By the estuary of the Tâf, in Carmarthenshire, Laugharne Castle offers a textbook case of the transformation of a medieval castle into a Renaissance house. Its architect was a colourful figure: Sir John Perrot, a flamboyant courtier whom rumour called the illegitimate son of Henry VIII himself.
The favourite and the fortress
In 1584, Elizabeth I granted Laugharne to Sir John Perrot (1528-1592). This great figure — Lord Deputy of Ireland, reputed (by his build and temperament) the natural son of Henry VIII — judged the old fortress little suited to his courtly taste. He undertook to reshape it into a great Renaissance house: wide windows turned towards the sea to catch the light and the view, comfortable domestic chambers, arrangements worthy of a man of the court. He did the same at Carew, his other Welsh seat. Laugharne thus illustrates the passage, under Elizabeth, from the defensive logic to the logic of comfort and display.
A fatal disgrace
Perrot's destiny was as flamboyant as his fall was brutal. A powerful and arrogant man, he made enemies at court; accused of treason, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died in 1592 — perhaps poisoned —, his great house of Laugharne barely completed. His career sums up the fate of so many Elizabethan favourites: a dazzling rise, then a fall all the harder. The castle's gazebo would become, much later, a place of writing dear to the poet Dylan Thomas. To see: the two round medieval towers, the great Tudor windows facing the estuary, the garden, the gazebo.
Did you know?
Sir John Perrot resembled Henry VIII so much — the same imposing stature, the same choleric and authoritarian temperament — that rumour made him a natural son of the king, born of a liaison with Mary Berkeley. Nothing proves it, but Perrot himself seemed to cultivate the legend. An irony of fate: this presumed royal bastard ended his days a prisoner in the Tower of London, condemned for treason under the reign of his presumed half-sister, Elizabeth I.
Notes
Laugharne Castle lies at Laugharne, Carmarthenshire; a ruin run by Cadw, open to visits. Seasonal hours to check.
Quiz
- Who transformed Laugharne into a Renaissance house in 1584?
- Sir John Perrot
- Cardinal Wolsey
- Owain Glyndŵr
- Whose illegitimate son was Perrot said to be?
- Henry VIII
- Francis I
- Charles V
- Where did Perrot die in 1592?
- A prisoner in the Tower of London
- On a battlefield
- In exile in France