Castell Moel Manor House, Llangain (The Gatehouse Record)

Castell Moel Manor House, Llangain

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Greencastle; Green Castle; Humphreys Castle; Castle Mole

In the community of Llangain.
In the historic county of Carmarthenshire.
Modern authority of Carmarthenshire.
Preserved county of Dyfed.

OS Map Grid Reference: SN39631659
Latitude 51.82484° Longitude -4.32822°

Castell Moel Manor House, Llangain has been described as a probable Fortified Manor House.

There are masonry ruins/remnants remains.

Description

Shattered ruins of a possibly 16th but probably 17th century house ruins; an early wing was incorporated into large cruciform renaissance house. Leyland (1538) noted only 'small tokens' of a house or castle, presumably a precursor to the house represented in the present ruins; an engraving of 1740 shows the house in a ruinous state, similar to its present condition. Source: Jones 1991 (Carmarthen Ant. 27), 3-20. (Coflein)

Nothing is known about the history of the worn motte and bailey known as Castell Moel located about 550m to the south of a late medieval masonry castle of the same name. This later castle is actually a L-planned medieval house that once belonged to the Rede family. Today the ruins are much overgrown and are located on private property. The most prominent remains consist of a substantial section of the eastern tower along with a portion of the northern tower. Details of windows, doorways and fireplaces can still been seen in the surviving sections of the castle. Although part of the castle may have at one time included mock battlements, it is doubtful that the building was ever intended for serious defensive purposes. (Salter).

Comments

The standing remains appear to be early modern rather than medieval although it does seem a late medieval house stood here.

Sources of information, references and further reading

The National Monument Record (Coflein) number(s) for this site is/are 17403.
The County Historic Environment Record (formerly Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) for this site is/are 2145.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Jeff Thomas's Castles of Wales
  Dyfed Archaeological Trust, 1998-, Historic Landscape Characterisation
  CastleUK.net
  Wikipedia entry
Books
- Morgan, Gerald, 2008, Castles in Wales: A Handbook (Talybont: Y Lolfa Cyf.) p. 253 (listed as possible)
  Pettifer, Adrian, 2000, Welsh Castles, A Guide by Counties (Boydell Press) p. 58
  Davis, Paul, 2000, A Company of Forts. A Guide to the Medieval Castles of West Wales (Gomer Press) p. 123-4
  Salter, Mike, 1996, The Castles of South West Wales (Malvern) p. 29
  Davis, P.R., 1987, Castles of Dyfed (Llandysul: Gomer Press) p. 38-39
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 1 p. 60
  RCAHMW, 1917, An inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Carmarthenshire (HMSO) p. 149 no. 443 online copy
  Lewis, Samual, 1849, A Topographical Dictionary of Wales online copy
Periodical Articles
- Jones, F., 1991, ‘Annals of an old manor house: Green Castle' Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Vol. 27 p. 3-20
Antiquarian (Histories and accounts from late medieval and early modern writers)
- Toulmin-Smith, Lucy (ed), 1910, The itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535-1543 (Bell and Sons; London) Vol. 4 p. 180 online copy

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales, the four welsh archaeological trusts and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain Designated Historic Asset Descriptive Information from The Welsh Historic Environment Service (Cadw), licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown.
Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Lidar coverage in the UK is not complete. The button above will give an idea of the area of coverage. Higher resolution lidar images in both DSM and DTM form may be available from Lle A geo-Portal for Wales (click the preview tag to bring up a map and then select format byclicking on the small blue diamond in the top right corner of the map.)

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

This record last updated 19/04/2016 20:02:13

¤¤¤¤¤

Data >	Coflein	County HER
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	Historic Wales	V. O. B.	Geology	LIDAR
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio