Marcross Castle (The Gatehouse Record)

Marcross Castle

In the community of St Donats.
In the historic county of Glamorgan.
Modern authority of Vale of Glamorgan.
Preserved county of South Glamorgan.

OS Map Grid Reference: SS92326920
Latitude 51.41168° Longitude -3.54957°

Marcross Castle has been described as a certain Fortified Manor House.

There are masonry ruins/remnants remains.

This is a Grade 2 listed building protected by law*.

Description

Traces of a Late C13 early C14 defensible courtyard house, of a rather irregular quadrilateral plan, c.50m square, abandoned c.1700. Largely obscured/destroyed by recent farm buildings. (Coflein)

The moated dwelling and enclosure comprising the former Marcross Castle was the local seat of the Van family who had inherited through marriage a moiety of Marcross in mid C13 and who held it until the death of the last of the male line in 1694. In C18, the remains formed part of Castle Farm. The SW enclosure wall dates from the late C13 or early C14.
The stretch of medieval walling comprises remains of the SW curtain wall of Marcross Castle. Stretch of high wall of stone rubble with blocked arched light to former first floor hall. To the NW, the wall descends low and on SE it is bounded by a later C20 outbuilding in which no old work appears to remain. (Listed Building Report)

Damaged remains of a castle or fortified manor house at Marcross, partly incorporated into a free-standing outbuilding and a section of the farmyard wall of Village Farm. The wall and outbuilding were Listed in 1982, by which date associated earthworks identified from an aerial photograph sited to the south-west of the farm had been levelled and built over. (Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust HER)

Sources of information, references and further reading

The CADW listed database record number is/are 13306; 13307.
The National Monument Record (Coflein) number(s) for this site is/are 300394.
The County Historic Environment Record (formerly Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) for this site is/are 00406s.

Books
- Davis, Paul, R., 2011, The Forgotten Castles of Wales (Almeley: Logaston Press) p. 101-108
  Pettifer, Adrian, 2000, Welsh Castles, A Guide by Counties (Boydell Press) p. 111
  RCAHMW, 2000, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan Vol. 3 Part 1b: The Later Castles (London: HMSO) SH2 p. 448-53
  Salter, Mike, 1991, The Castles of Gwent, Glamorgan and Gower (Malvern) p. 54
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 1 p. 173
Periodical Articles
- Spurgeon, C.J. and Thomas, H.J., 1978, 'Medieval Glamorgan' Morgannwg Vol. 22 p. 24 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.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of the described site.

This record last updated before 1 February 2016

¤¤¤¤¤

Data >	Coflein	County HER		Listing
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