Castle listed among the UK’S best

A CARMARTHENSHIRE castle has been listed in the top five in the whole of the UK according to reviews from the general public.

Kidwelly Castle was joined by Pembroke Castle in Pembrokeshire as they were ranked fourth and fifth respectively in a UK’S Best Rated Castle list complied by holiday provider Cottages and Castles.

They looked at almost 2,000 castles across the UK in total and calculated the percentage of four and five star reviews each castle had on Tripadvisor.

In first place was Castle Stuart, a 17th Century Tower House near Inverness in Scotland, which had an overall rating of 97.84%.

That was followed by Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeenshire with 97.81% of good reviews, and Rowton Castle in Shropshire with 96.97%. Kidwelly Castle is then in fourth place with 96.93%, with Pembroke Castle in fifth with 96.8%.

The castle sits in Kidwelly town centre and began life in the early 12th Century as a Norman ‘ringwork’ castle made of wood.

It was attacked numerous times before being captured by Lord Rhys in 1159, and by the 13th century the stone castle that still stands today was built.

An interesting fact is that it actually appears in the first scene of the 1975 comedy classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, refer to Kidwelly Castle as “the medieval fortress of everyone’s dreams”.

On Tripadvisor, one reviewer said: “There’s so much to see at this castle. You can walk the battlements, climb many staircases....it took us a good two hours to go over everything. The best castle in the area.”

Another visitor wrote: “We have been to a lot of castle ruins on our holiday - this one is by far the best. So many nooks and crannies to explore. In its time it would have been a very attractive castle.

“Lovely views from the top, and it was a very enjoyable couple of hours spent there. Well worth a visit.”

Pembroke Castle is even older than its counterpart in Kidwelly, having been partly built in the late 11th Century. A century later it was given by King Richard I to William the Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke, who rebuilt the castle in stone.