If you’ve ever wondered what Cardiff once looked like in Tudor times then you’re in luck. An Elizabethan writer, Rice Merrick, wrote an especially detailed account of the city in the sixteenth century in his A Book of Glamorganshire’s Antiquities, published in 1578. 

Relying also on the earlier mid-sixteenth century work of John Leland, as well as his own observations, he credited the foundation of the town to Sir John Fitzhamon, who he stated created the settlement before 1066. Cardiff gained its city status in the early twentieth century, and so it is difficult for us to imagine the smaller town compared with the sprawling and modern city of today.

The River Taff was the main feature of Tudor Cardiff, which ‘runneth neare the Towne Walles in the West part of the Towne, and washeth the Wall’. However the speed of the river had caused some erosion by the late 1500s, with Merrick noting it was ‘somewhat too hard, for part of it is hereby overturned, and the Sea floweth to the Walls’. Here, where the stone and timber-framed town met the sea, 'there was ‘a faire Key [Quay], to the which both Ships and Botes resort’. 

St John's Church, Cardiff

Residents and visitors could walk along the town’s defensive walls, where strong stone gates controlled access to the east, west, north and south, secured by heavy wooden doors. The South gate, said Merrick, was nearest to the sea, but a tower called Cock’s Tower (‘Cokestour’) was designed for military use, defending the town from potential maritime attack.

Cardiff’s residents worshipped in two churches, built within the walls. St John’s, Merrick called ‘a faire Church, with two ildes [aisles], standing upon… Pillers of faire free stone’. It had a ‘very faire Steeple… with fower [four] steeple gates of free-stone, very workmanly wrought, standing upon four strong Pillers’. The other Tudor church, he said, was ‘of farre greater Antiquity’. It stood in the south west of the community, and the churchyard ‘reached neere the Kay’. In addition, within the walls were built two smaller chapels: a tall building called the Shoemaker’s Chapel, named only because it was situated on Shoemaker’s Street. The other chapel had become a ruin by the late 1500s, but was founded near the West Gate, where beyond it, was also a monastery of the Blackfriars. This monastery was founded by Richard de Clare Earl of Gloucester in 1256, while another, the Greyfriars, was founded by Sir William Herbert, near the North Gate. The mention of chapels, churches and monastic buildings in Cardiff during this period reflect the highly moral and religious lives of its residents. The decayed chapel Merrick saw in 1578 was a sign of the turbulence that earlier Tudors had experienced through the actions of the Reformation forty years previously. 

But what if you were to walk along Cardiff’s streets in 1578? You’d see a ‘well compacted’ town, described as ‘almost Square’. Merrick thought it was beautiful, with ‘many faire Houses and large Streetes’, although accepted that his ‘square’ was a little longer from north to south than it was east to west. There were so many buildings, he said, that there was very little ‘waste ground’ inside the walls, and where there were gardens, they were very small. Officials hurried to the Town Hall to conduct government business, shuffling towards its doors with stacks of paper held in their arms. The aldermen, bailiffs, mayors and magistrates of the council met every two weeks to relate and implement the policies that trickled down from Elizabeth I and her Privy Council in Westminster. As they discussed business inside the Town Hall, the busy High Street outside hummed with trade and chatter. Right next to the hall was a Shambles, Merrick tells us, where goods were sold. Underneath the Council Room was a prison ‘wherein offenders and misdoers are comitted’. It was also here that judges would convict offenders, condemning them to the gaol, or for more serious crimes, to execution. Courts were held every other Thursday.

Continuing our journey, toward the west was a ruined house, with only ‘few Walls yet standing’. This was originally a house commissioned by Sir Roger Vaughan in the fifteenth century. The knight had stipulated that the walls should be thick and high, and it certainly would have stood out along the street while it was being built. However, after Sir Roger’s death after fighting on the side of York in the Wars of the Roses, the building was never finished. It was sold for building materials during the reign of Henry VIII, but not all of it had been taken. For Cardiff’s Elizabethan residents, the fragments of stone still stood stoically as they went about their lives shopping and socialising. It was referred as ‘New Place’. 

The site of Cardiff’s Corn Market was marked by a stone cross ‘covered over with Lead’, and vendors would flock here to sell goods twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Another market was held in the High Street ‘for all other necessaries to be sold’. The town was connected with important trade and business routes, having immediate access to the sea and not far from the major medieval and Tudor port town of Bristol, as well as others. There were more opportunities for trade, entertainment and socialising during the town’s two fairs: one on St Peter and Paul’s Day and the other on the Nativity of St Mary and St Andrew’s Day. Merrick doesn’t mention the many inns and taverns that would have offered wines, ale and food in the town, but does state that ale tasters were appointed each year. The Tudors attempted to regulate the weights and measures of produce to stamp out old medieval habits where a pint might be larger, smaller, or even watered down, depending on where you bought it. Looking among the huddle of buildings with their signs hanging over the doorframes, we’d see the two ale tasters visiting inns and taverns of Cardiff to test the quality and quantity of produce. They would then move to issue fines or further proceedings if the drinks did not meet royal standards.

Just like today, Cardiff’s castle rose stockily in the skyline, and had its own community of nobles, royals and servants. From the north of the town, you approached through a ‘faire Gate, to enter into a faire great outer Court’. Here, Merrick noticed the ruins of houses once inhabited by twelve knights, established for those who had originally accompanied the town's founder Sir Robert Fitzhamon into Glamorgan. By the 1580s though, they were ‘now decayed’, with only one house standing, recently owned in the 1500s by Sir Edward Mansell. In the courtyard was also a Shire Hall along with gardens and orchards which could also be seen elsewhere in the castle grounds. The castle was defended by a ‘deepe Ditch, whereunto the River Taf was to be lett in at pleasure’. He also saw the Black Tower, ‘great… high, and covered with Leadd’ and ‘the most ancient Monument and strongest defence’, the Keep. Merrick also described the many chambers of the castle, bay windows and fortified gates. Close to the inner gate was a well, which provided fresh water to the castle’s inhabitants and officials. The Tudor castle also had an impressive dining hall with bay windows, a buttery, pantry, kitchen and ‘very faire and great Cellars for Wine Cellary and Beere’, although other parts of the castle were, Merrick notes, in a poor state of repair. Access to the town was back through the postern gate. 

Rice Merrick wrote towards the end of the Tudor period, during the reign of Elizabeth I. Through his experiences he left a valuable and enduring image of Cardiff during the later sixteenth century. His words, jotted down, help us to imagine not only the timber-framed, stone walled architecture of Cardiff at that time, but allow us to get a valuable glimpse into everyday town life and inhabitants. 

You might also like The Medieval Women of Cardiff Castle and The Tomb of Robert Curthose, Gloucester Cathedral.

Interested in Tudor history? You might also like my second book, Power Couples of the Tudor Era, published by Pen and Sword Books, which explores the contributions couples made to their own times as well as how they influenced our own. Order your copy here. 

The Tudors are famous for creative expression, art and the theatre during their reigns. But the English Renaissance started a lot earlier than 1485. Find out more in my book Power Couples of the Renaissance. It features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website. 

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Source:

A Book of Glamorganshire’s Antiquities, Rice Merrick Esq 1578 ed., James Andrew Corbett, Dryden, London, 1887

I spend more time than is probably acceptable leafing through old eighteenth and nineteenth century antiquarian magazines looking for transcripts of old household accounts and inventories. But late one night I came across something that made me stop and blink. 

In 1880, Queen Victoria commissioned an inventory into her ancient jewels, to be used for ‘Her Majesty’s private information’. The results were published in that year’s edition of Archaeologia, Volume 45, published by the Society of Antiquaries. 

The sparkly collection, stored in the Private Audience Chamber of Windsor Castle, included items passed down by previous royals, as well as items the queen had obtained more recently. 

The men commissioned to complete the inventory, in their dark suits and high-collared shirts, marvelled at the jewels, some of which were as much as two thousand years old. 

Alexander Bassano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Among the items carefully noted on the inventory was an intaglio impression of a cupid ‘bending his bow’, in red, and set in an oval ring. It was believed to have been made in around 200 BC. There was also a cameo of a Roman emperor wearing a wreath on his head, depicted in profile. This had been in the royal collection for two centuries, previously owned by Charles I before he was king. It was made of agate, and had been broken at one time into eleven pieces but there were clear signs of repair, and was set in a gilt mount. According to an inventory of Charles I’s, ‘this cameo 'was cracked and broken in a former time by the lady Somerset while her husband was Lord Chamberlain’.

Other items included an oval cameo of red and white of ‘a warrior kneeling, with lance over the right shoulder; the Gorgon on his shield’. This piece was dated to around the late third century. Another cameo depicted a female portrait in profile, inventoried as ‘antique Roman work of the third century’. Some of these had been in the collection since the Tudor period, reflecting perhaps the sixteenth-century love of the Renaissance and ‘rebirth’ of classical art, something very much in fashion. This female portrait had been set in the sixteenth century in a gold mount, along with another piece depicting a ‘small figure of a faun or satyr’, dated to the third century, which had a seventeenth century gilt mounting. 

Victoria also owned depictions in rings and pendants of the head of Isis, an Egyptian goddess also worshipped by the ancient Romans; more cameos of male and female busts and one of a lion. Another brings to mind gladiatorial combat, noted as ‘two helmeted heads facing each other, enclosed in a raised rim or border reserved in the blue stratum’, although the helmets were worked in the colour brown. This piece was dated to the third or fourth century. 

Of course, there were some later heirlooms which Victoria might have brought out for a special occasion. An onyx cameo of St George and the Dragon dating to the tenth or eleventh century; a portrait of the medieval French king Louis XII on a ring and a cameo pendant of Elizabeth I. One Italian item created in the sixteenth century was acquired under the queen’s Tudor ancestors and sounds particularly striking. It was noted as a pendant, in enamelled gold and set in a ‘monster pearl, which forms the body of a mermaid. She holds a mirror in the left hand and is dressing her hair with a comb held in the right. The tail is set with rubies on green enamel’. The jewel was suspended by two chains, above which was an ornamental flower, a mother of pearl hanging over the mermaid. Dangling below were three hanging pearls with diamond clasps. 

All these priceless jewels – and many more - survived two thousand years of ownership and ended up in one of Queen Victoria’s cabinets at Windsor in 1880. Many pieces in the collection were clearly diplomatic gifts, like the portrait of Louis XII - while others were picked out by earlier monarchs with a keen eye for a sparkling decoration. Jewels dating to 200 BC were mended and reset in the sixteenth century, demonstrating that care was taken to preserve these items during the English Renaissance. It wasn’t only figures like Isabella de’Este in Mantua who sought out ancient jewellery and artwork for her own collection but also the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, who repaired and safeguarded this jewellery for their descendants. We don’t often think of Queen Victoria as the owner of ancient items of jewellery like these, but her commissioning the inventory towards the end of her reign suggests that she wanted to document them and ensure they would be cared for. A fascinating glimpse into the Victorian Royal Collection. 

You might also like: The Queen of Beauty: Jane Georgiana Seymour, Duchess of Somerset and Is It True that Queen Victoria Hated the Town of Reading? 

Interested in the way Classical works triggered change during the Renaissance? My book, Power Couples of the Renaissance, features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website. 

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Source: Archaeologia, Society of Antiquities, Volume 45, London. 1880. 

First, this was my first visit to Stow-on-the-Wold. We decided to go for a couple of days to a place we’d never been to, have lunch, explore and come home the next day. Looking at some Cotswold villages, I basically did the digital equivalent of sticking a pin blindly onto a map and booked a hotel in the middle of the village. 

Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire, as it turns out, is the opposite of the sleepy, rural village I thought we’d be visiting. Walking around the square, we watched as cars pulled up and American, Spanish and Japanese tourists clambered out with bulging suitcases. A lady we got talking to in the bakery was from Uruguay, while a couple we chatted to in the pub were from Spain. A quick trip to St Edwards Church, famous for having likely inspired The Doors of Durin in Lord of the Rings, soon turned into a long queuing session, waiting to take a photo of the ancient doors in between tourists running up and posing with two fingers in a peace sign, with their tongue sticking out. Later in the evening we returned to find the queue gone and took our own photos until an American couple appeared, with the same idea. 

We parked and headed for The Stag, a honey-coloured stone building in the village square, opposite St Edward’s Church. The building today is thought to be mostly Georgian, but parts of it were once a medieval coach house dating to the 1300s. There are two priest holes, too, reminders of Stow’s religious past. As we’d arrived about an hour before check-in we decided to stay for lunch. Both of us had the Fish and Chips and it was hot, beautifully cooked and full of flavour. As I looked around, I saw everything you’d want from an old pub - crooked ceilings and walls, a dimly-lit dining room with comfy cushions and wooden tables. There were even lovely iron (?) candle lanterns on the tables with tea lights burning inside. My husband, undefeated by his generous lunch, decided to have an affogato with a shot of Cotswold Cream (a creamy whisky liqueur a little like Baileys but with more flavour and complexity, less sweet). We’ve bought a bottle to have at home, we loved it so much. 

The staff on the reception desk were happy to look after our overnight bags, so we went on a little walk to explore Stow-on-the-Wold. In many ways, it’s like going back in time. There were lovely little bakeries with plump, crisp pain au chocolats in the window and so many old pubs, including The Porch House, which claims to be the oldest pub in England. The market cross still stands in the village, along with a crooked building which is said to date to the fifteenth century. One of the supporting parts of the foundation was forgotten while it was built, and so now it leans a little to one side. While my husband scoffed at medieval craftsmanship, I pointed out that it was a mark of quality even that it’s still standing and in use more than 500 years later. 

Back to The Stag, we were shown to our room. Beautifully decorated, with its own bathroom and a big king-sized bed. We loved that there was a kettle for tea and a coffee machine in the room but you had to walk down the stairs to the ground floor to collect fresh milk and drinking water from the fridge there. We often get fed up of those plastic UHT milks while we’re travelling and the waste generated for each dribble of milk, so we thought this was a great move. We did come down in the evening and saw that another guest had stored their four-pack of Stella in the fridge, marking their room number in capital letters on the cardboard sleeve in biro. Did we joke about nicking it? Yes. Did we? No.

Yes, there are creaky steps on the stairs and some low ceilings. But it all adds to the charm of this lovely old inn in one of the Cotswolds’ most historic areas. The staff were amazing, the food was gorgeous and they also had a cocktail menu. We loved that they chose not to add to the mountains of little plastic cups that end up in landfill every day and provided chilled drinking water in glass, reusable bottles. Parking was easy, and we could see our car from our room. The inn might have been welcoming guests since the late 1600s, but the building is thought to be medieval. In many ways it’s modern, caring and trendy, with each of its rooms put together by a local designer, and finished with modern art and what the website calls ‘country chic’. But to stay overnight is to enjoy a piece of history of the beautiful village of Stow and follow in the footsteps of those from centuries past. Highly recommend, and we’d definitely come back if we visited again. 

The Stag at Stow didn’t know we would review this, to them we were just a random couple staying over for one night. All opinions are my own. Find out more for yourself: The Stag at Stow, The Market Square, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, GL54 1AF. 

You might also like: The Old Black Bear, Tewkesbury, The Royal Oak, Tilehurst, and Staying Overnight in a Georgian Brewery in Henley-on-Thames.

The Stag stood during an exciting time in our history, the medieval era, the Tudors and the dawn of the Renaissance. Find out more about this period in my book Power Couples of the Renaissance. It features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website. 

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