A BLESSING OR A CURSE?
I thoroughly enjoyed your recent article on castles (July 2018), but while you allude to the great stone edifices being a boost to a lord’s status, you seem to ignore one essential point. Most castles were symbols of oppression. They were built, in the main, by conquerors, and their purpose was to keep the populace in a state of subjugation. Virtually all of the great concentric castles of North Wales - Harlech, Caernarfon, Beaumaris and the rest - were constructed on the orders of Edward I and his successors to keep the Welsh from rising in revolt.
ILL TIDINGS Phil doubts that the proliferation of castles was a good thing for the Welsh