Porth-Mawr Gatehouse
gatehouse in Crickhowell, Powys, Wales
Porth-Mawr (Great Gate) is a gatehouse on Brecon Street in the centre of Crickhowell, Powys, Wales. Constructed in the 15th century by a branch of the Herbert family as the entrance to their Tudor mansion of Cwrt Carw, it is a Grade I listed building.
History and description
The Herbert family, of Raglan Castle, were Anglo-Welsh nobility whom became predominant in South East Wales in the 15th century. A branch of the family constructed a large mansion at Crickhowell, Cwrt Carw (Cwrt-y-Carw), and Porth-Mawr (Great Gate) was built as a grand gatehouse entrance to the mansion in the late 15th century. The mansion itself was torn down in the 19th century after a serious fire, and a new house was built on the site in around 1825. At the same time, the gatehouse, and the attached wall in which it is set, were given castellated decoration. Robert Scourfield and Richard Haslam, in their Powys volume in the Buildings of Wales series, describe the reconstruction as "highly Picturesque". The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales attributes the wall to the late 18th and/or early 19th centuries.
The gatehouse is built of rubble and is of two-storeys. A spiral staircase leads to a first-storey chamber and the gatehouse has a small turret to the roof.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17743102. Authority coordinates are 51.860, -3.138. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1825.
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This entry incorporates text from “Porth-Mawr Gatehouse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.