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Rhuddlan is peaceful enough now, with the church on its rise and the picturesque ruins of the castle overlooking the river. But its past was anything but peaceful, and its role in the history of Wales far from picturesque. The hill on which the town is built commands a ford across the Clwyd: whoever controlled this crossing controlled the easiest route into the heartland of north Wales. Offa of Mercia and the Welsh fought over it; a Saxon fortified borough was succeeded by a Welsh princely palace. The Normans took it early in their campaign in north Wales, and in 1073 Robert of Rhuddlan, ‘the terror of North Wales’, built the first castle at Twt Hill, a little to the south of the present town. This castle was surrounded by a tiny borough, the defensive ditch of which still survives.
When Edward I reconquered this part of north Wales in 1277, he determined to build a new stone castle. Designed by the foremost military architect of his day, Master James of St George, this was the first of Edward’s revolutionary ‘concentric’ castles, modelled on the great fortifications of the Holy Land where Edward had been on crusade as a young man. Instead of the traditional fortified keep, the castle had an walled inner ward with round towers and twin gatehouses, surrounded by a lower curtain wall with turrets. This arrangement enabled bowmen to fire from outer and inner walls at the same time. If the outer wall was breached, the heavily-defended inner ward could hold out, while attackers were subjected to fire from the turrets in the outer wall. The whole was surrounded by a third line of defence, a moat linked to the river.
In 1282, with the castle completed, the meandering River Clwyd was re-cut and canalized so that the castle could be supplied by sea. The castle’s dock gate can be seen in the angle of the moat nearest the river, and Rhuddlan was still a port until the nineteenth century. Also in 1282, after a campaign for which Rhuddlan provided the base, Edward finally defeated Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. The next year, Welsh military resistance collapsed with the capture and brutal execution of Llywelyn’s younger brother Dafydd. In 1284 Edward issued a statute from Rhuddlan laying down the framework of government for his new conquest. The tablet at the Parliament House (so called: in fact, probably the medieval court house) in the town’s main street commemorates this event, but reads as though the statute confirmed Welsh independence instead of ending it.
Around his new castle Edward established a new borough, and the old settlement around Twt Hill disappeared like its castle under grass. The new town was geometrically planned, and the grid pattern of its streets still dictates the appearance of modern Rhuddlan. Part of the new town ditch can still be seen between Vicarage Lane and Kerfoot Avenue. After years of obsolescence, Edward’s castle had a new lease of life in the seventeenth century. It was held for Charles I in the Civil War but fell to General Mytton in 1646. Two years later it was finally slighted, and the stone provided building material for many of the houses in the town.
The old borough at Twt Hill had had a Dominican friary, some of whose buildings still survive but on private land. In about 1300 St Mary’s Church, Rhuddlan was established to serve the new community. About two hundred years later, the church was doubled in size by adding a second nave and a tower. Double-naved churches are typical of Denbighshire. A range of explanations has been suggested for this architectural idiosyncrasy. Were they built by rival families, or did they house altars to rival saints - or was it simply that adding an extra nave was an easy way to increase the size of a church? It was certainly simpler and cheaper than adding side aisles or transepts, and more effective than lengthening the building. Only one wall needed to be removed in order to double the floor area. Double-naved churches also had increased scope for stained glass, in the two east windows, and for the glorious carved roofs for which Denbigh was famous.
Rhuddlan Church still has a number of intriguing early features, including the 17th century Welsh texts painted high on the north and south walls. These suggest that a number of the congregation were expected to be literate, and in Welsh. There are also some 13th and 14th century monuments which were brought from the friary church at the Dissolution and now mostly stored at the back of the south nave. By the altar is the engraved slab of Fr William de Freney, wearing his vestments and regalia as suffragan bishop of ‘Rages’ (Edessa, in modern Turkey)
