Llanblethian Castle

PricingFreeFree for all visitors

Free entry for everyone

Entry

Free for everyone

Pricing details

Free entry for everyone; no membership card is needed.

ParkingParking not known

The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.

Parking details

Cadw names a small car park at the entrance to the site, its own parking spaces on top of a small bank at the end of the narrow lane of Castle Hill; no charge or free statement is published, so the status is recorded as unknown, and reviewers describe free parking for two or three cars. Take care on the narrow lanes. Bike storage is available.

Driving pin: Cadw's marker at the end of Castle Hill lane by the entrance spaces. Cadw publishes no postcode and Google's CF71 7BE falls 400 m away on Town Mill Road. By road: Llanblethian, half a mile south of Cowbridge, off the A48. By rail: Bridgend, 11.3 km. National Cycle Network route 88 passes 4.8 km away.

About

Llanblethian Castle, Castell Llanfleiddan, also known as St Quentin's Castle, is the ruin of a 14th-century fortress on a spur above the River Thaw half a mile south of Cowbridge, probably built by the English nobleman and military commander Gilbert de Clare in the early 1300s. Its most notable remnants are the huge twin-towered gatehouse and a high stretch of curtain wall on the north side; in the centre an earthen mound carries the remains of a thick-walled building that may be all that is left of an earlier keep. Reviewers find well-kept ruins with a few information boards and countryside views, enough for half an hour, and note that the upper levels are sometimes locked. One tip from visitors: the lane up is narrow and the car park at the gate holds only two or three cars. Dogs on short leads may explore the ground level.

Check today’s timesPick a day for times and prices

Today, Saturday 24 October

Llanblethian Castle10:00 – 16:00last admission 15:30

Free entry

Opening times may change at short notice.

Open 10am to 4pm all year, last admission 30 minutes before closing; closed 24, 25 and 26 December and 1 January. No admission charge. Cadw may close monuments at short notice in extreme weather.

Terrain level 2, easy: the sloped, grassed lower grounds hold tumbled stone and may be slippery or muddy; the castle is split into lower and upper levels, with handrails on the upper levels when they are open, which a visitor in May 2026 found locked. No toilets or facilities. Drones are not permitted.

Dogs: Dogs on short leads are welcome on the ground level of the castle; the upper levels are for assistance dogs only.

Photo: The gatehouse of Llanblethian Castle with its pointed entrance arch, seen across the grass under a clear blue sky, with blue spring flowers on the bank in the foreground. FILLUPBEE, CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Quentin%27s_Castle,_Llanblethian.JPG. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.