Flint Castle

The first of the castles built during Edward I's campaign to conquer Wales, Flint castle dominates a harbor on the river Dee estuary. Its construction was begun in 1277. The king arrived in Flint in July, by August nearly 3,000 men were employed in the building yard digging the ditches around the new fortification and the city. Only in 1279 the walls began to rise and in 1280 the great royal master architect James of St.James, in charge of operation at the near Rhuddlan Castle, took control over the construction of Flint. He comes too late to be credited of the castle's plan but in Flint we can find works very similar to those at Rhuddlan that we will find again in the later Edwardian castles. The curtains and the angle towers of northwest, northeast and southwest were completed in 1282, the great rounded keep of the southeast angle, a masterpiece of military architecture, continued to grow until 1286 when the works stopped, but it never reached the intended height.

The castle, as all the other Edward I's castles, was built on the coast to be easiest supplied by sea and occupies a promontory that juts into the river Dee large estuary. Today the river is far from the castle walls, in the middle age it filled the moat at high tide and beside the keep was found a dock where ships berthing and this saved the castle by the attack of Dafydd ap Gruffudd in 1282 and in 1400 by the one of Owain Glyndwr. During the Civil War Flint changed hands several times. It was strongly slighted and used as a quarry for the town houses.

This explain the ruinous actual condition of the complex. The outer ward in encircled by a curtain surviving only as a low wall on the dry moat. Only fragments of the Outer Gate towers remains. The inner ward is a square enclosure with circular angle towers, with one bigger and separated by the walls forming the keep. The original curtain survives only on the south and a short part of the east side and it is pierced by arrow slits as at Rhuddlan. Timber residential buildings stood against the walls. The Northeast tower is the best preserved, with four storeys connected by a spiral stair and gifted by fireplaces, windows and latrines it was surely intended to be lived in. Flint is the only Edwardian castle without a gatehouse, the entrance is a simply gateway flanked by the keep.

The never completed keep is a great round tower divided by a moat from the inner curtain that curves inward to avoid it. A wooden bridge connect the two parts of the castle, formerly it was a drawbridge. The keep wall is 23 feet thick and a vaulted passage runs all around inside it starting beneath the entrance gallery, placed at ground level instead of a floor above as in other Wales' keeps. Three doors separate us from the central chamber. At the upper floor five small chamber are contained in the thick of the wall and the inner cylindrical room formed the main hall. At least one more storey must have be intended to give majesty at the keep and perhaps it rose higher before the slighting and we know that an elaborate timber gallery was built on its top in preparation for a visit of the new Prince of Wales in 1301.