Читать книгу Scenes in North Wales - G. N. Wright - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The town of Beaumaris, now a fashionable watering place, containing a permanent population of two thousand four hundred and ninety-seven souls, appears to have originated in the circumstance of a castle having been erected here by Edward the First, in the year 1295. It subsequently became a place of commercial importance, was erected into a borough and constituted the shire-town; the first of these advantages it has been gradually stripped of by its enterprising little rivals, Bangor and Caernarvon. The situation is low, as the explanation of the name Beau marais, the beautiful marsh, indicates, but the coup de œil enjoyed from the marine parade, called the Green, as well as from Baron Hill, the seat of Sir R. B. Williams Bulkeley, Bart., is a composition both chaste and picturesquely beautiful:

“Hibernia’s eastern sea here Cambria laves,

And pours on either shore its restless waves,

While Mænai’s currents with its waters play,

Now roll to meet or refluent fill the bay,

And circling Priestholm shows its oval steep,

Emerging boldly from the briny deep.”

Llwyd’s Beaumaris Bay.

One broad, handsome, and spacious avenue passing up the centre of the town, is finely terminated by the castle gate, an interesting contrast to the many gay, graceful, modern erections which decorate each side of the approach.

Edward the First caused three noble fortresses to be erected in North Wales, to curb the spirit of the stubborn Welsh; and chose Conway, Caernarvon, and Beaumaris for their sites. Of these, Caernarvon Castle is by far the most majestic and spacious pile: Conway enjoys the most picturesque position; while the interior of Beaumaris Castle strikingly suggests how perilous and uncertain must the tenure of human life have been in the feudal ages. The royal founder appointed Sir William Pickmore, a Gascon, to be constable of the castle and captain of the town, situations subsequently held, probably with emolument, but without conferring any military renown upon the possessors. In the reign of Henry the Seventh the garrison, which consisted of twenty-four men, was withdrawn, during the constableship of Sir Rowland Villeville. The Earl of Dorset being constable of the castle in 1642, his deputy, Thomas Chedle, furnished it with men and ammunition; but Thomas, the first Lord Bulkeley, succeeding in 1643, his son Colonel Thomas Bulkeley, with the gentlemen of Anglesea, held it for the king until the year 1648, when it surrendered upon honourable terms to General Mytton. The property of the castle is still in the crown, but the constableship was deservedly restored to the Bulkeley family, and is now vested in Sir Robert B. Williams Bulkeley, Bart., the representative of that ancient and noble house. Edward is supposed to have imbibed that Asiatic style, which pervades the architecture of his royal castles, during his expedition to the Holy Land.

The site of this fortress was adopted for a twofold purpose, both as being well adapted for defensive operations, and convenient for the landing of supplies, by means of a canal which communicated with the sea, a portion of which called “Llyn-y-Green” was till lately perceptible. An outer ballium of low but massive and embattled curtains is flanked by ten circular bastion towers: those which occupy the angles exceeding considerably in diameter all the intermediate ones.

The Postern gate opened to the west or land side, and was situated between two ponderous square towers, which were again flanked by turrets of dissimilar shape and of unequal dimensions. Several portcullises appear to have been lowered within the long arched-way of this entrance. Fronting the sea there was a second entrance, protected by two vast circular bastion towers, besides the additional security of successive portcullises. A massive square building overhangs this entrance on the left, and a long embattled curtain, extending to the right, formerly sheltered those employed on the canal or fosse, in supplying the garrison with stores. This last singular and irregular work is called “the Gunner’s Walk,” and several large rings, still firmly fixed in the masonry, very sufficiently show that here the supply barges of the garrison were anciently moored.

The envelope is separated from the keep or citadel by a broad intermural ambulatory, extending entirely round; a second entrance of fine proportion opens a communication with the inner court, beneath a spacious castellated building, the ground plan of which may yet be distinctly traced. This is a level area one hundred and ninety feet square, from the four corners of which small triangles are cut off by the enclosing wall. On the north-west side of the court, projecting from the curtain wall, stands a stately edifice, spiritedly and gracefully designed. The front consists of two stories; the upper adorned with five pointed windows of large dimensions, furnished with architraves of cut stone, and lighting the great council hall, which measures seventy feet in length: the basement is pierced by four smaller windows and the principal entrance door, while the whole is terminated by two beautiful round towers, with tapering bases, in the style of modern architectural pavilions. A ground plan precisely corresponding with that of the council hall may be traced amidst the ruins on the opposite side of the court, but how far their decorations resembled each other must continue to be matter of conjecture. To all these ancient castles a chapel is uniformly found attached, a circumstance which some historians attribute to the superstition, others, more charitably, to the piety of our ancestors. The little ecclesiastic edifice included within the walls of this castle rather argues the possession of the latter quality, from its unostentatious style and circumscribed dimensions. The walls and roof are still entire, the former decorated with pointed recesses, and the latter groined and supported by ribs springing from pilasters; while three lancet-windows, or rather loop-holes, at the eastern end, appear to have been the only means for the admission of light, that this modest little oratory ever possessed. From the thickness of the wall surrounding the inner court a gallery is gained, by means of which communication is preserved with every part of the citadel, and several square apertures, opening into recesses in the side walls of the gallery, are conjectured, by Grose the antiquarian, to have been the mouths of so many dungeons, yawning for their prey.

Part of the inner area is desecrated into a tennis court: desecrated, for a ruin is a sacred thing, rooted for ages in the soil, identified with it, and considered as a work of nature rather than of art. It is a deposit, of which the very proprietor is esteemed but the guardian, for the amusement, admiration, and instruction of posterity.