Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/341

 Caerphilly Castle^ Glamoi^gan, 317 Prince of South Wales, before 1174. when he did homage to Henry II., at Gloucester. By this match the influence of the family, already great, with the Welsh, was much increased and became very great. They dwelt too near Cardiff actually to organise insur- rections, but they were always ready to promote them at any favour- able opportunity. Many such opportunities occurred during the reign of Henry III., when the Earls of Pembroke wielded the power of the infant lord of Glamorgan, and were continually at war with Henry. Llewelyn, then Prince of Wales, was sometimes in alliance with the earl, and sometimes harassed his rear, descending from the uplands of Caermarthen and Cardiff, and bursting into Monmouth- shire across the unguarded pass of Senghenydd. It became the business of Gilbert de Clare, on coming into his lordship, to bar this passage, and this he effectually completed by the construction of Caerphilly. The name of his architect or engineer is unknown to fame, but he was a deacon in his craft, and the earl gave full play to his abilities. The castle is placed in the midst of a deep and broad hollow, open on the east towards the Rhymny, and divided on the west from the valley of the Taff by the mountain ridge of Mynydd Mayo. North and north-west, at a greater distance, is the concave crest of Mynydd Eglwisilan, and on the south, the long and well- known elevation which separates the hill-country of Glamorgan from the plain, and is intersected by the ravines of the Taff, the Rhymny, and the Ebbw. This ridge is locally known as Cefn Carnau, and, on the road from the castle to the sea, is crowned by the ancient stronghold of Mor-graig. The traveller, who wishes to see Caerphilly to advantage, should descend upon it soon after sunrise in autumn, from one of the surrounding heights, when the grey towers of the castle will be seen rising out of an immense sea of mist. The whole basin is a part of the Glamorganshire coalfield. The mineral has long been worked on Caerphilly mountain, where it appears on the surface, and the castle is chiefly constructed of the fissile sandstone of the neighbourhood, which appears to have been quarried from a large excavation by the roadside, near Chapel- Martin. Along the base of the mountains, and extending some way up their skirts, here, as in all the valleys in the neighbourhood, lie vast deposits of gravel and sand, composed in part of the dlbris of the neighbouring rocks, but chiefly of rolled pebbles, brought down from the northern hills by diluvial agency. Near the centre of the basin is a bed of gravel, of considerable extent and thickness, the surface of which has been deeply wrought, by some natural process, into a series of furrows and eminences. A narrow tongue of slightly elevated ground, the termination of a low peninsula of gravel, projects eastwards, and, by its projection, divides a swampy flat of considerable breadth into two portions. These are contained within irregular gravel banks, similar to, though somewhat higher than, the central peninsula. The southern is