The Date of Caernarvon Castle

Nearly forty years ago Sir Charles Peers read a paper of outstanding importance on Caernarvon Castle. The description he then gave of the various buildings of which the castle is composed is printed in the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society. It will never be bettered, combining as it does a mastery of detail with a simple and lucid presentation of a most complicated structure. It is prefaced by an analysis of contemporary documents bearing on the original work of construction, on the gradual progress of building and on the castle's subsequent history. On the strength of these records a concise building sequence is established, and this has in its turn been adopted as the basis of all subsequent writings on the castle. A dated ground-plan, setting out this sequence in graphic form, accompanied the printed account, and has since been widely reproduced.