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Caerwys b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Caerwys and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Caerwys, Flintshire. Caerwis it is called on l8^th century maps, and in the early 19^th century, it was noted chiefly as a crossroads junction for mysterious places like Skynyog and Bullafranck. It is now a smallish place reached by relatively minor roads between Holywell and St Asaph or Denbigh and Mold. But it is a striking example of the way in which Wales can preserve its ancient traditions in the 21^st century. Caerwys has been celebrating its unique Eisteddfod since 1568.

It seems always to have had an artistic tradition peculiar to itself. The contests of music and poetry known as Eisteddfodau have been an outstanding feature of life among the Welsh for longer than written records have existed. The most important of these gatherings, perhaps the first to be held on a national scale, was the one called in the year 1177 by Rhys ap Gruffydd. Prince of South Wales, who invited all the bards of the country to his castle at Cardigan, or Aberteifi, to prove themselves in competition. Those of South Wales were found to excel in music, those of the North in verse; and for both arts the highly sophisticated rules that have governed them ever since were established. Gerald de Barn, the Norman-Welsh Archdeacon of Brecon, some sixty years afterwards wrote of the great skill the Welsh seemed naturally to have in these things, and of how they were distinguished from all other people he knew by their habit of singing not in unison but in harmony, by some natural instinct.

Caerwys, being set in an area where the political questions between Wales and England were most acute, naturally found in them a theme for its poets; and the death of the last Llywelyn was mourned in an elegy written by a man of Caerwys, Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Coch. who had been a bard under the special patronage of that prince. But there is little record of the place as a fully developed town until 1290, when Edward I of England granted it a charter, making it the only Welsh borough in Flint. Its importance for the district in which it lay was marked by its fairs, held once a week until very recent times. The drovers who brought their cattle to market, and passed through Caerwys on the great cattle-trek into England, had their animals shod in a smithy that once stood at the end of Drovers Lane, and in the market square a bell was hung to ring in the opening of the fair and ring it out again.

In 1568 Caerwys became nationally significant. The ending of the succession of native Princes of Wales did not mean the ending of the Welsh literary tradition; even the ban laid by Henry VIII on the use of the Welsh language in courts of law did not succeed in destroying a tradition that went much further back than the Eisteddfod of 1177. Certainly the language became increasingly confined to the villagers and peasantry, but the wandering harp-men, living by their skills and going from place to place in all seasons and weathers, produced songs that are still known and sung today as outstanding pieces of lyric beauty and literary craftsmanship. The 17th and 18th centuries have many names of such men to prove how strong was the life of the Welsh cultural tradition. The practice of the wandering harp-men continued far into the 19th century. Caerwys can claim to have made this survival possible.

Queen Elizabeth Tudor granted a commission to twenty gentlemen of North Wales to summon a meeting of all such wandering minstrels at Caerwys. They had been active since the fall of Llywelyn, demanding their ancient privilege of hospitality and payment for their songs; but they were apparently threatened by the competition of vagrant and idle persons calling themselves rhithmers and barthes. The Tudors were anxious to suppress the dispossessed who had flooded the country after the Wars of the Roses and the economic revolution that had overthrown the village systems of the Middle Ages. Under their legislation, even professional actors were classed with rogues, vagabonds. Egyptians (gypsies), and other masterless men. The native harpists of Wales were a considerable problem. The Commission of Caerwys regularized the profession and instituted a system of licences to those who proved their ability, giving the award of a silver harp to the man who came first in the competitions. The date and place of all subsequent Eisteddfodau were announced in advance at fairs and markets throughout the five counties of North Wales. The old town hall, where the first Commission Eisteddfod was held under the branches of an ash tree, has now been replaced by the post office.

The original plan of the town, as laid out in the days of Edward I, is still obvious in the pattern of its long, straight streets, its influence has passed far beyond Wales. When William Penn was projecting his new town of Philadelphia in the peace-seeking community of Pennsylvania in America, he took the advice of Dr Thomas Wynne, a native of Caerwys, who thought Edward I's designers were no bad masters to follow.

The parish church is one of the ancient Welsh foundations, and a holy well recalls the days before Christianity was introduced. Roman relics are, a little surprisingly, not much in evidence so far; the silver and lead along the Dee estuary were of the sort to attract them. But the medieval village has recently been excavated near at hand, and the grave-mounds of the Bronze Age lie about the area.

Nearby towns: Denbigh, Flint, Holywell, Mold, St Asaph

Nearby villages: Bagillt, Bodfari, Cilcain, Cwm, Dyserth, Greenfield, Gwaenynog, Halkyn, Henllan, Llanasa, Llandyrnog, Llanelwy, Llangynhafal, Llannerch-y-Mor, Llanrhaiadr, Meliden, Mostyn, Nannerch, Northop, Northop, Prestatyn, Rhuddlan, Rhydymwyn, Talacre, Thurstaston, Trefnant, Tremeirchion, Whitford

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