1277 & All That

Last day today, and we went to look for the ruins of one of the last true, Welsh, Princes of Wales' castles, near Aber-Miwl, Powys, part of which, pictured. Dolforwyn Castle, built in 1273, and besieged & sacked by Edward the First's English forces in 1277, Llewelyn ap Gruffudd's stronghold was subsequently ceded to the invaders. A shockingly facile précis of events, I know, but the cultural repercussions still reverberate now, over seven hundred years later. I bet no-one outside of Wales was ever given but the faintest clue as to the history of The Marches in history lessons at school: much like all marginalized cultures, ethnic groups and societies, Welsh history has been trivialized as a mere sidebar to the all-important, all conquering Norman English aristocracy and its imperial machinations over the last thousand years or so.

If you go by the name Fitzherbert or Paget, it's likely you'll own considerable lands and property, whereas if you are a Jones, a Parry, or even answer to a more ancient style of appellation such as Gwilym ap Pugh, at best you will be an academic living in modest comfort somewhere like Pen Llyn or Ynys Môn, whilst the ancestors of those ancient invaders still own most of the land and all the mineral rights to our country. Again a crass simplification, but one not far from the nub of the matter, and which applies equally to the rest of the British Isles and its various peoples, whose histories have been subsumed into those of their oppressors and would be lost to time itself, were it not for the efforts of historians more open to their subject, than in my schooldays, at least.