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