URPoint Details
Limited disabled car parking on the road outside the castle, 100 yards from the castle (flat approach route). Access possible to all ground floor levels including the exhibition some stepped areas have wooden ramps.
The most technically perfect medieval castle in Britain, Beaumaris was the last link in the chain of coastal fortresses built by King Edward I to control Wales.
Begun in 1295 in reaction to a Welsh rising, it stands midway by sea between Conwy and Caernarfon, commanding the old ferry crossing to Anglesey. There the king commissioned his brilliant architect James of St George to build the biggest and most ambitious of castles, a perfectly symmetrical stronghold defended by four successive and concentric lines of fortification.
At first work progresses with astonishing speed.
Two thousand labourers dug the encircling moat materials poured into the site and hundreds of masons, smiths and carpenters began raising the six towers and two huge gatehouses of the inner ward, surrounded by sixteen towered outer defences. But soon the king's attention was distracted and funds and supplies faltered. When work petered out some thirty years later, Beaumaris was still not quite
- Type:
- Landmark