Click here to read my “Letter From…” article on Nation Cymru.

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Click here to read my “Letter From…” article on Nation Cymru.

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Yesterday we were talking about The Royal Charter disaster of 1859. Most of the victims were buried in the churchyards near the wreck site at Moelfre (as described in my blog about the local parish records), but we knew a few had been buried in Pentraeth. After lunch we took a stroll up to the church to explore.

We soon found the graves; six simple anonymous stones, plus a larger one added later to commemorate the victims. A later search of the Pentraeth parish records shows they were buried in mid-November, about two weeks after the wreck.

Close to these graves was another one I’d wanted to find. When asked about famous women of Pentraeth the first to pop into my mind was Mary Owen. Newspaper reports in 1911 trumpeted her as being “King George’s oldest subject” at the age of 108. She lived at Fron-oleu, a small cottage on the slopes of Mynydd Llwydiarth overlooking Traeth Coch. The story goes that two strangers tracked her down and arrived at the cottage with a camera. She was asleep when they first arrived, but they photographed her both asleep and awake. The photos were made into postcards, celebrating her longevity. She died just a few months later, in December 1911, an event that was reported in newspapers ranging from the Dundee Evening Telegraph and the Cheshire Observer to Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper of London.

As usual, I wanted to find out more about her, so I first turned to the censuses. The 1911 census page for Fron-oleu shows it occupied by Mary and her nephew Owen, with two visitors on the day, Mary Owens and John Glyn Owen (a shoemaker). Oddly, Mary is listed in 1911 as being 105, rather than 108. She is also listed as single. I had assumed the John Owen, who is also listed on her gravestone, was her husband, but apparently not. He died in 1898, aged 80, so I checked the 1891 census for Fron-oleu, where they are listed as brother and sister. Nephew Owen was there again, as well as another nephew John.

John and Mary were the inhabitants of Fron-oleu all the way back to 1861, with their occupations variously listed as “farmer”, “labourer”, “housekeeper” or “living on own means”. Owen also lived there as far back as 1871, when the 15-year-old was listed as a “scholar”, presumably going to school at one of the two recently founded schools in Pentraeth. John had lost his wife early, as he was widowed in all these census years. His 10-year-old son John was a schoolboy in the house in 1861.

Step back another 10 years to 1851 and Mary is still living in Fron-oleu, but this time with her parents Richard (a labourer) and Ellen. Going further back to 1841 finds Fron-oleu a very full house, with Richard and Ellen there with sons John, Richard and David, and a daughter Elizabeth. John was the one who later occupied the house with his sister, and Richard is listed as a shoemaker. But where was Mary? She was an adult, the oldest of the family, so must have been living somewhere else. In fact, a Mary Owen of the right age was one of two young women working as servants in Marian, a large and old house between Pentraeth and Talwrn. I suspect this is her. Most other Mary Owens in the area were living with either parents or spouses.

Looking through all these censuses raised some questions about her story of being the oldest subject in 1911. First, the postcard and news reports all state she was born in Trefriw, which is best known as a village in the Conwy valley near Llanrwst, but is also the name of a place in the south of the island in Llangadwaladr. But all the censuses say that she and her brother were born in Pentraeth. Maybe there was a nearby house by that name, but nothing like it shows up in the Pentraeth censuses.

Of more concern is the age. Although she was supposed to be 108 in 1911, the census that year actually shows her as 105 years old, which would make her birth year 1806 rather than the 1803 usually cited. Ten years before, she gave her age as 89, making her birth year 1812. Going back another 10 years to 1891 she reports an age of 65, which would make her birth year 1826!

In the earlier censuses her reported ages stabilize to the usual interval of ten years. So, it looks like Mary was actually born around 1816-1818. Turning my eye to the baptism and marriage records, I found that her parents Richard Owen and Ellen Thomas were married in Pentraeth church on 25 May 1815. Scanning through the baptism records for Pentraeth (which only cover the baptisms at the established church, St. Mary) I can find no children of Richard and Ellen until youngest child in the 1841 census, David, was baptised in 1825. But searching another online database, the Wales Births and Baptisms, 1541-1907 at Familysearch.org, turns up a Mary Owen, daughter of Richard and Ellen, christened on 11 January 1818 in the nearby village of Llanbedrgoch. Some of her siblings also appear in that database, baptised in Pentraeth. Perhaps they were nonconformists and were baptised in chapels rather than the established church.

Mary had her five minutes of fame for being the oldest British subject, but the truth is she died at the respectable, but unremarkable, age of 94. How she became known as the oldest is not recorded, but this goes to show that we can’t always rely on stories like this without looking into the actual records.

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I know there is no place like this in or around my village, and as far as I know never was. The hill in the background doesn’t look like the landscape around here. It could conceivably be Mynydd Llwydiarth, but there are far too many houses on the slope. The National Library of Wales place names database, which lists not only towns, parishes and villages, but also individual farm and field names as shown on the mid-19th century tithe maps, doesn’t show any other Pentraeths in Wales. So where was this? I can’t resist a chance to follow up a historical mystery, so I bid for the postcard and won it for the princely sum of £1.

The first clues are on the back of the postcard. It was published by F. H. May, based on Ata Road in Pwllheli. It was postmarked somewhere in Caernarfonshire (part of the postmark is missing) in 1914 and was sent to a Mr Williams of 15 Hill Street, Gerlan, Bethesda. So it is probably somewhere in North Wales. The writer of the card, who signs off as “Nain”, says “This is my house O Alun how do you like it? Be good you shall come here for your holidays.”

I posted scans of the postcard on my Facebook and Twitter pages, hoping one of my followers might recognize it. Within a couple of hours the mystery of the location had been solved. On Twitter a couple of followers said “Nefyn”, and @dilgriff posted another postcard from F. H. May with a view across the bay at Nefyn, showing this building sitting on top of the cliff. This card seems to come from a page on the Nefyn.com website about the photographer, Fred May. One Facebook follower, Wendy Howard, jumped in with both feet and started researching the recipient family; see her comments on my original post.

So we now know where the mysterious Pentraeth Castle is, lets fill out some of the details about it and the people involved. First, when was it built? The old-maps.co.uk site allows you to explore old Ordnance Survey maps through the years, from the 1st edition in the late 1880s. The one from 1900 shows The Castle on top of the cliff overlooking the bay. In 1889 there was just a small building on this site, labelled “Cliff Cottage”. By 1918 the building was labelled “Castell Pentraeth”.

The census can also provide clues. In 1891 Cliff Cottage was still in existence. It was occupied by Griffith Griffiths, his wife Ellen and their 10 year old niece Jane Evans. Griffith was a settmaker, presumably working at the nearby Gwylwyr Quarry, which produced granite setts for paving roads. So that cottage must have been demolished and the castle built sometime between 1891 and 1900.

Cliff Castle appears in the 1901 census, occupied solely by Ellen Owens. She is listed as a servant and caretaker. In 1911 she is still there as its caretaker, the only occupant. Was this ostentatious castellated building a holiday home for some wealthy person, with Ellen looking after it when the owner was not in residence?

Most UK censuses only list the people who were actually living at a property on the day. But in 1911 they also produced summary books, which for each property gave just the name of the main occupier, along with the total number of males and females living there on census day. For The Castle the occupier is named as Corton Lord, with just a single female (Ellen) actually living there. He presumably is the owner and occasional resident.

So who was Corton Lord? An unusual name like that should be easy to track down, but searching the Ancestry and FamilySearch genealogy databases throws up very little. Beside the entry for the 1911 census, all Ancestry offers that seems to fit is a Frederick Corton Lord, born in 1860 in Salford, Lancashire, who is listed in one person’s family tree as the husband of Katherine Pollitt, with no further information. Searches of the newspaper databases at the National Library of Wales (available online free of charge to any resident of Wales who applies for a reader’s ticket) were also fruitless. The next step after these online resources would be to visit the Gwynedd Archives, but for the moment I’ll need to leave this question aside.

What about the postcard writer and recipient? My Facebook follower Wendy got to this before me and tracked down the 1911 census record for the family living at 15 Hill Street, Bethesda. They were William T Williams, a quarryman at Penrhyn Quarry, his wife Annie and their three children. One was six year old Owen Alun Williams, so this little boy was the “O Alun” to whom this postcard was sent from his Nain (grandmother). He would have been around nine years old when the postcard was sent and she is encouraging him to be good so that he can come visit. It sounds like his parents may have been ill, but are improving.

So was the caretaker of Pentraeth Castle, Ellen Owens, little Alun’s grandmother? Given that she is listed as single in both censuses, that doesn’t seem likely. She was 70 in 1911, so perhaps someone else had taken over as caretaker by 1914, when the card was posted. A concerted effort to track down the Williams family tree would probably help to identify her, but other tasks are calling me now, so I’ll need to set this aside for another time.

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We arrived at the Ucheldre centre and filed through the new exhibition, with a quick glance at the displays. We would have plenty of time during the day to explore them in more detail. After signing in we entered the violet and sky-blue illuminated main hall, the former chapel of what was once the convent of the sisters of the Bon Sauveur. Now an active community centre, the Ucheldre was an ideal place for today’s event, a day school about the archaeological excavations at Parc Cybi, Holyhead, organized by the Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Gwynedd Archaeological Trust (GAT).

A major Welsh Government development site, now home of a hotel and truck stop, Parc Cybi has proved a major boon in our understanding of life on Anglesey through the millennia. Today’s series of lectures would give us a broad overview of what was found at the site, how they fit in the broader setting of prehistoric and ancient knowledge of Anglesey, Wales and beyond, and explore some aspects in greater detail.

A summary report about the finds of the excavation can be downloaded from https://heneb.org.uk/project/archaeology-at-parc-cybi-holyhead/.

Introduction

The day kicked off with an introduction by Jane Kenney, the project manager for the project from GAT. Excavations took place at Parc Cybi between November 2006 and July 2008, and again between September 2009 and February 2010. Unlike many archaeological digs, where just a few trenches are excavated over areas of potential interest, the fact that this whole site was being redeveloped allowed the archaeologists to strip off the soil over a very large area (over 20 hectares), laying bare the landscape for mapping and further investigation. Jane took us chronologically through what had been uncovered.

One of the oldest was also the most spectacular. A series of holes in a rectangular layout, dug for wooden posts, define the outline of a large early Neolithic timber-framed hall. Similar halls of this age have been found around Britain and Ireland, but are very rare. Measuring 15m long and 6m wide, and with a double row of timber posts inside along its length forming an aisle, this would have been an impressive structure. Radiocarbon dating shows that it was occupied between around 3700 and 3600 BC. It appears to have been divided into three separate areas or rooms, with several hearths. Inside the house were found pieces of pottery, flint flakes, burnt bones and saddle querns used to grind grain. Smaller temporary structures dating from around the same time were found nearby.

Evidence of occupation of the area in the later Neolithic comes from pits and hearths, indicating the locations of small huts, plus lots of pottery, more decorative than that found earlier. Also found during this period are burnt mounds, areas where water was heated in pits by throwing in rocks that had been heated in a nearby fire, then discarded in a mound next to the pit.

Settlement in the area in the end of the Neolithic and into the Bronze Age is demonstrated by the presence of Beaker-style pots, used widely from 2500 to 2000 BC, and cist grave burials. These are graves constructed of vertical slabs of stone forming a box in a pit, within which the body would be placed in a crouched position and covered with another slab. Several are found in Parc Cybi, some with Beaker pottery. Postholes defining the outline of a Bronze Age timber roundhouse, plus some small rectangular structures that may be granaries, have also been found.

The Iron Age, beginning around 1000 BC, saw an increase in settlements across Anglesey, and this is seen at Parc Cybi. The stone foundations of several round huts were found, along with walls partially enclosing them, and paths running up to the entranceways. A talk later in the day by Jane would describe these in more detail.

The end of the Iron age saw the coming of the Romans to Anglesey in AD 61. This is reflected in Parc Cybi by a trackway running across part of the site and various small buildings in which had been found Roman-era pottery. Also found was a blue glass counter, probably used in a board game. During this time burial practices change and people were buried in stone-lined cist graves, much longer than the earlier ones found here, allowing the bodies to be buried full length. A graveyard with 23 of these graves, neatly arranged in rows, was found in Parc Cybi.

Evidence of people in the area during the early Medieval age is given by the presence of numerous grain driers. These are elongated pits where a fire would be built at one end, then the grain suspended over the other on branches and straw to be dried. Carbon dating of some of the burnt grain found in these show they were used in the 5th and 6th century AD. These would probably have been built close to the actual fields where the grain was grown.

No actual remains of houses were found for the Medieval period, but this could be because the style of building left little trace. In the 11th-12th century evidence of a smith working in a farmyard was found. The same area was still in use as a farmyard in the 18th century. From that time onwards estate maps (and later Ordnance Survey maps) show the development of the field systems and farmsteads as they have been in more recent times. Some had been abandoned in the 19th century, but the floor and chimney base of one of these houses was uncovered during excavations. The most recent find during the digs was a stone-lined well with steps leading down to it, which may have been in use up to the 1950s.

Late Neolithic Pottery

Pottery of different designs and from different eras was found at Parc Cybi. Alison Sheridan from the National Museums of Scotland stepped up to the podium next to place these pots in a wider context of pottery around Wales and much further afield.

The earliest type of pottery found at Parc Cybi, dated to around 3700-3600 BC, is the ‘Irish Sea Ware’ or ‘Modified Carinated’ bowls. These are simple round pots that flare out slightly at the top. They are found widely in Ireland, and are also found in Calais and further afield in France from sites dated 200-300 years earlier, suggesting that this style originated on the continent and were later brought to Britain and Ireland.

By 3350 BC another type of pottery appeared, Mortlake style. These were more highly decorated, with various types of stippling made in the wet clay before firing. Analysis of chemicals found within these pots show that they were probably used for cooking stews, as traces of cattle and sheep meat were found.

The next type of pottery found is Grooved Ware. This is first found in Orkney around 3100-2900 BC. The decorations on these echo those seen in rock carvings at passage tombs such as Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad y Gawres on Anglesey, as well as Newgrange in Ireland, which are from the same period. This type of pottery spread southwards from Orkney, arriving in Parc Cybi around 2900 BC. Interestingly, chemical analysis of these pots shows that the meat they cooked was pig, not cattle and sheep.

Cist Barrows

After the tea break Frances Lynch took to the stage to tell us more about the early Bronze age cist burials found at Parc Cybi. Very close to the excavation site is the Trefignath Neolithic burial chamber. It was closely associated with the settlements at Parc Cybi and probably held some of their occupants. But, in burial chambers like this, mixed burials was the norm. The bones of several people would have been mixed together.

By the Bronze age burials were mainly done in cists. These were formed of four slabs of stone, placed vertically in a pit, to form the walls of a chamber. The body was then put inside and a cap stone placed on top. The chambers were fairly short, so the body would have to be placed in a crouched position. Parc Cybi has a group of eight cists, close together and oriented in random directions; they were probably once covered with a mound once all the burials had taken place.

The cists were normally very well made, with the stones chosen and shaped so they fit together will little space in between. Other large stones and rubble were filled in around the outside to keep the vertical slabs upright. Even after millennia these cists were empty; no soil had managed to infill them. No bones were found, as the acidic conditions of the Anglesey soil meant that water leeching through would have dissolved them long ago. However, two of the cists did contain pots, one a beaker for holding liquids and one a food vessel.

Early Smithing

The next talk veered away from pots and stones to talk about metals, chemistry, and physics, complete with a phase diagram. Tim Young of GeoArch gave us an overview about what the archaeological record can tell us about metal working in the past. Parc Cybi has evidence of the working of iron from the Iron Age through the post-medieval period.

Early iron working was done with a hearth on the floor, often made of clay. The fuel to make the very hot fire required for softening iron was charcoal, and the raw materials were sourced locally. Later on raised hearths were constructed and coal or coke was used for hotter fires. The iron ore was more likely to have come from further afield and brought to the site.

When iron is smelted slag is formed, which is the waste material left over after the metal is melted out. Tim showed how looking at cross-sections of the slag found nearby can reveal clues as to how the metal was smelted and what fuel was used. Also, when hot metal is hammered to shape it very small and hot particles are thrown off. These fall into the soil below the hearth and can later be examined under a microscope to provide more evidence of the methods of ironworking. Other methods, such as mass spectrometry, were used to determine the chemical composition of the waste, to provide clues as to the origin of the iron ore.

The Romans

David Hopewell of GAT began his lecture by saying that, when he told someone that he was going to talk about the Romans on Anglesey he was told it would be ‘a very short lecture’. Until recently there has been little evidence of the Romans on the island, other than the Caer Gybi fort in Holyhead and the nearby watchtower on Holyhead Mountain. There is also the Roman historian Tacitus’s account of the invasion of Anglesey, which Dave quoted from extensively.

I say “until recently”, as there have in just the past few years been some tantalising finds that suggest there may have been more Roman activity on the island than we thought. Along the northwestern coast of Anglesey, earthworks at Pen Bryn Yr Eglwys were recently investigated as a possible Roman watchtower, within sight of the fort at Caer Gybi and the Holyhead Mountain watchtower. Some Roman pottery was found. Not far away, rectangular cropmarks noticed in a field at Cemlyn were explored using geophysical methods to reveal structures under the surface. These showed a double walled enclosure with several rectangular buildings, similar to Roman fortlets.

Most revealing is the excavation at Tai Cochion, overlooking the Menai Strait and Caernarfon near Brynsiencyn. This was found to be a small settlement, with a road running up from the strait and through the village of several rectangular buildings (rather than roundhouses more commonly built by the native occupants of Anglesey). Excavations of one of these buildings showed it was built around 140 AD, was burnt down and rebuilt in 275 AD, and probably abandoned around 350 AD (the last dateable evidence is a coin from the reign of Roman emperor Constantius II. Intriguingly, the road through the village continues on roughly in the direction of the fort in Holyhead. The village had no signs of defences so was probably a civilian settlement, possibly a trading port.

Iron Age

After lunch Jane Kenney returned to the stage to focus on the Iron age finds at Parc Cybi. A small settlement of four roundhouses was found, centred around what is now a small roundabout just past the truck stop. This site is very close to a nearby marshy area, and the houses were built on platforms of stone and soil to raise them up a bit.

The houses were clustered close together, and all had their entrances facing towards Holyhead Mountain, where there was a hillfort, despite the prevailing wind coming from that direction. A path lead up to the entrance of the largest round house, and some of them showed evidence of the walls being thickened around the entrances later on, perhaps to make them more impressive looking. Postholes in a rectangular layout show where granaries were built to store grain; these flanked the path to the houses and may have been deliberately placed there to show off their wealth to visitors.

It was from here that some of the serious ‘bling’ was found; a small gold ring, probably used as a hair decoration, and a fragment of an amber bead. Other finds include stones of various sizes with holes in the middle, probably used as weights to hold down the thatched roofs or fishing nets, and a quern for grinding grain. Little pottery was found, but this is common in the Iron Age; they may have used wood and basketry to make their household goods.

More Iron Age

Kate Waddington from Bangor University followed on to set the Parc Cybi finds in the wider context of the Iron Age throughout northwest Wales and elsewhere in Britain. There are three categories of settlements at this time: enclosed, unenclosed, and hillforts. The first millennium BC is when we first find evidence of settlements being used over a long period of time, by multiple generations. Also settlements seemed to have become more specialized. One may, for example, show lots of evidence of metal working, which is absent from nearby settlements.

Kate took us on a tour of several Iron Age settlements. Erw Wen, near Harlech, which dates from 980-590 BC, is notable because it was originally built with timber walls, which were later reconstructed in stone. A similar settlement at Pimperne Down, Dorset was recently reconstructed by experimental archaeologists, who found it took over 200 mature trees and straw from more than 30 fields to build. Bryn Eryr, near Llansadwrn on Anglesey, was an enclosed settlement of three roundhouses, with a cobbled yard, that was developed over 700 years. Two of the houses have been reconstructed at St Fagans National Museum of History (which is described in my previous blog). Later unenclosed settlements have been excavated at Ty Mawr near Holyhead and Parc Bryn Cegin by Bangor. These have the remains of numerous houses, but it appears only a few were occupied at any one time, with older ones abandoned as new houses were built. Numerous hill forts in the area, such as Tre’r Ceiri and Meillionydd on the Llŷn peninsula, were also described.

Continuity and Collapse

Nancy Edwards from Bangor University was next up, to talk about societal change from the Roman period into the early medieval. When the Romans, who had governed Wales for a few centuries, withdrew the land they left behind went through economic collapse and political fragmentation. However, there was also a continuity. Several inscribed stones dating from this period have been found on Anglesey, many preserved in churches such as the stone dedicated to King Cadfan in Llangadwaladr, or that for Saint Saturninus in Llansadwrn church. The earlier of these had Latin scripts, and were projecting the identity of the post-Roman local elite. Later Irish influence is noted by the Ogham script that accompanied the Latin inscription on a stone dedicated to Mailisi near Llanfaelog. By the sixth century Welsh names become prominent.

Around 580 AD climate change came in the guise of a Little Ice Age of cooling conditions, possibly caused by a Icelandic volcano eruption. Pollen evidence shows an increase in wetlands and woodlands and a decrease in arable crops. Risk management is evident in the appearance of corn driers (mentioned above) which allowed more of the crop to be preserved.

Despite all the changes, some settlements persisted. The Tŷ Mawr hut circles, begun in the early Iron Age, were in use well into the early medieval period, and Cefn Cumwd, uncovered by the construction of the A55 across Anglesey, was occupied from the early Bronze Age to the post Roman period.

Summing Up

Finally, Gary Robinson (Bangor University) took to the stage for a summing up. He sang the praises of the work that has been done at Parc Cybi over 14 years. The ability to excavate a large area has given us a picture of how the human use of the landscape has changed over time. A question from an audience member earlier in the day asked if a random spot on Anglesey were stripped bare, as had been done at Parc Cybi, would the resulting archaeology have been as rich. The answer was an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ History is under our feet where ever we walk.

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After attending the “Spheres of Influence” day school last month, I decided to finally get myself a copy of this fine book. One of the authors, Richard Suggett of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, gave a talk about “Anglesey’s Plastai”, which whetted my appetite for more details on the ancient manor houses of the Island.

Co-authored with Margaret Dunn of Discovering Old Welsh Houses and published in 2014, this large format and well illustrated book charts the development of gentry houses in North-west Wales through the late medieval and early modern periods. In particular, it places these developments on a firm timeline by using dendrochronology (dating building timber through the growth rings in the wood) to accurately date the main structural elements.

The introduction begins by describing the usual medieval style of house throughout England and Wales, the hall-house. This type of house, built to impress, focused on the large main hall, open to the roof, which was held up by massive curved timber frames called crucks. An open hearth, with no chimney, stood in the middle of the hall, with the smoke rising up to the roof. Portions of the building were partitioned off at either end, with service rooms such as the buttery and pantry at one end, and the owner’s private chamber at the other.

In the first half of the 16th century this house plan began to be modified, initially with the building of fireplaces and chimneys. Existing hall-houses replaced the central hearth with a fireplace, while newly built houses began placing the fireplaces at the end of the hall. Since the chimney took the smoke directly outside the house, the need for a vast open space above the hall, where the smoke dissipated, was eliminated. This space was then used to create a second story of private chambers, increasing the living space.

All these modifications in the house plan lead to the classic Snowdonia-style house. These are two story dwellings with the distinctive feature of an asymmetrically-placed entranceway, positioned one third of the way along the side wall. This formed a passageway through the house to another door on the other side. On one side would be two service rooms, while on the other was the larger main hall, with a fireplace at the far end. Beside the fireplace was usually a spiral staircase leading up to the chambers on the first floor.

The rest of the book describes in detail a number of examples of these ancient houses from around North-west Wales. A brief history of each house is given, along with floor plan diagrams and photographs of key features. This publication being the result of the North-west Wales Dendrochronology Project, the results of the dating of various timbers of the house are also included. A description of the project and the list of the dozens of volunteers involved can be found at the end of the book.

Given the title of the book, it is unsurprising that most of the houses are in Snowdonia. However, two Anglesey houses are featured. I was fortunate to have visited one of them back in 2015 on an Anglesey Antiquarian Society field trip. Gronant was first built around 1540 by Robert Bulkeley, grandson of William Bulkeley, the first of the Bulkeleys to have come from Cheshire and settled in Beaumaris. It remained in the Bulkeley family until 1888.

The main part of the house follows the classic Snowdonia pattern, with a cross passage between the main hall on one side and a parlour on the other. Around 1618 a second house was built at a right angle to the original house, possibly to house one of the newly married sons of the Bulkeley family. In the 19th century the two houses were linked through an extension (to the right in the photo above).

The chamber above the hall in the original building gives us an idea of what it might have looked like at the height of its grandeur. Fragments of wall paintings can be seen, made up of colourful floral and geometric designs. Wall paintings like this would have been very common at the time, but few have survived the elements and centuries of redecoration.

If you find yourself fascinated by the history of these ancient houses, how they developed and were modified, then this is an excellent addition to your library. It is available at Amazon.co.uk or through your local bookshop and other retailers.

Warren Kovach is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

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The above image is a view of Beaumaris Castle unlike any that you’ve probably seen before. An Edwardian family pose in front of a castle gateway, with the walls draped with vegetation and bordered with colourful flowers. But, is this really Beaumaris Castle? Where’s the moat and bridge?

Compare it to a recent photo of mine from the same viewpoint and you can see that it is definitely the gateway to Beaumaris Castle. However, unlike the restored and highly popular visitor attraction that it is today, in the 19th and early 20th century it was a ruin that attracted the interest of the Victorians, who sought out romantic views of ancient buildings.

Beaumaris Castle was built by Edward I in the late 13th century, after he conquered Wales. It was never finished to its full height, and only occasionally saw military action, most notably during Owain Glyndŵr’s revolt and the English Civil War.

It was bought from the Crown by Thomas Bulkeley of Baron Hill in 1807 for £735. The Bulkeley family had been constables of the castle for generations. They treated it as a romantic Victorian ruin, but also used it for battles of another sort, with a tennis court built in the inner ward, as you can see in this picture.

The Bulkeley family gave the castle to the State in 1925. The Commissioners of Works, the predecessor of today’s Cadw, soon set about doing major reconstruction work, removing vegetation from the walls, repairing stonework, and restoring the moat. It is now one of the most popular visitor attractions on Anglesey and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986 (along with Conwy, Caernarfon & Harlech Castles).

This new postcard is from the Tuck company’s “Picturesque North Wales” series, appearing in their 1911-12 catalogue. It was painted by Henry B Wimbush, a London-born landscape artist who did many illustrations for the Tuck postcards, as well as for book publishers such as A & C Black.

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This blog joins my Twitter feed and Facebook page as a way to post more informal information about my investigations of the island’s history. I’ll be writing about places I’ve visited, facts and stories that I’ve been tracking down, and anything else I think might be of interest to those interested in the history of Anglesey.

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