Conwy Castle

Conwy Castle rises above the estuary of the River Conwy in North Wales, built in just four years between 1283 and 1287 under the master mason James of St George for King Edward I of England, part of Edward's campaign of castle-building to secure his conquest of North Wales. The castle and its accompanying town walls were sited on the grounds of a former Cistercian monastery, a choice read as a symbolic assertion of English authority over a place of established Welsh significance, and the combined project cost roughly fifteen thousand pounds, an immense sum for the period. Its plan divides into an Inner Ward, housing what the historian Jeremy Ashbee has called the best-preserved suite of medieval private royal chambers in England and Wales, and an Outer Ward, the two linked by eight massive towers and two barbicans. The castle carries the earliest surviving stone machicolations in Britain, projecting defensive galleries that let defenders drop material on attackers below, and a postern gate opening onto the river allowed the garrison to be resupplied by sea during a siege. UNESCO designated Conwy Castle a World Heritage Site in 1986, naming it among the finest examples of late thirteenth and early fourteenth century military architecture in Europe.