TY - BOOK

T1 - Princely Ambition: Ideology, Castle-Building, and Landscape in Gwynedd 1194-1283

AU - Jones, Craig

N1 - to be published Spring 2021

PY - 2022/2/14

Y1 - 2022/2/14

N2 - While the Edwardian castles of Conwy, Beaumaris, Harlech and Caernarfon are rightly hailed as outstanding examples of castle architecture, the castles of the native Welsh princes are far more enigmatic. Where some dominate their surroundings as completely as any castle of Edward I, others are concealed in the depths of forests, or tucked away in the corners of valleys, their relationship with the landscape of which they are a part far more difficult to discernthan their English counterparts.This ground-breaking book seeks to analyse the castlebuilding activities of the native princes of Wales in the thirteenth century. Whereas early castles were builtto delimit territory and as an expression of Llywelyn I ab Iorwerth’s will to power following his violent assumption of the throne of Gwynedd in the 1190s,by the time of his grandson Llywelyn II ap Gruffudd’s later reign in the 1260s and 1270s, the castles’ prestige value had been superseded in importance by anunderstanding of the need to make the polity he created – the Principality of Wales – defensible.Employing a probing analysis of the topographical settings and defensive dispositions of almost a dozen native Welsh masonry castles, Craig Owen Jones interrogates the long-held theory that the native princes’ approach to castlebuilding in medieval Wales was characterised by ignorance of basic architectural principles, disregard for the castle’s relationship to the landscape, and whimsy, in order to arrive at a new understanding of the castles’ significance in Welsh society.Princely Ambition also advances a timeline that synthesises various strands of evidence toarrive at a chronology of native Welsh castle-building. This exciting new account fills acrucial gap in scholarship on Wales’ built heritage prior to the Edwardian conquest andestablishes a nuanced understanding of important military sites in the context of nativeWelsh politics.

AB - While the Edwardian castles of Conwy, Beaumaris, Harlech and Caernarfon are rightly hailed as outstanding examples of castle architecture, the castles of the native Welsh princes are far more enigmatic. Where some dominate their surroundings as completely as any castle of Edward I, others are concealed in the depths of forests, or tucked away in the corners of valleys, their relationship with the landscape of which they are a part far more difficult to discernthan their English counterparts.This ground-breaking book seeks to analyse the castlebuilding activities of the native princes of Wales in the thirteenth century. Whereas early castles were builtto delimit territory and as an expression of Llywelyn I ab Iorwerth’s will to power following his violent assumption of the throne of Gwynedd in the 1190s,by the time of his grandson Llywelyn II ap Gruffudd’s later reign in the 1260s and 1270s, the castles’ prestige value had been superseded in importance by anunderstanding of the need to make the polity he created – the Principality of Wales – defensible.Employing a probing analysis of the topographical settings and defensive dispositions of almost a dozen native Welsh masonry castles, Craig Owen Jones interrogates the long-held theory that the native princes’ approach to castlebuilding in medieval Wales was characterised by ignorance of basic architectural principles, disregard for the castle’s relationship to the landscape, and whimsy, in order to arrive at a new understanding of the castles’ significance in Welsh society.Princely Ambition also advances a timeline that synthesises various strands of evidence toarrive at a chronology of native Welsh castle-building. This exciting new account fills acrucial gap in scholarship on Wales’ built heritage prior to the Edwardian conquest andestablishes a nuanced understanding of important military sites in the context of nativeWelsh politics.

KW - castle studies

KW - medieval Wales

KW - archaeology

M3 - Book

SN - 9781912260270

T3 - Explorations in Local and Regional History

BT - Princely Ambition: Ideology, Castle-Building, and Landscape in Gwynedd 1194-1283

PB - University of Hertfordshire Press

ER -