Castle Coch

After a couple of jobs, I got to the castle well after it was closed to take some photo's. I never tire of seeing the castle where I played as a very young child and also married there.  The main blip picture is of the front and the extra is a rear view. If you are interested in a brief history (the caste isn't that old!), here it is........



Castle Coch is the Welsh name for Red Castle. It's a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle built above the village of Tongwynlais, near Cardiff. The first castle on the site was built by the Normans after 1081, to protect the newly conquered town of Cardiff and control the route along the Taff Gorge. Abandoned shortly afterwards, the castle's earth motte was reused by Gilbert de Clare as the basis for a new stone fortification, which he built between 1267 and 1277 to control his freshly annexed Welsh lands. This castle was likely destroyed in the native Welsh rebellion of 1314.

In 1760, the castle ruins were acquired by John Stuart 3rd Earl of Bute as part of a marriage settlement that brought the family vast estates in South Wales. In 1848, John Chricton-Stuart, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, inherited the castle. One of Britain's wealthiest men, with interests in architecture and antiquarian studies, he employed the architect Willia Burgess to reconstruct the castle, "as a country residence for occasional occupation in the summer", using the medieval remains as a basis for the design. Burges rebuilt the outside of the castle between 1875 and 1879, before turning to the interior; he died in 1881 and the work was finished by Burges's remaining team in 1891.

In 1950, the 5th Marquess gifted it to the state and it is now in the care of CADW.