Raglan Castle is undoubtedly the finest late medieval fortress-palace in Britain. A lavish proclamation of the success of an entrepreneurial Welsh family, it was begun during the 1430's by Sir William ap Thomas. This opportunistic veteran of the French wars raised its mighty "Yellow Tower", a moated stronghold equipped with up-to-date gunports and a unique double drawbridge.

His still more successful son William Lord Herbert, Yorkist viceroy in Wales during the Wars of the Roses, added a palatial double-courtyard mansion, luxurious within but defended by a formidable gatehouse ans many-towered walls. Like his father, he imitated fashionable French building styles and employed expert masons whose trademarks can still be seen on Raglan' s finely-dressed sandstone walls.

Built regardless of cost and sumptuosly embellished with carving, the castle became still more splendid under Herbert's Elizabethan descendents, who added a lordly banqueting hall and other fashionable apartments. Yet Raglan remained a fortress, enduring a fierce thirteen-week siege during the Civil War.

The strongly-build Yellow Tower shrugged off bombardment by heavy artillery and when the castle surrendered to Parliament, had to be laboriously undermined before "it fell down in a lump". The strength and high quality of this splendid monument to medieval family pride is indeed still obvious today.