Conwy Town Walls - Gwynedd, Wales, Great Britain.
N 53° 16.896 W 003° 49.880
30U E 444573 N 5903919
Conwy's town walls some of the finest and best preserved sets of defensive medieval walls in Europe, with twenty-one towers and several gateways. The Walls are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, administered by CADW, located in Conwy, Gwynedd, Wales.
Waymark Code: WMHQ3X
Location: North Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 08/03/2013
Views: 8
Cadw is a Welsh word meaning ‘to keep’ or ‘to protect’.
"The walls of Conwy are judged the finest in Britain. They are not only completely intact, but largely unencumbered by later building, and still give the impression of enclosing and protecting the town. Like the castle, their history is well documented, and they are sufficiently well-preserved in detail to demonstrate all the tactical features of their design.
The circuit of the wall is 3/4 of a mile in length, with 21 towers at regular intervals of about 46m. The wall is 1.68m thick and 9m high, with towers rising to 15m. Externally it presented a continuous stone face, but the towers were open-backed, the wall-walk maintained across then by a series of removable wooden bridges. This insured that each section, with its independent stair to ground level, could be isolated if it was attacked and scaled. At wall-walk level, each tower had a floor (set back from the bridge) which gave access to the lower arrowslits and to a stair to the battlements. They may not have been roofed.
The wall and towers provided 480 firing positions, the projecting towers covering the base of the wall to either side. Tower 13 at the highest point illustrates the tactic of the surveillance system; it is set forward of the wall-line to give a clear view of the approach to the Upper Gate and down the north side." Text Source: (
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"Conwy's town walls are a medieval defensive structure around the town of Conwy in North Wales. The walls were constructed between 1283 and 1287 after the foundation of Conwy by Edward I, and were designed to form an integrated system of defence alongside Conwy Castle. The walls are 1.3 km (0.81 mi) long and include 21 towers and three gatehouses. The project was completed using large quantities of labourers brought in from England; The walls were slightly damaged during the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr in 1401, but political changes in the 16th century reduced the need to maintain such defences around the town. The fortifications were treated sympathetically during the development of the road and railway systems in Conwy during the 19th century and survived largely intact into the modern period. Today the walls form part of the UNESCO world heritage site administered by Cadw. Historians Oliver Creighton and Robert Higham describe the defences as "one of the most impressive walled circuits" in Europe. Text Source: (
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CADW url: (
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Property page on UNESCO World Heritage website: (
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