HAY-ON-WYE CASTLE

Brecknockshire

There are two Castle sites in Hay-on-Wye, the town once having been divided in half by the Welsh/English border (and split into "Welsh Hay" and "English Hay").  One Castle was a motte dating from the early 1100s which King John destroyed in 1216.  The other was a Castle of enclosure in the town centre.

The wife of William de Braose (Lady Maud) whose rebellion had caused King John to destroy the motte castle refused to give up her land or her two sons as ransom.  It is likely that the bulk of Hay's second Castle was built in this period.  Lady Maud paid for her insolence by being flung into the dungeon at Corfe Castle where she died.

Of this second Castle only the gatehouse and one tower remain.  In Elizabethan times a large mansion was erected on the site and it is this that makes up most of the ruin today known as Hay Castle.  In the picture above the tower is on the left the Elizabethan mansion stretching right from it.

Hay-on-Wye is more famous today as the "Town of Books" due to the vast number of second-hand bookshops in the town; it's violent, blood-soaked past as a border battleground all but forgotten.

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2001