Town in Pembrokeshire, Wales
Pembroke
A Welsh town where a teenage widow gave birth to the first Tudor king, and where Oliver Cromwell needed 48 days to crack a single castle.
Key information
- County
- Pembrokeshire
- Nation
- Wales
- Known for
- Pembroke Castle, birthplace of Henry VII in 1457
- Famous people
- Henry VII, William Marshal, Jasper Tudor, Richard de Clare (Strongbow)
About Pembroke
The castle where the Tudors began
On 28 January 1457, inside Pembroke Castle, Margaret Beaufort gave birth to a boy. She was just 13. Her husband, Edmund Tudor, had died a few months earlier, and the baby arrived into a country sliding towards civil war. He was named Henry. Nearly 30 years later he took the crown at Bosworth as Henry VII and founded the Tudor dynasty, which gave England Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Pembroke was the stronghold of the baby's uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. It was Jasper who looked after the boy and later helped keep his claim alive through years of exile in Brittany.
A fortress built on a limestone ridge
The town grew up around its castle, which stands on a rocky promontory above a tidal arm of the Milford Haven waterway. The first fortress was raised from 1093 by Norman lord Arnulf de Montgomery, probably in timber and earth. The stone giant you see today owes most to William Marshal, who married Isabel de Clare in 1189 and was invested as Earl of Pembroke in 1199. Marshal, a tournament champion who ended up serving as regent for the boy king Henry III, built the great round keep. It rises about 23 metres and is topped with a stone dome, an unusual and strikingly confident piece of medieval engineering. Under the castle is the Wogan, a huge natural cavern that opens onto the river. It was once reached by a stair from the great hall and used as a store and boathouse.
The 48-day siege that ended with a lottery
During the Civil War of 1648, Pembroke's commander, John Poyer, switched sides from Parliament to the King. Oliver Cromwell himself arrived to deal with the rebels. The castle held out for 48 days. Cromwell's guns battered the walls, and the garrison's water supply was cut off. Poyer finally surrendered in July. Three officers were condemned, but only one would die, so they drew lots. Poyer drew the fatal lot and was shot in Covent Garden in 1649. Afterwards the castle was partly demolished, and it sat in ruins for centuries.
One very long street
Pembroke is built along a single main street that follows the ridge below the castle, a layout laid out in the Middle Ages. Long, narrow plots run back from the street on both sides, and parts of the town walls still survive. The walls once ran round the town to protect the settlement, which grew into a busy medieval port and market. Monkton Priory, founded in the 1090s, stands at the western end, a reminder of how closely the Normans tied church and castle together. The tidal Mill Pond beside the castle, once a source of power, gives Pembroke one of the best-looking approaches in Wales.
A name that travelled
The Welsh name, Penfro, means roughly the land's end, and the town has given its name to an enormous number of things. The Earls of Pembroke include some of the most powerful men of medieval England, among them William Marshal, Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, and Jasper Tudor. The name also turns up on the Pembroke Welsh corgi, the short-legged dog long linked with Pembrokeshire and famously loved by Queen Elizabeth II. Even Pembroke Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge carry the title. In the 20th century the castle was rescued and restored, largely by Major-General Sir Ivor Philipps from 1928, and it is now one of the best-preserved Norman castles in Wales.