Rubbing Stone on Prestatyn Castle Motte (geograph 4652521)

Prestatyn Castle is a motte and bailey castle in

Prestatyn Prestatyn is a seaside town and community in Denbighshire, Wales. Historically a part of Flintshire, it is located on the Irish Sea coast, to the east of Rhyl. Prestatyn has a population of 19,085, History Prehistory There is evidence that ...

, Wales, built in 1157 on land granted to the Norman lord Robert Banastre by King

Henry II of England Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189), also known as Henry Curtmantle (french: link=no, Court-manteau), Henry FitzEmpress, or Henry Plantagenet, was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189, and as such, was the first Angevin king ...

. It was built on level ground on the coastal plain and commanded an extensive view. Nowadays the mound and slight remnants of a causeway are all that is visible.

History

King

granted Prestatyn to Robert Banastre (or Robert de Banastre) in 1165. The castle was destroyed by the Welsh led by

Owain Gwynedd Owain ap Gruffudd ( 23 or 28 November 1170) was King of Gwynedd, North Wales, from 1137 until his death in 1170, succeeding his father Gruffudd ap Cynan. He was called Owain the Great ( cy, Owain Fawr) and the first to be ...

in 1167. It does not appear to have been rebuilt, and the Banastre family fled to Lancashire where Robert constructed a house on the site currently occupied by

Bank Hall Bank Hall is a Jacobean mansion in Bretherton, Lancashire, England. It is a Grade II* listed building and is at the centre of a private estate, surrounded by parkland. The hall was built on the site of an older house in 1608 by the Banastres ...

on land that was granted to him by

Henry de Lacy Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln (c. 1251February 1311), Baron of Pontefract, Lord of Bowland, Baron of Halton and hereditary Constable of Chester, was an English nobleman and confidant of King Edward I. He served Edward in Wales, France, and Sc ...

. By 1279, this region was again under control of the English but historical records only refer to the manor house and not the fort.

The site

An earth mound, visible in fields to the south of the Prestatyn railway station, near Nant Hall, marks the site of an early wooden motte and bailey castle. Prestatyn Castle occupies a low-lying position, but still commands a view across much of the flat coastal plain and guarded the coast road between Rhuddlan and Chester. The only remains of the castle are a raised mound about in diameter surrounded by a ditch. The bailey enclosed the whole of the motte, an unusual arrangement. A slightly-raised causeway extends to the south but there is no sign of what entrance arrangements were present, nor of what structure originally topped the mound. Excavations that took place around 1913 revealed that the bailey was surrounded by a substantial stone wall about thick.

References

Bibliography * *

External links

Bibliography of sources relating to Prestatyn Castle
{{coord, 53, 20, 19, N, 3, 23, 41, W, display=title Castle ruins in Wales Castles in Denbighshire Scheduled monuments in Denbighshire Motte-and-bailey castles Prestatyn