Snowdonia National Park in Wales
WALES in the western part of England, is bounded on the east by England, on the north by the Irish Sea, on the south by Bristol Channel, and on the west by St. George’s Channel. Since 1536, it has been politically integrated with England, with which it forms part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It retains, however, cultural characteristics which distinguish it from England.
Wales is almost entirely an upland region, Snowdon Massif in Caernarvonshire has five peaks, the highest of which is 3,560 ft., and is the highest point in England and Wales. The main river is the Dec. The coast line is rugged and irregular, indented by many wide bays, of which Cardigan Bay is the widest.
The earliest known inhabitants were a slight, short dark people, possibly of Iberian origin. Before the end of the Bronze Age the country was overrun by Celts who were developing the use of iron. When the Romans came to Britain in the fourth century they found it necessary to build forts along the Welsh border to protect their British province from sporadic inroads. With the departure of the Romans early in the fifih century the Welsh tribes began swarming down into the English midlands. They came into conflict with the Anglo-Saxon invaders from the east and were driven back into their hilly strongholds. Eventually the Anglo-Saxons drove wedges to the north and south of Wales, separating the Welsh from the Celts of Cornwall and northern England.
It was Edward I, who ruled from 1272 to 1307, who was successful in overthrowing the leading Welsh chieftains and in 1282 Llwelyn Prince of Wales, was killed. To keep the country in subjection Edward built a number of castles and in 1301, he created his own son Edward, Prince of Wales. Since then the male heir to the English throne has been known by the title “Prince of Wales".
For a century British law and the English language became predominant. This naturally aroused the antagonism of the Welsh. It wasn’t until 1536 that Wales became an integral part of the Tudor Kingdom but retained its identity as a principality within the kingdom.
Wales passed through the Reformation of the sixteenth century easily, and became attached to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was deeply affected, however, by the Evangelical Revival . This was due chiefly to the efforts of a Welsh hymn writer and Methodist preacher, William Williams. This movement influenced not only the religious life of the country but also its cultural and political outlook and was largely responsible for arresting the tendency to substitute English for Welsh. The result was that Wales was more successful than Scotland and Ireland, in retaining the language of the country. Today almost one third of the people speak both English and Welsh, while about three per cent speak only Welsh.
The Industrial Revolution during the late eighteenth century had a profound effect on Welsh life because of the rich deposits of coal and iron in the southern part of Wales. Today many other industries and tourism add to the economy of Wales. (Ref. Collier’s Encyclopedia Book 23 Page 217-219)
Wales is an extraordinary mixture of the obvious and the recondite, a country of romantic legends and mined castles, yet the overpowering spirit of the landscape is one of Gothic drama - a wild mountainous terrain of vast, cloud-misted distances, pervaded by the sound of sweet water and birdsong. Here is a depth of vision leading you into the center of an almost untouchable world of clear light and exhilarating vista - a land where curlews flock in their thousands to feed upon damp moorland, their wild plaint, at first joyous and then of long despairing lament, seems to haunt Wales eternally.
In the days of the Princes, Wales was always regarded as three entities, the Northern Kingdom of Gwyneddt, the Middle Kingdom of Powis, and the Southern Kingdom of Deheubarth. Powis was never a very strong power and seldom stood by its own might, nowadays it is only a vague historical memory. Not so, however, the other two, Wales is only a unified country in the mind of the idealist - in practice it is divided into North and South. The division is precise and occurs at the River Dovey, this point is a boundary not only of Welsh feeling - between the Anglicized lands of South Wales, and the spirit of Celtic individualism which has been the hallmark of the Northern lands since the 13th century - but scenery also, the sharp mountains of the Cambrian Range lying to the north of the Dovey, whilst smoother, less dramatic mountains spread southwards across the Deheubarth landscape.
In Southern Wales history delivered a hammerblow to Welsh nationhood by the gradual inroads made by Norman Marcher Lords who extended English conquest from the mouth of the Wye as far west as Pembrokeshire’s Atlantic headland. Along this fief, part of which is still referred to as “Little England beyond Wales,” are found the ruins of the most impressive castles in Wales - with a host more on a lesser scale of grandeur. Everywhere along this feudal tract the Norman and English cultures dominate - fine stone houses were constructed magnificent churches were raised: and towns on the old English plan were built.
As the south coast has its line of castles stretching from Marches to the ocean boundary, so has the northern seaboard a string of impregnable fortresses. But these are of quite a different order. The former were as much baronial mansions as fortresses, whilst the latter built by King Edward I after his conquest of Wales, were just fortified barracks for royal troops. The countryside around these bastions showed no signs of a spread of English culture and remains today as Welsh in speech, feeling and lack of architectural impulse as it ever was.
Under the yoke of Plantagenet kings the flower of Celtic independence retreated into the vastness of the Snowdown landscape - vast mountains, notched in places like battlemented towers, with high passes and craggy peaks - from where the spirit of Welsh freedom occasionally resurfaced in the guise of her hero princes - Llwelyn the Great, Llwelyn at Gruflydd and Owain Glyndwr. Some part of the essence of defiance seems to linger in these wild, northern mountains to haunt this highland of rock and heather where nothing appears to have altered since the Ice Age: all is embraced by silence, save for the bleat of lambs, the sudden flight of snipe, or the solitary call of the rare red kite. Here are great sweeping moorlands, rising to mountainous masses 2,000 feet or more in height and interspersed with marsh-flats ablaze with golden gorse flower. Views are wide and horizons far: the wind sweeps freely across the vastness, and the skylark and meadow pipit’s song is lost to the breeze. However, soaring above all - dominating all - is the ethereal azure mass of Snowdon - the focus of bardic song and sentiment through the ages.
North Wales is a land composed almost entirely of ancient rock formations whose contorted form and denuded surfaces were produced by ice pressure millions of years ago.
In the great mass of the northern Cambrian Range, Snowdon at 3,500 feet, Carnedd Dafydd at 3,426 feet and Carnedd Llwelynn 3,484 feet, are sister peaks - barren on their upper slopes and in winter snow covered - their summits reflected in lonely blue and black lakes of crystal purity set high up in their mountain folds. South and East of Snowdon, on the 2,000 feet contour, are the Arenig moorlands, the Berwyn Mountains and the Harlech Dome. These, in turn, are skirted by a rolling landscape intersected by moor and patches of peat-mire, which are almost intimidating in their sense of splendid immunity from traces of human activity - all, that is, except, for an occasional ruined stone and slate cottage, the long deserted shelter of shepherds seeking the high summer pastures.
The central plateau melts into Mid-Wales, and the Plynlimon group whose characteristics are rounded grassy shapes, worn into innumerable furrows, culminating in one very definite mountain – Plynlimon. Although in height it only rises 2,465 feet, there is something very grand and distinctive about it. Plynimon represents the comer stone of all three provinces of Medieval Wales, and also, in the peat bogs of its slopes, gives birth to both the Severn and the Wye.
Further south along the Cambrian backbone of Wales, lie the contorted hills, tall shadowy rock gorges and great cascades of foaming water that form the Brecon Beacons.
They rise to 2,905 feet at Pen y Fan and are named from their use as sites for signal fires. The wind-lashed summits have a dragon like outline, sporting sheer precipices which fall 600 feet and have been likened to the crests of giant waves about to break into the deep valley gorges or “cwns” below. On either side of the Beacons are the East and West Black Mountains. They have very distinctive individualities, and it is unfortunate and confusing that they should share a similar name - even the colour is wrong, for they are composed of outcrops of red Devonian sandstone.
The Eastern group - marking the end of Wales, and the beginning of England - are imposing whale-backed barriers holding a series of long valleys, all ‘blind’ at the northern end. In one of these cwns is situated the beautiful, lonely ruin of Llanthony Abbey, whose monks deserted it as early as the 12th century.
It was abandoned during the lawless reign of Stephen, yet to stand on its site and feel the mountains enclosing around, one wonders if it was not the overpowering nature of the savage scenery that overawed the brethren rather than the turmoil of marcher wars. (Reference : “The British Isles" written by Phillip Clucas Msiad. Produced by Ted Smart and David Gibson.)