Longtown Castle

Roman pottery and charcoal date Longtown Castle to a first-century fort built during the Silures resistance, making it nearly two thousand years old before any medieval stone rose. Walter de Lacy later occupied the fort with a wooden tower on its northwest corner, using it to control the valley and resist Welsh forces after the Conquest. Gilbert de Lacy probably replaced that timber structure with the stone ruins visible today around 1150, turning an old military stronghold into a permanent border seat.