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Raglan Castle

Castle ruins in WalesGrade I listed castles in MonmouthshireRegistered historic parks and gardens in MonmouthshireScheduled monuments in MonmouthshireTudor England
Use British English from May 2015
Raglan Castle's main entrance
Raglan Castle's main entrance

Raglan Castle (Welsh: Castell Rhaglan) is a late medieval castle located just north of the village of Raglan in the county of Monmouthshire in south east Wales. The modern castle dates from between the 15th and early 17th centuries, when the successive ruling families of the Herberts and the Somersets created a luxurious, fortified castle, complete with a large hexagonal keep, known as the Great Tower or the Yellow Tower of Gwent. Surrounded by parkland, water gardens and terraces, the castle was considered by contemporaries to be the equal of any other in England or Wales. During the First English Civil War, Raglan was occupied by a Royalist garrison on behalf of Charles I but was taken by Parliamentarian forces in 1646 and its walls slighted, or deliberately put beyond military use. After the Stuart Restoration in 1660, the Somersets declined to restore it and it became first a source of local building materials, then a romantic ruin. It is now a tourist attraction.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Raglan Castle (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.7703 ° E -2.8521 °
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Address

Raglan Castle

Castle Road
NP15 2BT , Raglan
Wales, United Kingdom
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Raglan Castle's main entrance
Raglan Castle's main entrance
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Monmouthshire
Monmouthshire

Monmouthshire ( MON-məth-shər, MUN-; Welsh: Sir Fynwy) is a county in the south east of Wales. It borders Powys to the north; the English counties of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to the north and east; the Severn Estuary to the south, and Torfaen, Newport and Blaenau Gwent to the west. The largest town is Abergavenny, and the administrative centre is Usk. The county is rural, although adjacent to the city of Newport and the urbanised South Wales Valleys; it has an area of 330 square miles (850 km2) and a population of 93,000. After Abergavenny (12,515), the largest towns are Chepstow (12,350), Monmouth (10,508), and Caldicot (9,813). The county has one of the lowest percentages of Welsh speakers in Wales, at 8.2% of the population in 2021.The lowlands in the centre of Monmouthshire are gently undulating, and shaped by the River Usk and its tributaries. The west of the county is hilly, and the Black Mountains in the northwest are part of the Brecon Beacons National Park (Bannau Brycheiniog). The border with England in the east largely follows the course of the River Wye and its tributary, the River Monnow. In the southeast is the Wye Valley AONB, a hilly region which stretches into England. The county has a shoreline on the Severn Estuary, which is crossed at this point by the Severn Bridge and Second Severn Crossing. The name derives from the historic county of the same name, of which the contemporary county covers the eastern three-fifths.