leland's third
gate? Returning to the so-called north gate leading into the northern
bailey, we have noted how it is an addition to the town wall and lies
over the ditch. Clearly it cannot have been built when the walls and
ditches of the northern and town bailey were open and functioning for
defence. But the old town was in decay when Leland visited it; quite
possibly the ditch had become silted up and was used as a track to get
into the northern bailey and the arched entrance may have been built
by then. In 1891 a yearly lease of 'Conigar Bach' referred to above
states that the tenant had to leave a cartway (i.e. the present track
along the ditch into the children's playing ground in the northern bailey)
and to build 'a proper entrance gate thereto in the wall'. The boundary
itself is cleary marked on the 1789 Cawdor map, but the lease condition
could refer to the first building of the arched entrance. It is the
present author's opinion, and it can be no more in the absence of conclusive
evidence, that the boundary was made when the northern bailey was in
use as a 'coneygarth' or rabbit warren, which needed to be secure on
all sides. So it is possible that the third gate referred to by Leland,
was, as suggested earlier, located outside the castle gate. The Topography of the Bailey The two main streets in the Bailey
(see Fig. 1) were the present day Castle Street and Castle Road. The
former is referred to in a deed of 1361, printed in 1975 by W. H. Morris,
as the highway leading to the Castle on the north side of a property.
A 1405 lease refers to a plot in the Bailey with the 'royal way' to
the south as does a 1409 lease.23 These probably lay
on the eastern and western sides of Castle Street respectively. The
other main route is that leading from the castle westwards to Llansaint
and Ferryside. This may be referred to on a 1444 exchange of tenements
if we go by the already noted mediaeval orientations of north, south,
east and west. The tenement lay between the royal way on the east, the
tenement of Philip Box on the south and the tenement formerly of Roger
Cardigan on the north and west.24 The property in question
could lie under the present Baptist Chapel, and Castle Road thus be
the other royal way. Castle Street roughly bisects the
Bailey area, and would thus allow for roughly equal sized burgage plots
east and west of it or at least the same range of sizes—between
40 and 70m. in length—as the present day Water Street property
boundaries. Castle Street and Castle Road both lead to an open area
in front of the main castle gateway, which must have been the original
market place. It is referred to in post mediaeval documents as the Castle
Green, somewhat misleadingly as this is also the name for the area between
the town Gatehouse and the bridge. From the fourteenth century onwards,
however, we hear of a market cross in 'Scholand', at the junction of
Ferry Road and Water Street, outside the early mediaeval borough. In the early seventeenth century
we hear of a third street—Cock or Coke Street—and in 1678
the lease of an old cottage in Bailey Street was described as having
Coke Street on its northern side and Bailey Street on the south. Bailey
Street-still thus called in 1866—is the present day Castle Street,
so Cock Street must be the present Bailey Street. This would fit the
description of properties in Cock Street having old walls, which would
be the town wall still surviving on the western side of Ditch/New Street. The present day property boundaries
in the Bailey show little of the continuity of burgage property boundaries
so marked in the main axial streets of the town east and west of the
Gwendraeth. As noted by W. H. Morris, there were only 3 burgages, 7
tenements and 8 cottages in the Bailey in the early sixteenth century,
nor does Gerard Bromley's Survey of 1609 show much change. There was
some kind of business activity with 'the Shambles besouth the decayed
burgage' in 1609, sited in the triangle of land between Bailey and Castle
Street where the school now stands, but not on any possible mediaeval
market site, nor does it appear in the eighteenth century documents.
The dovecot, mentioned in the early sixteenth century rental, had a
longer life. It seems from the 1609 Survey and a 1753 Rental, where
it appears as 'The Pidgeon House', to have been sited in the western
half of the Bailey. Throughout most of its history,
in comparison to the rest of the town, the Bailey must have presented
the appearance of a veritable rus in urbe with its gardens and
empty spaces. A number of ruinous properties were recorded in the Chief
Rent Roll of 1753.25 There was a malthouse belonging
to Alderman Richard Morris in the Bailey Street - Castle Street triangle.
There was also 'the great Orchard' occupying the site of 9 former burgages
in the graveyard of the present day Baptist Chapel. A few of the older cottages,—one
with a boxed in and thatched roof—remain in Castle and Bailey Street.
The shop in front of the present 'Ye Olde Moat Restaurant' has simple
undressed timber purlins in its roof and heavy stone walls. Another
building of some antiquity, known as 'the Old Tithe Barn' lies along
the north side of Castle Road. An area outside the west end of this
building was excavated by the author in February 1980, which showed
it to have a complex structural history. The present single storeyed
structure (heightened at some time) is shorter than the original, and
leanto styes were built against the truncated western end. It is not
known how old the name is or whether the 'Tyth Barn' leased to Jenkin
Malephant in 1765 is the same building. It is again referred to in the
1844 Rate Book. The Chief Rent Roll of 1753 also
shows a marked division between substantial houses with stables, gardens
etc, and small cottages. The Mansel family had a house on the eastern
side of the Bailey close to the Castle Gate, (now a garden) the picturesque
appeal of the Castle no doubt according well with the seclusion from
the through traffic of the town. In the nineteenth century there was
space available for the imposing Baptist Chapel, and the more modest
Welsh Wesleyan, built outside the Castle gate and demolished in 1962
to provide space for a car park. The District School, now closed, was
built in the mid-nineteenth century. Castle Farm house was not built
until the early twentieth century, yet the presence of a working farm
until recently there, typifies the post mediaeval character of the Bailey. Conclusion The unique natural setting of each
town strongly influences its topographical development and the fascination
of town studies is to explore the particular disposition of topographical
elements—castle, defences, church, priory, friary, burgage plots,
market places—common to most mediaeval Welsh towns. FOOTNOTES 1.
Cyril Fox and C. A. Ralegh Radford. Archaeologia 83, 1933, 93107. |