Barry Castle is located at 53m above the Ordnance Datum and 15km south-west of Cardiff Castle. The castle on the site of a former Romano-British farmstead. There are remains of three buildings which formed the south and east sides of a small quadrangular court that was entered at the south-east. There may have been another building on the western side and for a tower at the south-west angle.

During clearance work in the 1960s, traces of hearths and pits associated with twelve century potsherds were revealed. There may have been a primary castle ringwork in the location, as the estate map of 1622 shows a circular enclosure. The stone east building was raised in the thirteenth century, possibly by Lucas de Barry, and the more extensive south range is likely to have been the work of John de Barry who held the manor for most of the first half of the fourteenth century.

The north and south gable ends survive from the rectangular east building. Before the building was recorded by Clark in1874, it was converted into a barn during the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The structure was unchanged until 1956 when two houses were built beside it. At this time the eastern wall was demolished and it was dated as medieval and it was found to include Roman tiles and tufa blocks. The western wall was modern and dated from the barn conversion. The existence of the west building is known from sections of the south and east walls that were discovered during the digging of cable trenches in 1960 and 1979.

The building of phase 2 is aligned east to west and its south wall forms the greater part of the south perimeter. The foundations were noted by Clark in 1834. At the south-west corner they were destroyed when an air raid shelter was built in the Second World War. During clearance work features of a sixteenth century ale house were discovered, including its foundations.

The gatehouse, dated 1600-1720, is the most impressive remnant of the castle, incorporating the eastern gable of the south building and comprising a vaulted gate passage beneath a small portcullis chamber. The only significant surviving section of the curtain wall is to the east. The foundations of the north curtain wall were removed during housebuilding in the 1920s.

RCAHMW, 15 August, 2011

Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Glamorgan, Volume III ? Part 1b, Medieval Secular Monuments, The Later Castles
From 1217 to the Present (LM1)