Modern Pen Y Bryn

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Daily Post, Monday, 19 November 2001

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Where is the real home of the Welsh Princes? Researcher Kathryn Pritchard Gibson believes she has the answer. lan Skidmore reports It's my duty to Welsh history to prove that Llywelyn the Great lived in my house. When Kathryn Pritchard Gibson bought Pen y Bryn at Abergwyngregyn, near Bangor, in 1988, it was a chicken farm with 36 acres of land. Within days of the family moving in, people called at the house and told them it was the site of Garth Celyn, the home of Llywelyn the Great and his grandson, the first Prince of Wales. She says her own painstaking research confirmed it was indeed the palace of the independent Welsh Princes in the 13th century. That prompted Kathryn and her husband, Brian, to refuse offers in excess of £2m from developers eager to capitalise

KathPG

on the land when the route of the A55, which runs along the property, was announced. We were not tempted, not for a minute. We felt strongly that this unique site was too valuable to Welsh history for us, to sell in this way," she says. Kathryn has spent years finding out all she could about the house.

HOME RULE:
Kathryn Pritchard Gibson at Pen y Bryn
in Abergwyngregyn, which she claims was where Llywelyn the Great lived in the 13th century. Picture: GERALLT RADCLIFFE

"I studied and studied and studied, it became a passion and duty," she says. "The present building was identified as a Snowdonia cross passage house of about 1553, that had been modernised by the Elizabethan owner, Sir William Thomas, in 1580. Llywelyn's Tower had been incorporated into that house. Below the Elizabethan house are remains of an earlier building. 'We discovered a trap door in the tower, stone steps leading to a small room with walls three foot thick, and slit windows with a handsomely carved medieval door with a tunnel that, according to tradition, comes out beyond the house near the Menai Strait." The Royal Commission on Ancient Historical Monuments for Wales identified that the house was standing in a large double bank and ditch enclosure and there is evidence of Bronze Age settlement before that. Behind the house there is an Iron Age hill fort and, in front of Garth Celyn, the remains of the Roman road linking Canovium, and Segontium to Chester. Across the Strait is Llanfaes, where Princess Joan and Princess Eleanor were buried in a Franciscan Friary on the seashore. "The big stone barn in the farmyard was in fact a medieval gatehouse," says Kathryn. "I feel that in a way we were guided here. If we had not bought it, it would have gone to developers. There was already planning consent to turn the gatehouse into holiday cottages, but the fields would have been a roadside hotel and garage, covered in tarmac by now." The difficulty, the Pritchard Gibsons found, was to get the academic establishment to agree the historic significance of the site. In January 1993, the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust reported: "The Trust remains unconvinced there is any evidence available at present to confirm or even suggest that Pen y Bryn was the location of the Royal, Llys (palace)." David Longley, the Trust director, dated the tower as a 17th, or later, century folly. But the same year Professor David Austin, head of the Department of Archaeology at Lampeter, dated the tower of Pen y Bryn to the beginning of the 13th century and said it was a rare surviving example of a medieval watchtower.
Meanwhile, Kathryn and a fellow researcher, Dr Gweneth Lilly, continued with their mission. They found letters in the Lambeth Palace Archives, London, from Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, grandson of Llywelyn the Great, to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Written in November 1282, they had been addressed from Llywelyn's home, Garth Celyn. This evidence was validated and published by the scholar Professor Caerwyn Williams, the head of the Centre of Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University, in 1998. Kathryn says she will gladly make the letter and other documents available at any public inquiry. "Garth Celyn has still not been officially recognised for what it was the Royal home in the 13th century, prior to the Conquest, the centre of government, and the headquarters of the struggle to maintain Welsh independence!' Recently Gwynedd Archaeological Trust (GAT) announced the results of an 18 month survey, carried out by them on behalf of the Countryside Council for Wales. They suggested that the site of the palace was on Pen y Mwd, a small mound on the valley bottom on the other side of the river. David Longley, the Trust's director, refused to comment on the report beyond saying: "The project was not about the village, it was about the environment. It would be a pity if our purpose was sidelined by some tired old arguments." Kathryn said: 'We would welcome a thorough study of the whole Aber Valley. The traditions of the area should not be twisted and manipulated to suit GAT, or anyone else's purpose. "It is no secret that we opposed GAT when they gave the go-ahead for Welsh Water to build a sewage farm at Llanfaes on the site of the royal burial ground. It was after our Llanfaes protest that GAT claimed there was no evidence to confirm Pen y Bryn was the location of the Royal Llys."
Kathryn vows to continue with her campaign to have the house officially recognised as the home of Llywelyn the Great "It's not for me but an important step for Welsh history." “I would welcome a thorough study of the whole Aber Valley… not for me but for Welsh history” see more about Pen y Bryn