The Case in Brief
Two Thousand Years of History Behind One Gothic Facade Nestled in the heart of the city, this fortress-like structure made of stone walls surrounded a Roman fortress, a castle built by…
Two Thousand Years of History Behind One Gothic Facade
Nestled in the heart of the city, this fortress-like structure made of stone walls surrounded a Roman fortress, a castle built by the Normans, a medieval stronghold, and a Victorian-era Gothic fantasy. Most visitors come to see the gilded ceilings and the gold-fringed Arab room.
Few people know that beneath it all, there are air-raid shelters that housed thousands of Cardiff residents during the Blitz, or that a king’s brother was imprisoned here for the last years of his life. Two millennia of continuous use have left behind many traces, but Cardiff Castle has even more than its share.
A Roman Fort Beneath a Norman Motte
The site has been reinforced on numerous occasions since Roman times when a fort was built here on the shore in the 3rd or 4th century AD to defend the River Taff and the approach to the Bristol Channel, as part of a chain of coastal signal forts to deter seaborne raiders. Sections of the Roman wall remain visible today incorporated into the later medieval and Victorian castle walls.
When the Normans arrived in the late 11th century, Robert Fitzhamon, Lord of Gloucester, selected the same strategic site to build a wooden motte-and-bailey castle which marked the Norman presence in the newly conquered region to the Welsh who surrounded it. This was replaced in the 12th century by a stone castle with a shell keep and substantial walls, probably by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of King Henry I.
A Duke Imprisoned by His Own Brother
That stone keep would have its share of notable inhabitants too, including a medieval European aristocrat who spent twenty years as a prisoner there. Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy and eldest son of William the Conqueror, was one of the most colorful figures of his age. Robert spent years fighting his younger brothers for the English throne before finally being defeated and imprisoned by his younger brother Henry I at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106.
He remained in custody at Devizes Castle for two decades before being sent to Cardiff Castle in 1126, where he would die in 1134, in his early eighties, having spent nearly his entire life imprisoned by his own family in a castle that had nothing to do with him until he was forced to spend his final decade there.
Despensers, Rebellion, and a Welsh Prince’s Revenge
By the 14th century, Cardiff Castle was in the possession of the Despenser family, whose rule was strongly opposed by the Walespeople. In 1318, the Despensers ordered the grim execution of the Welsh lord Llywelyn Bren, who was the first to rise in the rebellion against their oppressive rule. His body was hung, drawn, and quartered at Cardiff Castle, and the resentment against the family and their regime lived on in the hearts of the Welsh people for a long time after his death.
This resentment was to live on and resurface later in the 15th century. In 1404, the Welsh prince Owain Glyndŵr, one of the most successful rebels against the English rule, breached the castle through the West Gate and set both the castle and the surrounding village on fire. The Black Tower and the South Gate of the castle were severely damaged. Interestingly, the castle’s monks’ quarterswere not harmed, as monks who cared for the local Welsh people had previously buried Llywelyn Bren according to Christian traditions. His body, they claimed, had been given a proper burial in a religious ceremony, which, according to the rebel leader Owain Glyndŵr, was not forgotten by his followers.
The castle was built for the third time during the next decades. Its new owners, the Beauchamp family, arrived in the late 14th century, and by the 1420s, Richard de Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, became its new ruler. Between 1425 and 1439, he built a brand-new large domestic wing. It was adorned with a tall octagonal tower at the center, 75 feet high, and two smaller turrets at its corners. This wing was to give the castle its present-day silhouette, mostly hidden under the later Victorian buildings.
The Butes: Coal, Wealth, and a Gothic Fantasy
The most significant period in the history of Cardiff Castle began in the eighteenth century when it was purchased by the Bute family, Scottish peers who played a major role in developing Cardiff as a commercial center. The second Marquess of Bute was to make Cardiff’s docks one of the largest coal-exporting hubs in nineteenth-century Britain. This made his son, the third Marquess, one of the richest men in the world at the time.
In 1865, the third Marquess invited young architect William Burges to come and see the castle. The two men spent the next sixteen years completing what would become one of Britain’s finest examples of Gothic revival architecture.
Between 1868 and Burges’s death in 1881, and the work continued up to the 1890s under the direction of the fourth Marquess, they created the Arab Room with its gold-leafed dome and Islamic carving, the marble and alabaster-clad Winter Smoking Room, and the intricately fitted apartments in the restored Clock Tower. The designs were so startling that they created a stir at both the Royal Academy in 1870, where some of them were exhibited, and again at the Paris Exhibition eight years later.
A Castle That Sheltered a City
Cardiff Castle’s Roman and medieval walls were to conceal yet another history before finally leaving the Bute family altogether. In the 1880s the third Marquess built up a system of internal galleries within the thickness of the castle’s walls in order to display thenewly discovered sections of Roman wall; however, some historians believe he merely wanted a secluded walkway which he could use in the bad weather.
These very galleries, wall passages became air raid shelters during the Second World War, complete with bunk-lined dormitories, kitchens, toilets and first-aid posts, carved into the masonry. Up to nearly 2,000 people could be sheltered from the air raids over Cardiff, between 1939 and 1944.
The fourth Marquess of Bute passed away in 1947 and, in order to pay the huge death duties, his son, the fifth Marquess, decided to donate Cardiff Castle, along with the surrounding parkland, to the city. The keys to Cardiff Castle were formally handed over to Cardiff’s Lord Mayor on September 10, 1947 and Cardiff Castle has belonged to the city ever since.
Why Cardiff Castle Is Considered Haunted
The Second Marquess Still Walks the Halls
The castle’s most frequent ghost story concerns the second Marquess of Bute himself, who supposedly walked through the fireplace in the library which was a doorway during his time from the chapel, right through six feet of stone. The staff and guests have reportedthat the main dining room doors open and close on their own at three forty-five in the morning, the time the second Marquess died, as thelights flicker on and off.
His most infamous appearance was in 1976, when a young couple on a staircase saw a tall man in a red cloak jostling past them in a hurry. The woman who saw the man’s face said he glared at her before he vanished, and she recognized him from a portrait of the second Marquess that hung nearby. Another ghost story concerns a faceless figure who haunts a stockroom near the chapel, where the castle staff has regularly discovered the goods rearranged for no apparent reason. This specter has been dubbed “Sarah” by the castle staff.
A Phantom Coach and a Vanishing Guest
Another ghost legend is attached to Cardiff Castle, the Phantom Coach. It is said that once upon a time, a Trustee of the Bute family, John Boyle, was sitting in the library of the castle one evening in November 1868, when he heard the sound of a coach outside.
It pulled up at the castle door, but the butler told him that there had been no coach. Local people say that the sound of the phantom coach was a warning of death in the Bute family. It is said that the third Marquess’s own daughter actually heard the phantom coach one night, when the sound of the horses came from the courtyard on the night of her father’s death in the family’sScottish home.
It is not known what time it was when the third Marquess died. However, it is important to mention that he did not die until 1900, thirty years after the event described by John Boyle. This does not seem to have stopped people from telling the story, since it continued to live on for more than a century.
There are more recent examples of ghost stories at Cardiff Castle. The castle’s employee Derek Edwards told that once upon a time, in 1975, not long after he started working in the castle, he saw a man sitting in the dining hall, and asked if he needed help. The man turned round to face him, and then disappeared.
The Legend
In November 1868, trustee John Boyle heard a phantom carriage arriving at the courtyard to drop on the castle door but discovered that there was nothing that arrived. The locals consider this a death omen, and the third Marquess’s daughter reported hearing the phantom carriage the night of her father’s death.
The Record
The third Marquess didn’t actually die until 1900, three decades after Boyle’s account, a discrepancy that hasn’t stopped the story from being retold for over a century.
Buried Gold Between Two Castles
One more local legend connects Cardiff Castle with its diminutive and picturesque counterpart, the Castell Coch (the Welsh for Little Castle) about six miles to the north. This castle, also rebuilt largely by the Bute family and their architect, John Gould, Burges, was connected, according to one local legend, with Cardiff Castle by a tunnel. The tunnel was the work of a Civil War gentleman who disappeared, leaving behind two eagles to guard the treasure. The treasure itself was a chest of gold, hidden, it is said, somewhere on the way during his flight from the castle.
It is hard to say if there was a tunnel, and if there was, whether it really contained a Civil War gentleman, two eagles, and a chest of gold. However, Cardiff’s underground story is not so exciting, but it does help to understand what legends about hidden passages might have been like.
Visiting Cardiff Castle Today
The Cardiff Castle is located in the heart of Cardiff, which is surrounded by Bute Park with its magnificent view over the River Taff. The castle is within walking distance of the main train station and the shopping district. An admission ticket grants access to the Castle Apartments with their Burges’s Gothic Revival, the castle’s keep on a motte, the battlement walks, the Firing Line military museum, and the ancient tunnels and shelters discovered during World War II, which have been open to the public since 2011.
The castle is open daily throughout the year, including Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day, except for the holiday season that lasts from November to February when the opening hours mayvary. The ticket price for an adult is around £16.50, while children and concessionaires get a discounted rate. In addition, the castle offers a summer concert series under the open air that may alterthe opening hours. Therefore, double-checking the information on the Cardiff Castle website prior to visiting is recommended.
Have you walked those wall tunnels and felt something watching from the dark, or heard footsteps that weren’t your own? Let us know in the comments below.
Sources consulted for the historical details in this post include Matthew Williams, “William Burges’ Furniture for Cardiff Castle,” The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 – the Present*, No. 16 (1992), pp. 14–19; Margaret Walker, review of* Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute by John Davies, History*, Vol. 67, No. 219 (1982), pp. 158–159; Michael Hall, review of* Cardiff Castle and the Marquesses of Bute by Matthew Williams, The Burlington Magazine*, Vol. 162, No. 1411 (Oct. 2020), p. 914; Wikipedia’s entry on Cardiff Castle and on Robert Curthose; Cardiff Castle’s official history and timeline pages; Cardiff Castle’s account of “The 1947 Handover”; Icy Sedgwick, “Cardiff Folklore: Ghosts, Tunnels, and Creatures in the Taff” (Aug. 19, 2023); and Great Castles, “Ghosts of Cardiff Castle”, drawing on Charles A. Coulombe’s* Haunted Castles of the World
