While you’re in the bailey of Nevern Castle, take a look at the back of the Throne (built around 2000 and diligently restored 2021-4 by Patrick Beaumont). You’ll see two escutcheons – coats of arms on shields. The one with two red bars is that of the FitzMartins, the Norman lords who first built the castle; the other has a lion and three ravens, and is supposed to represent the Lord Rhys.
But we’ve recently discovered that the lion and three ravens actually belonged to a different and distantly related Rhys, a couple of centuries later.
The mistake was pointed out by Roger Turvey, the historian of early medieval Wales, whose book The Lord Rhys: Prince of Deheubarth is regarded as an excellent account of Rhys and the period.
Coats of arms are awarded and recorded by the College of Arms on behalf of the Sovereign. They don’t record pictures of arms; instead, they record the blazon, a written description of the arms. The holder of a particular blazon is then entitled to render this into pictorial form in a variety of traditional styles.
The blazon of The Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd, as confirmed by the College of Arms, is:
Gules a Lion Rampant in a Bordure indented Or
Or in more modern language, “On a red background, a yellow upright lion within a serrated border.”
Typical renditions of this blazon would look like this:
The design on the left appears alongside the effigy of Rhys in St David’s Cathedral (although it is known that the face of the effigy is not actually Rhys’).
The confusion apparently came about when the throne was being made. There are two other prominent nobles called Rhys ap Gruffydd. One was in the 16th century, whose coat of arms included ravens; and the other in the 14th century, who also lived near Cardigan.
We’ve decided not to change the Throne, but the coat of arms has been updated on this website and will be in future literature.
