At the same period, a large single-storey building was added near the keep to serve as the county court. M uch of the building work in the outer ward may also belong to the early 13th-century work of William Marshall, and the main plan of the present defences remains as originally constructed. However, the apparently almost perfect preservation of this work is largely an illusion, as there was at the castle a systematic programme of restoration in the 19th and early 20th century. There were postern gates on either side, defended by the St Ann Bastion and Monkton Tower respectively, but the main gatehouse, with its two portcullises, stout doors, three machicolations, or murder holes, in the vaulting and its series of arrowslits, is one of the finest and earliest of its kind. The western Bygate Tower has a prison in its basement, then each gate tower has a ground and two upper floors reached by stairs spiralling in opposite directions.
Doors lead from the upper rooms on to the wall walk.
Photo Copyright 1994 by Jeffrey L. Thomas . T he castle was granted out by the crown with a series of short-lived tenancies, and fell into considerable disrepair. In 1405 Francis Court was hastily given munitions to hold the castle against Owain Glyndwr's uprising . The room in the Henry VII tower, in which tradition states that the future king was born, is a most unlikely birthplace, and is to be hoped that his mother, the widowed Lady Margaret Beaufort, was given more consideration. P embroke declared its support for Parliament at the beginning of the Civil War , but in 1648 the town's mayor, John Poyer, disgruntled at his lack of reward, joined a disaffected group of Roundheads unwilling to be demobilized.