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Penrice Castle (Welsh:Castell Pen-rhys) is a 13th-centurycastle nearPenrice, Swansea on theGower Peninsula,Wales. Nearby is a neo-classical mansion house built in the 1770s. The mansion is aGrade I listed building, and the surrounding gardens and park is also listed at Grade I on theCadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.
Penrice Castle is the 13th-century successor to a strong ringwork to the south east, known as the Mountybank. It was built by the de Penrice family, who were given land there for their part in theNorman Conquest of Gower. The last de Penrice married a Mansel in 1410 and the castle and its lands passed to theMansel family. The Mansels later boughtMargam Abbey and made it their main seat, while retaining their Gower lands. The castle was damaged in the 17th-centuryEnglish Civil War.
The stone castle is a large, irregularhexagon with a roundkeep on the west side, to which were attached two other towers and a partialmantlet or chemise wall. At the north-west corner is a twin square-towered gatehouse with another tower inside. The ground falls away steeply to the north, east, south and south west, where there are various other turrets, though not scientifically disposed. The whole structure is now in a dangerous condition, but the south wall can be seen from the footpath that runs past the 18th-century mansion on the estate (51°34′27″N4°10′15″W / 51.5742°N 4.1707°W /51.5742; -4.1707 (Penrice House, Gower, Wales)), immediately to the south.
It entered into the possession ofEdward Hancorne following his marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Mansel of Penrice Castle, in 1707. His eldest son Thomas inherited the lands upon his father's death.[1]
The mansion built in the 1770s by theneo-classicalarchitectAnthony Keck for Thomas Mansel Talbot (1747–1813) of Margam and Penrice, is itselfGrade I listed and among the finest country houses inWales.[2] While the mansion was being built, the surrounding park, also Grade I listed on theCadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, was laid out in about 1773–76 byWilliam Emes, a follower ofCapability Brown.[3] The mansion was built to house Thomas Mansel Talbot's collection of antiquities and works of art. He visited Italy between 1769 and 1773 and bought antiquities fromThomas Jenkins,Gavin Hamilton andGiambattista Piranesi, including a Minerva with bronze helmet and a funerary monument (now in the Courtauld Institute, London). He also bought modern furniture by Albacini and Valadier and contemporary sculpture byJohan Tobias Sergel, and commissioned busts of himself and Pope Clement XIV fromChristopher Hewetson (the latter now in theVictoria and Albert Museum, London). In addition he bought paintings byRembrandt andJacob Philipp Hackert, and drawings byNicolas Poussin. His collections were shipped from Italy in 1772 and 1775 and displayed after his marriage in 1792. Much of the collection was later transferred toMargam Castle in Wales, and sold at auction in 1941.
Information on the Penrice household and family in 1799–1806 and after appears in the published diaries and correspondence of a Scottish-born governess,Agnes Porter. This was collated by Joanna Martin, after finding the source materials in the castle attic in about 1973.[4]
The mansion is now inhabited by the Methuen-Campbell family, who are direct descendants of the de Penrices.
The namePenrice Castle was borne byCastle Class locomotive No.5057 of theGreat Western Railway. The name was transferred to locomotive No.5081 in 1937 and further transferred to No.7023 in 1949.
51°34′31″N4°10′13″W / 51.5752°N 4.1703°W /51.5752; -4.1703
