Castell Coch

Castell Coch is a medieval castle rebuilt in the High Victorian Gothic Revival style with French influences. The two building periods can be identified by their different masonry: the early medieval work is built of coursed or random rubble, while the Victorian rebuild uses coursed, dressed, snecked, and sometimes tooled stone. The main roofs are covered with small slates and plentiful lead flashings, with stone tiles on the roof of the shell or curtain wall. There are overhanging sprocketed eaves and weather vanes bearing monograms, and circular chimneys, some clustered together. Many fittings and some structural elements are made of wood.

The ground floor plan consists of a central, nearly circular courtyard surrounded by three circular towers linked by a shell wall. The Well Tower stands at the north-east, the Kitchen Tower at the south-west (connected by the Hall Block to the Keep Tower at the south-east), and the Drawbridge Entrance is located adjacent to the Keep Tower on the east side. The masonry features tiers of putlog holes, very long arrow loops, and generally small outward-facing windows, often with trefoil heads and metal armatures, some divided by transoms. The embrasures have tiered wooden shutters with decorative metal fittings.

The Towers and Entrance

Moving anti-clockwise from the north-east, the Well Tower has a very deep lead-covered parapet with widely spaced shuttered embrasures and water chutes at the base. Above rises a steeply pointed turret roof incorporating small steeply pointed wooden dormers. The courtyard-facing elevation has an attached but separate roof. A garde-robe tower stands in the angle with the courtyard wall. An exceptionally deep battered plinth, formed as stone cladding to the motte wall above the moat, is equal in height to the shell wall it supports. This plinth has two tiers of arrow loops, a line of chutes, and boarded embrasures overhung by the deep eaves of the pitched roof.

The Kitchen Tower comprises a round tower broached to a rectangle at its base by one of the massive spur buttresses supporting the side of the castle. It has a conical roof with single pitched swept roof dormers and windows at two levels, the upper ones shuttered. Attached to the north side is a rectangular tower with boarded embrasures and an arched culvert at the base.

The Hall range runs along the south side between the towers. It has a deep partly battered plinth rising from the rocky outcrop and three trefoil-headed undercroft lights with transoms. Above is a similar range of double lights.

The Keep Tower has a conical roof and a rectangular fireplace tower with clustered chimneys at the angle with the Hall, plus a separate circular chimney facing the front. Small lights are arranged on three storeys, with transoms at the lower level. Deep spur buttresses at the base plunge lower to the south as the ground falls steeply, with a further drainage culvert in the angle.

Attached at the front is the two-storey rectangular Entrance Tower with a pitched roof, the overhang at the gable end supported by brackets. It has a double round stack at the rear and a wooden guard chamber at the front, all on the top floor, which is slightly corbelled out. Below is a polychrome statue of the Virgin and Child in a shallow pointed arched niche. At ground floor level is the wide double-ordered segmental pointed main entrance with wooden drawbridge access. The portcullis section has two chamfered orders of outer arches, a chamfered machinery slot, then two lower inner arches also chamfered with a gap for missiles. The portcullis sits in its slot with an arch behind, followed by a further two-ordered arch with massive boarded doors fitted with iron bands and studs. To the right, a small section of shell wall with stone cladding at the base links with the Well Tower.

The Courtyard

Inside the shell wall, the courtyard has a modern surface of end-on narrow stones laid in panels. The shell wall has a ground floor arcade of pointed arches with voussoirs. At first floor level is an open inward-facing balcony, with bays created by king-posts supporting the pitched roof. The balcony extends in front of the Kitchen Tower and Hall, providing main access to these rooms, and links with roofed stairs to the courtyard. The arched recesses below asymmetrically continue the ground floor arcade, which also incorporates a flight of stone stairs down to a lower chamber.

The roofs of the Kitchen Tower, stairs, and Hall all adjoin, incorporating swept eaves, dormers, and tall lateral stacks. The Hall roof and coping run out into the Keep Tower, with a small two-storey polygonal tower with pyramidal roof positioned by steps below. Above is a flat-roofed wing crossing the angle with a three-light trefoil-headed mullioned window and staircase tower behind. To the left is a wooden framed, braced, and gated balcony to the bedroom, with twin water chutes below and a pitched roofed hoist above.

Below, the balcony continues with a pitched roof in front of the Entrance Tower, with the three-ordered segmental-pointed arched inner face of the main gateway below. It continues at a slightly different level in front of the Well Tower, which has an inward-facing circular corner turret with conical roof adjoining the main tower and a short corbel table marking the site of a former chapel. Below at ground floor level is a pointed-arched entrance set in the battered plinth. Further flights of steps lead down to lower chambers on either side of the gateway.

The Interior

The interior comprises a suite of highly decorated and richly furnished rooms, most of which are open to the public (though some rooms are not accessible). Glazing is mostly of small panes in patterned leading or with iron armatures. Doors are boarded with heavy battens, sometimes forming a grid, and are painted. Most floors are of red and black quarry tiles, with some boarded.

The ground floor chamber of the Well Tower has very deep splays to the windows and a heavy wood ceiling supported on massive corbels and struts. The first floor chamber, which houses an exhibition, has a similar roof, a plain fireplace with mantelpiece and deep kerb, and access to the balcony with stone seating.

The Kitchen Tower has a similar wooden ceiling, plain painted walls, a large range in the outer wall, wall cupboards, and hatches. Adjacent stairs lead to the room above.

The Hall has a stencilled boarded roof with two moulded painted cross beams and long octagonal king posts. The walls feature an elaborate decorative masonry pattern and round pointed-arched openings in earth colours with a crimson dado. Portraits and crests of the Bute family are displayed. At each end are tiered polychrome scenes from saints' or martyrs' lives in ecclesiastical wall painting style. The painted fireplace has a deep hood and a tall polychrome figure of Saint Lucius under a canopy, with an enriched fire basket and tile backing. Seats are set in the window embrasures.

At first floor level, the Keep Tower contains the main reception room, the octagonal Drawing Room, which is immensely richly and intricately decorated in a wide range of colours enhanced by gilding. Dominating the room is an elaborate chimneypiece featuring the figures of the Three Fates in a deep trefoil-headed arcade above a cambered-headed fireplace deeply moulded with open trefoils and gilded leaves. The fireback and dogs are surrounded by elaborate tiles including a Zodiac series. The walls are painted with flora and fauna, and the dark green dado has panels painted with similar motifs. Above is a vaulted roof with sky-blue panels painted with birds and stars, the ribs decorated with butterflies. At gallery level is a triforium-style arcade with cusped pointed arches, all richly painted and moulded, with a gallery front of pierced quatrefoils and foliage soffit below. An intricately carved wooden candelabra is suspended from a sunburst at the apex. On the opposite wall above the door are three shields in a rectangular frame. Door surrounds are embossed with more nature motifs. Seats are set in the deep window embrasures, and the furniture is simple and painted.

The first floor chamber of the Entrance Tower, the Windlass Room, contains the portcullis gear in place. It has a simple fireplace and walls of tooled stone.

A spiral stone staircase leads to the second floor, which houses Lord Bute's bedroom, again elaborately decorated with windows on three sides. The fireplace has a deep moulded inhabited vinescroll and a huge tapering chimney breast extending to the roof like a stovepipe with stencilled decoration that extends over the walls. The painted stencilled boarded ceiling has a barrel vault with side pitches similar to an aisled nave, with two huge painted cross beams each with three carved posts. The windows have gilded leading, and the large quadripartite window incorporates a door giving access to the courtyard balcony. The painted bedroom furniture is somewhat austere.

A spiral stone staircase leads to the third floor of the Keep Tower, Lady Bute's Bedroom. This is an entirely circular room similar to a chapter house, with a pointed arched arcade of fourteen bays, richly painted and decorated, with gilded capitals, stencilled and papered walls, and a darker dado. Windows in alcoves provide panoramic views. The richly decorated and heavily gilded chimneypiece has a deep hood incorporating a figure of Psyche bearing the Bute shield. The spectacular vault rises in five tiers of panels, each decorated with flora and fauna motifs and surmounted by a coffered dome with four tiers of panels incorporating mirrors in the two upper tiers with similar motifs. The doorways are shouldered. A central tiered painted metal candelabra hangs in the room, which is furnished with elaborately wrought bedroom items.