Penrice Castle (Ruins)

Penrice Castle is a stone-built castle featuring a drum-tower keep and a large ward to its east side. To the north of the ward, there is a group of ruined buildings that includes a gatehouse flanked by defensive turrets. Attached to the east side is a conical dovecote, which is listed separately. Much of the castle is heavily overgrown and inaccessible, but the wall of the ward generally survives to a height of about 3 to 5 metres, with small open-backed defensive turrets appearing at intervals.

The circular keep on the west side has a diameter of about 12 metres and stands approximately three storeys tall. Most of its openings are walled up, except for a slit opening facing west and a pointed arch facing north. The keep has two small semicircular additions, one to the east and one to the west, as well as a three-storeyed rectangular building attached to its exterior. This building survives on two sides only and originally had a gabled roof running northeast to southwest. It features a large fireplace in its southwest wall with a segmental arch on corbels and remnants of flat arches in openings above.

Close to the keep, there is a small intramural building with two remaining walls and a walled-up segmental opening to the exterior. The entrance building at the north has a portcullis slot behind a gothic arch, with guard towers on either side that have loops facing the entrance. The northern tower has been adapted as a dovecote, while the other is inaccessible. The rear corners of the entrance building facing the ward are rounded, and there is a gothic arch of two orders at the rear opening to the ward, above which is a first-floor lancet window with seats in the reveals. Along the north side, there is an enclosure with traces of intramural buildings, and two walls on the northeast side are remnants of a building that was attached to the lost wall dividing the ward into two halves.