Built in 1614 and modified in the early nineteenth century, the Beaumaris Courthouse is the oldest active court building in Britain and the only Welsh courthouse to survive from before 1700. The interior is largely Georgian: an unaltered jury box, dock, witness box and judge's bench in dark oak, with the original public gallery overhead.
The court still occasionally hears cases. When not in use it opens as a museum, ticketed together with the gaol a few streets away — the natural pairing, since defendants tried here were often sentenced to its cells. The interpretation is light but the rooms speak for themselves; sit in the dock and look up at the bench, and Welsh justice from the Stuart era to the Victorian feels uncomfortably close.