About
Kidwelly Castle, Castell Cydweli, rises above the river Gwendraeth like the fortress of everyone's dreams, which is why it opens Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Established between 1106 and 1115 for Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, as a Norman ringwork of timber and earth, it was attacked repeatedly by the Welsh princes and the Lord Rhys captured it in 1159. By the 1280s the Chaworth brothers, Marcher lords, had built the stone castle within a castle, an inner ward with four round towers inside a D-shaped outer ward, and the Duchy of Lancaster added the great gatehouse; even Owain Glyndwr could not break in. Reviewers call it one of Wales's best-preserved castles, with towers that keep their floors, hidden passages, one-way wall walks with views over the town and grassy wards for picnics. Book online for a small saving and collect the site map at the desk. Dogs on short leads may explore the ground level, and the Wales Coast Path's Kidwelly to Burry Port walk begins at the castle.
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- Kidwelly Castle09:30 – 17:00last admission 16:30
Opening times may change at short notice.
Open daily all year: 1 March to 30 June 9.30am to 5pm; 1 July to 31 August 9.30am to 6pm; 1 September to 31 October 9.30am to 5pm; 1 November to 28 February 10am to 4pm. Last admission 30 minutes before closing. Closed 24, 25 and 26 December and 1 January. Cadw may close monuments at short notice in extreme weather.
Terrain level 2, easy: a single step and a manual door into the visitor centre, then a wide non-slip concrete path with a slight incline over a slatted wooden bridge to the entrance; wheelchair and buggy access to the visitor centre and the ground floor of the castle, whose grassed wards have one short flat path, while the wall walks, towers and basement rooms are reached by steep, narrow, sometimes uneven stairs with low doorways and one-way systems, and the main tower leads to an open viewpoint on its curved roof. Gravel and cobbles can defeat some mobility scooters. Toilets on the lower level by the visitor centre with an accessible cubicle and baby changing. Portable induction loop, defibrillator, dog bowl, two picnic tables, gift shop with guidebooks and an exhibition; no cafe. Drones are not permitted.
Dogs: Dogs on short leads are welcome on the ground-floor levels; the upper levels are for assistance dogs only.
Photo: Kidwelly Castle's round towers and curtain walls along the grassy slope of its ridge, seen from the low ground below. Iphrit, CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kidwelly_castle_whole.JPG. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.
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Walking routes2 routes
Kidwelly to Burry Port (Wales Coast Path)(opens the full route on the National Trust site)
WalkDog access not confirmed16 km distance
