Wiston Castle (Castell Cas-wis)

Wiston is what every castle looked like first: a steep earth motte thrown up by the Flemish settler Wizo around 1100, later topped with a polygonal stone shell keep whose walls still ring the summit. Cadw calls it one of the best-preserved motte-and-bailey castles in Wales, and because it never grew into a great stone fortress it shows the earliest form with nothing in the way.

Entry is free and access is a short walk from the village lane. It's an atmospheric fifteen minutes rather than an afternoon — the value is in reading the landscape: motte, bailey platform, the church beside it, a Norman colonial package dropped whole into Welsh Dyfed nine centuries ago.

Fold it into a heritage run with Picton Castle and Scolton Manor, both minutes away by car.