The West Gate:
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1. Reconstruction drawing of Cardiff's Westgate.......... 2. 18th Century print of same (source: Cardiff City Library)
The only example of medieval Cardiff’s town gates, which can still be inspected today, if only as a reconstruction, is the West Gate. In its time, it was variably known as ‘Millgate’ and ‘Myllegate’, although Rice Merrick referred to it as ‘Miskin Gate’. West Gate was first mentioned in 1184, when it was described as ‘Poartarune et Palicii Villee de Cardiff’. At that time it was still a timber construction and part of the timber palisade fence which surrounded the town. The tower-like stone construction which eventually replaced the timber gateway, was approximately twenty-five feet (or seven and a half meters) high to the top of the parapet, by c. twenty feet (or six meters) wide, by c. seventeen feet (or five and a quarter meters) deep. The inside of the structure had a slightly arched ceiling, c. seventeen to eighteen feet (or five and a half meters) above the road surface. It was fourteen feet (or four and a third meters) wide. The eastern wall of the gate tower building was open while the western wall contained the arched gateway and the wooden, double-leafed gates themselves. Noticeable is that the gateway was not placed centrally into the gate tower. Instead, it was positioned c. two feet (or two-thirds of a meter) off center to the south.
According to both W. Rees and D. Morgan (44), the gatekeeper lived above the gate in an upper storey, supposed to have been known as the ‘Sentry House’. Matthews, on the other hand, only mentioned that the gatekeeper of the southern Castle Gate lived above it and was paid two pence per day. Some confusion seems to have been caused by Matthews' list of Council lease approvals which states under item 23 that Thomas Jenkins leased "a Centry house over North Gate"; but the entry is incomplete. However, an earlier entry says that a "house by North gate" was leased for 99 years as of 1701. Similarly, application 26 is for the lease of a sentry house by West Gate, i.e. as of 1653. As the top of West Gate tower had no upper storey, as far as one can tell by the available evidence, the accommodation could only have been located in a timber superstructure. In fact, the same applies to the North Gate. None of the 17th/18th centuries prints depicting it or West gate show superstructures, either of stone or of timber. Judging by these prints, the Sentry House at the North Gate was actually quite clearly a separate building placed outside the gate. It seems that Matthews accidentally used the expression ‘over’ instead of ‘by’ when translating the list may have been responsible for this confusion.
During the punitive raid on Cardiff in 1404, the West Gate was apparently razed to the ground (45). It has been suggested that some of the rubble from that event was used to cover the road surface of that time. The latter was discovered in the early 20th century, when the extant road surface was removed and a perfectly preserved and original, cobbled road came to light. Whatever happened, the gate was reconstructed during the 47 years after 1404. Thereafter, it held its own for nigh on four centuries. It still stood in 1774 when Paul Sandby produced his above-mentioned print. Even Rowlandson’s aquatint of Cardiff Castle of 1799 suggests that the West Gate still stood. However, the best and most accurate of all illustrations of the gate seems to be an undated painting in Cardiff Castle by an unknown artist (46). It shows the gate and its adjoining southern wall extension as well as the curtain wall that connected it to the Castle. This is the more surprising since the minutes of the Council meeting of 20th September 1781 record "…it was ordered that the West Gate of such Town, be pulled down…". (47). What must have saved it was the timely diversion of Castle Street into the new, due west orientated turn pike road to Cowbridge, by-passing West Street by the Castle wall.
Nevertheless, by the late 1910s the gate tower had completely disintegrated, bar the south- western corner, which once supported one half of the double gate. It still stood as a wall fragment to some six feet (or two meters) by three and a half feet (or one meter), eight feet (or two and three quarter meters) high. The former bearing parts of the hinges were still in their original position (48). In 1921, West Gate was restored, presumably to its original dimensions and appearance. Yet, the curtain wall that was added to join the gate to the Castle appears to have been aligned anew. Both in the undated painting and in Stewart’s plan of 1824 the curtain wall connects clearly to the inner corner of the southern of the three castle towers. Today’s junction on the corner of Beauchamp’s tower does not appear to be in agreement with existing illustrations. However, one ought to consider the fact that the 18th century prints of the West Gate show that houses stood where the curtain wall ought to have been. At least, this raises the possibility that, prior to the undated painting, the wall stood in today’s position after all.
Stewart’s plan also suggests that Cardiff’s western town wall started from the south corner of West Gate. It ran along the outside of the group of houses huddling together in that angle of former West Street (now a path, fenced-off, extending alongside the Castle wall) and the turnpike road to Cowbridge. Perhaps the flush-fitting junction between the town wall and the gate tower explains the off-center position of the gateway itself within the tower. This would not have been noticeable in the structure’s heydays, because wall and tower merged into one another, as illustrated in figure 3a.