Brecon Castle

Brecon Castle (Welsh: Castell Aberhonddu) is a castle in the town of Brecon, Wales. It was built by the Norman Lord Bernard de Neufmarché in 1093, and was frequently assaulted by the Welsh in 13th and 15th centuries. The castle's ownership changed numerous times. It began falling into ruin when Henry VIII executed the last dukes of Buckingham, who at the time controlled the castle. It was renovated and made into a hotel in the early 19th century.

Brecon Castle

History

Bernard de Neufmarché, William the Conqueror's brother,[1] conquered Brycheiniog after killing Rhys ap Tewdwr at the battle of Brecon, which occurred around Easter 1093.[2][3] The Normans subsequently invaded all of South Wales, defeating the local rulers.[1][3] Bernard received the title of Lord of Brecon.[2] He commenced the construction of the motte-and-bailey castle at Brecon in 1093,[4] thereby creating the first stone castle in Wales. The stones were taken from the Roman town of Caer Badden.[2] The castle was built at the merging point of the rivers Usk and Honddu, conferring the benefits of protection and hydropower for mills.[1]

The castle later passed to the de Braose family. When the de Braoses rebelled against King John of England, John captured the castle in 1207. However, the de Braose family retook the castle during the First Barons' War. The Bohun family received the castle in 1241 and held it until 1373 when Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford died without male issue. It eventually passed to the Stafford family,[5] of whom Edmund Stafford, 5th Earl of Stafford (1377-1403), of Stafford Castle, had married Anne of Gloucester (1383-1438), daughter and heiress of Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester (youngest son of King Edward III) by his wife Eleanor de Bohun, the elder daughter and co-heiress of Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford. Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (1477–1521), born in Brecon Castle,[6] was executed for treason in 1521 and posthumously attainted in 1523, when all the family's estates escheated to the crown. Although some estates were later recovered by his descendants, Brecon Castle began the process of dilapidation.[1] The castle was last besieged by Rowland Laugharne, a military commander for the Parliament, in 1645.[5] The Welsh also attacked the castle numerous times, in 1215, 1231, 1233, 1264, 1265, 1273, and 1403.[2] It was first captured by the Welsh in 1215, and it was captured again in 1264 and 1265.[3] The attacks of 1273 and 1403 resulted in serious damage.[2]

Numerous renovations were carried out through the castle's history. A shell keep made of stone was constructed in the late 12th century (the keep was initially made of wood[1]). In 1233, a bailey wall, also made of stone, was constructed. Two towers, one round and the other semi-octagonal, were built in the 13th century and early 14th century, respectively.[2] A hall block was added in 1300.

The castle had become mere ruins by the end of the Georgian era.[4] Renovations were begun in 1809 by Sir Charles Morgan of Tredegar House, and more than £7,000 had been spent on the repairs by 1814.[1] The castle was made a hotel, which it currently continues to be.[4]

gollark: All numbers are two's complement because bee you.
gollark: The rest of the instruction consists of variable-width (for fun) target specifiers. The first N target specifiers in an operation are used as destinations and the remaining ones as sources. N varies per opcode. They can be of the form `000DDD` (pop/push from/to stack index DDD), `001EEE` (peek stack index EEE if source, if destination then push onto EEE if it is empty), `010FFFFFFFF` (8-bit immediate value FFFFFFFF; writes are discarded), `011GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG` (16-bit immediate value GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG; writes are also discarded), `100[H 31 times]` (31-bit immediate because bee you), `101IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII` (16 bits of memory location relative to the base memory address register of the stack the operation is conditional on), `110JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ` (16 bit memory location relative to the top value on that stack instead), `1111LLLMMM` (memory address equal to base memory address of stack LLL plus top of stack MMM), or `1110NNN` (base memory address register of stack MMM).Opcodes (numbered from 0 in order): MOV (1 source, as many destinations as can be parsed validly; the value is copied to all of them), ADD (1 destination, multiple sources), JMP (1 source), NOT (same as MOV), WR (write to output port; multiple sources, first is port number), RE (read from input port; one source for port number, multiple destinations), SUB, AND, OR, XOR, SHR, SHL (bitwise operations), MUL, ROR, ROL, NOP, MUL2 (multiplication with two outputs).
gollark: osmarksISA™️-2028 is a VLIW stack machine. Specifically, it executes a 384-bit instruction composed of 8 48-bit operations in parallel. There are 8 stacks, for safety. Each stack also has an associated base memory address register, which is used in some "addressing modes". Each stack holds 64-bit integers; popping/peeking an empty stack simply returns 0, and the stacks can hold at most 32 items. Exceeding a stack's capacity is runtime undefined behaviour. The operation encoding is: `AABBBCCCCCCCCC`:A = 2-bit conditional operation mode - 0 is "run unconditionally", 1 is "run if top value on stack is 0", 2 is "run if not 0", 3 is "run if first bit is ~~negative~~ 1".B = 3-bit index for the stack to use for the conditional.C = 9-bit opcode (for extensibility).
gollark: By "really fast", I mean "in a few decaminutes, probably".
gollark: I suppose I could just specify it really fast.

References
  1. Parry, Edward. "History of the Brecon Castle" (PDF). breconcastlehotel.co.uk. Retrieved 24 October 2015.
  2. Alan Philips (4 November 2014). Castles of Wales. Amberley Publishing Limited. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-4456-4406-6.
  3. Terry Breverton (30 October 2012). Wales: A Historical Companion. Amberley Publishing Limited. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-4456-0990-4.
  4. "Brecon Castle". britainexpress.com. Retrieved 24 October 2015.
  5. Adrian Pettifer (2000). Welsh Castles: A Guide by Counties. Boydell & Brewer. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-85115-778-8.
  6. GEC Complete Peerage, vol.XII, p.390

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