With its bailey partially overlain by a derelict public house first mentioned in 1662, the only real remnant of
the castle is now the powerful ditched motte above the banks of the river crossing. The pub occupies the enigmatic traces of the
bailey,
while recent excavation work has shown the bailey interior to be made
up of clay and gravel. The bailey was small, but has now been
heavily mutilated by the pub garden and roadworks feeding the ancient
and modern bridge over the Afon Dwyfor. Almost certainly the site
commanded the Roman crossing of the river on the route between the Roman port of Tremadog
and Segontium.
The castle has no known medieval history, but logically it should be
one of the Norman mottes built by Robert Rhuddlan and his followers in
their overrunning of North Wales in the 1070s or 1080s. 
If this
were so it was certainly destroyed in 1094 when all the castles of
Gwynedd were destroyed. There is no evidence that this was a
Welsh built castle and, being a lowland site, it seems more possible
that it belongs to the group of castles commanding lower-lying
positions in North Wales of the late eleventh century, see the castles
of Gwynedd.Copyright©2016
Paul Martin Remfry