Abergwyngregyn
Abergwyngregyn is a village in Gwynedd, North Wales adjacent to the A55 five miles east of Bangor, eight miles west of Conwy.
For almost all purposes, the name is shortened to Aber.
Aber Garth Celyn, now known as Abergwyngregyn or Aber, is a settlement of great antiquity and pre-conquest importance on the north coast of Gwynedd. Its boundaries stretch from the Menai Strait up to the headwaters of the Afon Goch and Afon Anafon. Protected to the east by the headland of Penmaenmawr, and at its rear by Snowdonia, it controlled the ancient crossing point of the Lafan Sands to Anglesey. A pre-Roman defensive enclosure, Maes y Gaer, which rises above Garth Celyn on the eastern side of the valley, has far reaching views over Irish Sea with the Isle of Man visible on a clear day. The Roman road from Chester, linking the forts of Conovium and Segontium, crossed the river at this point.
Garth Celyn is a strategic promontory of land overlooking the Menai Strait and the port of Llanfaes on the opposite shore. The Roman road that linked Conovium to Segontium (Caernarfon) looped round the Garth. At the end of the twelfth century, beginning of the thirteenth century, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Llywelyn Fawr, Llywelyn the Great, utilized the promontory to build a royal home, known as Ty Hir, the Long House, in later documents. To the east was the newly endowed Cistercian Monastery of Aberconwy; to the west the cathedral city of Bangor. Between Garth Celyn and the shore, the fertile farmland, provided food for the royal family and the members of the court. The sea and the river had fish in abundance and there was wild game to be hunted in the uplands. In 1211 King John of England brought an army across the river Conwy, and occupied the royal home for a brief period; his troops went on to burn Bangor. Llywelyn's wife, John's daughter Joan, negotiated between the two men, and John withdrew.
- William de Braose, having been found in Llywelyn's chamber together with Joan, was hanged in the marshland below Garth Celyn, the place that was remembered as Gwern y Grog 'Hanging Marsh', in May 1230.
- Joan died at Garth Celyn in 1237;
- Dafydd ap Llywelyn died there in 1246;
- Eleanor de Montfort, Lady of Wales, wife of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, died there on 19 June 1282, giving birth to a baby, Gwenllian.
- In November 1282, the Archbishop of Canterbury came to Garth Celyn to negotiate between King Edward and Tywysog Llywelyn.
- In November 1282, Llywelyn wrote letters dated from Garth Celyn, totally recting the bribe offered by the Crown of England.
On 11 December 1282, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Tywysog Cymru, the Welsh Leader of Wales, was executed. The correspondence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, preserved in Lambeth Palace Archives, London, provides details of the events surrounding the death.
In November 1282 Tywysog Llywelyn had been offered a secret bribe by the English crown; the sum of one thousand pounds a year and an estate in England if he would surrender his nation state unreservedly to the king of England (Lambeth Palace Archives). From his home, Garth Celyn, Tywysog Llywelyn wrote his response, a total refusal of the offer and a clear statement of his duty towards his inheritance. Within a month, on the instructions of Edward Longshanks, he was murdered. Edward’s army closed the net and captured the royal court and with it independent Wales.
After the Conquest the name Garth Celyn was eliminated from the record books. The name, though it continued in local use, was never used in any document of the English administration.
The settlement Aber Garth Celyn adjacent to the royal home became officially known by the English conquerors simply as Aber, ‘Estuary’ with its identity removed; later more descriptively as Aber Gwyn Gregyn, ‘Estuary of the White Shells’. The invasion of Wales was accompanied by savage reprisals against those who had stood in the way of the will of the king of England. On 18 January 1283, Dolwyddelan Castle was occupied by the army of invasion (PRO. E101/359/9)and immediately munitioned to provide a base in the Lledr valley. At Edward’s command raiding parties were sent out into the mountains of Snowdonia to search for booty. The troops were informed that they could claim one shilling as the king’s gift for the head of every Welshman that they brought back to camp.
On 22nd June 1283, Prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd, heir to the Principality, was captured, his hiding place at the foot of Bera in the uplands above Aber Garth Celyn, betrayed. (P.R.O. E101/3/30) Dafydd, seriously wounded ‘graviter vulneratus’ in the struggle was taken that same night to Edward at Rhuddlan. (Cotton Vesp. B xi, f. 30) Wales was plundered, and Edward’s trophies taken across the border into England.
The matrices of the personal seals of Prince Llywelyn, his wife Eleanor de Montfort, daughter of Earl Simon, and his brother Prince Dafydd were seized and placed in the royal Wardrobe. Edward ordered that these also were to be melted down and the silver used to craft a chalice, which he intended to present to the new Cistercian foundation of Vale Royal abbey in Cheshire.
On 2 October 1283, Tywysog Dafydd was put to death at Shrewsbury, by hanging, drawing and quartering. 'Geofrey of Shrewsbury' was paid 20s. for carrying out the gruesome execution. (P.R.O. E101/351/9) (see the lament by Bleddyn Fardd, mourning the loss of a man of great valour, whom he had known personally).
The Welsh royal children were locked away, and never released. Dafydd's two sons, heirs to the Principality / Kingdom of Wales were imprisoned in Bristol castle where they remained for the remainder of their lives. (see Accounts of Bristol castle) Gwenllian was held at Sempringham Priory, Lincolnshire, until her death 54 years later. Dafydd's daughter Gwladys was held at Sixhills Priory.
Garth Celyn was surrounded and deliberately overshadowed by the castles of Conwy, Caernarfon and later Beaumaris. Wales became England’s first colony.
Garth Celyn, the demesne messuage of the royal manor, became known as Pen y Bryn. In 1553 the 'Manor of Aber' was granted to the Thomas family; they converted the remains of Ty Hir, the medieval Long House, the home of the Princes, into an Elizabethan manor house. The tower, Twr Llywelyn, built c.1200, still stands.
Aber Valley
- Aber Falls
The valley provides the access to one of Wales' great waterfalls, the Aber Falls as the Afon Goch falls precipitously, some 120 feet over a sill of igneous rock into a marshy area where it is joined by two tributaries; the enlarged stream, Afon Rhaieadr Fawr, heads towards the Menai Strait and the sea. Part way down it becomes Afon Aber Garth Celyn, or more recently Afon Aber, and the valley was known as Nant Garth Celyn.
- Bont Newydd.(SH66267200)
The single barrel-vault bridge spans Afon Aber Garth Celyn, providing a roadway across the river, some 25 ft in width. The date of construction is unknown, but its existence was marked on the O.S. map of 1822. The bridge provided a safe crossing for drovers leading animals up the valley. Large stones in the river under the bridge mark the site of an earlier ford.
Aber is the coastal crossing point for the ancient drovers and later Roman road that led across the Lafan Sands to Anglesey. The Roman road from Chester crossed the river Conwy south of Tal-y-Cafn, connected with the fort at Conovium [[Caerhun] by a short branch, then led up via Rowen and [Bwlch-y-Ddeufaen]], the Pass of the Two Stones, as an engineered overlay on top of of the earlier British trackway, into Snowdonia. The Roman road descends down Rhiwiau, the valley between Llanfairfechan and Aber, follows the coastal route west, loops round Bryn Llywelyn, Garth Celyn, crosses the river by means of a ford, passes by the church and leads on to the major Roman fort at Segontium, Caernarfon. The drovers road from Anglesey came into the settlement on the valley bottom on the west bank of the valley botom , where provision was made for the animals to be penned and shod, and the feet of the geese to be coated in pitch, and then followed the valley to join with the Roman road.
Three Roman milestones have been discovered in the area. Two of these, found in 1883 in a field called Caegwag, on the farm Rhiwiau Uchaf (SH 67907275), are now in the British Museum, London.
- Maes y Gaer(SH 67327251)
The defensive enclosure, built on a hill that forms the western end of a spur overlooking the valley. It is approx 730 ft. above O.D. The walls of the enclosure are pair shaped and protect an area 400 ft long and 220 ft. wide of about one and a half acres. Maes y Gaer has a steep drop on all sides except the east, where the there is a more gentle slope leading to the pasture land. The entrance is on the south-east, now badly ruined but originally 11 ft. wide, with a passageway to the interior 20 ft. long. Below Maes y Gaer, above Garth Celyn (Pen y Bryn), is a level area of land known as Garth Elin.
Additional
- Aber, Neu Aber Gwyn Gregin
O Aber! mae d’enw mor swynol i’m henaid,
O’m calon y’th garaf tra bwyf yn y byd,
Dy lethrau dryfrithir â gwaith ein hynafiaid,-
Gwrthgloddiau a chaerau a chestyll tra chlyd.
Eu-bannawg fynddau- noddfâu yr hen Gymry
Sy’n orwych ymgodi i’r cymyl di ri’,-
Y Llwydmor a’r Bere, mynyddoedd anwylgu,
Sy’n addurn i’r Aber i brofi ei bri,
Ac yno mae palas yr hen dywysogion
Fu’n llywio y Cymry er’s cannoedd cyn hyn,-
Llywelyn Fawr enwog – hen Gymro twym-galon,
A Dafydd ein brenin fu’n byw’m Mhenybryn.
Hu Eryri. Glan Traeth Wylofain (Hugh Hughes, Aber), (‘Cymru’ O.M. Edwards 1893)
- y Mŵd
'an earthen motte in the mouth of the valley marks the settlement and the prince's residence was set on a shelf just above it to the east.' Dr Colin Gresham (T.C.H.S. 1979) The settlement of Aber Garth Celyn was on the valley bottom on the west bank of the river. The precise nature of the 'earthen motte', Pen y Mŵd, has led to much debate. It was renamed 'Aber Castle Mound' by the Ancient Monumuments Board, on the grounds that 'it was assumed to be a Norman castle'. E. S. Armitage in her work The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles, confused Aber Garth Celyn with Aber Menai leading to the assumption that it might have been constructed by Hugh D'Avranches, earl of Chester. The word Mŵd in early Welsh means 'vault' or 'chamber', and there is no record or proof that the Normans, or anyone else, built a motte and bailey castle at Aber. The mound is circular, 22 foot high with an oval top 57 feet by 48 feet. It has been suggested that it might be a fifth or sixth century A.D. mound built over the body of a local champion warrior lord who in his lifetime had protected his people, and in death was expected to do the same. The area was Christian at this time, but the people still clung to their traditional beliefs. Other similar mounds have been found in western Britain, and while it is difficult to resolve the debate, it is worth mentioning.
Bibliography
- Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions 1962 Article Aber Gwyn Gregin Professor T. Jones Pierce
- Y Traethodydd 1998 Tystiolaeth Garth Celyn
- Gwynfor Evans (2001) Cymru O Hud Abergwyngregyn
- Gwynfor Evans (2002) Eternal Wales Abergwyngregyn
- John Edward Lloyd (1911) A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest (Longmans, Green & Co.) see pages 670-71 for Gwern y Grog
- F. E. Fynes-Clinton (Oxford 1912) The Welsh Vocabulary of the Bangor District
- Harold Hughes and Herbert North (Bangor, 192) The Old Churches of Snowdonia, p.152-155.
Literature
- Saunders Lewis play Siwan
- Thomas Parry play Llywelyn Fawr
- Edith Pargeter novel The Green Branch
- Edith Pargeter novel The Brothers of Gwynedd
- Barbara Erskine novel Child of the Phoenix
- Sharon Penman novel Here be Dragons
- Sharon Penman novel Falls the Shadow"
- Sharon Penman novel The Reckoning