Newport Castle in 1881

 

A Bit of Newport Castle History

Extract from:

"Rambles and Studies in Old South Wales"

By Wirt Sikes

Published in 1881

Pages 100 & 101

Of all the old castles in Wales, perhaps this is the most mournful to look upon, so fallen is it from its grand estate. A ruined castle is seldom debased to such plebeian uses as those which have befallen Newport.

It is now occupied by certain brewers and other unknightly varlets; but there was a day when this pile was the home of kings; and where now ferments the democratic ale and rings the rattle of barrels being hooped, once flowed the ruddy wine from silvern flagons and echoed the laugh and song of revelry.

The castle was built by the Welsh king Robert Fitzroy, in 1130, to protect his domains and to guard the passage of the river, which was and is here fordable at low tide, and after passing through the hands of several successors, it came at last to the Duke of Buckingham. When this duke was executed the estate was seized by Henry VIII.; and when Cromwell's army came it met the fate of all the baronial halls to which the old castle-hater paid his respects.

Precisely at what time the poor ruin was seized upon by the base fortunes which now degrade it is not recorded. The humiliation of a modern red- tiled roof covers the central tower of the ruin where it looks upon the river, the only part of the walls now standing.

The tower next the bridge has its venerable head covered with a kindly peruke of ivy, as if Nature took pity on the poor old castle in its hour of degradation, and tried thus as it might to atone for man's inhumanity to storied stone.