Cowbridge as we know it today, however, developed from the 'new town' established in 1254 by Richard de Clare, Lord of Glamorgan. The town walls, the church and the burgage plots date from this time. The subsequent development of Cowbridge has been as a market town for the Vale of Glamorgan - its stock market still operates every Tuesday. In addition, it became an educational, administrative and social centre for the Vale.

The Grammar School was founded in 1608 (and was owned between 1685 and 1918 by Jesus College, Oxford); the Great Sessions and Quarter Sessions were held in Cowbridge until the early nineteenth century; wealthy families of the Vale of Glamorgan built town houses along the High Street, giving them the right to vote - and lots of social contacts, with meetings and balls especially in the Assembly Room of the Spread Eagle Inn and in the Bear Hotel. Another claim to fame is that in the late 1800s there were 27 public houses in existence along the High Street and its continuation in Eastgate and Westgate.

These street names remind us that in the medieval walls there were originally four gates which controlled access to the town. For three of them the main purpose was to collect tolls from those going to market; the fourth, the North Gate (the base of which was recently discovered by excavation) only gave access for stock to the marshy lands to the north. The Eastgate (near the present Town Hall) and the Westgate (adjoining the Mason's Arms Inn) were removed in the eighteenth century as they presented a real obstacle to the growing stage coach traffic along the main road.

The South Gate (shown in the picture at the top of this page) still remains in good condition however, next to the Grammar School, though it has lost its one-time upper room. Of the walls themselves, the best preserved stretches run along the west, from The Mason's Arms on the High Street to a circular bastion in the south west corner (there is a pleasant walkway along the walls here), and then along the south side past the Southgate to another bastion on the comer of the Grammar School gardens. On the north side of the town, the burgage plots have encroached beyond the wall and the town ditch, so the evidence is very occasional - in changes in stonework in the burgage plot walls and in signs 9f subsidence over the filled in ditch!

Cowbridge today is a prosperous, bustling little town, famed for its restaurants, antique shops and boutiques, with a wealth of fine eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings, many of which were built around earlier structures. Particularly noteworthy are the town houses like Woodstock House, Old Hall, Caecady House and Great House. The church is large and was known as the Cathedral of the Vale, with a south aisle donated in 1473 by Lady Ann Neville, wife of Richard III. Cowbridge is well worth a visit!

More information about Cowbridge and the surrounding area is available on the Vale of Glamorgan's website.