View from Raglan Castle

After a walk around Abergavenny we stopped off at Raglan Castle on our drive home. The afternoon was one of blue skies, fast moving white clouds, and a temperature somewhat lower than recently. The remains of the castle are quite substantial (see photographs below and here) and include a spiral staircase up to what must have been something approximating the highest point of the building As we stood looking north-west at the summits of The Blorenge, Sugar Loaf and The Skirrid we could see the patches of light and the clouds' shadows moving across the fields. I took my photograph more in hope than expectation of capturing this effect and I'm quite pleased with the result.

 photos © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Raglan Castle

Raglan Castle is one of the last medieval castles to have been built in England and Wales. Most of what can be seen dates from the mid to late 1400s and mid 1500s, including the state apartments, garderobe tower, gatehouse and closet tower seen in the photograph. The castle was built on the site of a smaller castle/fortified house. The large building whose remains we see today was the work of William Herbert (d.1469). Later owners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries turned it into a Renaissance palace with extensive gardens, lakes, fountains and other landscaping features. The seventeenth century owners' loyalty to Charles 1 proved the building's undoing because after its capture the Parliamentary forces under Thomas Fairfax "slighted it" i.e. destroyed enough of it to render it unusable. The photograph I took in May proved less satisfactory than this image from July 2018.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100