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 discern than their English
counterparts. This ground-breaking book seeks to analyse the
castle-building activities of the native princes of Wales in the
thirteenth century. 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 castle-building 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.