Category Archives: Walks

A visit to the 12th century Birkenhead Priory #1 – The Medieval buildings

Introduction

The chapter house

Birkenhead Priory is one of the most enjoyably unexpected places I have visited in the region, even more surprising than a Roman bath-house embedded in a 1980s Prestatyn housing estate. The priory site incorporates both the remains of the 12th century monastic establishment and the ruins of St Mary’s 1822 parish church with its surviving tower and terrific views. On all sides the site is surrounded by both heavy and light industry. Cammell Lairds shipyard not only butts up against the south and east walls, but purchased part of the priory’s former churchyard and cemetery for its expansion and the building of Princess Dock. On the other sides are warehouses and commercial units. The result is that in spite of the clanging and banging from the vast ship under construction immediately next door (fascinating in its own right), the obvious and somewhat inescapable cliché is that the ruins of the priory and parish church are an oasis of peace in the midst of all the busy activity. The small but quiet stretches of grass, the trees and the wild flowers contained within the remains of the priory site are a treat, and the splendid views from the top of St Mary’s tower are a powerful reminder of how the world has changed since the foundation of the priory.

I have divided this post into two parts, because there is so much to say. A visit to Birkenhead Priory is really five visits in one. In chronological order, a visit to the site provides you with the following heritage:

1) The priory, established in the 12th century and built of red sandstone, is the oldest part of the site and the star turn with its vaulted undercroft and chapter house
2) St Mary’s parish church was built next to the ruins in 1821 to serve the growing community, its gothic revival windows wonderfully featuring cast iron window tracery
3) The priory’s scriptorium over the Chapter House, now with wood paneling over the sandstone walls, is the exhibition area for the Friends of the training ship HMS Conway,
4) The Cammell-Laird shipyard is hard up against the priory’s foundations and fabulously visible from St Mary’s Tower. When it wished to expand into the church’s churchyard, it purchased the land and re-located the burials
5) St Mary’s Tower, which is open to the public with amazing views from the top, is now a memorial to the 1939 HMS Thetis submarine disaster in the Mersey.

In this part, part 1 I am taking a look at the priory. In part 2 I have looked at the post-dissolution history of the site; the 1821 construction of St Mary’s parish church; the memorial to HMS Thetis and the display area for HMS Conway. I will tackle Cammell Laird’s separately, as I suspect that it will be very difficult to handle in a single post, and I need to do a lot more research before I make the attempt to summarize its history.

Birkenhead in the foreground with the manor and ruins of the monastery, and Liverpool in the background over the river, c.1767, showing just how isolated Birkenhead remained even in the 18th century. Attributed to Charles Eyes. Source: ArtUK

Foundation of the priory in the 12th Century

Artist’s impression of the priory done by E.W. Cox by 1896.

The priory was dedicated to St Mary and St James the Great. There are no documents surviving from the priory, and none of its priors became important in other areas of the church or in life beyond the priory, so most of the information comes from other sources of documentation as well as from the architecture itself. Its principal biographer, R. Stewart-Brown, writing in 1925, commented that it was “not possible to compile anything in any degree resembling a history of this small and obscure priory,” but the result of his work was an impressive overview of the priory, its financial stresses and its involvement in the Wirral as a whole and the Mersey ferry in particular. Much recommended if you can get hold of it. Although not certain, is thought that the priory was founded in the mid-12th century by one of William the Conqueror’s Norman followers who was rewarded for his service to the new king and the local earl Hugh Lupus with land on the Wirral. His name was Hamon (sometimes Hamo) de Massey from Dunham Massey, the second baron, who died in 1185, suggesting that the priory was founded before this date, probably in the middle of the 12th century.

Exterior of the west range, showing the two big windows that illuminated the guest quarters, the one on the left heavily modified.

The priory was established on an isolated headland, surrounded on three sides by water. Hamon almost certainly took as his model for the priory the abbey of St Werburgh in Chester (now Chester Cathedral) which was founded in 1093 by Hugh d’Avranches, also known as Hugh Lupus. Hugh Lupus had convinced St Anselm of Bec (later Archbishop of Canterbury and after his death canonized) to come and establish St Werburgh’s, and it was organized along classic Benedictine lines, about which more below. The founding of a monastic establishment was seen as a Christian act, a statement of piety and devotion, and was most importantly a precautionary investment in one’s afterlife, securing the prayers of the monks, considered amongst the closest to God, throughout the entire lifetime of the monastery

A priory was smaller and inferior in status to an abbey and was was often dependent (i.e. a subset) of an abbey, and answerable to it. It is possible that the much larger and infinitely more prestigious St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester supplied the monks to establish Birkenhead Piory, but there is no sign in the cartularies (formal documents and charters) of St Werburgh’s that there was any ongoing formal connection between the two. The difference between a non-dependent priory and an abbey was usually that the priory did not have sufficient numbers to be classified as an abbey, or that it had not applied for the royal stamp of approval required for the more senior status of an abbey. The minimum requirement for the foundation of a Benedictine abbey was 12-13 monks. A 16th century historian suggested that there were 16 monks, but it is by no means clear where this figure came from. Twice during the 14th century it is recorded that there were only five monks at the priory, and it is very likely that the priory remained too small to become an abbey.

The typical monastic day in a Benedictine monastery. Not a great photo, but a very nice representation from a display in the museum area in the undercroft

The Benedictine Order was not the oldest of the monastic orders in Britain, but following the Norman Conquest it became the most widespread. It was named for St Benedict of Nursia who, in the 6th century, set out a Rule, or set of guidelines, for his own monastery. This spread widely and became the basis of many monastic establishments setting out to follow his example. The Benedictines had been well established in France at the time of the Conquest, and sponsorship by incoming Normans, granted land by William the Conqueror, ensured that they spread rapidly in England, and later Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Benedictine monasteries were all built to a standard architectural layout, with minor deviations, based on both religious and administrative requirements.

The monastic buildings

Plan of the Birkenhead Priory site. Source: Metropolitan Borough of Wirral leaflet (with my annotations in colour). North is left, south right.

If you take the guided tour, which I sincerely recommend, you begin your tour in the undercroft, now used as a museum / display space. Most helpfully it has a scale model of the priory with Stewart-Brown’s 1925 site plan, both of which help you to orientate yourself and get a sense of how the ruins were once a complex of buildings that defined and enabled a monastic community, combining religious, administrative, domestic and other functions. In the plan on the left, with the surviving remains of the priory outlined in red, the site of the priory church outlined in orange and remains of the 1822 St Mary’s Church outlined in green. The blue margin indicates the shipyard over the priory wall. The numbers on the plan are referred to in the description below. You can download a copy of the map (without the coloured additions) as a PDF here.

Like St Werburgh’s Abbey, the priory buildings were made of locally available red sandstone. Like all monasteries based on Benedictine lines, the monastic site plan began with a square. The bigger the monastery envisaged, the bigger the square. This was known as the garth (1 in the plan on the left), and was either a grassed area or a garden. Surrounding this was the cloister, a covered walkway that served as a link between the buildings that were erected around the garth, and where desks were usually arranged so that the monks could work. This was a secluded space, confined to the inmates of the monastery.

Model of the priory church and claustral buildings in the priory’s museum space in the undercroft showing a possible layout of the church. The chapter in this view is hidden behind the tower.

The most conspicuous of the buildings would have been the one that no longer stands: the church and its tower (4 on the plan above, outlined in orange), which made up one side of the cloister. Traditionally in Benedictine complexes this was built on the north side of the garth, making up an entire side of the cloister, in order protect the rest of the buildings and allow light into the garth and the other cloister buildings, but at Birkenhead Priory’s church was on the south, possibly to protect the claustral buildings from the winds whistling down and across the Mersey. The model and plan show that the 13th century church was built in the standard cross-shape. It featured a long nave at the west end (where the public were permitted to observe religious ceremonies), and a surprisingly long east end (where the ceremonies were performed) with two side-transepts, which were usually used as chapels for commemorating the dead and a tower over the crossing. A pair of aisles flanked the south and north transepts as show above. When it was first built in the 12th century, the church would have been much smaller and probably smaller than this footprint.

View of Birkenhead Priory by Samuel and Nathan Buck in 1726, showing the remains of the church’s northern arcade. Source: Panteek

Lonely remainder of the church’s northern arcade

The entrance to the chapter house with its Norman arches. You can clearly see the difference between the 12th century chapter house masonry and the 14th century scriptorium above with its gothic window and tracery. The tower in the background belongs to the 19th century church.

The chapter house (2) is the oldest of the Birkenhead Priory buildings, the only one remaining that dates to the 12th century. The building of the priory church, being the place where the main business of praising God took place, was usually started straight away, but the chapter house was often built in tandem as this was also of fundamental importance to a monastery. This is where the everyday business of the priory was attended to, from the day-to-day administration and disciplinary matters, to the daily readings of chapters of St Benedict’s Rules or other improving texts such as excerpts from one of the many histories of saints (hagiographies). The Birkenhead Priory’s original medieval chapter house is a gorgeous. The vaulted roof of the chapter house is superb (see the photo at the very top of this post), and although the windows have been altered over time, one of the deep Norman Romanesque window embrasures survives, and is a thing of real beauty (see below). The stained glass is all modern, but all are nicely done, the one over the altar by Sir Ninian Cowper combining religious themes relevant to the house (St Mary and St James flanking Jesus) with two prestigious characters from the priory’s own history (its founder Hamo de Massey and its two-time visitor Edward I). Gravestones from the medieval cemetery have been incorporated into the floor around the post-Dissolution altar. In the medieval priory, there would have been no altar in the chapter house, but following the Dissolution the chapter house was converted into a chapel and is still used for weddings, funerals and baptisms.

Over the top of the chapter house, a scriptorium was added in the 14th century. In theory this was where the copying of books took place, but it has been pointed out that this was a particularly large space for such an activity, and it may have been used for something else, or for a number of different activities. Today it is the display area for the training ship HMS Conway, and at some point in the 19th or early 20th century was provided with panelling and has some very fine modern stained glass by David Hillhouse. This modern usage will be discussed in part 2.

Opposite the chapter house the remains of the west range (7-11) survives, which was again a two-floor building separated into a number of different spaces It seems to have been divided into two, with the northern end and its big fireplace reserved for guests, and the southern end, with an entrance into the cloister, seems to have been split into two floors, with a fireplace on each, for the prior’s personal quarters, which would have included a private parlour that he could use for entertaining VIP guests. Although it’s not the most aesthetically stunning of the surviving claustral buildings today, the stonework displays a fascinating patchwork of different features and alterations that reflect many changes and refinements in use over time and are still something of a fascinating puzzle.

West Range

Remodelling in the 14th century created the undercroft and the refectory above it, as well as the kitchen. The undercroft (14), once used as a storage space, with the original floor intact. The investment in the lovely architecture may indicate that before it was used as a storage area, it had a more high profile role, perhaps as a dining area for guests. Above it was the refectory, unlike St Werburgh’s, Basingwerk Abbey or Valle Crucis Abbey, all of which had refectories at ground level. It was reached by a spiral stone staircase leads up to this space today.

The kitchen was apparently to the north of the west range, and connected to it, as shown on the above plan (12). This was convenient for the guest quarters, but not quite as convenient for the refectory over the undercroft, from which it was divided by a buttery (or store-room, 13), over which a guest room was also installed. The kitchen was apparently a stand-alone structure made mainly of timber, and this may have been because kitchen fires were so common, and building the kitchen slightly apart from the main monastery would have been a sensible precaution. Kitchen fires are thought to have been the cause of several devastating scenes of destruction in monastic establishments, spreading quickly via roof timbers and wooden furnishings.

Between the chapter house and the north range, which contained the undercroft and refectory, was an infirmary (19 on the plan) and the dormitory (18) side by side, each accessible from the cloister. The infirmary was for the benefit of the monks, and was where those who were sick or injured or suffering the impacts of old age were cared for.

Sources of income and financial difficulties

Carved head in the side of the fireplace in the guest quarters on the ground floor of the west range

Monasteries were amongst the most important land-owners in medieval Britain, on a par with the aristocracy. Their income came mainly from agricultural activities, both crops and livestock, as well as making and selling bread, beer, buttery and honey; but they might also own mills, mines, quarries and fisheries and the rights to anchorage, foreshore finds and the use of boats on rivers. For those with coastal and estuary locations with foreshore rights, there was, as Stewart-Brown lists, the benefits of flotsam (items accidentally lost from a boat or ship, jetsam (items deliberately tossed overboard), salvage from shipwrecks and keel toll. The luckier (or most strategically inclined) monasteries and churches also had pilgrim shrines, sometimes reliquaries imported from overseas. St John’s Church in Chester had a miraculous rood screen, St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester had the shrine containing the bones of St Werburgh herself, and Basingwerk Abbey had the neighbouring holy well of St Winifred. These attracted donations and bequests and were good for the settlements in which they stood, because the pilgrims needed places to stay, food and drink, and would probably buy souvenirs. Birkenhead Priory had no such shrine, but it probably felt the impact of the pilgrim route as the ferry crossing over the Mersey, which it ran free of charge, was an important link between Lancashire, west Cheshire and northeast Wales.

Some of the monastic landholdings on the Wirral. Source: Gill Chitty, on Merseyside Archaeology Society website

The original foundation of the monastery would have included both the land on which the monastery sat, funding for building it, and an economic infrastructure of landholdings as well as the income of some local churches. The long list of land-holdings sounds impressive, but most of them appear to have been quite small and scattered, some of which will have been wooded and some wasteland, not all of it suitable for cultivation or pasture. These include lands in Birkhenhead (including the home farm in Claughton with its mill), Moreton (with a mill and dovecote), Tranmere, Higher Bebington, Bidston, Heswall, Upton, Backford, Saughall, Chester, Leftwich, Burnden at Great Lever in Middleton, Newsham in Walton, Melling in Halsall, and Oxton. Either at foundation or not long afterwards, the priory was granted the incomes of the churches of Bidston, Backford, Davenham and half of the church of Wallasey, and claimed rights of Bowdon church that were disputed.

Carving at the base of a window arch in the west range

The monastery did not flourish with these assets. In spite of the claim that there were 16 monks at the time of its foundation, the records made by official church visitors suggests there were only a small number of monks at any one time (only five in 1379, 1381, and 1469, and seven, including two novices, in 1518 and 1524), and there is plenty of evidence to indicate that the priory struggled financially. Monasteries had significant overheads including feeding the community, buying tools and supplies, repairing monastic and farm buildings, appointing stewards and other employees, providing charitable alms and providing hospitality free of charge. Where they earned incomes from churches and chapels, they were also responsible for the provision of the clergy and shared part of the cost of maintaining the buildings. Ambitious priors often invested in building projects, sometimes to improve the monastic offering, sometimes for prestige, and even with donations this was usually costly. There were also occasional challenges to bequests made to churches from following generations, which involved costly legal proceedings. Balancing the books was a frequent problem for monastic establishments, and the priors of Birkenhead Priory were no different.

There were quite limited means by which the priors of Birkenhead might increase their income. The most obvious way of generating ongoing income was to acquire more land through gifts and bequests. In this endevour the priory probably had a real disadvantage in being near to both St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester and, across the river Dee, Basingwerk Abbey at Holywell. Both abbeys had significant land-holdings on the Wirral, and both had pilgrim shrines and were on pilgrim routes. Both were large and prestigious, and were far more likely to attract big gifts than a small and rather remote priory. If Birkenhead hoped to attract gifts of land, it probably had to depend on local landowners and merchants who felt a personal connection with the priory but would not necessarily have had the wherewithal to significantly change the income-earning potential of the priory, providing personal items rather than swathes of land. For these very local gifts and legacies, it is entirely possible that the priory was also in competition with contemporary parish churches on the Wirral. There are records in the early 16th century, not long before the monastery was closed during the Dissolution, that give an idea of the sort of bequests made by local people in return for requiem masses to be recited for their souls: one will provided a painting of the Crucifixion for the priory church. Another bequeathed the owner’s best horse, 10 shillings, and a ring of gold.

As the Middle Ages progressed, populations expanded and both new and old towns began to hold markets where everyday goods and more prestigious products could be traded, even once-isolated monasteries found themselves becoming integrated into the secular world and in competition with it. It certainly did not initially help the monks at first that during the early 13th century Liverpool began to grow. Under the Benedictine rules, monasteries had an obligation to provide hospitality to visitors when required, and the Birkenhead monks ran the ferry over the Mersey as a charitable service. When the priory was first established, offering occasional hospitality and running the ferry free of charge were not onerous. This changed rapidly after 1207 when Liverpool was granted burgh status by King John, as the following translation of the original Latin charter confirms (Translation from Picton 1884):

The 1207 charter of Liverpool by King John. Source: Royal Charters of Liverpool leaflet

John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, Aquitain, and Earl of Anjou, to all his faithful subjects who may have wished to have burgages in the town of Liverpool greeting. Know ye that we have granted to all our faithful people who may have taken burgages at Liverpul that they may have all liberties and free customs in the town of Liverpul which any free borough on the sea hath in our land. And therefore we command you that securely and in our peace you come there to receive and inhabit our burgages. And in testimony hereof we transmit to you these our letters patent. Witness Simon de Pateshill at Winchester on the 28th day of August in the ninth year of our reign.

A little later Liverpool was granted the right to hold markets and fairs, and the links between Liverpool and the busy port of Chester grew to be increasingly important. There was no infrastructure to cope with this increase in human traffic. They were already offering a ferry service free of charge but even more pressing on their resources was the cost of housing guests. There were no inns between Liverpool and Chester (showing a lack of commercial ambition on the part of both Liverpool and Chester medieval merchants!), so the monks found themselves obliged to offer accommodation and food, which the rules of the Benedictine order required them to offer free of charge. This hospitality became particularly difficult if there was a spell of bad weather, during which those waiting to cross from Birkenhead to Liverpool would have to wait at the priory until the weather improved and crossings could resume. They were also were troubled with all the through-traffic that travelled along a route that ran through the monk’s Birkenhead lands close to the priory buildings.

The spiral staircase from the undercroft into the former refectory

It must have exacerbated the monks’ financial situation when Edward I visited the monastery twice with his entourage during this period. Edward’s first visit was in September 1275 for three nights, seeking a diplomatic solution to his dispute with the self-styled Prince of Wales, Llywelyn the Last of Gwynedd. His second was in 1277 for six days with the apparently dual motives of pursuing his campaign against Llywelyn and receiving a delegation from Scotland to settle a boundary dispute. Although the king would pay the costs of his entourage and horses, the cost of entertaining the king and his most senior advisors fell to the monastery. Hosting a royal entourage was notoriously expensive, and any contributions made by a visiting monarch to a monastic establishment only rarely compensated for the outlay.

One of the measures to improve their income in the 1270s involved the expense of serious litigation when incumbent prior claimed that the church had been presented in its entirety to the priory. This was disputed by the Massey family, who triumphed in the courts. Fortunately for the priory, in 1278 the 5th Hamon de Massey came to an agreement with the monks to their benefit. Other litigation occurred over pasture rights in Bidston and Claughton.

In 1284 the priory received permission from Edward I, who had probably witnessed the priory’s problems at first hand in the 1270s, to divert the road that disrupted the priory “to the manifest scandal of their religion” and to provide the priory court with an enclosure, either a ditch, hedge or wall, to preserve its privacy. This would have incurred costs, but would have eased one of the problems caused by the ferry. Rather more significant for their finances, early in the 14th century the priory was granted a licence to build and charge for guest lodgings at the ferry at Woodside, and in 1311 they were granted the rights to sell food there. It was at this time that the church was expanded, which would have been a significant project.

Chapter house building with scriptorium room added over the top in the 14th century.

The first half of the 14th century had been hard for most of western Europe, with both famine due to anomalous weather conditions that caused crops to fail, followed only a few decades later by a plague that killed huge numbers of people. In Britain the famine lasted from 1315-17 and the Black Death arrived in 1348. The priory survived both the famine and the plague, as did the settlement of Liverpool, now a century old. At some point in the first half of the 14th century, the priory acquired land in Liverpool so that the monks could begin to trade their goods at market, building a granary or warehouse on Water Street (then known as Bank Street).

In 1316 the hospital of St John the Baptist in Chester was judged to be seriously mismanaged and was put into the hands of the priory, perhaps because of their experience running their own infirmary. This was a failure, merely adding to the priory’s problems, and was removed from their care in 1341.

Multiple layers in the west range, with a window added into the top of a former fireplace, blocking it, and a fireplace above it.

In 1333 Edward III requested monasteries to contribute to the expenses of the marriage of his sister Eleanor. Local monasteries who contributed included Birkenhead, which contributed £3 6s 8d and Chester’s St Werburgh’s Abbey which, bigger and more prosperous, gave £13 6s 8d. There were doubtless other payments of this sort, occasional and therefore unpredictable, and impossible to resist. The priory was also liable for taxation.

The ferry from Woodside had continued to be supplied free of charge, but the priory appealed to Edward III and was permitted for the first time to charge tolls in 1330, setting a precedent that remains today. A challenge to the monk to operate the ferry and claim the tolls, was challenged by the Black Prince in 1353, but the priory produced its charter and successfully resisted the removal of this privilege. The tolls charged were recorded at that time: 2d for a man and horse, laden or not; 1/4d for a man on foot or 1/2d on a Saturday market dasy if he had a pack

Other ways of generating income from lands to which they had rights were also explored, and from records of litigation against them, they were often accused of infringing forest law. Wirral had been defined as a forest by the Norman earls of Chester, which restricted how the land could be used. The monks were clearly assarting (cutting down wood to convert to fields and pasture), reclaiming waterlogged land, enclosing certain areas and cutting peat for fuel. The priory was able to argue special exemptions for some of the charges, and produced the charters to prove it, but at other times they were fined for the infractions. In 1357, for example, they were fined for keeping 20 pigs in the woods.

A number of monastic establishments seem to have responded to surviving the plague by redefining themselves via architectural transformations. Whatever the reasons for this trend, Birkenhead Priory was no exception and the 14th century could have been an expensive time for the monks. The frater range (including the elaborate vaulted undercroft and the refectory) was completely rebuilt and the west range was remodelled. The room today described as a scriptorium was also added over the chapter house at this time. Although Stewart-Brown suggests that much of this could have been accomplished with “pious industry . . . without much cost” with the assistance of donations of labour and money, that is probably somewhat optimistic, and there would have been an outlay. Certainly, at the end of the century the priory was considered to be so impoverished that it was exempted from its tax contribution.

There is some evidence that for at least some of the Middle Ages the priory rented out land rather than working it themselves, except for their home farm at Cloughton. This had the benefit of providing a dependable income if tenants were reliable, and obviated the need to appoint managers or deal with labour and handle the sale of produce, but if the cost of living went up, the fixed income that no longer purchased what it had previously afforded, and this could represent a serious problem.

Dissolution

The opening page of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, showing Henry VIII. Source: Wikipedia

When Henry VIII’s demand for a divorce was rejected by the pope, the king severed Britain from the Catholic Church, creating the Church of England. This provided him with the opportunity to acquire land and valuable assets by dissolving all monastic establishments, all of which had been subject to the papacy. The spoils were to be used to fund Henry’s wars with France and Scotland, and some former monasteries were given to Henry’s supporters as rewards. To assess the potential of the monastic assets, Henry VIII commissioned the Valor ecclesiastis, a review of every monastery in the country. All monastic establishments with an annual income of less than £200.00 were to be closed as soon as possible. The first monasteries were dissolved in 1536 and the process was more or less concluded by 1540, with a handful of the more prestigious abbeys, like St Werburgh’s in Chester, converted to cathedrals. Birkenhead Priory was only earning £91.00 annually so it was amongst the first to be closed. There was no resistance by the Birkenhead prior, who was provided with a pension of £12.00 annually. The brethren were either dismissed or disseminated to non-monastic establishments.

Visiting

The car park is on Church Street, at the rear of the priory, where the cafe is also located. There is some on-street parking on Priory Street at the front of the priory. Source: Birkenhead Priory website

This is a super place, and makes for a terrific visit. Do go. You won’t be disappointed!

Even with SatNav, the big thing to remember about finding your way to Birkenhead Priory, if you are arriving by car from the Chester direction, is to do whatever it takes NOT to end up at the Mersey tunnel toll-booths 🙂 They were very nice about it, let me out through a barrier, and gave me perfect directions to get to the priory once they had freed me from the tunnel concourse. Very nice people. If Edward III was looking down, I’m sure he would have rolled his eyes in despair, given that it was he who gave the monks the right to charge for their Mersey ferry crossings.

Do check the opening times on the website, as the priory is only open on certain days and for only a few hours on those days, mainly in the afternoons. There is dedicated parking on Church Street at SatNav What3Words reference ///super.punchy.report. From there, the priory is up a short flight of steps. You can also park on Priory Street, which is where the SatNav will take you if you simply type “Birkenhead Priory” into your SatNav (at What3Words ///indoor.vibes.hips), which offers step-free access but there is limited parking there, and it is a favourite place for van drivers to park and eat their lunches so may be better used as a drop-off point before going round the the car park.

Remnants of the decorative floor tiles, now in the priory’s undercroft, which is used as a museum space

At the time of writing, a visit is free of charge, and so are the guided tours. My guide was the excellent Frank. He covered not only the priory but St Mary’s, the HMS Conway room, and the HMS Thetis memorial and, when I headed up to the top of the tower of St Mary’s, directed me to out for the dry dock where the CSS Alabama (the US Confederate blockade runner) was built by John Laird, to be discussed in Part 2. Frank was very skilled at providing sufficient knowledge to get a real sense of the place, but not so much that it became information overload. I very much appreciated this, having always found it difficult myself to strike that particular balance. I was lucky enough to have him to myself, having turned up at opening time, but I noticed that the next tour had a respectable group attending.

There is a small gift shop where you can also buy a really useful guide book with plenty of plans, illustrations and colour photographs. Please note that they are not able to take cards, and payment is cash only.

There are toilets in St Mary’s tower, a picnic area behind the undercroft on sunny days, and the highly rated Start Yard café is almost next door on Church Street.

For those with unwilling legs, I would suggest that apart from the tower and its 101 steps, and a flight of around 10 steps up into the scriptoruim (the display area for HMS Conway) this is entirely do-able. There are occasional single steps and uneven surfaces, and it is a matter of taking good care. As mentioned above, if you park in the carpark at the rear on Church Street, there is a flight of steps into the priory, but even if there is no space in the limited street parking available at the front of the priory on Priory Street, it is a useful drop-off point for anyone needing step-free access. You can find the SatNav references for both above.

I have posted a two-minute video of the priory, recorded on my iPhone, on YouTube:

Sources

Books, papers, and guidebooks

Baggs. A.P., Ann .J Kettle. S. J. Lander, A.T. Thacker, David Wardle 1980. Houses of Benedictine monks: The priory of Birkenhead, In (eds.) Elrington, C. R. and B. E. Harris. A History of the County of Chester: Volume 3, (London, 1980) pp. 128-132.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ches/vol3/pp128-132

Burne, R.V.H. 1962. The Monks of St Werburgh. The History of St Werburgh’s Abbey. S.P.C.K.

Chitty, Gill 1978. Wirral Rural Fringes Survey. Journal of Merseyside Archaeological Society, vol.2 1978
https://www.merseysidearchsoc.com/uploads/2/7/2/9/2729758/jmas_2_paper_1.pdf

de Figueiredo, Peter 2018. Birkenhead Priory. A Guidebook. ISBN 978 1 9996424 0 2

Hughes, Tony. St Mary’s Parish Church, BIrkenhead, 1819-1977. n.d.
https://thebirkenheadpriory.org/wp-content/uploads/St-Marys-booklet.pdf

Picton, Sir James A. 1884. Notes on the Charters of the Borough (now City) of Liverpool. The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol 36 (1884)
https://www.hslc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/36-5-Picton.pdf

Stewart-Brown, R. 1925. Birkenhead Priory and the Mersey Ferry, and a Chapter on the Monastic Buildings. The Gift of the Directors of the State Assurance Company Ltd.

White, Carolinne 2008. The Rule of St Benedict. Penguin.

Websites

The Birkenhead Priory
https://thebirkenheadpriory.org/
Buildings of Birkenhead Priory
https://thebirkenheadpriory.org/about/
The medieval grave slabs of Birkenhead Priory
http://thebirkenheadpriory.org/wp-content/uploads/Graveslabs-of-Priory-Chapel.pdf

Mike Royden’s Local History Pages
The Monastic and Religious Orders in the Hundred of Wirral from the Saxons to the Dissolution of the Monasteries – A study of the Monastic history and heritage of Wirral by Norman Blake, April 2003
http://www.roydenhistory.co.uk/mrlhp/articles/students/monasticwirral/monasticwirral.htm
The Influence of Monastic Houses and Orders on the Landscape and locality of Wirral (with particular reference to Birkenhead Priory) by Robert Storrie, April 2003
http://www.roydenhistory.co.uk/mrlhp/articles/students/bheadpriory/bheadpriory.htm
The Medieval Landscape of Liverpool: Monastic Lands (with particular reference to the granges of Garston Hall and Stanlawe Grange) by Mike Royden, 1992
http://www.roydenhistory.co.uk/mrlhp/articles/mikeroyden/liverpool/monastic/mondoc.htm

ArchaeoDeath
Commemorating the Reburied Dead: Landican Cemetery
https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2024/05/16/commemorating-the-reburied-dead/

Old Wirral
https://oldwirral.net/archaeology.html

Wirral Council
Making Our Heritage Matter. Wirral’s Heritage Strategy 2011-2014, 2013 Revision. Technical Services Department.
http://democracy.wirral.gov.uk/documents/s50009194/Wirral Heritage Strategy Appendix.pdf

Wirral History
Medieval Wirral (maps)
http://www.wirralhistory.uk/medieval.html

An online archive for for St Mary’s Church and the Priory, Birkenhead
History of the Priory and St. Mary’s Church Birkenhead
http://stmarysbirkenhead.blogspot.com/p/history-of-priory-and-st-marys-church.html

Leaflets

Birkenhead Priory Guide. Metropolitan Borough of Wirral.
Birkenhead Priory A4 leaflet Wirral

Liverpool’s Royal Charters
https://liverpool.gov.uk/media/ghdaoid3/liverpool-charter.pdf

St Mary’s Parish Church 1819-1977
https://thebirkenheadpriory.org/wp-content/uploads/St-Marys-booklet.pdf

Gop Cave and Cairn near Prestatyn #3 – The vast cairn

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Introduction

The cairn rising above the tree tops on Gop hill, with the cave visible as a dark line in the light limestone ridge below. Source: Coflein

Gop Cairn is at an elevation of 250m (c.820ft) above sea level on the prow of a hill overlooking the Vale of Clwyd, just outside the village of Trelawnyd (formerly known as Newmarket). It is oval rather than round, and measures roughly 101m x 78m (331 x 255ft). It is the biggest man-made prehistoric mound in Wales, and in Britain as a whole it is second only to Silbury Hill in Wiltshire.

The cave has already been discussed in part 1 (Pleistocene and Mesolithic) and part 2 (Neolithic burials).

The Excavation

The plan of the cairn and excavations by Boyd Dawkins. Source: Boyd Dawkins 1901

Sir William Boyd Dawkins was hired by the landowner to excavate the cairn. Boyd Dawkins had a simple, though labour-intensive strategy. The plan that Boyd Dawkins made of the cairn shows the dip in the top that remains today. Boyd Dawkins speculates that this could have been caused when the cairn was later used as a source of raw materials for local drystone walling, or alternatively by subsidence due to the collapse of an underlying chamber.

Although there is a thin covering of vegetation today, the cairn was found to be built of chunks of limestone. Around the base of the cairn there seems to have been a more organized and well presented kerb of drystone walling. Ian Brown suggests that when first built, and during the period when it still retained importance, it may have “shown a dramatic whiteness set against a blue or darkening site.” The limestone ridge below, in which the cave is located and shown at the top of this post, certainly seems almost white in the sunshine, and the cairn may have had a similarly noticeable appearance, particularly given its great size.

Boyd Dawkins sunk a shaft (6ft 6 ins by 4ft / c.2m x 1.22m) vertically from the top of the cairn, which had to be shored up with timber to allow work to proceed safely. The shaft reached the former ground surface, which was formed of bedrock. A main “drift” (a mining term for a horizontal subterranean tunnel) was then tunnelled running 30ft (c.9m) to the northeast from the bottom of the vertical shaft towards the edge, followed by two shorter drifts. The hope was to find a burial chamber at the centre. It was not unreasonable to assume that there would be a burial chamber of some description. Although Neolithic chambered cairns are not common in northeast Wales (examples are Tyddyn Bleiddyn near St Asaph and Tan y Coed in the Dee valley), there are many Early Bronze Age round barrows with cists, and there are several stone-built burial sites and a stone row on the Great Orme to the west.

Unfortunately, in spite of all the hard work, all that Boyd Dawkins and his team found were fragmented animal bones, which in spite of his considerable experience identifying animal remains, Boyd Dawkins was unable to identify with certainty: “hog, sheep or goat, and ox or horse, too fragmentary to be accurately determined.” Overall, the suggestion is that these were domesticated species that could have been herded or penned in the area.

No artefacts were found.

Conditions were obviously very difficult, as Boyd Dawkins states: “The timbering necessary for our work was not only very costly, but rendered it very difficult to observe the condition of the interior even in the small space which was excavated.” It is possible that the chamber, if there is one, is off-centre, and that any passage leading to it is in a different direction. Until further survey or excavation work is carried out, there is no means of telling what lies beneath the surface.

Dating the Cairn

Neolithic arrowheads found on Gop Hill. Source: Glenn 1935

Data for the dating of the cairn is circumstantial. Although domesticated animal species were found within the cairn, these could have been deposited at an any time from the Neolithic onwards. On the other hand, arrowheads and other Neolithic stone tools have been found on Gop Hill. According to T. Allen Glenn in 1935, Gop Hill was known locally as Bryn-y-Saethau, the Hill of Arrows, due to the large number of Neolithic arrowheads found there over the decades. Just below the cairn, just 43m (141ft) away, shown in the above photograph, is a shallow cave in the limestone ridge that contained Neolithic burials. There are ephemeral Neolithic sites nearby, identified by T. Allen Glenn during field walking during the 1920s, and there are other Neolithic cave sites in northeast Wales. At the same time, nothing significant relating to the Bronze Age has been found in the immediate area. Although Iron Age and Roman sites have been found in the area, Gop Cairn is not an Iron Age or Roman form of site, and there is no record of a medieval motte and bailey castle up on the hill. On balance, accepting that it remains speculative, it seems probable that it will turn out to be a Neolithic site if it is ever properly investigated.

Myth: “Baseless Theories”

A local writer named Edward Parry, author of Royal Visits and Progresses into Wales, written in 1851, propagated the idea that Gop Hill and its cairn were connected with the battle between Boudicca and Suetonius Pauluins in A.D. 61. It is a bizarre theory, that Ellis Davies, under the subheading “Baseless Theories” says in 1949 was a “false derivation” based on one of the names of the Gop, Cop Paulini. It is otherwise incomprehensible why Parry should have come up with the theory, but it found its way into other pamphlets and local accounts. As Davies points out in a rather aggrieved tone, “It would not be necessary to refer to these absurd stories about the association of Boudicca with Gop and neighbourhood were it not for the fact that locally they still persist!”

The Beacon

In his 1949 book “The Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Flintshire,” Ellis Davies notes that in the 17th century there was a beacon on Gop Hill, the purpose of which was to send up an alarm, when necessary, should pirates be spotted off the coast. A small hut was built at the bottom of the cairn to store the combustible materials with which the fire would be lit.

Final Comments

It is a little ironic that there is such a lot to say about a rather small cave, and not a great deal to say about an absolutely enormous cairn on the prow of a hill that dominates the surrounding landscape. It seems clear from the burials in the cave beneath the cairn, dated by association with distinctive artefacts, and supported by stone tools found on the hill, that this was an important location during the Neolithic. It seems likely that the cairn could have belonged to the same period, but it is also possible that it could belong to the following earlier Bronze Age. Further investigation will be required to nail down the date of the site, and to establish if there are any additional structures, such as burial chambers, contained within.

Suggestions for the derivation of the name Gop. Source: Ellis Davies 1949, p.159

Sources and visiting details are shown in part 1

Gop Cave and Cairn near Prestatyn # 2 – The Neolithic burials

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Part 2 – The Neolithic burials in the cave

Introduction

Main entrance to Gop Cave

In Part 1 I looked at the excavations carried out at Gop Cave in 1886-7, 1908-14, 1920-21 and 1956-57 and talked about the pre-glacial levels of Gop Cave, with its finds of woolly rhino, hyaena and wild horse, and the Mesolithic tools found outside the cave mouth.

In this second part, the cave is still the topic under discussion, with a shift in focus to the Neolithic layers, whilst the cairn on top of Gop Hill is tackled in part 3. During the Neolithic, the cave was used to deposit a number of burials, two thirds of which were contained within a walled-off section of the cave, and the rest within a narrow passage that linked two parts of the cave. These burials are the subject of this post. References used for all three parts are listed in part 1, together with visiting details.

The Excavations

Modern plan of Gop Cave by Cris Ebbs. Source: Cambrian Caving Council Survey 2013

Just to recap briefly on the details from part 1, the earliest excavations in the cave were carried out by Sir William Boyd Dawkins, a well known and respected early archaeologist who excavated the cave site over two seasons in 1887 and 1887, having originally been asked to assess the cairn on top of the hill. The lowest level was barren , but the next contained numerous bones of Pleistocene animals, many of them now extinct. The top two layers contained mainly Neolithic material including human skeletal remains.

In 1908 John H. Morris began digging at the cave, and was joined by T. Allen Glenn, who took systematic notes and made a plan of the newly uncovered sections of the cave. They opened up a passage missed by Boyd Dawkins, referred to as the northwest passage, which linked to a very small opening just to the east of the main cave entrance. During these excavations a further six partial skeletons were found, two of them children. The skeletal remains in both cases were associated with artefacts and animal bones.

Most of the bone collection collected by Boyd Dawkins, and stored in a pigeon house at Gop Farm, were disposed of in 1913 by the tenant of Gop Farm, who threw them down a local mine shaft – which is particularly sad as Glenn had just received permission to take charge of them. Most of the Morris and Glenn finds, both bones and objects, were sent to the National Museum of Wales. Some finds from Gop Cave are also retained by Manchester Museum and Aura Museum Services, and possibly by the Grosvenor Museum in Chester.

The Neolithic burials at Gop Cave

In total, at least 20 individuals were recorded in Gop Cave. The 14 found by Boyd Dawkins and the 6 found by Morris and Glenn may have been deposited at slightly different times, due to the different character of the deposition. Whereas the individuals discovered by Boyd-Dawkins seem to have been buried whole, Glenn is fairly confident that the ones discovered by himself and Morris in a different part of the cave were only partial when they were interred.

Boyd-Dawkins excavations showing the chamber (feature B) above layer 3 and abutting layer 4, which contained skeletal remains of humans with artefacts. Source: Boyd Dawkins 1901. See other cave plans in part 1.

Dawkins describes how he found a thick layer of charcoal over slabs of limestone at a depth of 4ft (c.1.2m) from the surface, which formed an old hearth. Blackened slabs were found throughout the area excavated, and there were also burnt and broken bones of domestic animals and fragments of pottery. “Intermingled with these were a large quantity of human bones of various ages, lying under slabs of limestone, which formed a continuous packing up to the roof. On removing these a rubble wall became visible, regularly built of courses of limestone.” These limestone blocks made up walls on three sides, with the cave wall itself making up the fourth wall, to form a chamber 4ft 6 by 5ft 4 (c.1.4m x 1.65m). Inside the chamber was what Dawkins describes as “a mass of human skeletons of various ages, more than fourteen in number, closely packed together, and obviously interred at successive times.” Individuals were deposited in a crouched position, “with arms and legs drawn together and folded.” His assessment was that the bodies were buried whole. When the chamber became full, another area of the cave was used as an overflow for new burials, identified on the section plan above as area A. Because layer 3 was found beneath the burial chamber, as well as beneath layer 4, Boyd Dawkins concluded that layer 3 had formed a habitation area prior to the burials, in a similar way to two other cave sites in north Wales.

Glenn’s plan of the 1912 excavations. Source: Davies 1949

When Morris and Glenn opened up another passage, and found another six individuals, Although the view was confused by rock fall and a very uneven floor, it was thought that limestone slabs may have been used to create a wall around some of the skeletons. Glenn describes the bones as fragmented and partial. Glenn ascribes this to the remains having been brought from somewhere else, rather than having been depleted due to roof fall damage of fragile bones, or the work of the “burrowing animals” that caused disruption in the stratification within the passage. He was methodical and a good observer, so presumably had good grounds for suggesting this, and it is certainly in keeping with other, more recent archaeological evidence for Neolithic burials where partial skeletons are found, apparently due to having died elsewhere and been moved to a particular site for burial. Another possibility is that the body had been excarnated, a practice involving the ceremonial placement of a body in the open air to allow it to be processed naturally so that it was defleshed and partially disarticulated before being collected for interment, which often resulted in the bigger longbones and crania being collected whilst finger and foot bones were left behind.

Having opened the cave out and discovered the second entrance, Morris and Glenn found that it was blocked with limestone slabs, apparently deliberately, although it is by no means certain when this was done. It is not unlike the blocking of entrances to Neolithic burial monuments towards the end of the Neolithic period.

The artefacts associated with the burials

Polished blade found by Boyd Dawkins in Gop Cave. Source: Dawkins 1901

The artefacts associated with both sets of skeletons are all Neolithic in date. Boyd Dawkins assigned them to the Bronze Age on the basis of the pottery, but this has since been re-dated. Both the Boyd Dawkins and the Morris and Glenn excavations produced stone tools, most of which are fairly generic but can be assigned to the Neolithic. One of the Boyd Dawkins discoveries was a long, curved blade, very carefully carved and polished to provide it with smooth surfaces, and showing no signs of usage. He also identified quart pebbles, which he refers to as “luck stones.” Another notable stone tool, this time found by Harris and Glenn in the part of the cave undiscovered by Boyd Dawkins, was a bifacially worked axe head made from Graig Lywyd stone from the well-known Neolithic stone mines at Penmaenmawr, which was apparently unused.

Objects found by Harris and Allen in Gob Cave, including the Graig Lwyd axe at top. Source: Davies 1949.

The pottery was Peterborough ware, and it has been determined that the Gop Cave type was the Mortlake variant of Peterborough ware, which dates to between about 3350 and 2850 BC. All were fragments, and were either grey or black or burnt red.

Pottery found in association with the skeletons by Boyd Dawkins, since identified as Mortlake Ware. Source: Boyd Dawkins 1901

Kimmeridge sliders. Source: Boyd Dawkins 1901

Two unusual items were referred to by Boyd Dawkins as “links,” which he thought were proably used to fasten clothing, and are referred to by some others as belt-sliders. He described them as being made of “jet or Kimmeridge coal,” or “Kimmeridge shale.” As these items are now lost, they cannot be tested (they were last known to be in Manchester Museum, but now cannot be found). He gives the measurements as 54mm L x 22m W and 16mm H; and 70mm L, 22mm W and 27mm H. Boyd Dawkins says that they showed no signs of any usage, and according to Alison Sheriden’s analysis of these object types, this is typical. They appear to have been kept for show rather than being attached to clothing or employed in some other everyday capacity, much like the curved blade and the Graig Lwyd axe head. As jet and Kimmeridge coal come from Yorkshire, and a third of all known sliders have been found in and around Yorkshire, they are certainly exotic goods in northeast Wales, and the rarity of the substance may have endowed it with a particular cachet. Jet has the very unusual property of being electrostatic, so that when it is rubbed it can make one’s hair stand on end! If it was jet, this would certainly have added to its novelty value. 29 of them were known when Sheriden was surveying them in 2012, of which only 6 were certainly of jet, one of which was found in Wales. 12 or 13 were from burial contexts and distribution showed “a marked tendency towards coastal and riverine finds” that are a reminder of the extensive networks that operated in the Neolithic.

Although the objects in the cave are few and far between, some were unused suggesting that they highly valued and retained for special occasions or as prestige items. It is unclear whether any artefacts were associated with any particular individuals, although Boyd-Dawkins describes the the jet sliders and the polished flint flake forming one group together.

Animal remains

Although he does not list numbers, Boyd Dawkins says that the remains of the domesticated species “were greatly in excess of those of the wild animals, and the most abundant were those of sheep.” He also comments that the horse listed under wild fauna may actually be domesticated, and that foxes were using the vicinity of the cave area at the time of the excavation. All bones were found in what he describes as “prehistoric refuse heaps and that nearly all were broken and burnt.

As all the bones were discarded in 1913, none of the identifications can be checked, but Boyd Dawkins was very experienced in the identification of animal remains, giving some confidence that his work reflected the reality of the situation. Sheep and goat are notoriously difficult to tell part, so the question-mark against goat is not surprising. That sheep are dominant is not a surprise, as the area around Gop would be ideal grazing for them. The valley bottom would have been well-suited for cattle and horse.

Dating the skeletons

Mandibles used in radiocarbon dating of Gop Cave skeletons. Source: Schulting 2020

Although the artefacts found in the cave, loosely associated with the skeletal remains, are indicators of a mid-Neolithic date, as described above, in 2020 Rick Schulting was able to pull together 23 samples from a number of caves for radiocarbon dating, including three samples from Gop Cave, comprising two mandibles and one cranium. Although some samples had been tested previously, an error in the sampling method had led to them being withdrawn in 2007. For Gop, the new dates lie firmly with the Middle-Late Neolithic range, tending towards the middle of the Neolithic (between c.3100 and 2900 BC).

This date range backs up the findings of the Mortlake variants of the Peterborough ware, the jet sliders and the Graig Lwyd axe.

The practice of non-monumental burials

The main form of burial recognized throughout most of the Neolithic Britain is the long barrow or cairn, or the round passage grave. In each case, there was usually an accumulation of burials over time, referred to as collective burials. These were not, however, the only forms of burial during the Neolithic. Although less often found, because of the lack of monumental marker, flat interment cemeteries are known, burials in the ditches of the so-called causewayed enclosures are often recorded and there is some, uncertain data that there may have been burials in rivers. During the later Neolithic, cremation became the norm.

Jawbone of skeleton from Gop Cave. Source: National Museum of Wales (47.97/104)

By far the most common non-monumental form of burial, however, is deposition within a cave. Cave burials of various dates are known from all over Britain. In his survey of cave burials in 2020, Rick Schulting noted examples from the Palaeolithic through to the Anglo-Saxon period. From the Neolithic in north Wales, contemporary with Gop Cave, nearby Nanty-Fuach rock shelter above Dyserth produced five burials, all contracted, and without grave goods. Outside the cave there were fragments of Neolithic pottery, a large barbed and tanged arrowhead and, nearby, some Peterborough ware. In the Alyn valley 16 burials were deposited within Perthi Cawarae, and 6 within Rhos Ddigre, the latter associated with a Graig Lwyd axe and pottery fragments, both in the Alyn valley. Other examples are known from Loggerheads and Mostyn with Neolithic flint implements. It is clear that Gop Cave is by no means an isolated example, although the precise arrangement of the skeletal remains within containing walls may be unusual. As many caves were excavated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when excavations lacked today’s precision, it is impossible to know what was missed by excavators. Finally, Schulting notes that there is a gap of “several millennia” between the last Mesolithic cave burial and the first Neolithic ones, indicating that there is no continuity of burial tradition in caves between the two periods.

Meaning in collective burial

Frances Lynch suggests that the use of caves for burial, occurring in many areas at different periods “seems to be a matter of convenience rather than cultural preference” but there are alternative views on the matter. In his book on the materiality of stone – Christopher Tilley does not discuss caves, but he references almost every other aspect of stone as a natural material that becomes objectified by human uses and actions. He comments that social identity requires “specific concrete material points of reference in the form of landscapes, places, artefacts and other persons.” Topographic and other natural features are often used by humans to anchor and fix memory and establish places of meaning in landscapes. Carole Crumley highlights the phenomenological experience of features like caves, mountains and springs, and their role in connecting the mental with the material to create both individual and social identity. In their chapter on the uses of landscape features like caves and springs by the Maya in Mesoamerica, James Brady and Wendy Ashmore describe how caves, eternally damp and dripping water, were connected with the sacred and the ritualization of water. By appropriating and modifying such natural features, people have embedded them with meaning to form bridges between the natural, supernatural and the manufactured, blurring the differences to confer special status on these dark places where the dead might be deposited safely.

Artist’s impression of what an excarnation platform might look like. By Jan Dunbar. Source: BBC

A number of authors have suggested that collective burial of humans, and in particular the mingling of bones rather than maintaining skeletons as delineated individuals, is an indication of the individual being subsumed into a collective identity, privileging the group identity over the authority or status of any one individual. Of course, these collective burials, whether in monument or cave, are representatives of much larger communities, and the criteria used for selecting one person for burial over another are lost. It is possible that in order to transform an individual into a representative of the community, a two-stage process was undertaken whereby an individual is excarnated or buried elsewhere, and then moved to a collective burial site, a transformative process during which the individual member of the community loses their individuality and becomes representative of a communal and ancestral link between the past and the present. With the addition of each new individual to the cemetery, another layer of communal meaning was added to the cave, reinforcing the message that the existing burials already encapsulated.

In the contrast between the brightness of the light-coloured limestone reflecting in the sun, and the darkness of the hidden, secret interior there is a resemblance between the relationship between the visually striking chambered tomb and the sepulchre within. Not forgetting, of course, that there is an enormous cairn on top of the hill, just 43m (141ft) away from the cave, which may in itself have been a marker rather than a grave. The cairn is discussed in part 3.

Final Comments

Neolithic stone implements found in and near Gop Cave. Source: Davies 1949, p.283

Gop Cave is often left out of accounts of the Neolithic in Wales, or merely mentioned in passing, which is surprising given both the number of its human occupants and the unusual combination of artefacts found within the cave. Cave burials are given secondary status to monumental constructions, but given the number of them in Wales, it is good to see that they are now being researched as valid contributors to the corpus of knowledge about the Neolithic both in Wales and the rest of Britain.

Graph from Jonathan Last showing the usage of caves at different periods in England (The Archaeology of English Caves and Rock-Shelters: A Strategy Document. Centre for Archaeology Report 2003)

Sources and visiting details are in part 1

Gop Cave and Gop Cairn near Prestatyn – # 1: Woolly rhinos and hungry hyaenas

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Introduction

Gop Hill in northeast Wales, a few miles southeast of Prestatyn, and just above the village of Trelawnyd (formerly Newmarket from 1710 to 1954) is home to Gop Cave and Gop Cairn, just a few minutes apart from one another. Gop Cairn has the distinction of being the largest man-made prehistoric mound in Wales, and when approached from a distance, its size really is impressive. Although the cairn was investigated in the 19th century, with a vertical shaft sunk from the top to the level of the floor, and a “drift” tunnelled outward from the base of the shaft, no burial chamber or human remains were found.

The south-facing limestone cave was also investigated, producing Pleistocene zoological remains, Mesolithic stone tools and Neolithic human burials and contemporary artefacts and the bones of both domesticated and wild animals. In 1868 Boyd Dawkins excavated pre-glacial animal species such as woolly rhino and steppe bison in the cave deposits, which provided significant data about local ecological conditions. Excavations by T. Allen Glenn in the early 1920s discovered Mesolithic remains on the platform outside the cave. Although this was a small assemblage, it is an important contributor of knowledge about the poorly understood North Wales Mesolithic. The Boyd Dawkins excavations also produced an unusual and very important Neolithic burial chamber. It was found in one of the upper layers, with walls made of layers of stone containing at least 14 burials. Pottery and stone tools found with them were sufficiently distinctive to provide a chronological range, placing the burials within the Neolithic period. Excavations conducted by John H. Morris and T.A. Glenn between 1908 and 1914 found another six burials in a previously undiscovered passageway, including two children as well as a Neolithic axe-head from the nearby Graig Lywyd axe factory and are considered to lie within the same date range as those found by Boyd Dawkins, taking the total count of individuals found up to 20. It did not take a great leap of imagination to speculate that the Neolithic date for the cave could suggest a similar date for the cairn, although this remains unverified.

Plan of Gop Cave. Source: Cambrian Caving Council Survey 2013 (Cris Ebbs)

Over three posts, the Gop Hill sites are described and the work carried out summarized. This post, Part 1, looks at the 19th century excavation of Gop Cave by Sir William Boyd Dawkins, a really rather remarkable early investigator of prehistoric habitats and fauna as well as archaeological remains. Visiting details are provided towards the end of Part 1, after which there is a list of references. Part 2 looks in detail at the Neolithic burial within the cave, and part 3 looks at the cairn.

Sir William Boyd Dawkins, excavating 1886-1887

When I was working in caves with archaeological deposits in the mid- to late-1980s, 100 years after William Boyd Dawkins was excavating at Gop Cave, he was a very well-known name, and a respected one. It is easy to be frustrated with the quality of the work carried out in those early investigations, some of which were far from systematic, and caves have some particular quirks of their own to contend with, but a few of these early investigators were impressive and Sir William Boyd Dawkins was one of them.

Born near Welshpool in 1837 Sir Wiliam Boyd Dawkins (1837-1929), developed a keen interest as a child in collecting fossils. His initial field of interest was primarily geology, natural history and palaeontology, all of which have in common with archaeology a focus on stratified sequences and the relative positioning of fossils, bones and objects within those sequences. Just as early archaeologists were interested in building up sequences of artefacts so that they could understand how human technology developed, early palaeontologists were interested in the developmental sequence of prehistoric animal and plant species. In 1860 he graduated in Natural Sciences and Classics from Oxford and in 1861 he was appointed to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Fortunately, because Sir William found many archaeological remains during his investigations, he treated these more recent discoveries with equal interest and respect. His earliest archaeological excavations were at Wookey Hole in Somerset where he discovered some of the first evidence of Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) occupation. These discoveries helped him to develop methodologies for excavating cave sites and to build up a good understanding of the type of environmental and human data that he was likely to encounter within particular geological and geomorphological contexts. He wrote a number of important articles about extinct sub-species of rhinoceros that had once inhabited Britain. He became the first President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society and President of the Cambrian Archaeological Association. He excavated at a number of cave sites in north Wales, and his 1874 book “Cave Hunting: researches on the evidence of caves respecting the early inhabitants of Europe” became a classic.

The four phases of Gop Cave deposits

Figure 5 from Boyd Dawkins 1901, p.327 (the cavity marked as B was the Neolithic burial chamber)

When Boyd Dawkins first encountered Gop Cave, it was full to the brim with glacial, post-glacial and more recent debris and rock fall:

While the cairn was being explored my attention was attracted to a fox-earth at the base of a low scarp of limestone 141 feet to the south-west of the cairn. It occupied a position which I have almost invariably found to indicate the presence of a cavern used by foxes, badgers, and rabbits as a place for shelter. I therefore resolved to explore this, with the assistance of Mr. P. G. Pochin. The fox-earth led us into a cave completely blocked up at the entrance by earth and stones and large masses of limestone, which had fallen from the ledge of rock above. This accumulation of debris occupied a space 19 feet in width, and extended along the whole front of the cavern

Nothing loth, he set about clearing it in a top-down methodical way that would allow him to assess the chronological composition of the deposits. It was a remarkable achievement, given the incredibly limited head space and the absence of more than a thin envelope of natural light.

Figure 4 showing the excavations of the cave in horizontal plan, with the sections through the deposits both outside and within the cave. Feature B is the Neolithic burial chamber. Source: Boyd Dawkins 1901, p.325

Boyd Dawkins identified four distinct phases within the cave. These are shown in the table below and discussed beneath. The terms Pleistocene and Holocene used in the table below refer to consecutive periods in the geological timescale. The Pleistocene begins at around c.2.8 million years ago, covering the most recent period of repeated periods of major glaciation to 11,700 years ago, when the last glacier retreated and the planet entered its present inter-glacial phase, the Holocene. The Holocene levels at Gop Cave, which include the 14 burials (thought by Boyd Dawkins to be Bronze Age but now reassigned to the earlier Neolithic), will be discussed in Part 2. Below is a discussion of the Pleistocene levels.

Geological Table Source: USGS

Figure 6 from Boyd Dawkins 1901, p.329

Boyd Dawkins noted that the layers were not as they would have been originally deposited: “They appear to have been washed out of the original hyaena floors by the action of water, and to have been redeposited at a time later than the occupation of the cave by hyaenas.” The presence of stone of non-local origin also argues for different phases of water and glacial activity entering the cave, scouring the deposits and replacing them.

Boy Dawkins identified the Pleistocene fauna from the surviving bones and antlers found in the cave as follows.

Cave hyaena – Hycena spelaea
Bison – Bison priscus
Red deer – Cervus elaphus
Reindeer – Cervus tarandus
Roe deer – Cervus capreolus
Horse – Equus caballus
Woolly rhinoceros – Rhinoceros tichorhinus

Woolly Rhino. Source: Science

Woolly rhino (now designated Coelodonta antiquitatis), cave hyaena (now referred to as Crocuta crocuta , and sometimes Crocuta crocuta spelaea) and Bison priscus (steppe bison) are now extinct. The steppe bison was the species painted in famous Upper Palaeolithic caves like Lascaux in France and Altamira in France. Although Boyd Dawkins identified horse as Equus caballus, if the identification of horse was correct, it would probably have been the wild ancestor of caballus, Equus ferus. Reindeer are no longer found wild in Britain. Of the species on his list, red deer and roe deer and horse are the only wild species that remain in Britain. Boyd Dawkins observed that some of the remains, and particularly the antlers of “the reindeer, bore the teeth marks of hyaenas, and had evidently belonged to animals which had fallen victims to those bone-eating carnivores.”

20th Century Excavations

Glenn’s fold-out plan of the 1912 excavations. Source: Davies 1949

Further excavations took place during the earlier part of the 20th Century, contributing more information.

Between 1908 and 1914 John H. Morris and T. Allen Glenn investigated the northwest passage of the cave system, sometimes. This was missed by Boyd Dawkins because it was hidden behind a blockage of clay and stalagmite. This passage produced an additional six skeletons, two of which were children. Glenn describes an excavation “carried out with extreme care and by modern methods” but says that due to burrowing animals there was no recognizable stratification byond determining Pleistocene and Neolithic levels. The floor was covered to a depth of between 18 inches and 2ft “with cave earth and pieces of limestone over a hard floor of clay mixed with stalactite fragments and limestone rubble” over bedrock. There is some indication that limestone slabs had been used to build low walls around some of these skeletons. Finds within the cave, at the new entrance and near the cave between 1911 and 1917 were collected by Morris. Neolithic human remains and artefacts were found, and will be discussed in Part 2. Animal remains found were horse, sheep/goat, ox, pig, wolf, fox, bear, lynx, badger, fowl, hare, rabbit, frog, watervole, mole, stoat and fieldmouse. The mixture of Pleistocene and Holocene species suggests that these were highly disturbed layers, probably due to the activity of burrowing animals mentioned by Allen.

The excavations linked the passage in which they were working to the second entrance, the very small opening for which is a little further along the ridge to the west, and shown on the plan at the top of this post. This is sometimes referred to as the North-West Cave, although it is part of the same cave system as the main Gop Cave.

Both cave entrances in the limestone ridge.

T. Allen Glenn returned to the site between 1920 and 1921, funded by the National Museum of Wales. He excavated the platform in front of the cave, which was largely untouched by Boyd Dawkins and found more human and animal remains, as well as Mesolithic stone tools, described below. Glenn wrote up both his own and Morris’s excavations in one 1935 report.

In 1956 William H. Stead excavated at the site and amongst other animal remains found a lion tibia. The reports are in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, nos 23 (1957), 28 (1958) and 29 (1960). Although I have listed them in the bibliography, I don’t have access online via the University of Chester, and the library does not have these volumes on the shelves, so I have been unable to read up on the findings. If I get hold of them (please give me a yell if you have access to them!), I’ll update this section.

Dating the animal remains in the Pleistocene cave

Gop Cairn with the cave entrance visible on the limestone ridge just below.

There were only certain periods when Britain was actually habitable. One reason is that harsh climatic conditions during glacial periods forced most life to leave all but the most southern areas. For example, between c.160,00 and 80, 000 years ago the environment was too hostile for human occupation and for most animals. Another reason is that, after 130,000 years ago the permanent chalk land-bridge between Britain and Europe was destroyed, and after this time Britain and Europe were only connected during glacial periods when the water level dropped sufficiently for land-bridges to be revealed, which enabled animal and human migratory movement. Modern research into the climatic and environmental past has helped to clarify when land bridges between Europe and Britain enabled animals and humans to wander freely. With the final retreat of the ice sheets at around 10,000 BC the land bridges were permanently submerged. De Groote et al explain this very clearly:

Generalised reconstruction of the land surface and the extent of ice sheets of the British Isles. Source: De Groote et al 2017, fig.1 p.3

From the early Pleistocene, Britain was connected to main-land Europe by a land-bridge that enabled humans and fauna to migrate in and out (Fig. 1A). Until about 130,000 years ago, this narrow chalk isthmus, separating the north (North Sea) and southwest (English Channel) marine embayments, kept Britain connected to varying extents even when sea-levels were high during the warm interglacial periods; the eventual complete breaching of this chalk barrier was crucial in forming the island and the Dover Strait. During glacial periods, much of the earth’s water would have been trapped in the ice caps and when, during the later Pleistocene, the bed of the North Sea was exposed, a large land area known as Doggerland, created by geological uplift and sedimentation from rivers, also provided a route into the British Isles and fauna, including hominins, would have entered this way. The flooding of the shallow shelf areas of the English Channel and the North Sea are the consequence of the current high interglacial sea levels.

Even without modern scientific dating methods, reliable time-ranges can be assigned to animal bone assemblages on the basis of which species were found together in a certain place during a certain period. Boyd Dawkins had already assembled a considerable amount of data on the subject, some of which was published in his earlier work Early Man in Britain published in 1880.

AHOB time chart showing periods of human absence and occupation. Click to enlarge or see original on the AHOB website

Improvements in palaeo-zoology have helped to clarify which species were present during which periods. Some animals that are now either completely extinct or permanently migrated out of Britain provide a latest possible date for their presence. Studies of prehistoric assemblages of fauna have also helped to fix date ranges for the presence of certain species, assigning them to marine isotope stages (also known as oxygen isotope stages). Marine isotope stages measure oxygen isotopes in sea water that is absorbed into the skeletons of tiny single-celled organisms called foraminifera, which are preserved in sediments on the sea floor. The oxygen isotopes contain information about the volume of ice present globally, and therefore provide a record of alternating glacial and interglacial periods. The faunal assemblage corresponds well to MIS 3, which falls into the Middle Palaeolithic archaeological period. Woolly rhino, for example, had left Britain by around 30,000 years ago. The entire assemblage probably puts Gop Cave in Marine isotope stage 3 (MIS 3). MIS 3 lasts from between 60,000 and 25,000 years ago. The conditions were ideal for woolly rhinoceros, horse, bison, hyaena, and reindeer, which inhabited temperate but cold semi-arid steppe-like conditions with often hot summers and very cold winters. Steppes are characterized by wide open treeless grasslands, with small shrubs, ideal for grazing species, and for carnivores preying on the grass-loving herbivores.

Pontnewydd Cave entrance. Source: National Museum of Wales

Even though the idea of woolly rhino, bison and hyaena roaming the hills of north Wales, all of them now extinct, may seem distinctly exotic, these time ranges are not particularly early for Britain. Not far away, near St Asaph, the cave site of Pontnewydd produced stone tools and human remains in association with animal species for which sound scientific dates were obtained during modern excavations. The human remains found in association with stone tools belonged to the branch of hominin known as Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis, named for the type site in the Neander Valley in Germany) and the dates cluster around 225,000 years ago. If correct, the Gop Cave date ranges are relatively recent by comparison.

Although MIS 3 corresponds to periods of human occupation in Britain during the Middle Palaeolithic there was no human habitation identified within the Pleistocene levels of the cave. Boyd Dawkins was experienced at identifying human artefacts and would almost certainly have recognized them had any been there to be found. a number of brief occupations of the country, Britain would have been occupied intermittently during this time, depending on the environmental conditions, and probably only by small groups. The most probably candidate for any humans dodging lions and woolly rhinos and competing with hyaenas for dining on deer, may have been Homo Neanderthalensis (Neanderthals). The oldest Neanderthal find in Britain was from Swanscombe in Kent, where a skull dates to c.400,000 years ago, a warm interglacial period. Neanderthals left and re-entered Britain numerous times, their movements determined by glacial and interglacial conditions, until around 40,000 years ago when the Neanderthals became extinct.

The Mesolithic

Microliths from Gop Cave, excavated by Glenn in 1920-21. Source: Wainwright 1961

The Mesolithic, corresponding to the geological Holocene, represents settlement during the earliest post-glacial period. Although the site was small, the Gop artefacts are very typical of Mesolithic finds in the area. The stone tools found included 6 microliths (tiny stone tools usually 3cm or less long), a scraper, two other tools of undetermined types, possibly waste flakes, and twenty three microlith and blade cores. A core is the original piece of stone after it has been worked. When microliths, flakes and blades have been struck from it it is discarded, but still bears the marks of the tools that were removed from it. Of the microliths, Geoffrey Wainwright describes two were obliquely blunted, two lanceolate, and four scalene triangles. There was also one broad point retouched on both sides and a section of a bone pin.

Distribution of Mesolithic sites in Wales. Source: Heneb Dyfed

The earliest known Mesolithic site in Wales dates to c.8600 BC (some 10,500 years ago) at The Nab Head in southwest Wales (no.5 on the map to the right). In 2021 a 9000 year old site was found on Castle Hill, off Hylas Lane in Rhuddlan, where over 13,000 stone tools and five decorated stone pebbles were found. Another well known site is at Trwyn Du on Anglesey where a Mesolithic occupation dates to between 8,000- 9,000 years ago, and was preserved beneath Bronze Age burial mound excavated when it was threatened by coastal erosion in 1974 (no.9 on the map).

With the withdrawal of the ice sheets, vegetation re-established itself, and whilst the land-bridge remained in tact, animals once again drifted across the land, with humans in their wake. Once the ice had fully retreated, the land-bridge was submerged and Britain and Ireland became separated both from the continent and from each other. The island was soon occupied by many small groups exploiting inland and coastal resources, hunting, collecting plant resources, fishing and collecting shellfish.

Decorated stone pebble from the Mesolithic deposits at Rhuddlan. Source: Dyfed Archaeology

Warmer and wetter than today, with a deciduous woodland landscape, the environment favoured different wild animal populations from the pre-glacial period, which required different hunting techniques. Particularly characteristic of the Mesolithic toolkit was the microlith, a catch-all term for a large number of varieties of tiny stone artefact that could have been hafted into wood, bone or antler to make arrows, spears, harpoons and scythes. Many Mesolithic communities were located on or near the the seashore. The seashore was a movable feast at this time as a) the ice continued to melt, raising sea levels, and b) land, which had been compressed under the pressure of the ice, began to rise. The exploitation of marine resources included both fish and shellfish. It was these settlers who, stranded on an island when the land-bridge was lost, were sufficiently stable and persistent to contribute to modern DNA.

Although permanent amelioration of the climate provided the ability to develop new patterns of living eventually lead to the expansion of populations and the modification of landscape, sites are difficult to locate, some were submerged during rising sea levels, and many are often highly disturbed, meaning that the period is still poorly understood. Each new site therefore contributes important data to the overall picture, and Gop Cave contributes information about where such sites were to be found in north Wales and what sort of activities were pursued.

The location of the finds today

Neolithic stone implements found in and near Gop Cave. Source: Davies 1949, p.283

Davies, writing in 1949, says that most of the animal and human bones from the Dawkins excavations were stored at the pigeon house belonging to Gop Farm, but that some of these were sold in around 1912 to an archaeologist in Wrexham. Davies himself saw “great quantities of bone” in the pigeon house in 1913 but in the same year, although T. Allen Glenn, who had excavated at the cave, had received permission from the estate manager to remove the archaeological remains, the tenant threw all of it “down an open mine-shaft nearby.” He goes on: “In a letter dated, ‘The Manchester museum, The University, Nov.19, 1937,’ the keeper, Mr. R.U. Sayce, M.A., supplied the information that there were in the museum several of the remains from the cave; they included animal bones, human skulls, and limb bones; also some sherds of Neolithic ‘B’ pottery. The long flint implement and the Kimmeridge clay links have not been traced.” The pottery, the flint implement and the Kimmeridge objects relate to the cairn and will be discussed in part 2. Davies also says that the finds from the objects retained by Morris at his home in Rhyl (where Davies was able to inspect them) were bequeathed to the National Museum of Wales. Those from the subsequent Glenn excavations in 1920-21 were also deposited in the National Museum of Wales, who had funded Glenn’s work.

According to Cris Ebbs, on the Cambrian Caving Council website, other zoological and archaeological remains that were not disposed of are now in the collections of Aura Museums Service, Grosvenor Museum in Chester.

Conclusions

Although there were no human remains in the Pleistocene levels of Gop Cave, the faunal remains provide a fascinating insight of their own into the environmental conditions of north Wales, suggesting that a steppe environment prevailed, possibly at some stage between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago. Understanding of the palaeozoology, palaeoecoloy and archaeology of the Pleistocene are all dependent on the work of palaeanthropologists, geologists, geomorphologists and climatologists, and many other specialists, all contributing very specialized research about how and when animals and humans would have been able to migrate to and from what is today an island.

The Mesolithic remains are the earliest evidence of human settlement in the immediate vicinity of the cave. Although they represent a small group of people probably passing through, with no signs of seasonal returns to the site, this helps to contribute to the fragmentary picture of what was happening in Wales in the post-glacial period. Both tools and tool cores were found, suggesting that tools were manufactured during the short stay at the site.

Visiting Details

When packing your rucksack or stuffing your pockets, do be sure to take a torch with a good, strong beam, and wear some solid footwear that will cope both with slippery mud and some very irregular stones and sharp rocks underfoot in the cave itself. Caves are nearly always dripping with water, so unless it has been a very dry period, you may want to have a waterproof ready to drag on. You cannot stand upright in the entrance of the cave, so you enter bent over, but it does open out so that you can explore some of the cave upright. It is a good idea to get a sense of the internal plan before you go, because the dark is very disorientating and it is quite difficult to make out what is where.

The village of Trelawnyd showing the locations of the car park (red rectangle), and the small lane that leads to the footpath (red arrow). Click to expand. Courtesy Apple Maps.

Gop Cave is a short walk from the village of Trelawnyd on the A5151 (itself a short drive from junction 31 on the A55). It is a two-for-one scenario, as immediately above Gop Cave and only a minute or two away, and visible for miles around, is Gop Cairn. I forgot to to take a What3Words reading for the cave, but the cairn is at ///searcher.sprint.wins, Both are on public footpaths and are free of charge to access. There is a car park on the little High Street in Trelawnyd, just off the A5151, or there is a limited amount of on-street parking a bit closer to the start of the small lane that leads to the footpath on the hillside, just up the slope from the car park. The footpath is clearly marked, as shown in the photograph below.

The first part of the footpath is a small lane that takes you past a couple of houses, until it reaches a narrow path that makes its way along the side of a tall garden fence to your right. This turns abruptly right and slightly uphill, leading to a low stone-built stile which takes you on to the hillside. I was with Helen Anderson (well-known on Twitter as @Helenus_) and we were busy nattering and wild-flower spotting (complete with wild orchids) so weren’t paying too much attention to the pathway markers, but they are there if you keep an eye open.

We followed the well-worn track, which leads at this time of year, late April / early May, through bright yellow gorse until it opens onto higher ground, which is completely open, with stunning views over the surrounding valley to Iron Age hillforts on the Clwydian range and to the sea to the west. You need to turn left beneath a shallow pale grey limestone ridge to reach the main cave entrance. A very tiny secondary entrance is a little further along. Retrace your steps to go up to the cairn, through a gate in a drystone wall. For anyone wanting to stop for a breather, there’s a bench near the gate, somewhat bizarrely looking like an escapee from a Victorian arcade or promenade.

Moel Hiraddug

Although the walk is slightly steep for a short section, it is a mellow walk, and far from strenuous and there are some great views across the valley. It took perhaps 10 minutes from the road to the cave, 15 minutes maximum, and another five minutes or so from the cave to the cairn. The cave itself requires you to duck down and be very careful both to watch your footing on a very uneven and rocky surface, and to mind your head. Best to leave your rucksack outside after liberating your torch.

If you are interested in the Iron Age heritage of the Clwydian Range, Moel Hiraddug is beautifully clear to the southwest, and other hillforts of the Clwydian Range, fading into the distance when we were there, are easily visible on a clear day,

The wildflowers were an added bonus, with a classical karst mix of tiny hardy species clinging to the almost non-existent topsoil above the limestone bedrock, including some really pretty succulents and lichens. The Early Purple Orchids (Orchis mascula) were a particular bonus, and apparently fairly common in early spring in the general area. As well as the miniature slipper-orchid shaped flowers clustering at the top of the stems, their long pointed green leaves often have dark aubergine-coloured spots along them. Read more about them on the Woodland Trust website.

Having visited, there’s the option of a very good lunch at The Crown Inn in Trelawnyd, which was filling up rapidly during our visit. After lunch we went on to see the gorgeous Dyserth waterfall only a few miles away, which is very close to the road (a 50p honesty fee was required for access), and then went on to visit the small but fascinating Prestatyn Roman bath-house, which was again nearby. I have posted about the bath-house here.

If you want to incorporate Gop Hill into a much longer walk (4-7 hours over 5miles / 10.5 kilometers) the Clwyd and Powys Archaeologial Trust has published what looks like an excellent one: https://www.cpat.org.uk/walks/gopcairn.pdf

Sources for parts 1 – 3

Books and Papers

N.B. The reports by Stead and Bridgewood in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society are highlighted in green because although they are the record of the 1950s excavations, I have been unable to get access to them so I have not actually used them in this post. I have included them for the sake of completeness. If you do have access to them and don’t mind scanning them, I’d be really grateful so that I can add them to the post!

Barton, Nicholas 1997. Stone Age Britain. English Heritage / B.T, Batsford.

Brace, Selina, et al 2019. Ancient genomes indicate population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain – Supplementary Material. Nature Ecology and Evolution
https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/sites/reich.hms.harvard.edu/files/inline-files/2019_Brace_NatureEcologyEvolution_Supplement.pdf

Brady, James E. and Wendy Ashmore 1999. Mountains, Caves and Water: Ideational Landscapes of the Ancient Maya. In (eds.) Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp. Archaeologies of Landscape. Contemporary Perspectives. Blackwell Publishers.,. p.124-145

Britnell, William J. 1991. The Neolithic. In (eds.) John Manley, Stephen Grenter and Fiona Gale. The Archaeology of Clwyd, 9.55-64

Brown, Ian. 2004. Discovering a Welsh Landscape. Archaeology in the Clwydian Range. Windgather Press

Burrow, Steve. 2011. Shadowland. Wales 3000-1500BC. Oxbow / National Museum of Wales

Crumley, Carole, L. 1999. Sacred Landscapes: Constructed and Conceptualized. In (eds.) Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp. Archaeologies of Landscape. Contemporary Perspectives. Blackwell Publishers., p.269-276

Davies, Ellis. 1925. Hut circles and ossiferous cave on Gop Farm, Gwaunysgor, Flintshire. Archaeologia Cambrensis, 7th series, vol.5, p.436-438

Davies, Ellis 1949. The Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Flintshire with a Short Appendix to “The Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Denbighshire” (1929). Cardiff

William Boyd Dawkins: Cave Hunting

Dawkins, Sir William Boyd 1874. Cave hunting, researches on the evidence of caves respecting the early inhabitants of Europe. Macmillan
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52424/52424-h/52424-h.htm
or https://archive.org/details/CaveHunting/dawkins-w-cave-1874-RTL002406-LowRes/

Dawkins, Sir William Boyd 1886. Early Man in Britain. Macmillan

Dawkins, Sir William Boyd 1901. On the Cairn and Sepulchral Cave at Gop, near Prestatyn. Archaeological Journal, Vol.58, vol.1

De Groote, I., Lewis, M. & Stringer, C. 2017. Prehistory of the British Isles: A tale of coming and going. Bulletins et mémoires de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13219-017-0187-8

Dinnis, R. & Cris Ebbs. 2013. Cave deposits of North Wales: some comments on their archaeological importance and an inventory of sites of potential interest. Cave and Karst Science 40(1): 28-34.
https://www.academia.edu/5157200/Dinnis_R_and_Ebbs_C_2013_Cave_deposits_of_North_Wales_some_comments_on_their_archaeological_importance_and_an_inventory_of_sites_of_potential_interest_Cave_and_Karst_Science_40_1_28_34

Glenn, T. Allen, 1925. Distribution of the Graig Lwyd Axe and its Associated Cultures. Archaeologia Cambrensis vol 90, p.190-218

Jenkinson, Rogan D.S. 2023. A North-Western Habitat: the Paleoethology and Colonisation of a European Peninsula. Internet Archaeology 61
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue61/1/full-text.html

Last, Jonathan (compiler) 2003. The Archaeology of English Caves and Rock-Shelters: A Strategy Document. Centre for Archaeology Report 32/2003
https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/5231/TheArchaeologyofEnglishCavesandRock-Shelters_AStrategyDocument

Lynch, Frances 2000. The Earlier Neolithic. In (eds) Frances Lynch and Stephen Aldhous-Green. Prehistoric Wales, Sutton Publishing, p.42-78

Marsolier-Kergoat M-C, Palacio P, Berthonaud V, Maksud F, Stafford T, Bégouën R, et al. 2015. Hunting the Extinct Steppe Bison (Bison priscus) Mitochondrial Genome in the Trois-Frères Paleolithic Painted Cave. PLoS ONE 10(6)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0128267

Parker-Person, Mike 1999, 2000. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Texas A&M University Press

Ray, Keith and Julian Thomas. 2018. Neolithic Britain. The Transformation of Social Worlds. Oxford University Press

Schulting, Rick J. 2007. Non-monumental burial in Britain: a (largely) cavernous view. In L. Larsson,
F. Lüth and T. Terberger (eds), Non-megalithic Practices in the Baltic: New methods and
research into the development of Stone Age society, 581–603. Bericht der Römisch-
Germanischen Kommission 88, Schwerin

Schulting, Rick J 2020. Claddedigaethau mewn ogofâu: Mesolithic to Romano-British human remains (mainly) from the caves of Wales. Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society, 28 (2), p.185-219

Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley 1982. Ideology, symbolic power and ritual communication: a reinterpretation of Neolithic mortuary practices. In (ed.) Ian Hodder, Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, p.129-50

Sheriden, Alison 2012. The jet belt slider, Movers Lane. In E. Stafford, D. Goodburn and M. Bates, Landscape and Prehistory of the East London Wetlands. Investigations Along the A13 DBFO Roadscheme, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham, 2000–2003, 192–202. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology (Monograph 17)

Sheriden, J.A. and Davis, M. 1998. The Welsh Jest Set in Prehistory: A case of keeping up with the Joneses? In (eds.) Gibson, Alex and Derek Simpson. Prehistoric Ritual and Religion. Sutton Publishing, p.148-162.

Stead, W.H., and Bridgewood, R., 1957. Gop Cave, Newmarket and Nant-y-fuach,
Dyserth, Flintshire, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 23, p.228

Stead, W.H., and Bridgewood, R., 1958. Gop Cave, Newmarket and Nant-y-fuach,
Dyserth, Flintshire, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 24, p.219

Stead, W.H., and Bridgewood, R., 1959. Gop Cave, Newmarket and Nant-y-fuach,
Dyserth, Flintshire, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 25, p.280

Tilley, Christopher 2004. The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology: 1. Berg

Wainwright, Geoffrey J. 1961
The Mesolithic Period in South and Western Britain. Unpublished PhD, UCL April 1961
Volume 1
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1317731/1/282048_Vol_1.pdf
Volume 2
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1317731/2/282048_Vol_2.pdf

Westbury, Michael V. et al. 2020. Hyena paleogenomes reveal a complex evolutionary history of cross-continental gene flow between spotted and cave hyena. Science. Vol.6, No.11.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay0456

White, Mark J. and Paul B. Pettitt 2011. The British Late Middle Palaeolithic: An Interpretative Synthesis of Neanderthal Occupation at the Northwest Edge of the Pleistocene World. Journal of World Prehistory 24, p.25-97

Wymer, John. (ed.) 1977. Gazetteer of Mesolithic Sites in England and Wales. CBA Research Report no.20. GeoAbstracts and The Council for British Archaeology.

Websites

Ancient Human Occupation of Britain
https://ahobproject.org/

Archaeology Data Service
A database of Mesolithic Sites based on Wymer JJ and CJ Bonsall, 1977
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/mesgaz_ma_2008/

Cambrian Caving Council
Gop Cave by Cris Ebbs. Based on “An Introduction to the Caves of Northeast Wales (2000, ISBN 0 9522242 1 6)) by Cris Ebbs, which is no longer available.
https://www.cambriancavingcouncil.org.uk/registry/CoNW/CoNW_04.htm#Gop

Dafyd Archaeology (Heneb)
Mesolithic
https://www.dyfedarchaeology.org.uk/wp/mesolithic-main-page/

Derbyshire County Council
William Boyd Dawkins – Chronology
https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/site-elements/documents/pdf/leisure/buxton-museum/permanent-collections/dawkins-jackson/sir-william-boyd-dawkins/william-boyd-dawkins-chronology.pdf

Dictionary of Welsh Biography
Sir William Boyd Dawkins
https://biography.wales/article/s-DAWK-BOY-1837

Dyfed Archaeology
Mesolithic Wales
https://www.dyfedarchaeology.org.uk/lostlandscapes/trwyndu.html

A Maritime Archaeological Research Agenda for England
The Mesolithic. By Martin Bell and Graeme Warren with Hannah Cobb, Simon Fitch, Antony J Long, Garry Momber, Rick J Schulting, Penny Spikins, and Fraser Sturt
https://researchframeworks.org/maritime/the-mesolithic/

Natural History Museum
First Britons
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/first-britons.html

Nation Cymru
Unearthed 9,000 year-old encampment ‘on a par with the oldest mesolithic site’ in Wales. By Jez Hemming, 17th February 2021
https://nation.cymru/news/unearthed-9000-year-old-encampment-on-a-par-with-the-oldest-mesolithic-site-in-wales/

A Research Framework for the Archaeology of Wales
Key Sites: Northeast Wales – Palaeolithic and Mesolithic 22/12/2003
https://www.archaeoleg.org.uk/pdf/paleolithic/KEY%20SITES%20NE%20WALES%20PALAEOLITHIC%20AND%20MESOLITHIC.pdf
A Research Framework for the Archaeology of Wales: Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, version 04 – October 2022. By Dr Elizabeth A. Walker, (Co-ordinator), Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales
https://www.archaeoleg.org.uk/pdf/review2024/VERSION%2004%20Palaeolithic%20and%20Mesolithic.pdf

Science
The Rise of the Woolly Rhino. New fossil discoveries may explain origin of several Ice Age creatures. 1st September 2011, by Sid Perkins.
https://www.science.org/content/article/rise-woolly-rhino

Smithsonian Magazine
An Evolutionary Timeline of Homo Sapiens
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/

South Yorkshire Historic Environment Research Framework
Palaeolithic. By Paul Pettitt
https://researchframeworks.org/syrf/palaeolithic/
Mesolithic. By Penny Spikins with a contribution by Ellen Simmons
https://researchframeworks.org/syrf/mesolithic/

UCL Blogs – Research in Museums
Migration Event: When did the first humans arrive in Britain? By Josie Mills, 24th February 2019
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2019/02/24/migration-event-when-did-the-first-humans-arrive-in-britain/

University of Manchester, Science and Engineering
Sir William Boyd Dawkins – An Extraordinary Study. By Joe Shervin, 28th January 2019
https://www.mub.eps.manchester.ac.uk/science-engineering/2019/01/28/sir-william-boyd-dawkins-an-extraordinary-study/

View across the valley

A visit to The National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port

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Although quite literally freezing cold, the sun was stunning yesterday so on the spur of the moment, having just run an errand to Rossett, I plotted a route to the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port on the Wirral. It’s very easy to find, being just off the M53. I have been meaning to visit ever since I moved to this area. It is one of those places best done in dry weather, because there is as just as much, if not more, to see outside as indoors. Visitor information details are at the end.

Background History

The museum occupies the 19th century canal and port complex, re-using the lovely brick-built buildings for exhibits and displays and using sections of the docks and basins for a number of fascinating canal and waterway vessels. Ellesmere Port was the largest Inland Waterway dock complex in the United Kingdom. The name Ellesmere Port refers to the town of Ellesmere, where many of the decisions about the Shropshire Union canal network were made. There was no Ellesmere Port until the port was established in 1796 as a small base at the Mersey end of the Shropshire Union Canal.

The Shropshire Union Canal was one of a number of canals built at different times which, in 1846, were amalgamated into a single operational network. The earliest part of this network was the Nantwich to Canal section. The earliest part of the system was the Chester Canal which ran from Chester to Nantwich in 1772. It was not until 1793 that a section connecting Chester to the Mersey was built, with its terminus at Ellesmere Port. The section from Nantwich to Birmingham, the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal, was the main north-south artery of this network, and was not completed until 1835, joining the national canal network for which Birmingham was the central hub.

By 1802 as well as a series of locks with a lock keeper’s house, there was also three basins, wet and dry docks, a small wharf, a clerk’s house and a canal lighthouse. Over subsequent decades additional wharves were added and warehouses, workshops and sheds were built. A scheme by Thomas Telford for a dock and entrance for seagoing vessels was completed in 1843, significantly improving the port’s suitability for transhipping. During the 1850s the most important cargo was iron, followed by ceramics from the Potteries, and substantial facilities were provided for both.

The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, and the simultaneous improvement in facilities at Ellesmere Port significantly improved the prosperity of the port. Unfortunately this was something of a swansong for the canal port, and In 1921 the Shropshire Union Canal Company sold its fleet of barges and the commercial viability of the canal and the port for freight handling came to an end. The railways replaced the canals throughout Britain, with many of the former wharves and ports falling into disuse and dereliction. Ellesmere Port managed to survive until the 1950s and became a museum in the 1970s.

More details of the history of the port, (together with some of the business and industries it attracted, the development of the surrounding settlement and details of the drainage of Stanlow marshes by German prisoners of war in the First World War), are available in Vince Devine and Jo Clark’s excellent survey (see Sources at end).

The Museum

The derelict port buildings became a museum in the 1970s after a heroic effort by a group of volunteers, and is now a conservation area with nineteen Grade II listed buildings. It was originally known as the North West Museum of Inland Navigation and had various other names until it became The National Waterways Museum, with its emphasis on inland waterways, both rivers and canals, although coastal vessels are also included. As well as boats and exhibition and display spaces, the site is also home to the Waterways Archive, and education centre, conference facilities, a shop and café and other amenities, all located within the port buildings.

Map of the museum. Sorry it’s a bit crumpled, but there does not appear to be a clean version online. Click image to expand.

Entrance is via the ticket office that sits between the shop and the café. There is a 5 minute video to watch if required, and then access to the rest of the museum is on the other side of the shop, which sites on the side of the canal entrance to the port. There were obligingly two narrowboats moored further up the quayside, hemmed in with ice, and this is a very good place to orientate oneself with the help of the excellent map that comes with your entry ticket. It’s quite a complicated site, with several buildings containing exhibits, so the map is invaluable.

I started out by walking over the bridges towards the Exhibition Hall, former warehousing, taking in some of the historic boats moored up alongside the quays in the Upper Basin.

The big former warehouse, called the Island Warehouse, has displays on two floors. The ground floor is a vast collection of objects connected to the waterways, including bits of engine, windlasses, tillers, rudders, sack barrows, buckets and lamps and a zillion other objects, parts and bits. There’s very little information on display, although a QR code promised more details about some of the objects via your smartphone (I had left mine in the car by accident).

A really wonderful find on the ground floor was a long glass cabinet containing a prehistoric log boat found in Baddiley Mere in Cheshire, and made of a single, hollowed-out trunk of oak. This is a nationally important object and it was splendid to see it. I had no idea it was at Ellesmere Port. Sadly, the cabinet was hemmed in on all sides with other objects. It was also covered in dust and the glass sides reflected the surroundings, so it was difficult to get close or see it properly and impossible to photograph well. I do wish that it was on the first floor exhibition area, where it could be seen and appreciated properly. According to the Heritage Gateway website, it is on loan from the Grosvenor Museum.

The prehistoric log canoe, which could be rather more conspicuously and sympathetically displayed.

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The first floor is a more formal exhibition area. There is a cut-away narrowboat called Friendship with its painted bow and stern and a tiny little cabin, the unimaginably small living quarters of the narrowboat’s operator and his family. A delightful pleasure boat, the 1954 Amaryllis, glows with glossy mahogany and polished brass. My favourite was an example of a long, slender boat called a “starvationer,” designed to run on the 46 miles (74km) of subterranean canal tunnels in the Duke of Bridgewater’s Worsley coal mines. Other cabinets have model boats and ships showing a range of different types and sizes. A couple of cabinets have examples of canal art associated with narrowboats. Items commonly found in the dock and canal port are included. There’s even a working model of the Anderton Boat Lift. Information boards provide plenty of detail.

A “starvationer”

Sack chute

Out on the other side of this building, back outside, there are more boats. Some of the boats that are usually out in the summer are under cover for winter, still visible but not as accessible. This is particularly true of the valuable wooden narrowboats like Gifford and the ice-breaker Marbury. Being under cover, they are also easier to work on. The ongoing care and repair of wooden boats is a major part of the out of season work at the museum, and there information boards explaining what is being done to each.

The ice-breaker “Marbury”

Walking to the left, a splendid ship hull rests in a giant covered cradle, the remains of the Mersey flat barge Mossdale. According to the signage she is the only surviving all-timber Mersey flat. She was initially named Ruby, in which guise she carried cargoes of up to 70 tons, towed by steam tug on canal, river and along the coast. In spite of her flat base she was very stable. She was sold in 1920, after which she carried pottery, grain, flour and sugar along the Bridgewater canal.

Mossdale

Beyond this is the splendid Pump House with its 69ft (21m) chimney built in 1873. This was closed to the public on the day I visited.

Heading back, the next place to visit is Porters Row, four terraced houses, each one fitted out with furniture, accessories, wallpaper, technology and kitchen equipment that would have been found in dock workers’ homes of the 1830s, 1900s, 1920s and 1950s. This is such fun, a really evocative way of getting a sense of how past objects were deployed in ordinary homes, although some were clearly more prosperous than others, one with a piano, and more remarkably one with a organ!

Beyond and downhill (reached via a ramp, or by locks if you are in a boat) is the Lower Basin containing more boats, with the rather well disguised Holiday Inn hotel beyond.

Crossing to the other side of the port, there is another set of buildings that includes the old stables (for the horses that pulled the unpowered narrowboats), the blacksmith’s forge (still operational), and the Power Hall, which is a display of ship engines, one of which can be operated via a push-button.

FCB18 – a barge made of concrete

On the other side of the Power Hall are two more boats, one of which, the barge FCB18, is fascinatingly made of concrete, which is a crazily counter-intuitive concept. But there it is, happily afloat. The information signage says that she was built in 1944 during the war, which was a time of steel shortage. Concrete was readily available and cheap, and although steel was still required, only 18 tons was required, as opposed to the 56 for a steel barge with a carrying capacity of 200 tons. Unfortunately, the resulting barge was heavy, difficult to steer, and brittle.

The other boat is Basuto, looking like something built of rusty Meccano, but again, still afloat in a sea of green weed.

Back up towards the exit is a sign pointing you to the slipway with its blue-painted wooden winch house, and from here you can see over to the channel that connects the Manchester Ship Canal to the River Weaver and Ellesmere Port. When you leave the museum, you can turn left along the road that passes between the museum and the car park, and walk along the channel’s edge towards the Holiday Inn, where there are some great swing bridges and more canal-side buildings, including a unique port lighthouse.

The above is just a sample – there’s lots to see. A great visit.

Visiting Information

A dry day is preferable for a visit, because there is a lot to see outside, and the buildings themselves are part of the attraction. Opening times are on the Canal and River Trust website here. At the time of writing (January 2024) the entrance fee was £11.75 for an adult, which seems quite steep but the ticket lasts for a year, and I will certainly be making use of mine for another visit. Other entrance fees are on the museum’s website on the above link. There is a nicely presented shop with books, toys and canal-themed ornaments, and a bright, comfortable café. Outside there are plenty of picnic benches, and a play area. The museum was amazingly quiet. Given the bright sunshine I thought that it would be fairly busy, but the cold was obviously a deterrent, the docks being frozen solid.

I was warned at the ticket office about icy surfaces, which takes on a particular resonance when you are walking along the edges of frozen expanses of water with almost no-one around. But they had done such a good job with the salt and grit that even in the cold shadows there was no ice on which to slip.

For those with unwilling legs, there are ramps nearly everywhere. In the Island Warehouse there is an elevator to the first floor, but this was out of order when I visited so it might be a good idea to phone first if you need it. There is a lot to see on the first floor, so it would be best to go when the elevator is working. The Pump House was closed, but this appears to be accessible only via a short flight of steps (5 or 6 steps). Otherwise, as far as I could see, the whole site seemed to be fully accessible for wheelchair users and those with unwilling legs.

Boat trips are available in the summer.

Sources

Books and papers

Vince Devine and Jo Clark. 2003. Ellesmere Port Archaeological Assessment. Cheshire Historic Towns Survey
http://www.cheshirearchaeology.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/HTS_Arch_Assess_EllesmerePort.pdf

Websites

The Ellesmere Port Canal Port Trail
The Mersey Forest
https://www.merseyforest.org.uk/things-to-do/walks-bike-rides-and-more/walks/ellesmere-port-canal-port-trail/

The Shropshire Union Canal
The Canal and River Trust
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/canals-and-rivers/shropshire-union-canal
Virtual Tour of the Museum
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/things-to-do/museums-and-attractions/national-waterways-museum-ellesmere-port/virtual-tour-of-the-national-waterways-museum

History of the Shropshire Union Canals
The Shropshire Union Canal Society
https://shropshireunion.org.uk/shropshire-union/early-history-of-the-shropshire-union-canals/

Postcard of a photograph from the museum archives. Lovely to see all those Fellows, Morton and Clayton narrowboats lined up. A real canal legend.

A visit to Dafydd ap Gruffydd’s 1278 castle at Caergwrle in northeast Wales

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Caergwrle Castle. Source: RCAHMW

On the top of a small hill formed of sandstone and grit, with good surrounding views, and relying partly on steep drops for its primary defence, Caergwrle Castle is ruined but contains the remains of well-built stone walls and a defensive ditch that is still quite deep in spite of the build-up of both castle and natural debris.

Caergwrle Castle, also known as Hope Castle and Queen’s Hope, was started in 1278 by Dafydd ap Gruffydd with support from Edward I. Dafydd was the brother of the better known Llywellyn ap Gruffydd (or Llywellyn the Last) who was the last native Prince of Wales to be recognized by the English crown. Both Llywellyn and Dafydd were grandsons of Llywelyn the Great. For a description of the ongoing conflicts between the Welsh factions represented by Llywelyn the Great, his children and grandchildren on the one hand, and the English crown under Henry III and Edward I on the other, see the post on this blog, in which I have made a stab at summarizing the complex background history.

Caergwrle Castle, c.1795 by John Ingleby showing the natural defences provided by steep drops at the west and south. Source: National Library of Wales, via Wikipedia

Today the main visible features of the site consist of an outer double ditch and some surviving sections of curtain wall and towers. The loss of masonry was partly due to the slighting of the site in 1282 when Dafydd abandoned it, but it was also severely damaged by accidental fire in August 1283. Although it passed through various hands thereafter, no attempts to restore it were made, and much later it was subjected to extensive stone robbing for building projects in the valley below. Given the indignities imposed on the castle in the past, what remains today is really quite impressive. The main source for this post is John Manley’s 1994 Excavations at Caergwrle Castle, Clwyd, North Wales: 1988-1990 (full details and a link to the PDF in Sources at the end of the post).

Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Edward I and Caergwrle Castle

North Tower

The fortifications enclose an area some 110m x 120m. The scale of the castle is entirely consistent with its Welsh-built siblings of the 12th and 13th centuries. When compared with Edward I’s contemporary and enduring monsters at Flint, Rhuddlan and Denbigh, Caergwrle Castle looks very modest. The castle was started in 1278, just one year after the foundation of Edward’s first castles in Wales at Flint and Rhuddlan. Welsh political power under Llywelyn ap Gruffudd had been pushed back to Gwynedd in the west, and although Llywelyn was still permitted to hold the title Prince of Wales, with Edward’s consent, this title was nominal, a mere consolation prize, and Llywelyn’s territory, power and status had been terminally undermined after his defeat in 1276, agreed in the Treaty of Aberconwy.

Daffydd had been a wildcard in the Anglo-Welsh conflict. Embittered by being denied his rightful inheritance by his brother Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, in 1263 Daffyd sided with Edward’s father Henry III against Llywelyn. Welsh law of the period demanded that when a landholder died, his property should be divided between his heirs, but when Gruffydd ap Llywelyn died, Llywelyn seized control over land that should have been divided between all four brothers, and it is not surprising that Dafydd felt betrayed and infuriated by Llywelyn’s usurpation of his birthright.

Northeast Wales, showing the cantrefi of Rhwfoniog and Dyffryn Clwyd

Following his support of Edward, and in the aftermath of the Treaty of Aberconwy, Dafydd was rewarded by Edward with lands in northeast Wales (specifically the cantrefi of Rhwfoniog and Dyffryn Clwyd), but he was aggrieved that the treaty failed to grant him his ancestral lands in Gwynedd. Llywelyn was permitted to retain all of western Gwynedd, which Dafydd felt again denied him the territory that he should have inherited from their father. John Manley suggests that this was deliberate, encouraging a perpetual conflict between the two men, creating a psychological barrier that would discourage any attempt at an alliance between them against Edward, as well as a geographical buffer between Llywelyn’s Gwynedd and England. Edward contributed token funds to the construction of Caergwrle Castle, and may have loaned Dafydd architectural advisors to assist with the design. Manley draws a number of parallels between Edward’s castles and that of Caergwrle, including corner towers, D-shaped towers, and the massive walls.

Curtain wall between the north tower and the east tower

Any real hopes that Edward’s might have had that these measures might help to seal the peace were frustrated. Edward’s castles and the accompanying towns, all of which were being populated by English migrants, reinforced Edward’s foothold, and he must have known that the resentment generated by his annexation of Welsh land was a real risk. Although Caergwrle Castle was built with Edward’s blessing and aid, ostensibly to defend Dafydd’s newly acquired territories against potential hostilities from native aggressors, slippery Dafydd turned against Edward in 1282. Dafydd’s uprising must have taken Edward by surprise in a way that an uprising from Llywelyn or any of the other Welsh landholders might not have done.

The well

Confronted with his brother Dafydd’s rebellion, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, stuck between a rock and a hard place, threw in his lot with his brother rather than honouring the peace treaty with Edward. He was killed in battle on 11th December in 1282. Dafydd adopted the title Prince of Wales but by early 1283, Edward I’s vast English army had hemmed in the Welsh heartland and Dafydd’s ambitions were clearly doomed.

In the event, Caergwrle escaped involvement in the rebellion. Although Edward sent a detachment to secure it, the castle had already been abandoned by Dafydd and “slighted ” (i.e. deliberately damaged to prevent easy re-use). Dafydd shifted first to Dolwyddelan Castle in southwest Conwy whilst the English took Bangor, Caer-yn-Arfon and Harlech. Castell-y-Bere, near the coast in mid-west Wales, was the last of the Welsh strongholds to withstand Edward’s armies, falling in April 1283. Faced with such a comprehensive annihilation, Dafydd fled. He was captured later that year and was tortured and put to death. The grizzly design of Dafydd’s death is some measure of how personally Edward had taken this new revolt. Llywelyn’s battlefield death was probably a lucky escape.

Never one to waste a resource, Edward ordered repairs to be carried out to Caergwrle Castle, as he did at a number of the other Welsh-built castles that he conquered. This policy improved his grip on Wales at a cost that was minimal when compared to the eye-watering expense of his newly founded state-of-the-art castles. Manley gives details of the accounts kept by John of Lincoln at the castle between June and November 1282, recording payments to men working on the castle. Amongst the personnel receiving payments were officials, knights, archers, crossbowmen, carpenters, masons, diggers and sundry workmen. As with Edward’s newly established castles in Wales, Caergwrle’s restoration was to be accompanied by a new town and populated by English migrants. The road layout was established, and when the castle was gifted by Edward to his wife, Queen Eleanor, a licence to hold a market was granted, but the plans for an English migrant settlement at the foot of a newly fortified Welsh-built castle were never completed.

In 1283 a fire broke out at the castle whilst Edward and Queen Eleanor were in residence, and even though excavations failed to produce evidence of a catastrophic fire, the castle was so badly damaged that it was apparently decided that additional resources should not be invested in extensive repairs. Even when Madog ap Llywelyn rebelled in 1294 the castle was not refortified. Madog, a distant cousin of Llywelyn, apparently undeterred by Edward’s uncompromising treatment of Dafydd, decided to test the king in one final 13th century uprising. The rebellion was suppressed. Nearly a century later the castle was ignored by both sides during the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in the early 1400s. During the 17th Century Civil War it was not one of the Welsh castles refortified for housing garrisons and storing supplies. In all these cases, it was probably decided that the castle was too ruinous, too small or in an unsuitable location – or a combination of all three.

Features of the 13th century castle

Caergwrle Castle. Plan showing the excavations 1988-1990 shaded in grey, the standing remains in black, and the outer enclosure to the east. Source: Manley 1994, Fig. 3, p.87

The main source of information about the castle is the 1994 report of the three-season excavation that took place between1988 and 1990 (see Sources at the end of the post). This detailed account by John Manley and contributors clarified the relationship between many of the visible and hidden remains to build up a partial picture of how the castle was designed and developed and what sort of diet the workers and inhabitants enjoyed.

The castle is strategically well positioned on a hilltop with near-vertical drops to the west and southwest. It sits above the river Alyn, and would have had excellent views over the surrounding area. Today the views are partially hidden by woodland. The river is not visible from the castle today, but runs along the base of the hill to its east, providing a readily available source of potable water during times of peace.

A suggested reconstruction of Caergwrle Castle from the east, showing the vulnerable aspect of the castle, defended with the help of a deep ditch. Source: Manley 1994, fig.23, p.129

As you approach the castle along the footpath from the road below, you find yourself confronted by a wooden stair-stile that crosses a ditch, as shown in the reconstruction on the left and on the plan below. This was once a double ditch, the outer one much shallower and less easy to see today. The ditches were an important component of the castle fortifications, providing protection on the side of the castle that was not protected by the steep drop.

The red dot shows the usual visitor entry to the castle, via the footpath that begins next to the war memorial. The yellow dot shows the usual exit, which allows you to walk back down via a footpath through the wooded area.

Having crossed the ditch, you enter with castle with the North Tower on your right, with a tiny section of curtain wall beyond; and the east-facing curtain wall on your left, with the round stone top of the well clearly visible at the foot of the wall. The wall is linked to the East Tower via the remains of an archway. Another small section of wall connects the East Tower to the South Tower. Opposite you, the original western curtain wall is missing in its entirety. Even given the ruinous nature of the castle, it is easy to see how solidly it was built, with thick, tall walls and impressively big towers, showing the influence of Edward’s architects and civil engineers.

Manley identifies six different styles of wall construction at Caergwrle. Masonry that could be most finely worked was used in prestigious areas and for specific architectural features, whereas internal walls, which would have been plastered anyway, were far less refined. Between the inner and outer wall faces, the interior was filled with rubble. A large quarry was identified to the northwest of the castle, and part of the hilltop itself was probably used during work to level the surfaces.

The North Tower, once D-shaped, is thought to have included a staircase and latrines. Below ground level was a storage basement or dungeon. Above, on the first floor, is evidence for a large fireplace. This is linked to the East Tower by a section of curtain wall terminating in an arch. The sandstone-faced well is clearly visible today, and right up against it excavations revealed that a lean-to building once stood against the wall. The once D-shaped East Tower, right on the edge of a steep slope down to the valley, was , and is also thought to have housed a latrine, as well as other chambers. The South Tower was a substantial round structure, although this is difficult to see from what remains today. Where the East Tower meets the section of curtain wall leading to the South Tower was a bread oven made of local sandstone, a common feature in medieval castles, its internal diameter around 3m. It is uncertain whether this belonged to Dafydd’s castle, or to Edward’s rebuild. The excavation discovery of mortar mixing and metal working areas as well as the very basic nature of the internal structures “make it difficult to imagine that the interior of Caergwrle castle looked like anything other than a building site between 1278 and 1283.”

Metal objects found at the site. Source: Manley 1994, fig15, p.113

Finds from the castle, found during the excavations included a small amount of medieval pottery, all hand coiled (none of it wheel-thrown), representing jugs, jars, pots and bowls. Comparisons with assemblages from Beeston Castle suggest a 13th century date, consistent with work carried out at Caergwrle by both Dafydd and Edward. Iron objects were few and far between but interesting, including construction materials, tools and weapons, and there were a few items of copper alloy. Five coins were found, including three from the reign of Edward I. Animal remains include cattle, sheep/goat (being difficult to distinguish archaeologically) and pig as well as wild species such as fish, bird and roe deer, suggesting a fairly broad range of meat dishes.

Combining all the data from the architecture and excavation, Manley conclude that Caergwrle was intended to be defended by spear “thrust or thrown” rather than by crossbow or longbow.

Visiting

Caergwrle Castle is free of charge to access and is open all year round. It is a popular destination for local dog-walkers, families and children, in spite of a moderately steep route up from road level. There is no information about the castle at the site. The surviving display frames, probably erected following the excavations in the late 1990s, are still standing but are empty.

Although the surrounding region is rural, the castle sits within woodland above a very built-up extended ribbon development of shops and housing along the busy Wrexham Road, and is easy to miss in the car. I used my Google SatNav to let me know when I was passing, which notified me just in time for me to spot a sign on the right (I was heading south to north) marking the way up. This way up is next to a conspicuous war memorial on the side of the road, just short of a Spar corner shop. You can find the pathway up on What3Words in your SatNav at ///fencing.chariots.prom. I parked on a nearby road, but I later noticed, when driving past it after my visit, that there was a car park for the High Street further along.

The walk from the road up to the castle is trouble-free, but moderately steep, starting with a metalled ramp and then wood-boxed steps. although it only took me about 10 minutes, if that, to walk from bottom to top. It is probably slippery in wet weather. The top is grassy and the track to the castle is quite muddy at this time of year, and there is a stepped stile to climb into the castle. If taking unwilling legs into account, the steepness and stile might be deterrents, There is a seat half way up that may help if not already occupied.

I combined this short visit with a walk at the lovely Waun y Llyn country park, approximately 15 minutes away by car, providing some splendid views over the surrounding lowland hills on a fine day.

Sources

Books and papers

Davies, J. 2007 (3rd edition). A History of Wales. Penguin

Davis, Paul R. 2021. Towers of Defiance. The Castles and Fortifications o the Princes of Wales. Y Lolfa

King, D. J. Cathcart. 1974. Two Castles in Northern Powys: Dinas Bran and Caergwrle. Archaeologia Cambrensis 123.
https://journals.library.wales/view/4718179/4746669/152

Manley, John. 1994. Excavations at Caergwrle Castle, Clywd, North Wales: 1988-1990. Medieval Archaeology, 38
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-769-1/dissemination/pdf/vol38/38_083_133.pdf

Websites

Aberdovey Londoner
Castell-y-Bere (1221-1295) in the Dysynni Valley. By Andie Byrnes, October 31st 2018
https://aberdoveylondoner.com/2018/10/31/a-visit-to-castell-y-bere-1221-1295-in-the-dysynni-valley/

Ancient and Medieval Architecture
Caergwrle – Castle. By Janusz Michalew.
https://medievalheritage.eu/en/main-page/heritage/wales/caergwrle-castle/

Cadw
Caergwrle Castle
https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/caergwrle-castle

Coflein
Caergwrle Castle
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/95099/

A very autumnal walk taking in Churton fields, Townfield Lane, the speedy Dee – and a cormorant.

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After all the rain last night, which was truly torrential, I was somewhat surprised to wake up to bright sunshine and a topaz sky this morning. A treat for mid November. Planning to walk through the fields behind Churton towards Farndon, before turning right down Townfield Lane to the Dee, I decided that it was a moment for seriously waterproof footwear. Not walking boots but welly boots. It was a good instinct. The fields were sodden and marshy, the tracks muddy and mired due to tractors, and the picturesque but unadopted Townfield Lane was a series of lane-wide pools. The short section of footpath leading north from the lane along the river bank to the field next to the river was only just clear of the flood waters, which were moving fast and forming fascinating eddies.

I always like the Churton-to-Farndon fields following harvest, because of the linear stubble that draws the eye into the distance and focuses attention on individual trees that, at this time of year, are full of bright warm colours. The deep chestnut brown of the fields provides a beautiful foil for the silvery stubble, the blue skies and the autumnal leaves. The mirror-like reflections in the standing water were a pleasure in their own right. Today really was a water walk.

The biggest surprise was spotting a cormorant (or is it a shag?) at the very top of a tall tree by the side of the river (see photo at end of post). Cormorants and shags are right at home on the coastal estuaries of mid-Wales, and are frequent visitors to the Thames and its former docks in London, both places where I used to live, but I never did learn to tell the difference between them, and I have never seen one this far inland. It seemed right at home.
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View from the Dee at the end of Townfield Lane across the fields to the Barnston Memorial.

It would have been good to turn this into a circular walk by continuing north along the side of the Dee and taking the footpath from the Dee straight through the plantation onto the track extending directly from Hob Lane in Churton, but the footpath back to Hob Lane through the plantation of trees is usually bad news in even averagely showery weather, with seriously thick, sometimes impassable mud, so I simply retraced my steps on this occasion. The circular walk is very much a summer activity after a period of very dry weather.

If you don’t like squelching through wet mud and soggy grass, or paddling through big areas of standing water, this is not a good walk following heavy rainfall, even on a beautiful day. On the other hand, it cast a very familiar local walk in an entirely new light. After heavy rainfall I would advise that this is not a walk for those with unwilling legs, although my father (he of a notably unwilling leg) had no problems with it in dry periods in the spring and summer. Today it was far too slippery and sludgy.

Day trip: Edward I’s 1282 Denbigh Castle and Town Walls

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Introduction

Aerial view of Denbigh Castle. Source: Coflein

The substantial remains of Denbigh Castle and its walls represent an important slice of Anglo-Welsh history, and are truly beautiful to visit on a sunny day when the castle walls and the surrounding landscape are bathed in bright, lovely light. It is thought, partly because of the original name Dinbych meaning ‘little fort’, that a previous castle, along much more modest lines, had been on the site at least from the 12th century. The new castle at Denbigh was built by Edward I (1239-1307, reigning from 1272). It was started in 1282, and given to Henry de Lacy to complete and defend in the same year. It survived the 1294 rebellion by Madog ap Llywelyn, the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr in 1400 and held out under siege for six months during the Civil War in 1646, before being slighted at the end of that war in 1659. The ruins attracted a number of painters, examples of whose work are shown towards the end of the post. On a visit to the town, and making it a good day out, there are also impressive heritage sites to see in Denbigh, some of which I have included in the Visitor details at the end of the post.

Llywelyn the Last paying homage to Edward, sitting on Edward’s left.

It is probably impossible to fully understand Edward I’s castles in Wales without getting to grips with the longstanding conflict between the English Crown and the Welsh princes in the 13th century. I did my best to summarize the background in a post on this blog in which, as well as discussing the conflicts, I have tried very hard to distinguish the different generations of Welsh princes from one another coherently, which is something of a challenge due to their repetitive naming conventions. Apart from a short introduction in the next paragraph, all my comments on Edward’s military strategy, and the reasons for it, are on that post, and are not covered here.

Map of Wales showing Edward I’s new castles in Wales. Source: By Eggishorn on Wikipedia

Denbigh Castle was Edward I’s sixth castle in Wales as he headed relentlessly west to subdue Wales. His castles at Flint, Hawarden, Rhuddlan and Builth (unfinished) in the northeast, and Aberystwyth in mid-west Wales were already underway, all started in 1277. Henry III and Edward had been troubled throughout Henry’s reign by rebellions in Wales, masterminded by Llywelyn ap Gruffud, known as Llywelyn the Last (not to be confused with Llywelyn the Great, his grandfather). Several treaties had failed to achieve long term peace, and although the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267 looked as though it might hold, Llywelyn ap Gruffud was labelled an outlaw in 1276, and war was declared in 1277. A peace was brokered, marked by the Treaty of Aberconwy of November 1277, but although Edward had every reason to believe that the new treaty might secure peace between England and Wales, he was taking no chances and began to build a series of castles in northeast Wales, beginning at Flint in 1277, with Rhuddlan Castle started later in the same year. These costly and invasive measures were vindicated in 1282 when war broke out again, instigated by Dafydd ap Gruffyd, Llywelyn’s brother, whom Llywelyn joined in the new uprising. Both were killed during the war, and peace lasted until 1294 when a distant cousin of Llywelyn’s, Madog ap Gruffud, again took up arms against Edward, marking the last of the 13th century attempts to regain both lost territory and lost dignity.

Why here? The location of Denbigh Castle

Strategic importance of the castle

Denbigh in the Vale of Clwyd with the River Conwy to the west and the Clwydian range and the Dee estuary to the east. Source: Google Maps

Denbigh Castle was built on a Carboniferous limestone outcrop overlooking the flat plain of the Vale of Clwyd and the lowlands of the Clwydian Range of hills, rising to 468ft (142m) above sea level. There may have been an earlier castle on the same spot. From the point of view of visibility of the surrounding landscape it is an excellent site for a castle. The Dee estuary lies over the hills to the northeast, and the River Conwy to the west. The Conwy marked a natural border between east and west Wales, a border that was a frequent bone of contention between the Welsh princes of Gwynedd and the English crown, as the Welsh attempted to push west in the face of the determination of the English crown to hold them safely contained in the west.

The Four Cantrefi. Source: Wikipedia

Denbigh lies in what was Rhufoniog, one of the so-called Four Cantrefi, four areas of north Wales that Henry III wrested from Wales and were allocated under the Treaty of Woodstock in 1247. Following grievances with the English governorship of the Four Cantrefi, Llywelyn the Last took up the cause against Edward I. Following Llywelyn’s surrender, Rhufoniog had been granted under the 1267 Treaty of Montgomery to Llywelyn’s treacherous brother Dafydd ap Gruffudd, together with Dyffryn Clwyd, but Dafydd rebelled against Edward. Llywelyn threw in his lot with his brother, and was killed in battle in 1282. Dafydd was captured and then tortured and killed in 1283, after which the cantrefi reverted to the English crown, a source of bitter resentment for the Welsh.

Edward granted land in Wales to favoured supporters, and allocated Denbigh to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, together with the cantrefi of Rhos and Dinmael, the latter having been wrested from the rulers of northern Powys. These three regions were combined to become Denbigh, a massive English footprint in northeast Wales. Henry de Lacy certainly set out to make the most of his new possession, evocatively expressed by R.R. Davies:

The seal of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln

Henry Lacy, earl of Lincoln: in his new, vast lordship of Denbigh not only did he create a brand new manor (with a brand new name) for himself from forfeited and other lands, grant out sizable estates for his followers and servants (including his chamberlain and his cook), establish two studs for his horses, and carve out parks for his pleasure and stock them with deer from Cheshire; but he also declared majestically that the new land measurement to be used in Denbigh was to be a perch of twenty-one feet as gauged by the length of his own foot.

Edward’s chain of castles, the so-called ring of iron, consisted of both both fortifications and a communication network. It was put to the test not only during the Middle Ages but in subsequent the early 1400s and the 17th century, highlighting the strategic importance of each castle.

Economic potential of the area

View from the castle’s main gate house

Edward’s castles were not standalone constructions. Communication networks were vital for a peripatetic king and court, but also for the movement of troops and the commercial viability of new settlements. Each castle connected to Edward’s growing network of roads and was accompanied by a new town. Areas in which castles and their towns were located had to be economically viable to attract English settlers to potentially volatile locations. Additional benefits were low rentals, exemption from tolls, and, in the case of Denbigh and some other towns, Edward granted the town a monopoly. The towns were monetized, using coinage for purchases, rather than the traditional Welsh system of exchange. Edward established mints at Rhuddlan and elsewhere to enable the urbanization of Wales.

View over fields beyond the castle walls today

Denbigh was one of the few castles built by Edward that was not a port, and did not have river access to a port. However the land was suitable for agricultural activities and livestock rearing. Cattle prefer good quality grazing, but sheep, which are less fussy about their food source, could be converted not merely into meat and dairy, but sheared for the thriving 14th century trade in wool and inexpensive cloth centred in nearby Ruthin. Stevens says that the in the Denbighshire lordship of Dyffryn Clwyd, “the lord’s demesne [productive land attached to the manor] flock numbered 2,000 – 3,000 and the aggregated tenant flocks nearly as many, with several private flocks numbering between 100 and 240.” In Dyffryn Clwyd it is known that weaving on a piecemeal basis in farmsteads supplemented other income.

The design

Burgess Gate, from the castle side

It is thought that the castle was designed and its build overseen by James of St George, who was responsible for Edward’s most spectacular castles in Wales. It was built mainly of local limestone, with some components built in local yellow and Triassic red sandstone. For the Green Chambers, the two-storey building with chambers over a wine cellar and meat store, a different type of sandstone was sourced from a site 16 miles (25km) north of the castle.

Today, as in Edward’s day, the castle was approached primarily via the Burgess Gate, which sits along the town walls, north of the castle. This is a thoroughly substantial piece of architecture with the power to intimidate and impress as well as to defend. Its original portcullis has long gone but when you stand beneath the arch you can see the carefully cared square holes in the masonry above you, which shows where the portcullis was raised. The mechanism that operated it was on the first floor.

St Hilary’s Tower with the remnants of the church still attached to its eastern side.

Passing through the gate and heading uphill brings you to the castle, with St Hilary’s tower on your left. St Hilary’s was a chapel with a tower at its west end dating to the early 14th century, only two decades after the castle was founded, and was altered a number of times, but the church itself was taken down in 1923. The chapel had fallen out of use when a new church was built in the town beyond the walls in 1874. The tower with its contemporary west doorway and its 15th century battlements are all that remains to commemorate the church.

The castle is still fairly awe-inspiring, but must have been magnificent when towering over the valley, particularly when compared to the smaller and less solidly built Welsh castles. L.A.S Butler describes three main phases of construction work. Initially what are now the outer defences on the south and west were built to provide a defensible enclosure within which the main building activity could be carried out. Once the outer defences were completed, the castle was built on rather more massive lines. The curtain walls are taller and thicker, and were interrupted by hexagonal and octagonal towers, the postern gate almost opposite the main gate and a hidden passage called the sally port allowing pedestrian movements during times of siege.

A CGI impression of the three towers that make up the gate house, showing some of the internal passageways and the locations of the three portcullis gates. Source: Castle Studies Group Journal 2015

The entrance to the castle proper is an extraordinary construction consisting of three octagonal towers, on a triangular plan, with internal passages and staircases. It was protected by a portcullis over a ditch, and contains a statue in a niche above, which may be a later addition depicting Edward II (1307-1327). Following the attack of 1294 additional protective walls were added, with semi-circular towers at weak points. The areas between these outer walls and the later inner walls are referred to as mantlets and offered additional protection to the completed castle. Construction work continued after the attack, both to undertake repairs and to complete most of the original design.

Today the castle walls surround a large green area along the edge of which are the foundations and partial ruins of a number of structures essential to the castle, including two wells, a great hall, apartments, a kitchen with two splendid 16ft (5m) wide fireplaces, a combined treasury and muniments tower, and a pigeon house. The open area of green grass, the ward or bailey, was once the place where troops could muster and train, and might be used for storage. Interestingly, Neaverson comments that the well sunk into the Carboniferous limestone would have been unreliable, with the many joints in the rock allowing water to escape, and notes that there were medieval records describing this problem.

For information about the building process involved in Edward’s early castles in Wales, see my post on Flint Castle, which quotes former mayoress Vicky Perfect’s excellent research on the subject.

The town and the walls

The town

Photograph of a wall poster from the Denbigh Castle shop, showing what the castle may have looked like in the 14th century. Also shown in the Cadw guide book.

Like his first Welsh castle and town in Flint in 1277, the new castle-town at Denbigh, was Edward I’s replication of a French “bastide” of the sort he had already built in Gascony, in which both the castle and the town were planned as a single entity, each supporting the other. These new English castle-town arrangements were deeply unpopular in Wales because the land appropriated from the Welsh for the town and associated land-use was reserved for the English, part of Edward’s plan to undermine the Welsh occupation and domination of key strategic places. Pioneer settlers were expected to help defend the town should it come under attack, but were granted commercial privileges as incentives in these troubled areas, and might attract those who were unable to generate similar opportunities in more peaceful places.

Artefacts on display in the visitor shop at Denbigh Castle.

One of the primary activities of the new settlers was agriculture. The Welsh inhabitants were ousted and English settlers were given the most productive land. Other settlers would have been traders and middlemen, sourcing luxury goods and other desirable produce and goods from elsewhere for sale both to the castle and townspeople. Service industries will also have grown up, like grain mills, blacksmith forges and tanners, as well as food outlets such as butchers, bakeries and breweries and would all have been vital to a successful town. A church and courthouse would have been essential, and would have required their own officials.

John Speed’s map of 1610. Source: Cadw

Once the land within the town walls had filled to capacity with homes and businesses, other buildings grew around the exterior of the walls, forming a very large settlement site. Butler says that the original layout of the town in c.1282 incorporated 63 burgesses (a free citizen of the borough) each with its own burgage plot (property and attached land held by ownership or tenure). By 1305 only 52 houses were within the walls and up to 183 were outside, the latter taking advantage of the flatter land and the easier access to water. By 1476 there were 276 burgages beyond the walls. A tile kiln dating to the 14th or 15th-century was found during the 1930s during building work. 15th century records refer to town routes including High Street, Beacon’s Hill, Pepper Lane and Sowter Lane, and during both late 15th and 16th centuries craftsmen included a draper, glovers, shoe-makers, mercers and weavers. Leland, writing in the 1530s, comments that the walled town was largely abandoned in favour of lower land beyond the walls where water could be accessed and “maany welles” had been established.

The battered remains of the Carmelite Friary on the edge of the medieval town. Source: Coflein

All that remains of the medieval town within the walls is the tower of St Hilary’s Chapel, started in the early 1300s. Beyond the castle walls, the CPAT survey dates the cruck-framed Friesland Hall House (later the Old Castle Arms and now Bryn Awelon) to the 14th century. The same survey states that The Plough in Bridge Street was originally an L-shaped timber-framed building with a medieval rock cut cellar below. An outlier in the medieval town was the Carmelite friary dating to c.1289. In the current town all the other ordinary wood-built buildings will have been replaced many times over, although some of the stone cellars may date to the late-15th century during the War of the Roses, when townspeople may have decamped from within the town walls after Jasper Tudor burned the town in 1468 (about which more below).

Robert Dudley’s courthouse, now the library

In 1536 the Act of Union promoted Denbigh to one of four administrative capitals in Wales. Surviving buildings from the reign of Elizabeth I in the 16th century are the courthouse of 1571 and the incomplete church of 1578, both built by Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, who was granted the lordship of Denbigh in 1563. The courthouse was built in the lower town, whilst the new church took advantage of the empty spaces within the town walls. Dudley appears to have done very little to restore the castle. A 1610 map of Denbigh by John Speed shows only a handful of building, including the two churches, within the town walls, and a sprawling town beyond, with the 1289 Carmelite friary (the only one in Wales, and marked on the map as “The Abbey”) on the outskirts.

The walls

Walking the town walls of Denbigh

The walls were built to contain the new town and were started at the same time as the castle. Unlike Flint’s long-gone rectangular town walls, Denbigh’s loop around in an irregular sub-circular shape, enclosing enclosing c.9.5 acres (3.8 ha), again supplied with defensive towers, offering good views over the surrounding area. Access into the town was via two main gates in the walls, the Burgess Gate mentioned above to the north and the Exchequer Gate to the west. You can walk a section of the walls, but you need to pick up a key to the gate from either the library or the castle shop.

The castle under attack during the reign of Edward I

Tombstone of Madog ap Llywelyn in Gresford All Saints’s Church

In September 1294 a distant cousin of Llywelyn the Last and Dafydd ap Gruffudd, named Madog ap Llywelyn, made one last- ditch attempt to repel the English before Owain Glyndŵr’s attempt over a century later. His reasons were not simply territorial but had much to do with the English tax burden of 1/15th imposed on the region. Madog successfully captured a number of castles, including Denbigh, forcing their defenders to retreat, but only three months later Madog was forced out of the castle, and by April 1295 the castles had been restored to the hands of their English lords. The plan might have worked had Edward, who had mustered an army on the coast for action in Gascony, and should have been absent when the revolt took place; unfortunately for the rebels, bad weather delayed departure and Edward temporarily abandoned his campaign in Gascony and headed for Wales. Madog was taken to London where he was held in captivity, probably until his death in around 1312. For those in the Wrexham-Chester area, Madog was buried in Gresford All Saints’ Church (described on this blog here), where his tomb, showing an effigy of him in armour with his shield, can still be visited. Gresford Church is very well worth a visit in its own right.

Tombstone of Madog ap Llywelyn in Gresford All Saints’s Church

Back in the wars after Edward I

Owain Glyndŵr’s Rebellion (1400 – c.1410)

Banner of Owain Glyndwr. Source: Wikipedia

By 1400 the castle had passed through a number of hands under the reigns of Edward II (reigned 1307 to 1327), Edward III (reigned 1327 to 1377) and Richard II (reigned 1377 to 1399). In 1399 Henry Bolingbroke became Henry IV and ruled until 1413, and one of the earliest challenges of his reign was the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in 1400. Glyndŵr was the last Welsh national to claim the title Prince of Wales, which had actually been conferred on Edward I by his father Henry III. By this time the lordship of Denbigh had passed into the hands of the Mortimer family, but Roger Mortimer died in battle when his son Edmund Mortimer was a minor. Henry IV therefore appointed Henry Percy to take charge of Denbigh, together with other administrative responsibilities in the area. In 1400 Glyndŵr attacked the town of Denbigh, although apparently did not attempt to take the castle. Percy, popularly known as Hotspur, planned a rebellion of his own and was interested in forming an alliance with Glyndŵr. Fortunately for the king, Hotspur died in battle in 1403. The preservation of the castle was possibly due to a strategic marriage between Sir Edmund Mortimer (young Edmund’s uncle) and Glyndŵr’s daughter Catrin in November 1402. As Denbigh was part of young Edmund’s inheritance, the agreement to preserve of Denbigh’s castle from destruction might have been part of the marriage negotiation.

The War of the Roses (1455 – 1485)

Still in the hands of the Mortimer family, who supported the Yorkist cause, Denbigh Castle became the target of Jasper Tudor, who had been granted the role of constable (high official) of Denbigh, but was unable to fulfil the role until he gained access to the castle. He made his attempt first in 1460, when he successfully took the castle for a number of months before being ousted, and again in 1468 when he failed to take the castle, but breached the town walls and set fire to the town. The castle was again repaired after the end of the war, and as mentioned above, it appears that the area within the town walls was abandoned rather than rebuilt.

The English Civil War (1642 – 1651)

Charles I. Source: Royal Museums Greenwich

The slow decay of the castle under the earl of Leicester continued unchecked until the castle suddenly resumed strategic importance during the English Civil War, beginning in 1642, when it had to be made fit to garrison 500 royalist soldiers. This task was allocated to Colonel William Salesbury of Rhug near Corwen (whose colourfully decorated Rhug chapel is now one of the real gems of north Wales). Butler says that although off the beaten track in terms of the main centres of fighting, Wales was nevertheless under threat. Its relative proximity to Chester proved useful in 1645 when Charles I’s royalist siege of Chester was unsuccessful, and the king headed to Denbigh, staying for three nights, as a royalist force assembled at the castle prior to making another attempt on Chester. Charles and the additional royalist force were attacked by Sir William Brereton and Sir Thomas Mytton, and were defeated in the land around the Carmelite friary on the outskirts of the Denbigh town. Within the castle, Colonel Salesbury remained under siege with 500 men from April to October 1646, only surrendering when he received a written command to do so from Charles I. Following a brief royalist reoccupation in 1659 the castle was slighted (demolished) by the parliamentarians to prevent it being of any further value to the royalists. It instantly became a source of very useful building material, and no attempt was made to restore it under Charles II when the crown was restored to the throne in 1660.

Denbigh Castle in Art

Denbigh Castle by Edward Dayes 1715. Source: Art Fund

All of the artworks here were painted in the 18th century, a period when an interest in the Classical ruins of the Mediterranean had also turned British artistic eyes towards ruins on the doorstep. Each of the paintings has its own very distinctive personality, but all are part of a tradition that responded to the ruins of grand buildings, particularly castles and abbeys, as symbols of a lost grandeur, fallen kingdoms and abandoned dreams. The Romantic fascination with aesthetically-pleasing icons of loss and decay also highlighted the inevitability of entropy as something sympathetic and pitiable. Although unimpeded by the facts and figures behind these vast structures, there is a sense that the artists of the 18th century were finding their own way of grappling with the past. The result was often poignant, usually striking, evoking magnificence and beauty blended with regret, redefining castles in their 18th century setting as something not merely benign but infused with a certain special value conferred upon them by their very antiquity.

Click to expand. Denbigh by John Boydell 1750 showing the castle, the Burgess gate, some of the city walls, St Hilary’s Chapel and the Earl of Leicester’s incomplete Protestant church. Source: Peoples Collection Wales

A View of Denbigh Castle by Francis Towne, 1777. Source: francistowne.ac.uk

The Gatehouse of Denbigh Castle: Colour Study 1799-1800 by J.M.W. Turner 1775-1851. Source: The Tate Research Publications

Final Comments

Denbigh Castle ticks all the boxes as a part of the story of Anglo-Welsh conflicts in the 13th century, as an excellent example of James of St George’s architectural imagination, and as an imposing and impressive component of Edward I’s chain of castles in north Wales. There are sufficient structural remains still visible within the castle walls to understand some of the key features regarded as necessary to the running of a castle in times of both peace and war. Denbigh Castle also demonstrates how medieval castles could be adapted for use during the English Civil War. As a ruin it inspired a number of 18th century artists who appreciated it more for its sense of the romantic than its military past. As a visitor destination it offers lovely views over the surrounding landscape, and provides the opportunity to explore a small multi-period market town which has a great deal to offer in terms of its architecture and its personality. There is even an annual plum festival in autumn, which this year was held on 7th October, and which we only just missed. At the castle, don’t miss the stairs in one of the gate towers up to the upper walkway, which gives you a birds-eye view over the interior of the castle and down into the town, across the valley and into the hills.

Visiting

First you need to check the opening times on the Cadw website. Particularly in autumn and winter, the site is only open on certain days. There is an entry fee unless you are a member of Cadw or an affiliated organization (again, check the Cadw website for up to date information). If you want to walk the town walls you will need to collect the key, available with a refundable deposit from either the library in the town or in the castle ticket office and shop. The library is currently shut on Thursdays at time of writing (October 2023).

If you want to park at the castle, it has a dedicated car park that you can find by following the occasional signage, and the access to which is at What3Words address ///craftsman.obstinate.explain. Instead of going straight to the castle we followed a leaflet, available to download from the Northeast Wales website, which took us around all of the key sites of Denbigh town (some of which are mentioned at the start of this post), so we parked behind the High Street and walked up to the castle after visiting other sites. There are lots of other parking options that are well signposted. A great and detailed source of information about the town is the official Cadw analysis of the town’s heritage, Denbigh: Understanding Urban Character, available for download as a PDF. At the castle there is information signage, but if you want detailed information it is best to do the reading in advance. There is a comprehensive Cadw guide book by L.A.S Butler dedicated to the castle, which is stuffed full of information with some really excellent maps and illustrations and is available from the castle shop, or from the usual online retailers.

There is plenty to see in the town itself. As well as the castle and walls, medieval sites include the Burgess Gate (once the main gateway through the town walls), St Hilary’s Chapel tower (the remnant of the early 14th century church), and the ruins of the Carmelite friary dating to c.1289. The CPAT survey dates the cruck-framed Friesland Hall House, otherwise known as Bryn Awelon with a 14th-century doorway in its southern side to the medieval period, as well as The Plough in Bridge Street, which was originally an L-shaped timber-framed building with a medieval rock cut cellar below. Elizabethan buildings from the 16th century include the Earl of Leicester’s courthouse (now the library) and his ambitious but incomplete 10-bay church, and there are other survivors of the 16th and 17th centuries in the town. The attractive town has plenty of substantial and Georgian homes and Victorian civic and residential projects that bring to life the wealth and confidence of the former market town. Be sure not to miss the fabulous statue of Dr Evan Pierce on his 72ft (22m) Tuscan column.

For those with unwilling legs: Please note that there are pros and cons with the castle and the walls. For the castle, I would suggest that you will miss getting up close and personal with some of the castle’s key features because many of them require going up or down slippery stone steps. On the other hand, if you confine yourself to the grass you can still see down into most of the features and up to others, and you will still get an excellent sense of the castle’s perimeter and personality, and the views over the surrounding landscape are simply spectacular in good weather. The upper rampart walk, reached via an original stone staircase, could be a potential difficulty, although there is a solid metal banister to grip. The town walls are also risky when there has been even a little rain due to the unavoidable shiny stone-work underfoot and the very real potential of slipping. I would say it is well worth the visit even if you cannot do it all.

Sources

Books and papers

Butler, L.A.S. 1990, 2007 (2nd edition). Denbigh Castle. Cadw

Davies, J. 2007 (3rd edition). A History of Wales. Penguin

Davies R. R. 2000. The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343. Oxford University Press (https://academic.oup.com/book/7027 requires institute access)

Morris, M. 2008. A Great and Terrible King. Edward I and the Forging of Britain. Penguin

Neaverson, E. 1947. Mediaeval Castles in North Wales. A Study of Sites, Water Supply and Building Stones. the University Press of Liverpool, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

Stephenson, W. 2019. Medieval Wales c.1050-1332. Centuries of Ambiguity. University of Wales Press

Stevens, M.F. 2019. The Economy of Medieval Wales 1067-1536. University of Wales Press

Walker, D. 1990. Medieval Wales. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks

Websites

Cadw
Denbigh Castle
https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/denbigh-castle
Denbigh Town Walls
https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/denbigh-town-walls
Denbigh: Understanding Urban Character (PDF)
https://cadw.gov.wales/sites/default/files/2019-05/Denbigh-%20Understanding%20Urban%20Character_0.pdf

Castle Studies Group
CSG Annual Conference Proceedings, Wrexham 2015, Individual Site Summaries. CSG29 2015 Wrexham Conference. Castles of North East Wales – Denbigh. Journal no.29 2015-2016.
http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/page153.html
http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/CSGJournal2015-16X8-pp1-120Final-Denbigh-58-89-low-res.pdf

Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust
Denbighshire Historic Settlements (index)
https://cpat.org.uk/ycom/denbigh/denbigh.htm
Denbigh
https://cpat.org.uk/ycom/denbigh/denbigh.pdf

Ancient and Medieval Architecture
Denbigh – Castle
https://medievalheritage.eu/en/main-page/heritage/wales/denbigh-castle/

Enjoy Medieval Denbighshire (PDF) leaflet
https://www.northeastwales.wales/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/medieval-denbighshire.pdf

Terrific scenery and views from Waun y Llyn Country Park, near Caergwrle

1 Reply

I had been visiting Caergwrle Castle on a bright, sunny, perfect autumnal day, and was actually heading elsewhere for a much longer walk when I noticed on my O/S map that there was a country park a short drive away, and went there on a whim. I’ll write up Caergwrle Castle later but here is some visiting information accompanied by some photos of the country park walk for those of you who are, like me, addicted to lovely views. It is certainly worth making the most of these occasional very beautiful days while we have them. Waun y Llyn Country Park sits on a hilltop with views over the local hillsides and and over the Dee floodplain into Merseyside.

Waun y Llyn is about half an hour’s drive from Churton, probably (I’m guessing) a bit less from Wrexham and a bit more from Chester. It is reached from all directions by single-track roads. Do note that if you or your driver is not keen on reversing, this is not the place to go. Access is via single track roads with passing places, and it is a popular destination with hikers and dog-walkers and is frequented by farm vehicles, so you will need to be prepared to reverse around very bendy bits as well as straight bits.

Location of Waun y Llyn, above Caergwrle (near Llay).

There is a warning on one of the information boards in the car park that there is livestock within the country park, and that you should keep dogs under control. I had assumed that it would be sheep, but the very fresh cow-pats made it clear that there was cattle up there. I didn’t see any, and much to their irritation neither did the two farmers who were looking for them! As one of them said, when he asked me if I had seen them, there are 70 acres for them to hide in.

I believe that Waun y Llyn means moorland by the lake (but do feel free to correct me). It is indeed a type of moorland, with copper-coloured bracken at this time of year, and bright yellow gorse in flower. There are only few trees, but there are young silver birch,some young oaks and small holly bushes, some of which are currently festooned with bright red berries.

There is also, as the name implies, small lake surrounded by boggy margins, with permanent water-loving plant species underfoot if you follow the watery marshland tracks. You can skirt the marsh and head towards the higher green ground, which provides a good viewpoint, but be aware that the whole area around the lake, linking one footpath to another is fairly damp.
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If you go when there has been rainfall, do wear water-resistant footwear. In spite of the glorious sunshine today, it rained all day yesterday, and although there are grassy footpaths, most of the the footpaths furthest from the car park were very muddy underfoot with large pools of water, and there are also places where small streams cross paths that require either jumping over or skirting around. Water loves an easy route, and some of the smaller footpaths had become tiny streams in their own right. All absolutely fine with suitably water-resistant footwear.

I would advise those of you with unwilling legs to avoid it at this time of year. There are no steep slopes or steps, but there are seasonally related challenges. I’ll give it another go in the summer and report back, but at this time of year the mud is very slippery, there is a lot of wet bedrock showing through on some of the narrower footpaths. One lady who had a bad leg was managing fine with two sticks along the grassy footpath, but had to turn back when the going became too muddy and rocky underfoot.

There is no archaeological site recorded at the country park, which seems almost counter-intuitive given the views. Both silica sandstone and millstone grit were quarried from the hill in the late 19th century, the latter for housing in the Alyn valley below, and the walk to the hilltop was a favourite destination of visitors to a spa in Caergwrle, contemporary with the quarry.

This walk took me about 45 minutes, so it was a short one but a good one. You can make it shorter or longer by following the different footpaths on the noticeboard by the car park, and you can turn it into a serious hike by including other local footpaths as well. There’s no hyperlink to the Country Park’s official website, because there does not appear to be one. Let me know if you find one. If you give Waun y Llyn Country Park a go, do enjoy!

The metalled approach from the car park to the entrance to the country park. The metalled surface goes onwards for a short way to the viewing point.

Entrance to the car park

The splendid Grade-1 listed Llangar Church, Cynwyd, near Corwen

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The small Llangar Church is exceptional. It is Grade-1 listed and a Scheduled Monument located in the Dee valley not far from Corwen. From its lovely lime-washed white walls and its small but well-filled churchyard to its painted interior and box pews, all set in the middle of a field, there is so much that is unexpected in Llangar Church. It has been subjected to detailed historical and archaeological research, and is accordingly much better understood than many other churches in north Wales. This work, looking at over 500 years of use, means that there is far too much information to include here. We were shown round by visitor guide Heather on the day, who was excellent, but there is not always a tour available, so the official Cadw guide book is certainly one way go to if you want a more informative account, with 18 pages dedicated to Llangar Church. The survey and excavation report published in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1981 (pages 64-132) is the most detailed report available, and can be accessed online. See Sources at the end of this post for both.

Visiting details and a map are at the end, but do note that this can be combined with a visit to the brightly painted 17th century Rhug Chapel, which is a 5-10 minute drive away, also on the map at the end (and about which I have posted here).

The meaning of the church’s name remains uncertain. One interpretation suggests that it it can be translated as “Church of the White Deer,” whilst another suggestion is that it might refer to the name of a neighbouring Iron Age hillfort. The Coflein website refers to it as “All Saints.”

Whatever the meaning of its name, the first documented evidence of it dates to 1291 and the church was probably founded earlier in the 13th century, serving local farms and the services that supported them. It escaped the destructive attentions of the Reformation, and was used until 1856, when it was replaced by a new church in Cynwyd that was both bigger and far more conveniently located. Although abandonment of the church, combined with its relatively inconvenient location, led to neglect, decay and damage, it fortunately escaped being plundered for building materials, and avoided the indignities of Victorian restoration work that usually augmented and remodelled what was found rather than merely preserving an architectural legacy.

It was not until the 1970s that conservation work accompanied by survey and research projects began to rescue the site and uncover some of its complex architectural and social history. The church was not a time capsule of a single particular period, but a palimpsest of multiple periods. This was a living, breathing community resource for over the 500 years, and as people and ideas changed, so did the church. The Cadw analysis of the architectural development of the church identifies five main phases: Medieval, Early 17th century, Mid to Late 17th century, early 18th century and later 18th and 19th centuries. The scatter of painted and engraved dates through the church from the 17th century suggest that that this was a period when the church underwent a number of repairs and modifications.

The churchyard

The entrance to the churchyard is marked by an attractive and remarkably solid 18th century stone lych gate, with double wooden doors. Like all lych gates it provided a shelter for coffin bearers and a place to rest the coffin bier until the service began, and also served as a formal entrance to the churchyard. The slate roof has two tiers of decorative pointed tiles on the churchyard side.

The churchyard is on a slope. To provide a flat surface on which to build the church, material was removed from the east and transferred to the west end. The dangers of this scheme, leaving one end much more consolidated and compressed than the other, resulted in later structural problems on the north side (opposite the porch side) and at the west end. Over the the decades, many of the headstones have started tilting downhill.

The cemetery has a particular charm all of its own, which is difficult to define but has something to do with the simplicity of the grave monuments, and the general absence of ostentation. The earliest of the monuments in the churchyard date to around 1600. Chest tombs of the 17th and earlier 18th centuries cluster close to the church itself, whilst those further away were later. These later graves were both chest tombs and graves marked by a headstone and footstone. The cemetery went out of use in the 1870s, when the church was abandoned. The church and churchyard, built into the side of a hill, are rather exposed and some of the inscriptions are very worn. Interestingly, most of those graves before 1825 were inscribed in English, whereas later ones were largely in Welsh.

18th century

1821

1841

There is also a sundial base just beyond the church porch.

Llangar Church and churchyard showing the northwest corner, by the Dee, completely free of graves. Aerial view. Source: RCAHMW Coflein

In general the north side of a churchyard was the last to receive graves, either because it had previously been in use for community activities or because, being darker and colder, it was less attractive for visiting. In the case of Llangar the northwest corner remained entirely free of burials right up to the moment of its abandonment, but this is probably because of problems with subsidence, a theory supported by various changes made to the church’s architecture to counter structural difficulties.

The church exterior

The guide book has a step by step tour of the exterior as revealed by the survey work. It is a fascinating detective story over two pages, perfect for anyone doing a self-guided tour on a dry day. The short version is that the south wall (porch side) dates to the Middle Ages, and the north wall was medieval but was modified over the centuries, with some windows blocked and others added. The north wall is now propped up by a modern retaining wall added during the renovation, but it is worth looking out for a top-to-bottom jagged line like a crack at the west end, which shows where structural work was carried out in the second half of the 17th century. The west wall was rebuilt in the early 18th century. The porch was added in the early 17th century, re-roofed in 1702, and the big ornamental window in the Perpendicular gothic style probably dates to around the same time.

The interior

Visitors enter the church via the porch with two stone benches, probably dating to the early 17th century. There is paintwork and various pieces of graffiti carved into wood and stone. Take note too of the noticeboard showing some of the restoration work.

As you walk in to the church, you are confronted with a fabulous red-painted life-sized skeleton representing Death, at gallery level on the opposite wall. As a reminder that a church is the interface between the living and the dead, and that life is only a temporary condition before interment and Judgement Day, this can scarcely be beaten. There are more details about this image below.

The ground floor is a single space with a floor covered in stone slabs and a small overhead gallery at the west end, which was probably used for the musicians. There are no aisles or other architectural divisions. The space beneath the gallery was clearly reserved for parts of the congregation that had the lowest status, at the furthest distance from the sacred east end, and was very dark and cramped beneath the low ceiling.

The earliest parts of the wooden beamed ceiling are thought to date to the 15th century, although timbers were replaced and repaired in subsequent centuries, and today most of them are modern, from the 1970s restoration. The east end, traditionally the sacred end of a church, is marked by a “canopy of honour” dating to the late 15th or early 16th century, a barrel-shaped ceiling that would have shown sacred themes in paintings that have now been lost. It is thought that they may have looked like those at St Benedict’s Church at Gyffin near Conwy showing the twelve apostles (its website is here, complete with a virtual tour).

The only feature that would have furnished the church of the Middle Ages to survive is the simple font set into a niche, which has been moved from its original position, probably in the 18th century. Most of the surviving fittings date to the early part of the 18th century.

From the 18th century, the public sat in the surviving box pews along the north wall and on backless bench pews on the south wall. Four of the elegant box are dated 1711 (belonging to the Hughes family of Gwerclas, 1759, 1768 and 1841. One preserves the initialse of one of its occupants.

Another pew, at the south side of the 18th century altar and dated 1841, was used by the rector’s family. Opposite, on the other side of the altar, is a painted 18th century cupboard topped with a winged angel. It is set into the north wall dating to the 18th century, with three keyholes, requiring three keyholders. The altar itself dates to the 18th century but was built of 17th century wood. The window above the altar is flanked by two panels, which between them show the Ten Commandments, in Welsh. Originally the east end would also have housed a pulpit, but this was moved to part way along the south wall. It is a three-tiered pulpit, which was probably moved from the east end sometime after 1732 to allow the altar rail to be employed for the giving of the sacrament.

Like nearby 17th century Rhug, Llangar’s interior wall paintings escaped the whitewashing vigour of the Reformation, but unlike Rhug, the paintings represent different time periods, from the 14th to late 18th centuries. Some images were overpainted with new ones, and many are very faint. One of the paintings has been removed to preserve it and is now in the exhibition area at Rhug Chapel. The Cadw guide contains a full description of all of the paintings, by A.J. Parkinson, but here are some highlights.

North wall

Most of the images were intended to provide visual material to support sermons, which Parkinson refers to as “teaching aids.” The fabulous skeleton is brandishing time’s arrow in one bony hand and a winged hour-glass in the other. Between his legs are a shovel and pickaxe, tools of the gravedigger. He is dated tentatively to 1748, the death of rector Edward Samuel, who was a notable Welsh scholar and poet. Looking to his left, on the front of the gallery, are some elegant yellow frames with floral motifs, containing texts that are now too faint to read, but may by Biblical.

To the right of the skeleton, over the window, is the name of the rector in 1730, and to the right of this was the Royal Arms of the same period, now in the Rhug Chapel visitor centre.

The rest of the north wall above the box pulpits contains overlapping images, the earliest of which, possibly 14th century, is a bishop (very difficult to make out) in the doorway of a substantial and rather exotic church, the towers of which can be easily seen.

The red frame possibly dates to the 15th century and probably contained a narrative, such as the life of Christ, or scenes from the lives of saints. Other decorations along the wall were painted over in the 18th century.

On the south wall are a series of morality-themed panels outlined in red, probably dating to the 15th century. All are very faint. Some of them show representations of the Seven Deadly Sins, in which each sin is personified and is shown riding an appropriate animal. These are very difficult to make out, but are almost unique. Jane Durrant’s reconstruction below shows what they may have looked like in the late medieval period (scanned from the Cadw guide book).

Cutaway reconstruction showing teh south wall panels as they may have looked in the 15th century. By Jane Durrant. Source: Cadw guide book by W. Nigel Yates (full details at end, p.28).

On the left is a stag, representing lechery, and on the right is a wild boar representing gluttony, two of the Seven Deadly Sins

The gallery with benches, at the west end, is reached by a flight of stone stairs. It probably housing the musicians and singers, retains a very unusual four-sided music stand.

Abandonment of the church

Llangar church with a temporary roof. Source: RCAHMW https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/93771/images

From the Middle Ages to the 19th Century populations changed, and parish boundaries often ceased to be representative of where people were concentrated and wanted to worship. In the middle 19th century Llangar and Gwyddelwern were neighbouring parishes, but Llangar’s population did not exceed 251 people dotted around the parish, whereas Gwyddelwern’s population had reached 1,118, of which nearly half lived in Cynwyd, near to Llangar. In 1853 the decision was made to redraw the parish boundaries so that Cynwyd was in the parish of Llangar, but at the same time it was also decided that a new church should be built at Cynwyd to replace the inconveniently located Llangar Church. Llangar Church had gone out of use by the mid 1870s except for occasional burials. Some abandoned buildings are robbed for their materials, but Llangar survived intact, although as its roof deteriorated, so the rest of it came under threat.

Restoration

Noticeboard in the church porch

The importance of Llangar was recognized in the 1960s, and it was taken into care by the Welsh Office in 1967. Restoration work began in 1974. There is a noticeboard in the porch of the church showing some of the restoration work, as well as on the Coflein website. Amongst many other restoration activities, one of the big structural changes accomplished during the restoration was the addition of a retaining wall on the outside of the original wall on the eastern end of the north side. This should continue to stabilize the church to secure its future. The roof was largely rebuilt, and most of the interior required conservation work. Survey work, involving a number of different specialists, began to reveal the history of the church and churchyard.

Final Comments

More than any other church that I have visited in recent years, Llangar provides a sense of a place of social congregation. This was off the beaten track, even for rural people who came from their farms and forges to attend the Sunday service. Many of them will have met at market, but a sense of real community probably only developed on the back of the weekly congregation, which was a social as well as a religious activity, attended by entire families. The paintings on the walls, changing over time to suit different needs, helped to involve the congregation in the Christian narrative, surrounding them with key messages and providing them with a sense of context. The painting here was not merely decorative, like Rhug, but invested with shared articles of faith. It is a small place, but it has a real impact.

Visiting

Source: Google Maps (with my annotations). Llangar Church is at the bottom of the map, Rhug at the top.

Before setting out, it is vital to check the website, because the church is open only on certain days of the month in the spring and summer, and is closed during autumn and winter. Do note that opening times are timed to coincide with those of nearby Rhug Chapel, so you can do both at the same time. https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/llangar-old-parish-church

Llangar Church and its churchyard are located in the Dee valley in a field just off the B4401, a well-used tourist route to the eastern side of Lake Tegid (sometimes referred to as Lake Bala).

Map sourced from the Coflein website with my annotations

There is a large lay-by opposite the farm track that gives access to the church. The church is sign-posted, but when I was there the sign was hidden by tree branches. There is a small post box on a pole next to the farm track that leads to the church, and a sign on the open gate for Station Cottage. The track leads downhill for a minute or two, past farm buildings on the left. The road goes hard right and then hard left. At the left turning, there is a gate on the right hand side (with a sign to its left saying Guide Dogs Only) that takes the visitor across a field, complete with mud and cow-pats, through a small gate on to a grassy footpath flanked by upright slates. This leads to the lych gate and the churchyard beyond.

For those taking unwilling legs into account, although it is only about 5-10 minutes from car to lych gate this is very slippery underfoot after rainfall, meaning that this would almost certainly be better approached during a dry period. Part of the graveyard is on a steep slope, which would make exploring it challenging, and there are steps up to the gallery within the church, but otherwise there should be no difficulties.

If you want to get the most out of the visit, the guide book is very helpful (see Sources below), covering both Llangar Church and Rhug Chapel as well as Gwydir Uchaf Church near Betws-y-Coed, which I have not yet visited, but looks fabulous. The guide book is particularly strong on Llangar Church. It can be purchased at Rhug Chapel, or ordered online from the usual sources.

If you plan to include a walk in your visit, the farm track from the road leads to a public footpath that runs along the disused railway track, which a couple who had arrived early recommended. There are many good walks in the Corwen area, some of which are detailed in an excellent leaflet, which can be downloaded here as a PDF.

Sources:

Books and papers

Parkinson, A.J. 1993. The Wall Paintings. In Yates, N.W. Rug Chapel, Llangar Church, Gwydir Uchaf Chapel. Cadw, p.37-39.

Yates, N.W. 1993. Rug Chapel, Llangar Church, Gwydir Uchaf Chapel. Cadw

Additional reading:

Shoesmith, Ron 1981.
Llangar Church. Archaeologia Cambrensis vol.129, January 1981, p.64-69
https://journals.library.wales/view/4718179/4748029/87#?xywh=-163%2C-2%2C2584%2C3638
Llangar Church. The Graveyard Survey
Archaeologia Cambrensis vol.129, January 1981, p.70-132
https://journals.library.wales/view/4718179/4748029/93#?xywh=-169%2C-8%2C2584%2C3638

Although I haven’t yet managed to get hold of it Heather, the Cadw visitor guide, also recommended R. Suggett’s Painted Temples: Wallpaintings and Rood-screens in Welsh Churches, 1200–1800. RCAHMW 2021.

Another book that I haven’t yet seen, to which Peter Carrington alerted me, is Archaeologies and Antiquaries: Essays by Dai Morgan Evans edited by Howard Williams, Kara Critchell and Sheena Evans. Archaeopress 2022, which has four chapters dedicated to Llangar.
https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803271583

Websites

Coflein
All Saints Church, Llangar
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/93771/
All Saints Church, Llangar, Images
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/93771/images

National Churches Trust
St John the Evangelist, Cynwyd
https://www.nationalchurchestrust.org/church/st-john-evangelist-cynwyd

Introduction

Foundation of the priory in the 12th Century

The monastic buildings

Sources of income and financial difficulties

Dissolution

Visiting

Sources

Books, papers, and guidebooks

Websites

Leaflets

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Introduction

The Excavation

Dating the Cairn

Myth: “Baseless Theories”

The Beacon

Final Comments

Sources and visiting details are shown in part 1

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Part 2 – The Neolithic burials in the cave

Introduction

The Excavations

The Neolithic burials at Gop Cave

The artefacts associated with the burials

Animal remains

Dating the skeletons

The practice of non-monumental burials

Meaning in collective burial

Final Comments

Sources and visiting details are in part 1

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Introduction

Sir William Boyd Dawkins, excavating 1886-1887

The four phases of Gop Cave deposits

20th Century Excavations

Dating the animal remains in the Pleistocene cave

The Mesolithic

The location of the finds today

Conclusions

Visiting Details

Sources for parts 1 – 3

Books and Papers

Websites

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Background History

The Museum

Visiting Information

Sources

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Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Edward I and Caergwrle Castle

Features of the 13th century castle

Visiting

Sources

Books and papers

Websites

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Introduction

Why here? The location of Denbigh Castle

Strategic importance of the castle

Economic potential of the area

The design

The town and the walls

The castle under attack during the reign of Edward I

Back in the wars after Edward I

Owain Glyndŵr’s Rebellion (1400 – c.1410)

The War of the Roses (1455 – 1485)

The English Civil War (1642 – 1651)

Denbigh Castle in Art

Final Comments

Visiting

Sources

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The churchyard

The church exterior

The interior

Abandonment of the church

Restoration

Final Comments