Secrets Of Great British Castles - Season 2, Episode 2 Cardiff Castle
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00:00For me, a great British castle is a fortress, a palace, a home.
00:11And a symbol of power, majesty and fear.
00:16For nearly 1,000 years,
00:18castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.
00:24These magnificent buildings have been home
00:27to some of the greatest heroes and villains in our national history.
00:32And many of them still stand proudly today,
00:35bursting with incredible stories of warfare,
00:39treachery, intrigue, passion and murder.
00:45Join me, Dan Jones,
00:47as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.
00:53This time, I'm in Cardiff Castle.
00:56Today, it's bursting with Victorian wealth and splendour,
01:00but it also has a history rich in dastardly deeds,
01:04horrible executions and bloody rebellions.
01:07It even helped fight off the Nazis.
01:17Good morning. A receipt, please.
01:22That's your receipt. Have a good day, sir.
01:24Thank you very much.
01:33For many centuries, Britain had a Wild West,
01:36fertile and full of opportunity,
01:39but also lawless, violent and restless.
01:46Today, we call it Wales, a place famous for music, for legend
01:50and, of course, for rugby.
01:52Throughout its history, Wales has been fiercely independent
01:56and it's caused a lot of would-be conquerors a lot of problems.
01:59And that's why the whole place is studded with castles,
02:02from the huge fortresses of the north
02:04to the strongholds here in the south, near the Bristol Channel.
02:09My favourite of all of them is here in Cardiff.
02:15Today, Cardiff is the capital of Wales
02:17and one of Britain's greatest cities.
02:20It's also the place where Doctor Who is filmed,
02:23which is quite fitting, because over the centuries,
02:26Cardiff Castle has had plenty of its own incarnations.
02:30The original castle was built in the Middle Ages,
02:33but today's visitors are mostly coming to see
02:36the extraordinary rooms inside these Victorian Gothic wings.
02:43They were built by the third Marquess of Bute,
02:46one of the richest men in the world.
02:49He spent a fortune on these lavishly decorated rooms,
02:53and it's said that he was the richest man in the world.
02:57He spent a fortune on these lavish interiors
03:01at the end of the 19th century.
03:08This banqueting hall might look like something straight out of the Middle Ages,
03:12but in fact it was built in the 1870s and no expense was spared.
03:17This was a time when medieval decoration was all the rage.
03:22But what I love about it is that as soon as you step into this room,
03:26you feel like you're transported into Cardiff Castle's incredible history.
03:45The story of Cardiff Castle begins in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings.
03:51Sailing from France, William, Duke of Normandy,
03:55challenged the Anglo-Saxon King Harold II for the throne of England.
04:03After a raging, day-long battle, Harold was killed.
04:07According to the legend, he took an arrow through the eye.
04:12On Christmas Day 1066, William, now known as the Conqueror,
04:17was crowned King William I.
04:20William's Norman army set about colonising the whole of England.
04:25They did it with castles, which they built across the land.
04:32And when they were done with England,
04:34William and the Normans turned their sights westwards, on Wales.
04:40But the Welsh weren't just going to roll over.
04:43The Normans had to do something dramatic to show off their power,
04:47and they did what they were most famous for.
04:50They built a castle right here in Cardiff.
04:58When the Normans got here, they found the remains of an ancient Roman fort
05:02built almost 1,000 years earlier
05:04to protect the conquering Roman soldiers
05:07from hostile tribes of native Britons living nearby.
05:11You can still see sections of the Roman wall here outlined in red sandstone.
05:16Now, the Romans left Britain in the 5th century AD,
05:19and forts like the one here at Cardiff were allowed to crumble.
05:22But when the Normans arrived, there was still enough left,
05:26perfectly located and just begging to be built upon.
05:34Mark, this a typical Norman castle?
05:36This is absolutely textbook what the Normans were doing after 1066.
05:39You've got a motte and bailey.
05:42The motte being this great mound of earth we see here,
05:45and the bailey being everything else, the wider enclosure.
05:48And the bailey is where you have basically all the buildings.
05:51You have your horses within here, you have your great hall, your chapel,
05:54your rooms where the knights sleep, everything.
05:57And is this what we call the keep?
05:59Well, the bit on top, we would now call it the keep.
06:01They would have just called it either the motte or the great tower.
06:04We've got a stone tower here now, but back in William the Conqueror's day,
06:07a wooden tower on top, wooden buildings everywhere.
06:16Mark, what would this space have been used for?
06:19Well, the motte would have been used for defence
06:21if the castle was under attack,
06:23for living when the lord was in residence, but also used as a prison.
06:27It's one of the things that people tend to forget about the Normans,
06:31is that whilst they were very violent in their warfare,
06:34when you surrendered to the Normans, they would spare your life.
06:37In a word, chivalrous,
06:39because they had the ability with castles to confine people.
06:43You could lock them up and throw away the keep,
06:45but you don't kill them, you just put them in prison.
06:49Cardiff Castle became the power base
06:51from which the Normans fought to control the natives of Wales
06:55and police the lands bordering England.
06:58In the centuries to come,
07:00Cardiff would be the scene of savage uprisings,
07:03brutal tyranny and blood-curdling executions.
07:07But ironically, the first man to fall foul of Cardiff Castle
07:11was William the Conqueror's own son.
07:16Cardiff Castle was originally built in the 11th century
07:20to impose the authority of William the Conqueror
07:23and his Norman invaders over south Wales.
07:28But bullying the Welsh was relatively easy.
07:31What the Normans couldn't do was get along with each other.
07:37When William the Conqueror died in 1087,
07:40he was survived by three sons.
07:43The oldest was called Robert,
07:45the second was another William,
07:47and the youngest was Henry.
07:51All three wanted their father's throne.
07:57The next in line should have been
07:59William the Conqueror's eldest son, Robert.
08:02He was a little stout man
08:04and his nicknames included fat legs and curt hose,
08:07which basically means shorty pants.
08:09Robert Curt Hose is buried here
08:11in one of the most magnificent buildings in England,
08:14Gloucester Cathedral.
08:19Robert was weak and easily influenced.
08:23He had fallen out with his father several times
08:26and at the time of the old king William the Conqueror's death in 1087,
08:31Robert had been banished abroad.
08:33It was the middle brother, William Rufus,
08:36who was named as the Conqueror's successor
08:38and crowned King William II.
08:41But that wasn't the end of the family feud.
08:45In 1100, William II was killed in a hunting accident
08:49when a stray arrow hit him in the back.
08:52This enabled the youngest brother to pounce.
08:56Robert Curt Hose was away fighting on Crusade
08:59and in his absence Henry now grabbed the throne
09:03and was crowned Henry I.
09:07CONCLUSION
09:12Understandably, Robert wasn't very impressed.
09:15Losing the crown to one younger brother, well, that was bad enough.
09:19Losing it to a second was starting to get a bit silly.
09:23He started raising troops
09:25and causing Henry as much trouble as possible,
09:28but that was his undoing.
09:30In 1106, Robert's armies clashed with Henry's armies
09:34and there was a great battle in Normandy.
09:37Robert was defeated and he was captured
09:40and his younger brother decided to put him out of the way for good.
09:50That didn't mean death, but the alternative was still pretty bad.
09:55Henry locked Robert up and threw away the key.
10:00At first, Robert was imprisoned in the West Country,
10:05but after 20 years of that, in 1126, he was brought here to Cardiff Castle.
10:11By now he was in his 70s,
10:14but he still had nearly another decade of captivity ahead of him.
10:22In 1134, when he was an extraordinary 80 years old,
10:27Robert Curthose died, still imprisoned here in Cardiff Castle.
10:32Now, as the son of one king and the brother of another,
10:35he'd have been in fairly luxurious conditions.
10:38This was more like house arrest than being locked in a dungeon.
10:41He spent his time here at Cardiff Castle learning the local language
10:45and at least one poem in Welsh has traditionally been attributed to him.
10:49It includes the line,
10:52And I think that's an incredibly poignant insight into the mind of a man
10:57who saw far more of the inside of Norman castles than he'd have ever wanted to.
11:06Robert Curthose wouldn't be the last enemy of a king of England
11:10to see out his days in Cardiff Castle,
11:13but few of them would die in their beds of old age.
11:17Instead, many suffered violent and painful ends
11:21as Cardiff Castle entered an era of executions and bloody rebellions.
11:32During the 12th and 13th centuries,
11:35Cardiff's defences were constantly beefed up.
11:38The castle on the hill would have been connected
11:41to the southern gatehouse by a huge wall,
11:44which split the courtyard, known as the bailey, in two.
11:53In the early 14th century,
11:55Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of a family of English nobles
11:59called the Dispensers.
12:01Under this family, the castle became a feared symbol
12:04of English power and authority,
12:07and Hugh Dispenser the Younger proved to be one of the most merciless
12:11bloodthirsty and hated men in the whole of Welsh history.
12:19Hugh Dispenser was the ruthless, ambitious favourite
12:22of England's deeply unpopular king, Edward II,
12:25who came to the throne in 1307.
12:31Dispenser used his influence with the king
12:33to build up a massive power base here in south Wales during the 1320s.
12:39He took the title Lord of Glamorgan,
12:41which gave him control of Cardiff Castle,
12:43and from here he exercised a reign of terror, tyranny and corruption
12:47that would eventually shake the whole kingdom.
12:50One of his first acts of diabolical violence
12:53and flagrant injustice took place right here in the castle grounds.
12:59Dispenser was despised throughout England
13:02because of his influence over the foolish King Edward,
13:06but he was especially loathed in south Wales.
13:10One of his most despicable acts
13:12involved a local Welsh hero called Llewelyn Bren.
13:21Llewelyn Bren was the son of a noble family
13:25who lived in the north of England.
13:33In 1316, bad weather had devastated crops
13:37and famine was ravaging the people of Wales.
13:45Provoked by the hardship all around him,
13:48Bren, a local Welsh lord, rose in revolt against the king.
13:54This was spreading across all of south Wales.
14:07When Edward II learned about Bren's rising,
14:10he sent 2,000 men into Wales to crush it.
14:13Now, this was a spectacular show of military force
14:17and Bren soon realised the only sensible option
14:20was to head, quite literally, for the hills.
14:23The rugged, windswept Brecon Beacons,
14:26but even that wasn't enough.
14:28With English troops approaching from two directions,
14:32in March 1316, Llewelyn Bren surrendered.
14:39Bren's one condition was that he alone should be punished.
14:43Now, that impressed his English captors
14:45who thought it was a great display of chivalry.
14:48Several high-ranking English lords asked the king to pardon him,
14:52but it didn't work out that way.
14:54In 1318, two years after he was captured,
14:57Bren was transferred to Cardiff Castle
15:00and he fell into the hands of Hugh Dispenser.
15:06This was a disaster for Bren
15:09because once he'd got him back to his stronghold,
15:12it became clear that the vengeful Dispenser
15:15had no interest in letting Bren go free.
15:19In fact, he wanted him dead,
15:22to send a message to his rival English lords
15:25who'd spoken up in Bren's favour,
15:28to flex his muscles and assert his power.
15:34Dispenser's influence with the king was so great
15:37that no-one could stand in his way.
15:39Without the benefit of a fair trial,
15:41with a total disregard for justice,
15:43he declared Bren a traitor
15:45and sentenced him to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
15:54This was a terrible way for an honourable man to go.
15:57Dragged through the streets behind a horse,
16:00choked with a noose and then disembowelled while still alive.
16:07It was one of the slowest, most savage and agonising deaths imaginable.
16:16With a taste for blood and an iron grip on the king,
16:20very soon Dispenser, the master of Cardiff Castle,
16:24wasn't just terrorising South Wales,
16:27he held sway over the whole kingdom.
16:33For the next four years,
16:35he would be the power behind Edward II's throne.
16:40But eventually, his evil deeds came back to bite him.
16:46Dispenser's influence had estranged the king from his wife, Queen Isabella,
16:51who was in self-imposed exile in France.
16:54Now the queen teamed up with another mighty baron from the Welsh borders
16:59called Roger Mortimer.
17:01Together, they launched an invasion of England,
17:04overthrew the unpopular king and put Dispenser in prison.
17:10He was sentenced to the same horrific death that he inflicted on Bren,
17:15to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
17:18It was said that when he was in prison,
17:21he attempted to starve himself to death,
17:24but there was to be no escape.
17:40Here at Reading University,
17:42there's grisly evidence that may help us to understand
17:46the savagery of the death that Dispenser suffered.
17:51Mary, where do these bones come from?
17:53Well, so they were discovered at Holton Abbey in Staffordshire
17:57when they were excavating the inside of the church.
18:00And why do we think that these might be the remains of Hugh Dispenser?
18:04So the bones, we have C14 dating,
18:07so they date around 1300s.
18:10And there were very few candidates for,
18:12if this is hang, drawing and quartering,
18:14for that practice during that time.
18:16One was Hugh Dispenser.
18:18So I contacted the archivist in charge of the abbey and the burials there.
18:23The archivist responded that Hugh Dispenser, he had been executed
18:27and his wife had petitioned for his head and a few vertebrae
18:31and one of his thigh bones.
18:32And it took me a few minutes to realise that the elements
18:35of skeleton that I was missing on my individual were his head,
18:39his thigh bone and some vertebrae.
18:42And it just seemed too much of a coincidence, really, not to be true.
18:46But probably the most obvious thing that we see
18:49are one of the neck vertebrae at the top
18:52and there's a clean cut mark straight through the vertebrae
18:55and this is a very clear sign of beheading.
18:57If we move down the spine, these are just higher up in his chest...
19:02OK. ..vertebrae.
19:04And they have been sliced down the middle... Oh, I see.
19:08..straight across by a sword or an axe.
19:11So it's as if somebody has been cut this way, vertically.
19:14Yes, yes, down the side of the skeleton.
19:17So when you look at this vertebrae in particular and you turn it over,
19:21there's also a very clean slice across the middle.
19:24So he's been cut this way and cut that way, so he's been quartered.
19:29So he would have been alive when he was being dragged
19:32by the back of the horse and then he would have been put on the ladder
19:36and he would have not been hanged the way we can think of hanging,
19:39he would have actually been choked,
19:41so that he would have been alive when they were eviscerating him.
19:44And probably he only died when they took him down from the ladder
19:47and then they beheaded him.
19:49So it was a very political execution, a very public execution.
19:52So all the evidence is pointing towards this being
19:55the skeleton of Huda Spencer?
19:57I think there's a weight of evidence to suggest
19:59that this is Huda Spencer, yes.
20:02Huda Spencer is remembered as brutal and evil,
20:07but also for reaping what he sowed.
20:10This stained-glass window in the castle
20:13shows him with his coat of arms upside down.
20:17It's a sign of disgrace and shame.
20:21With Spencer's gruesome death,
20:24one of the most violent periods in the history of Cardiff Castle had ended.
20:29But in the coming centuries,
20:31the castle's defences would be tested to the limit
20:34by some of the bloodiest rebellions in British history.
20:46By the 14th century, Cardiff Castle had come to symbolise
20:50the power of English kings over the people of Wales.
20:54That power was wielded by the lords of Cardiff Castle,
20:58such as the cruel and corrupt Huda Spencer.
21:03As a result, the castle was always a natural target for rebellion.
21:14At the start of the 15th century,
21:16the last great Welsh rising against the English crown began.
21:22The Welsh national hero, Owen Glyndwr,
21:25claimed the title Prince of Wales
21:27and led a violent revolt against King Henry IV.
21:34In 1403, Glyndwr and his men burned the city of Cardiff
21:38and placed the castle under siege.
21:41Eventually, with the castle running out of food,
21:44down to its last 24 cannonballs and a few bags of bread,
21:48down to its last 24 cannonballs and a few bags of gunpowder,
21:52it surrendered, but not before it had been badly damaged.
21:56It was a stunning victory for Glyndwr and the rebels.
22:05The English were humiliated,
22:07and although they eventually regained the castle,
22:10it took years for Henry IV to subdue Glyndwr's rebellion
22:14across south Wales.
22:16But when order was restored, the English took terrible revenge.
22:22The English passed a series of laws called the Penal Laws,
22:25which stripped the native Welsh of their legal rights.
22:28Welshmen were forbidden to carry weapons,
22:31own property in English towns,
22:33speak their own language or hold public office.
22:36This was a form of apartheid.
22:38If you were within this castle's walls, you were a person with rights.
22:42If you were outside, you barely had any.
22:47The Draconian laws that followed the defeat of Glyndwr's rebellion
22:51may have been harsh and repressive,
22:54but they did succeed in subduing the population of Wales,
22:58and a period of relative peace followed.
23:01A succession of aristocratic owners
23:03developed the castle buildings around the old Norman keep.
23:07In Tudor times, these new wings were further expanded,
23:12but by the 17th century,
23:14Cardiff Castle was once more in the firing line
23:17as a new and deadly conflict began to grip Britain.
23:23In 1642, increasingly bitter hostilities
23:27between King Charles I and his enemies in Parliament
23:31erupted into a civil war that tore Britain in half.
23:36The King's supporters, Cavaliers,
23:39battled the parliamentary army, the Roundheads,
23:43led by Oliver Cromwell.
23:45At stake was the whole system of British government.
23:49Should the country be ruled by headstrong kings
23:53or a dangerously radical Parliament?
23:56During this long struggle,
23:58Cardiff Castle was besieged several times.
24:02It was held first by the parliamentarians
24:05and then by the royalists.
24:07As fighting with cannon and guns
24:10spilled into the streets around it,
24:13the castle was badly damaged, and no wonder.
24:17Gunpowder was now being used extensively
24:21and it changed the nature of warfare.
24:24Cannons could wreck castle walls
24:27and defenders and attackers alike
24:29were using small arms called muskets.
24:32To get a taste for this new form of warfare
24:35which challenged Cardiff Castle's defences,
24:38I've come to have a go at firing a few weapons
24:41from the period myself.
24:48Well, when did muskets appear on the battlefield?
24:51They take over in the early 17th century
24:54and they are the dominant weapon on the battlefield
24:57until the 19th century.
24:59We've got some muskets here. They all look very different.
25:02This is a matchlock, which is the most common type
25:05that's mass-produced, and it fires with a piece of match
25:09held in the serpent mechanism here.
25:12This is a wheel lock.
25:15It's more expensive and therefore rarer than the matchlock
25:19and it has a flint in the firing mechanism here
25:23which does the firing for you.
25:25This is a carbine. This is a cut-down version of a flintlock.
25:28Really useful for cavalry because you can tote it by your saddle
25:31and dismount and fire with it.
25:33And what do they all fire?
25:35They fire lead balls like this.
25:38This is an actual Civil War musket ball
25:41and you see it's half an inch across, solid lead.
25:44When it hits you, the entry wound is half an inch across.
25:47The lead will then spread out and impact with your body
25:50so the exit wound on the far side of you
25:52is going to be about six inches across, maximum.
25:54You're going to have a horrible death.
25:56Even the guns are dangerous. They're totally inaccurate.
25:59Well, I think we should have a go at firing them.
26:01Let's go for it. I suggest you have this.
26:04Thank you very much indeed.
26:06The upmarket version. Yes, it feels very smart.
26:09I'll take the heavy, ponderous, more dangerous one.
26:15Colin, you're the man who's going to make sure we don't blow ourselves up.
26:18Hopefully, hopefully not blow yourselves up.
26:20Right, well, talk me through how this musket works.
26:23Well, this is a wheel lock
26:25and you've got to put in the main charge,
26:27which is one measure of gunpowder.
26:29Goes down the barrel? Down the barrel.
26:31That's it, tip her down.
26:33Right, now this gun is full of gunpowder
26:35and I'm slightly more scared than I was.
26:37You have every reason to be, sir.
26:39I'm going to give you that. Right.
26:41You take a bit of wadding. OK.
26:43Put that down the gun. Mm-hm.
26:46And this is the ramrod. This is the ramrod.
26:48Hence, ramrod straight. Absolutely.
26:50Right, see, I do know a bit.
26:52This isn't going to blow up when I do this, is it?
26:55All right, let's see. Let's see.
26:57Tell my wife I love her. That'll do.
26:59Replace the ramrod. OK.
27:02And that gun is now ready to go.
27:04Keep it away from your face, don't point it at anybody.
27:07So I take the key and give it a bit of a turn.
27:10Yeah. There we are.
27:14Are we about to give fire? I think so.
27:16That's to your front present, gentlemen.
27:18What does that mean? Point it in front of you.
27:20It means point it. Point it.
27:22OK. Give fire!
27:25WHOOSH
27:29I think it fired. It did fire.
27:31I heard something. Yeah.
27:33And mine fell out. I'm dead.
27:36Do you want to try touch firing it?
27:38If I hold the barrel for you? Yes.
27:40Give him fire. WHOOSH
27:42WHOOSH
27:45Wow.
27:48Perfect.
27:52After the battering it took in the civil war,
27:56Cardiff Castle was lucky to be left standing.
27:59The keep on the hill was badly damaged.
28:02And it might have decayed into obscurity and ruin,
28:06but for a wedding, that changed the fortunes
28:09not only of the castle, but of the whole of Cardiff.
28:18In 1766, an heiress called Charlotte Jane Windsor,
28:23daughter of an aristocrat and MP and the heir to Cardiff Castle,
28:27married a wealthy Scottish landowner, Lord Mount Stewart,
28:31the man who would become better known as the First Marquess of Bute.
28:37Together they set about transforming the castle
28:40that Charlotte had inherited into a comfortable Georgian mansion.
28:48They employed the most famous landscape designer of the day,
28:52Lancelot Capability Brown, to redevelop the castle and its gardens.
28:57Brown infuriated many locals when he demolished the massive Bailey Wall
29:02and swept away a number of ancient historic buildings
29:06to create a sweeping English landscape garden.
29:11The Marquesses of Bute also transformed the town around the castle,
29:16and it all started with coal.
29:27By the 19th century,
29:29the Welsh valleys became studded with steelworks and coal mines,
29:33like this one, known as the Big Pit.
29:39Coal was the super fuel of the Industrial Revolution.
29:43All the new technology was powered by steam,
29:46and to make steam, you need coal, and plenty of it.
29:50Now, as well as owning Cardiff Castle,
29:52the Bute family owned vast tracts of land here in South Wales.
29:57In the early 19th century,
29:59it was discovered that all this land was lying on top of rich seams of coal.
30:04The second Marquess of Bute quickly realised just how valuable the coal could be,
30:09and he exploited it to its fullest,
30:12changing Cardiff and its castle forever.
30:15The Bute family made Cardiff Castle and the city around it what it is today,
30:21and to turn all that coal into hard cash,
30:25someone had to dig it out of the ground.
30:28Everything the Butes created was based on the hard labour of local people,
30:34and the best place to see it is quite literally at the coal face,
30:38at the bottom of this mine.
30:44How long has this mine been here?
30:46How long has the people been coming up and down?
30:48Well, the shaft, it was first sunk in 1860, not quite to the bottom.
30:51In 1880, they made the hole a little bit deeper,
30:54to where we go in today, right at the bottom.
30:56So there have been men coming down this shaft for, what, 120, 130 years?
31:00Yeah. Maybe more. OK.
31:05Right, welcome to Pit Bottom.
31:07Here we are.
31:0890 metres now underground, yeah? 90 metres.
31:10Wow.
31:11Now just turn your light on for me.
31:13Of course, yeah.
31:15So how many miles of tunnels do we have here?
31:17They reckon up to 26 miles of roadway.
31:22When I was a kid, my grandparents used to bring me here,
31:25and it's still incredibly atmospheric to be down in these tunnels.
31:30But what you really get when you're here is the sense that
31:34this was hard, brutal, back-breaking work.
31:38It was hot, it was dangerous,
31:40and in the 19th century, there was precious little legislation
31:43to protect the people, men, women and children as young as five years old,
31:48who were toiling away.
31:50They were toiling away in these tunnels.
31:53But what you've also got to remember is that the painstaking work
31:57dragging coal out of here up to the surface
32:01is what turned Cardiff into an industrial powerhouse
32:05and made the Bute family of Cardiff Castle
32:08one of the wealthiest families in the world.
32:12All that coal and iron from the valleys
32:15needed to be exported to markets around the world,
32:19so the second Marquess of Bute built Cardiff Docks
32:23and transformed the town into one of the biggest ports in the world.
32:42Bute's ambitious development led to a boom in the city's industry
32:47and population during the middle of the 19th century.
33:12The population of Cardiff exploded from less than 2,000 in 1801
33:17to 150,000 a century later.
33:20By 1880, Cardiff had transformed from a small town
33:24into one of the world's busiest ports,
33:27with its docks handling more traffic than New York.
33:31With the vast wealth they accrued,
33:34successive generations of Butes transformed the castle
33:38into a palatial family home,
33:41and soon Cardiff Castle would become famous
33:44for the extraordinary richness and opulence of its interiors.
33:50Yet despite the centuries of peace and prosperity that Cardiff had enjoyed,
33:55its castle would be called once more into military service.
34:01Fortifications originally built in the 11th century
34:04would be tested by 20th-century invaders,
34:07the Nazis.
34:17From the earliest times,
34:19Cardiff Castle kept watch over the Badlands of Wales,
34:22keeping the unruly natives in check.
34:25Under the Tudors, the walls were strengthened and extended.
34:31Then a family of Scottish nobles, the Butes,
34:34not only embellished these buildings,
34:36but also developed the docks,
34:38transforming Cardiff from a small town on the edge of a fortress
34:42into a major modern city.
34:45In 1865, John III Marquess Bute,
34:49reputed to be one of the richest men in the world,
34:52decided to give Cardiff Castle a makeover.
34:56He asked the architect William Burgess
34:58to produce a report on the state of the castle,
35:01with a view to refurbishing it on a grand scale.
35:05The report was one of the most important documents
35:08in this castle's history,
35:10turning an old fortress
35:12into one of the most extraordinary Gothic palaces
35:16in the whole of Britain.
35:22This is a pretty incredible room.
35:24Which part of the castle are we in here?
35:26We're in the clock tower, which is the first part of the tower
35:29to be done as part of the rebuild.
35:31The theme is one of time,
35:33and if you're looking up into the ceiling,
35:35you'll see the signs of the zodiac up there,
35:38and each of the four seasons.
35:40What was this room used for?
35:42This one is called the Winter Smoking Room,
35:45so you'd think, you know, they'd come in here
35:47for cigarettes and cigars and port after dinner.
35:50Lord Bute experimented with drug tobacco
35:54and William Burgess smoked opium,
35:56but that wasn't unusual for Victorian artists and designers.
35:59But it would explain a lot of the design in this.
36:02Well, it's very easy to run away with the idea
36:04of this being an opium-induced fantasy.
36:07I think that's overstating it. It isn't.
36:10But certainly it's that period of imagination and dreams
36:13and Lewis Carroll and all of that sort of thing,
36:16and they just don't know where to stop
36:18because every surface is covered.
36:24So, whose room is it that has mirrors all over the ceiling?
36:28Yeah, I'm afraid you can't miss them, can you?
36:31This is Lord Bute's bedroom.
36:33Bit of a puny bed, isn't it?
36:35It's a single bed, as you can see,
36:37but actually this was really more of a dressing room than a bedroom.
36:40All of this must have cost a fortune.
36:42Yeah, but Lord Bute had a fortune.
36:44He had an income of about £300,000 a year.
36:46This is in the 1860s.
36:48I mean millions and millions of pounds.
36:50But he was using industrial money
36:53to put black gold, coal,
36:56into real gold on the ceiling here.
36:59Bute was creating a pleasure palace,
37:02incorporating all the luxuries of the day.
37:06There's a wonderful bath, which, of course, is all plumbed in.
37:10There's a working lavatory here,
37:12one of the earliest flushing loos in the city.
37:15And also other things.
37:17I mean, there was central heating in the house.
37:19There was electric light.
37:21We were the first house in Wales to be lit by electric light in 1883.
37:25So this is medieval, but with all the mod cons.
37:27Yeah, it's seeing the Middle Ages by moonlight.
37:29It's a very romanticised idea of the past,
37:32but also making sure that you are absolutely comfortable.
37:51We're right at the top of the castle now.
37:53What was this room used for?
37:55Well, that's a good question, really. I don't know.
37:57In fact, I think it's one of those secret worlds
38:00that Lord Bute had at the tops of so many of these towers.
38:03Little personal private spaces all for himself,
38:07but also reflects his interests.
38:09All over the walls, there's this incredible religious imagery
38:12with Hebrew writing underneath it.
38:14Was he a particularly religious man?
38:16Oh, he was. He was a Roman Catholic convert,
38:18so he converted when he was 21.
38:20But look at the details that are pure medieval.
38:23Look at this wonderful fountain.
38:25The water would have come out of the mouths of these fish.
38:28They're being held by beavers.
38:30This is all done with a great zest, a great imagination,
38:33and a great sense of fun.
38:35Despite the religion, Bute didn't take the creative process that seriously.
38:40This castle is meant to be enjoyed.
38:50But in some ways, it's a miracle
38:52that any of this Victorian splendour survives today.
38:56Because in the 20th century, a new enemy took aim at Cardiff,
39:00and this enemy threatened to wipe the city and the castle off the map.
39:07In 1939, Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.
39:12One year later, cities across Britain suffered devastating bombing raids.
39:19In Cardiff, 33,000 houses were bombed
39:23and almost 400 civilians killed during the course of the war.
39:28As the Nazis targeted Bute's docks.
39:31That death toll could have been far higher,
39:34but fortunately for the people of Cardiff, the castle came to the rescue.
39:42This castle's walls were built to withstand
39:44the worst the Middle Ages could throw at them.
39:47But when the Blitz began in Cardiff,
39:49it was a time of great panic and chaos.
39:54Here in the medieval ramparts, four entrance holes were cut,
39:58leading to a network of tunnels deep below the rock.
40:06They were close enough to the city centre
40:08for people to flee here when they heard the air raid siren.
40:12And you can still expect it.
40:14But it was only a matter of time
40:16before the city was completely destroyed.
40:19People were forced to flee here when they heard the air raid siren,
40:23and you can still explore them today.
40:41The castle survived the Blitz.
40:44Shortly after the war, the 5th Marquess of Bute inherited the castle.
40:49But with his family fortunes having declined substantially,
40:53he found himself struggling.
40:56With a heavy heart, he sold off the last of the family's property in Cardiff
41:01and gave the castle and the landscape parklands around it
41:05as a gift to the city.
41:14It severed the Bute family's 181-year connection with Cardiff,
41:19but gave the city a lasting legacy.
41:31Wales isn't the Wild West any more.
41:33The only battles fought here today
41:35are on the turf of the Principality Stadium.
41:38But this fortress stands as a vivid reminder
41:41of the tenacity, the tirelessness and the defiance
41:45of the people who used a castle to make a city.
42:11WELCOME BACK