Origins of Pembroke Castle

Pembroke Castle is a medieval fortress in Pembrokeshire, in southwestern Wales, standing on a rocky ridge above a tidal inlet. It began as an earth and timber castle built by the Norman lord Arnulf de Montgomery, and was developed into a stone stronghold in the following century. William Marshal, one of the most powerful men in England, added its great round keep, about twenty-four meters high, in the early thirteenth century. The castle was the birthplace of Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII. During the English Civil War, it changed hands, and Oliver Cromwell besieged it in 1648, after which it was partly demolished. It was restored in the twentieth century.

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