Harlech Castle

Harlech Castle is a masonry castle of limestone and granite construction, now roofless, with sandstone dressings to the openings and rock foundations. Built on a natural rock outcrop in a tight, restricted site, it is of concentric type. The main defences comprise four round towers at the corners of a roughly rectangular high-walled inner ward, with a lower-walled outer ward forming a narrow secondary line of defence that broadly follows the line of the inner ward, though its walls have been reduced in height.

At the centre of the inner ward's eastern (town-facing) wall stands a large square gatehouse block. This consists of a pair of high D-shaped drum towers to the front and a pair of narrower stair towers to the rear, the latter rising up two stages above the inner ward's corner towers and one stage above the paired front towers. The gatehouse was conceived as an independently defensible unit and could withstand assault from the inner ward should it be taken. The main approach is in the form of a tunnel entrance between the front towers, which leads through to the inner ward via a system of defences including portcullises, gates and murderholes. The portcullises were operated from the first floor and were therefore under the constable's direct control.

The gatehouse housed the principal rooms, arranged as lavishly-appointed suites, one on each of the upper floors. The first-floor apartment probably served as the constable's quarters, whilst the upper floor rooms, of rather finer quality of detail, were reserved for important visitors such as the King and his circle. Access to these apartments was from the inner ward via an external stone stair arranged in three straight flights, leading to a round-arched entrance off-centre to the left on the gatehouse's 3-window inner elevation. The windows to the upper apartments have finely-cut hollow-chamfered jambs and segmental heads, formerly with Decorated tracery lights typical of the Edwardian Court Style. Various fragmentary fireplaces survive, mostly with stone hoods featuring decorative corbels.

The hall, chapel, service and storage buildings were ranged around the north, south and west sides of the inner ward, with the well located against the north wall. Of these buildings, only the walls of the gabled chapel stand to any height; the remainder is reduced to foundation level.

The outer ward has a postern gate comprising a gateway between small turrets corbelled-out from the wall. On the north side is a postern gate with small D-shaped drum towers giving access to Castle Rock, the rocky plateau which provides the site. A wall runs north-eastwards and curves around and down to protect the rock on this side. At the foot of the rock, at the north-western point, is the Gate-Next-the-Sea, where supplies were landed by ship. This gateway had its own drawbridge and portcullis system and was further covered by two rock-cut engine platforms above. It was linked to the main castle by a walled and defended track, known as the Way From the Sea, which winds its way up along the east and south sides of the rock. A complex bridge system with further gates and a large drawbridge no longer survives.