DAN JONES: For me, a great British castle
is a fortress, a palace, a home.
And a symbol of power, majesty, and fear.
For nearly 1,000 years,
castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.
These magnificent buildings have been home
to some of the greatest heroes and villains in our national history.
And many of them still stand proudly today
bursting with incredible stories
of warfare, treachery, intrigue, passion and murder.
Join me, Dan Jones,
as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.
This time, I'm in Cardiff Castle.
Today, it's bursting with Victorian wealth and splendor,
but it also has a history rich in dastardly deeds,
horrible executions, bloody rebellions,
even helped fight off the Nazis.
Good morning. Receipt please.
Thank you.
Good day.
-Thank you very much. -All right.
JONES: For many centuries, Britain had a wild west,
fertile and full of opportunity
but also lawless, violent and restless.
Today, we call it Wales,
a place famous for music for legends, and, of course, for rugby.
Throughout its history, Wales has been fiercely independent.
It has caused a lot of would be conquerors a lot of problems.
And that's why the whole place is studded with castles,
from the huge fortresses of the North
to the strongholds here in the South near the Bristol Channel.
My favorite of all of them is here in Cardiff.
Today, Cardiff is the capital of Wales and one of Britain's greatest cities.
It's also the place where Doctor Who is filmed, which is quite fitting,
because over the centuries, Cardiff Castle has had plenty of its own incarnations.
The original castle was built in the middle ages.
But today's visitors are mostly coming to see the extraordinary rooms
inside these Victorian gothic wings.
They were built by the third Marquess of Bute,
one of the richest men in the world.
He spent a fortune on these lavish interiors
at the end of the 19th century.
This banqueting hall might look like something
straight out of the middle ages,
in fact it was built in the 1870's and no expense was spared.
This was a time when medieval decoration was all the rage.
But what I love about it is that as soon as you step into this room,
you feel like you're transported into Cardiff Castle's incredible history.
The story of Cardiff Castle begins in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings.
Sailing from France, William Duke of Normandy
challenged the Anglo-Saxon king Harold II for the throne of England.
(SOLDIERS GRUNTING)
After a raging day long battle,
Harold was killed.
According to the legend, he took an arrow through the eye.
On Christmas day, 1066, William, now known as "The Conqueror"
was crowned King William I.
William's Norman army set about colonizing the whole of England.
They did it with castles which they built across the land.
And when they were done with England,
William and the Normans turned their sight westwards on Wales.
But the Welsh weren't just going to roll over.
The Normans had to do something dramatic to show off their power.
And they did what they were most famous for.
They built a castle right here in Cardiff.
When the Normans got here, they found the remains of an ancient Roman fort
built almost 1,000 years earlier
to protect the conquering Roman soldiers
from hostile tribes of native Britons living nearby.
You can still see sections of the Roman wall here
outlined in red sandstone.
Now, the Romans left Britain in the fifth century AD.
And forts like the one here at Cardiff were allowed to crumble.
But when the Normans arrived, there was still enough left
perfectly located and just begging to be built upon.
JONES: Marc, this is a typical Norman castle?
MARC MORRIS: This is absolutely text book.
What the Normans were doing after 1066...
You've got a motte-and-bailey.
The motte being this great mound of earth we see here,
and the bailey being everything else, the wider enclosure.
And the bailey is where you have basically all the buildings.
You have your horses within here, you have your great hall,
your chapel, your rooms where the knights sleep, everything.
And is this what we call the keep?
The bit on top, we would now call it the keep.
They would've just called it either the motte or the great tower.
We've got a stone tower here now,
but back in William the Conqueror's day,
a wooden tower on top, wooden buildings everywhere.
Marc, what would this space have been used for?
Well, the motte would've been used for defense
if the castle was under attack.
For living, when the Lord was in residence.
But also used as a prison.
One of the things that people tend to forget about the Normans,
is that, whilst they were very violent in their warfare,
when you surrendered to the Normans, they would spare your life.
In a word, chivalrous.
Because they had the ability, with castles, to confine people.
You can lock them up and throw away the key,
but you don't kill them, you just put them in prison.
JONES: Cardiff Castle became the power base
from which the Normans fought to control the natives of Wales
and police the lands bordering England.
In the centuries to come,
Cardiff would be the scene of savage uprisings,
brutal tyranny and blood curdling executions.
But ironically, the first man to fall foul of Cardiff Castle
was William the Conqueror's own son.
Cardiff Castle was originally built in the 11th century,
to impose the authority of William the Conqueror
and his Norman invaders over South Wales.
But bullying the Welsh was relatively easy.
What the Normans couldn't do was get along with each other.
When William the Conqueror died in 1087, he was survived by three sons.
The oldest was called Robert,
the second was another William, and the youngest was Henry.
All three wanted their father's throne.
The next in line should've been William the Conqueror's eldest son Robert.
He was a little stout man and his nicknames included "Fat legs"
and "Curthose" which basically means shorty pants.
And Robert Curthose is buried here
in one of the most magnificent buildings in England,
Gloucester Cathedral.
Robert was weak and easily influenced.
He had fallen out with his father several times.
And at the time of the old king William the Conqueror's death in 1087,
Robert had been banished abroad.
It was the middle brother, William Rufus,
who was named as the Conqueror's successor
and crowned King William II.
But that wasn't the end of the family feud.
In 1100, William II was killed in a hunting accident,
when a stray arrow hit him in the back.
This enabled the youngest brother to pounce.
Robert Curthose was away fighting on a crusade,
and in his absence, Henry now grabbed the throne,
and was crowned Henry I.
Understandably, Robert wasn't very impressed.
Losing the crown to one younger brother, well, that was bad enough.
Losing it to a second, it was starting to get a bit silly.
He started raising troops and causing Henry as much trouble as possible.
And that was his undoing.
In 1106, Robert's armies clashed with Henry's armies
at a great battle in Normandy.
Robert was defeated and he was captured
and his younger brother decided to put him out of the way for good.
That didn't mean death, but the alternative was still pretty bad.
Henry locked Robert up and threw away the key.
At first, Robert was imprisoned in the West country.
But after 20 years of that, in 1126, he was brought here to Cardiff Castle.
By now, he was in his 70's.
But he still had nearly another decade of captivity ahead of him.
In 1134, when he was an extraordinary 80 years old,
Robert Curthose died still imprisoned here in Cardiff Castle.
Now, as the son of one king and the brother of another,
he would've been in fairly luxurious conditions.
This was more like house arrest than being locked in a dungeon.
He spent his time here at Cardiff Castle learning the local language,
and at least one poem in Welsh has traditionally been attributed to him.
That includes the line, "Woe to him that is not old enough to die."
I think that's an incredibly poignant insight,
into the mind of a man who saw far more of the inside of Norman castles
than he'd have ever wanted to.
Robert Curthose wouldn't be the last enemy of the King of England
to see out his days in Cardiff Castle,
but few of them would die in their beds of old age.
Instead, many suffered violent and painful ends
as Cardiff Castle entered an era of executions and bloody rebellions.
During the 12th and 13th centuries,
Cardiff's defenses were constantly beefed up.
The castle on the hill would've been connected to the southern gatehouse
by a huge wall which split the courtyard known as the bailey, in two.
In the early 14th century,
Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of a family of English nobles
called the Despensers.
Under this family, the castle became a feared symbol
of English power and authority, and Hugh Despenser, the Younger,
proved to be one of the most merciless, blood-thirsty and hated men
in the whole of Welsh history.
Hugh Despenser was a ruthless, ambitious favorite
of England's deeply unpopular king, Edward II,
who came to the throne in 1307.
Despenser used his influence with the king
to build up a massive power base here in South Wales during the 1320's.
He took the title Lord of Glamorgan which gave him control of Cardiff Castle.
And from here, he exercised a reign of terror, tyranny, and corruption
that would eventually shake the whole kingdom.
One of his first acts of diabolical violence and flagrant injustice
took place right here in the castle grounds.
Despenser was despised throughout England
because of his influence over the foolish King Edward.
But he was especially loathed in South Wales.
One of his most despicable acts involved a local Welsh hero
called Llywelyn Bren.
In 1316, bad weather had devastated crops
and famine was ravaging the people of Wales.
Provoked by the hardship all around him,
Bren, a local Welsh Lord, rose in revolt against the King.
Soon, his rebellion was spreading across all of South Wales.
When Edward II learned about Bren's rising,
he sent 2000 men into Wales to crush him.
Now, this was a spectacular show of military force.
And Bren soon realized, the only sensible option was to head,
quite literally, for the hills, these hills,
the rugged and wingswept, Brecon Beacons.
But even that wasn't enough.
With English troops approaching from two directions,
on March, 1316, Llywelyn Bren surrendered.
Bren's one condition was that he alone should be punished.
Now, that impressed his English captors.
They thought it was a great display of chivalry.
Several high ranking English Lords asked the King to pardon him,
but it didn't work out that way.
In 1318, two years after he was captured,
Bren was transferred to Cardiff Castle,
and he fell into the hands of Hugh Despenser.
This was a disaster for Bren,
because once he'd gotten back to his stronghold,
it became clear that the vengeful Despenser
had no interest in letting Bren go free.
In fact, he wanted him dead to send a message to his rival English lords
who'd spoken up in Bren's favor.
To flex his muscles and assert his power.
Despenser's influence with the King was so great,
that no one could stand in his way.
Without the benefit of a fair trial with a total disregard for justice,
he declared Bren a traitor
and sentenced him to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
This was a terrible way for an honorable man to go.
Dragged through the streets behind a horse,
choked with a noose, and disemboweled while still alive.
It was one of the slowest, most savage, and agonizing deaths imaginable.
With a taste for blood, and an iron grip on the King,
very soon Despenser, the Master of Cardiff Castle,
wasn't just terrorizing South Wales,
he held sway over the whole kingdom.
For the next four years, he would be the power behind Edward II's throne.
But eventually, his evil deeds came back to bite him.
Despenser's influence had estranged the King from his wife,
Queen Isabella, who was in self-imposed exile in France.
Now, the Queen teamed up with another mighty Baron from the Welsh borders
called Roger Mortimer.
Together, they launched an invasion of England
overthrew the unpopular king, and put Despenser in prison.
He was sentenced to the same horrific death
that he inflicted on Bren,
to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
It was said that when he was imprisoned, he attempted to starve himself to death.
But there was to be no escape.
Here at Reading University,
there's grizzly evidence that may help us to understand
the savagery of death the Despensers suffered.
Mary, where do this bones come from?
So, they were discovered at Hulton Abbey in Staffordshire
when they were excavated inside of the church.
JONES: Why do we think these might be the remains of Hugh Despenser?
So the bones we have c14 dating, so, they date around 1300's.
And there were very few candidates, if this was hung, drawn and quartered,
for that practice during that time.
One was Hugh Despenser. So, I contacted the archivist
in charge of the Abbey and the burials there.
The archivist responded that Hugh Despenser,
he had been executed and his wife petitioned for his head
and few vertebra, and one of his thigh bone, and it took me a few minutes
to realize that the elements in the skeleton that I was missing
on my individual work is head,
his thigh bone and some vertebra
and it just seemed too much of a coincidence, really, not to be true.
But probably the most obvious thing that we see
one of the neck vertebra at the top,
and there's a clean cut mark straight through the vertebra.
And this is a very clear sign of beheading.
If we move down the spine,
-these are just higher up in his chest... -Okay.
...vertebra, and they have been sliced
-down the middle, straight across... -I see. Yeah.
...by sword or an ax.
So it's as if somebody has been cut
-this way vertically... -Yes, yes.
-Down the side of the skeleton. -Okay.
So when you look at this vertebrae in particular, if you turn it over,
there's also a very clean slice
across the middle, so he's been cut this way
-and cut that way, so he's been quartered. -Oh.
So he would have been alive when he was being dragged by the back of the horse.
And then, he would have been put on the ladder
and he would have not been hanged the way we think of hanging.
He would've actually been choked,
so that he would've been alive when they were eviscerating him.
And, probably, he only died when they took him down from the ladder
and then they beheaded him.
So, it was a very political execution, a very public execution.
So all the evidence is pointing towards this being the skeleton
of Hugh Despenser.
I think there's a weight of evidence to suggest this is Hugh Despenser, yes.
JONES: Hugh Despenser is remembered as brutal and evil,
but also for reaping what he sowed.
This stained glass window in the castle
shows him with his coat of arms upside down.
It's a sign of disgrace and shame.
With Despenser's gruesome death,
one of the most violent periods in the history of Cardiff Castle had ended.
But in the coming centuries,
the castle's defenses would be tested to their limit
by some of the bloodiest rebellions in British history.
Fire!
(SOLDIERS GRUNTING)
By the 14th century, Cardiff Castle had come to symbolize
the power of English Kings over the people of Wales.
That power was wielded by the lords of Cardiff Castle
such as the cruel and corrupt Hugh Despenser.
As a result, the castle was always a natural target for rebellion.
At the start of the 15th century,
the last great Welsh rising against the English crown began.
The Welsh national hero Owain Glyndwr claimed the title Prince of Wales
and led a violent revolt against King Henry IV.
By 1483, Glyndwr and his men burned the city of Cardiff
and placed the castle under siege.
Eventually, the castle running out of food,
down to its last 24 cannonballs
and a few bags of gun powder, they surrendered.
But not before it had been badly damaged.
It was a stunning victory for Glyndwr and the rebels.
The English were humiliated, and although they eventually regained the castle,
it took years for Henry IV
to subdue Glyndwr's rebellions across South Wales.
But when order was restored, the English took terrible revenge.
The English passed a series of laws called the penal laws
which stripped the native Welsh off their legal rights.
Welshmen were forbidden to carry weapons, own properties in English towns,
speak their own language, or hold public office.
This was a form of apartheid.
If you were within this castle's walls, you had personal rights.
If you were outside, you barely had any.
The draconian laws that followed the defeat of Glyndwr's rebellion
may have been harsh and repressive,
but they did succeed in subduing the population of Wales
and a period of relative peace followed.
A succession of aristocratic owners
developed the castle buildings around the old Norman Keep.
In Tudor times, these new wings were further expanded.
But by the 17th century,
Cardiff Castle was once more in the firing line
as a new and deadly conflict began to grip Britain.
In 1642, increasingly bitter hostilities
between King Charles I and his enemies in parliament
erupted into a civil war that tore Britain in half.
The King's supporters, cavaliers,
battled the parliamentary army, the roundheads,
led by Oliver Cromwell.
At stake was the whole system of British government.
Should the country be ruled by headstrong kings
or a dangerously radical parliament?
During this long struggle,
Cardiff Castle was besieged several times.
It was held first by the parliamentarians and then by the royalists.
As fighting with canon and guns spilled into the streets around it,
the castle was badly damaged.
And no wonder,
gun powder was now being used extensively,
and it changed the nature of warfare.
Canons could wreck the castle walls
and defenders and attackers alike were using small arms called muskets.
To get a taste for this new form of warfare
which challenged Cardiff Castle's defenses,
I've come to have a go
at firing a few weapons from the period myself.
When did muskets appear on the battlefield?
They took over nearly 17th century
and are the dominant weapons on the battlefield until the 19th century.
We've got some muskets here. They all look very different.
This is a matchlock, which is the most common type.
It's mass produced, and it fires with a piece of match
held at the serpent mechanism here.
This is a wheel lock.
It's more expensive and therefore rarer than the matchlock
and has a flint in the firing mechanism here
which does the firing for you.
And this is a carbine, this a cut down version of the flintlock.
Really useful for cavalry, 'cause you can take it by your saddle
and dismount and fire with it.
And what do they all fire?
They fire lead balls,
like, this is an actual civil war musket ball
and you see, it's half an inch across, solid lead.
When it hits you, the entry wound's half an inch across.
The lead will then spread out and impact with your body.
So the exit wound on the far side of you
is going to be about six inches across, maximum.
You're gonna have a horrible death. Even the guns are dangerous.
They are totally inaccurate.
JONES: Well, I think we should have a go at firing them.
Let's go for it. I suggest you have this.
-Thank you very much indeed. -The up market version.
Yes, it feels very smart.
I'll take the heavy, ponderous, more dangerous one.
(CHUCKLES)
Colin, you're the man who's gonna make sure we don't blow ourselves up.
Hopefully. Hopefully, don't blow yourselves up.
Well, talk me through how this musket works.
This is a wheel lock.
And you've got to put in the main charge
which is one measure of gun powder.
-Goes down the barrel? -Goes down in the barrel, that's it.
Right. So now, this gun is full of gun powder
and I'm slightly more scared than I was.
Oh, you have every reason to be, sir.
I'm gonna give you that.
-Right. -Take a bit of wadding...
-Okay. -Put it right there in the gun.
Mmm-hmm.
And this is the ramrod.
-This is the ramrod. -Ramrod straight.
-Absolutely. -Mmm. So I do know a bit.
This isn't gonna blow up when I do this, is it?
-(LAUGHS) Let's see. -Let's see.
-Tell my wife I love her. -That'll do.
-Good. Replace the ramrod. -Okay.
And that gun is now ready to go.
Keep it away from your face. Don't point it at anybody.
So, I take the key and give it
-a bit of a turn. -Yeah.
There we are.
Are we about to give fire?
To your front, present, gentlemen.
-What does that mean? -It means point it.
Point it.
Okay.
Give fire!
-(FIRES GUN) -Whoo!
-I think it fired. -It did fire.
I heard something.
-Yeah. -And mine fell out.
I'm dead.
You want to try touch firing if I hold the barrel for you.
Yes.
Give him fire.
-(FIRES) -Whoo!
Wow!
Perfect.
JONES: After the battering it took in the Civil War,
Cardiff Castle was lucky to be left standing.
The keep on the hill was badly damaged.
And it might've decayed into obscurity and ruin,
but for a wedding that changed the fortunes, not only of the castle,
but of the whole of Cardiff.
In 1766, an heiress called Charlotte Jane Windsor,
daughter of an aristocrat and MP and the heir to Cardiff Castle
married a wealthy Scottish land owner, Lord Mount Stuart,
the man who had been better known as the first Marquess of Bute.
Together, they set about transforming the castle that Charlotte had inherited
into a comfortable Georgian mansion.
They employed the most famous landscape designer of the day
Lancelot Capability Brown,
to redevelop the castle and its gardens.
Brown infuriated many locals when he demolished the massive bailey wall
and swept away a number of ancient historic buildings
to create a sweeping English landscape garden.
The Marquess of Bute also transformed the town around the castle.
And it all started with coal.
By the 19th century, the Welsh valleys
became studded with steel works and coal mines.
Like this one known as the big pit.
Coal was the super fuel of the industrial revolution.
All the new technology was powered by steam, and to make steam
you need coal and plenty of it.
As well as owning Cardiff Castle,
the Bute family owned vast tracts of land
here in South Wales.
In the early 19th century, it was discovered
that all this land was lying on top of rich seams of coal.
The second Marquess of Bute quickly realized
just how valuable the coal could be and he exploited it to its fullest,
changing Cardiff and its castle forever.
The Bute family made Cardiff Castle and the city around it what it is today.
And to turn all that coal into hard cash, someone had to dig it out of the ground.
Everything the Butes created
was based on the hard labor of local people.
And the best place to see it is quite literally at the coalface
at the bottom of this mine.
How long has this mine been here?
How long have people been coming up and down?
Well, a shaft was first sunk in 1860, not quite to the bottom.
In 1880, they made the hole a little bit deeper
to where we go into today, right in the bottom.
So the men have been coming down this shaft for what, 120, 130 years?
-Yeah, yeah. -Maybe more, okay.
Right, welcome to the bottom.
-Here we are. -Ninety meters underground, 90 meters.
-Wow. -Can you turn your light on for me?
-Of course, yeah. -Yeah.
So how many miles of tunnels are there?
We reckon up to 26 miles of roadway.
When I was a kid, my grandparents used to bring me here
and it's still incredibly atmospheric to be down in these tunnels.
What you really get when you're here is the sense that
this was hard, brutal, back-breaking work.
It was hot, it was dangerous. In the 19th century,
there was a precious little legislation to protect the people,
men, women and children as young as five years old
who were toiling away in these tunnels.
But what you've also got to remember
is that the painstaking work dragging coal out of here, up to the surface,
is what turned Cardiff into an industrial powerhouse
and made the Bute family of Cardiff Castle
one of the wealthiest families in the world.
All that coal and iron from the valleys needed to be exported
to markets around the world.
So the second Marquess of Bute built Cardiff docks
and transformed the town into one of the biggest ports in the world.
Bute's ambitious development led to a boom in the city's industry and population
during the middle of the 19th century.
The population of Cardiff exploded from less than 2000 in 1801
to 150,000 a century later.
By 1880, Cardiff had transformed from a small town
into one of the world's busiest ports
with its docks handling more traffic than New York.
With the vast wealth they accrued, successive generations of Butes
transformed the castle into a palatial family home.
And soon, Cardiff Castle would become famous for the extraordinary richness
and opulence of its interiors.
Yet, despite the centuries of peace and prosperity that Cardiff had enjoyed,
its castle would be called once more into military service.
Fortifications originally built in the 11th century
would be tested by 20th century invaders,
the Nazis.
From the earliest times, Cardiff Castle kept watch
over the bad lands of Wales,
keeping the unruly natives in check.
Under the Tudors, the walls were strengthened and extended.
Then a family of Scottish nobles, the Butes,
not only embellished these buildings,
they redeveloped the docks,
transforming Cardiff from a small town on the edge of a fortress
into a major modern city.
In 1865, John, the third Marquess Bute,
reputed to be one of the richest men in the world,
decided to give Cardiff Castle a makeover.
He asked the architect William Burges
to produce a report on the state of the castle
with a view to refurbishing it on a grand scale.
The report was one of the most important documents in this castle's history.
Turning an old fortress into one of the most extraordinary gothic palaces
in the whole of Britain.
This is a pretty incredible room. Which part of the castle are we in here?
MATTHEW WILLIAMS: We're in the clock tower which is the first part of the tower
to be done as part of a rebuild.
The theme is one of time, and if you start looking at the ceiling,
you will see the signs of the zodiac up there
and each of the four seasons.
JONES: What was this room used for?
This one is called the winter smoking room.
So, you'd think, you know, they would come in here
for cigarettes, and cigars, and port after dinner.
Lord Bute experimented with drug tobacco and William Burges smoked opium.
But that wasn't unusual for Victorian artists and designers.
But it would explain a lot of the design in this.
Well, it's very easy to run away
with the idea of this being an opium induced fantasy.
I think that's overstating it. It isn't.
But, certainly, it's that period of imagination and dreams
and Lewis Carroll and all that sort of thing.
And they just don't know where to stop because every surface is covered.
So whose room is it that has mirrors all over the ceiling?
Yeah, I'm afraid you can't miss them, can you? This is Lord Bute's bedroom.
Bit of a puny bed, isn't it?
It is a single bed as you can see.
But, actually, this was more of a dressing room than a bedroom.
Oh, this must've cost a fortune.
Lord Bute had a fortune.
He had an income of about Â£300,000 a year.
This is in the 1860's.
I mean, millions and millions of pounds.
But he was using industrial money to put black gold, coal,
-into real gold on the ceiling. -Yeah.
JONES: Bute was creating a pleasure palace
incorporating all of the luxuries of the day.
There is a wonderful bath, which of course, is all plumbed in.
There's a working lavatory here,
one of the earliest flushing loos in the city.
And, also, other things. I mean, there was central heating,
in the house, there was electric light.
We were the first house in Wales to be lit by electric lighting in 1883.
So is this medieval, but with all the mod-cons?
Yeah, it's seeing the middle ages by moonlight.
It's a very romanticized idea of the past.
But also making sure that you are absolutely comfortable.
We're at the top of the castle now. What was this room used for?
That a good question really, I don't know. In fact,
I think it's one of those secret worlds
that Lord Bute had at the tops of so many of these towers.
Little, personal, private spaces all for himself.
But also reflects his interests.
All over the walls, there's this incredible religious imagery
with Hebrew writing underneath it.
-Was he particularly a religious man? -Oh, he was.
He was a Roman Catholic convert, so he converted when he was 21.
But look at the details that are pure medieval.
Look at this wonderful fountain.
The water would've come out of the mouths of these fish
that are being held by beavers.
This is all done with a great zest,
a great imagination, and a great sense of fun.
Despite the religion, Bute didn't take
the creative process that seriously. This castle is meant to be enjoyed.
JONES: But in some ways,
it's a miracle that any of this Victorian splendors survives today.
Because in the 20th century, a new enemy took aim at Cardiff.
And this enemy threatened to wipe the city, and the castle, off the map.
(BOMBS WHISTLING)
In 1939, Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.
One year later, cities across Britain suffered devastating bombing raids.
In Cardiff, 33,000 houses were bombed
and almost 400 civilians killed during the course of the war,
as the Nazis targeted Bute's docks.
That death toll could've been far higher,
but fortunately for the people of Cardiff, the castle came to the rescue.
(ALARM BLARING)
This castle's walls were built to withstand the worst
the middle ages could throw at them.
But when the blitz began in Cardiff, it was realized
they could probably stand up to German bombs as well.
Here, in the medieval ramparts, four entrance holes were cut
leading to a network of tunnels deep below the rock.
They were close enough to the city center for people to flee here
when they heard the air-raid siren. You can still explore them today.
The castle survived the blitz.
Shortly after the war, the fifth Marquess of Bute inherited the castle.
But with his family fortunes having declined substantially,
he found himself struggling.
With a heavy heart, he sold off the last of the family's property in Cardiff
and gave the castle and the landscape parklands around it
as a gift to the city.
It severed the Bute family's 181 year connection with Cardiff,
but gave the city a lasting legacy.
Wales isn't the wild west anymore.
The only battles fought here today
are on the turf of the Principality Stadium.
But this fortress stands as a vivid reminder
of the tenacity, the tirelessness and the defiance
of the people who used a castle to make a city.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)