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The old county of Montgomeryshire now forms the northern portion of the new the administrative county of Powys
A glance at the map will show that Montgomeryshire lies right across the middle of Wales, a belt, a sort of buffer between the rivalries, if any there be, of the north and south. It has the marcher county of Salop on one side, the east, and on the other the slightest nodding acquaintance with the sea. Its other neighbours are the Merioneth and Denbigh to the north, with Cardigan and Radnor to the south. For those who have statistical inclinations the county boasts 510,111 acres, that is to say 797 square miles, and the density of the population per square mile is just under 70. During the Roman occupation the present Montgomeryshire was part of the territory of the Ordovices in Britannia Secunda. Then, about 420, came the Roman evacuation under Flavius Honorius, and not much history remains until, at the tri-partition of Wales, Montgomery was included in the principality of Powys, as Powys Gwenwynwyn. Then we hear of it as Swydd Tre’ Faldwyn, the shire of the town of Baldwyn, a Norman knight who as William the Conqueror’s man did homage for it. In Domesday it is shown as the fier of Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury, and the town and castle were reckoned in Salop.
It must not be imagined that either Baldwyn or Roger de Montgomery enjoyed perfect peace in his fief. The men of Powys bitterly resented the invasion of the Norman’s, and after Roger’s death in 1095 they stormed the castle and destroyed the garrison. Then Rufus swept into Wales to conquer and ravage, and to teach those mutinous men of Powys a lesson. Gloriously the Red King swept into the country, and very ingloriously swept out again. Later monarchs were to find a similar difficulty when they essayed to tame the men of the mountain principality.
When Henry III incorporated the town of Montgomery, he restored and enlarged the castle, and made it impregnable against even the last of the warlike Llewellyns. Henry garrisoned it with seasoned troops, and placed it in the charge of Hubert de Burgh, granting him the honours and emoluments from the lordships of the Marches. Satisfied that the castle was now safe, and that the turbulent Welsh were sufficiently quelled, the king crossed the border with his forces. Immediately the Welsh rose, and, with their prince watching the retirement of the Crown forces, they surrounded the castle and demanded its immediate surrender. Apparently they did not know Hubert de Burgh. His fighting blood was up, and, leading his veteran garrison, he sallied forth to give battle. Feigning to be worsted, he led the Welsh on, caught them in the flank, and routed them with terrific slaughter. The scene was worthy of the pen of the writer of the Ingoldsby Legends. From the battlements the ladies of the castle watched the fray, surrounding the young and beautiful Countess de Burgh. Thomas Roscoe describes it : “The knowledge of being marked by the eyes of beauty sharpened the edge of Norman chivalry, and many a heart beat high and fair bosoms heaved with love and pride as the colours conferred on some favourite youth flew foremost in the frightful slaughter.” A glorious and inspiring spectacle! Listen again how “the lovely Countess averted her gaze from the sight; nature and humanity triumphed, though she south to disguise her tears and terror from her less scrupulous companions.”
La guerre n’est qu’un jeu. We remember “Le Pas d’Armes du Roi Jean,” with the fair Isabeau alone in the place of honour:
“La bas scule Force ayeules Portant gueules Sur azur.”Incidentally a carping critic pointed out to Victor Hugo that gules on azure was shocking bad heraldry. However, we are travelling far from Montgomery and its castle.
The fertile lands of Powys were too good to be given away, and they became for centuries the battlefields of the rivals, not only of marcher lords and barons, but of princes and kings. Baldwyn and roger de Montgomery, Rufus and Henry III and Hubert de Burgh, all came and went, won and lost. So the struggle and counter-struggle went on, and no slight, no advantage won, however small, remained unavenged by Welsh or Normans. To-day a few stones crumbling on a wooded hill are all that remain to tell the wonderful tales of fierce contest and wild and daring feats of arms. The little town, too, of Montgomery lives forgotten. Of it a writer has said, “Montgomery makes a most creditable effort to look like a town, and only fails because there are really not buildings nor people to make it successful.”
A word about Welshpool and Powys Castle. Welshpool is the biggest and only important town in Montgomery. It is the practical capital. The Assizes have been held there, and there was always a militia depot with barracks in the town. Going far back into history, a castle can be found on the hill occupied by the present splendid Powys Castle, or Castell Coch, the red castle, for it was the centre of old Powysland, and, as we have mentioned before here, the men of Powys were of a fiery and turbulent turn of mind, and brooked ill the overbearing of their Norman lords. Cadwgan started to build a castle in the beginning of the twelfth century, and later Owain ap Gruffydd held it under John.
Llanwddyn was a little village harbouring some five hundred souls, but now, just as the old barony of Culbin lies beneath the sand dunes, and the fair land of Gwaelod, the lost Cantrev of Ardudwy, lies beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay, Llanwddyn is no more. It lies, whatever may be left, beneath the waters of Lake Vyrnwy, the huge reservoir that supplies the City of Liverpool with pure water. No life could have been simpler or more remote than that of those five hundred souls of Llanwddyn. The village lay far from the communications of commercial civilisation. To these people, speaking practically no English, came the news one day that a great and distant city called Liverpool wanted pure water, and was going to collect it and store it in their valley of Vyrnwy. They were, one and all, turned out of their homes, and those who were sleeping peacefully under the green grass of the churchyard were reverently lifted and carried to a new resting-place up the hill. So everything was emptied, church and inn, the hospitable “Powys Arms,” and cottages and all; and a great dam was built lower down the valley, and the water rose until the deserted village lay swamped and sunk beneath many fathoms. To the Welshman, with his wholesale destruction and obliteration of everything so dear to him, cannot be adequately described. The res angusta domi, the everyday, unchanging life, snug, perhaps – probably in monotone, the curfew’s toll, the lowing herd, the ploughman, “all that Nature, all that wealth e’er gave,” transcended every other station in life’s journey. It is said that some of the old villagers died from the shock of this uprooting. This is very probable, for old people especially in remote villages, become essentially a part of their village in a way that no town-dweller can.
Lake Vyrnwy is undoubtedly very beautiful, even though it is artificial, and the view from the hotel up its five-mile length is unsurpassed. Though the lake and many thousand of acres of moor land and mountain around it are property of the Corporation of Liverpool, it is, fortunately, not a resort for tourists. Nor is it likely to become so, for, barring the hotel, which caters mainly for sportsmen, accommodation is practically non-existent, as the population on the lake shore is reduced to a minimum out of regard for the purity of the water. All round are the pastures that belonged to the old submerged Llanwddyn, and many beautiful trees have been planted, with rhododendrons and azaleas.
Mr A G Bradley has described the scene vividly. “. . . . it is in the intervals of a day’s fishing, when out on the broad bosom of the lake, that you may best take in both the beauty and romance of the place. Then is the time, after straining your eyes for an hour or so at where you know your flies to be among the dancing ripples, then is the time to lie back and rest them on the silent crags, towering to the sky, on the emerald turf, fresh with mountain mists and warmed by the suns of May, that sweep upward to their feet. The middle heights, too, are all ablaze with golden gorse, and sprinkled thick with feathery birch trees. From the straggling woods of primitive oaks, hoary with trailing moss and waist-deep in bracken that dip here and there to the water, comes at such times the note of the cuckoo, full and clear. . . . But perhaps after all it is at sunset, when the day’s work is over, and the breeze is dead, and we are stealing slowly homeward down the lake, that the spell of its strange association is strongest.” Tom Moore’s lines of the fisherman who sees in Lough Neagh’s waters;
“The round towers of other days In the wave beneath him shining”are familiar to readers of Britain Beautiful. At Vyrnwy they come quickly to the mind.
Farther down is Llangynog, a pretty village, with some old lead-mines. One of them, Craig-y-mwyn, was opened in 1692, and is very big. The place-name is from a fifth-century saint and martyr called Cynog. In the church of Pennant Melangell, the legend of St Monacella is told on a very fine carved woodwork. She was the daughter of an Irish king, and was being pressed by her father to marry one of his lords. But she had made a vow of celibacy, and fled to Wales, where she lived for fifteen years without seeing a male face. The story tells how the Prince of Powys, Brochmel Yscythrog, was out hunting one day (what wonderful adventures you could have out hunting in the mist days !), and the hare that he and his hounds were chasing ran into a fair open space among the trees, and sought refuge with a beautiful virgin whowas sitting there. Then the hare turned and faced the baying hounds, and they dared not seize her; and – so wondrous is the story – the huntsman’s horn stuck to his mouth, so that he could neither blow nor take it away. It was the virgin Monacella, and Brochmel Yscythrog gave her land and a shrine; and she became patron saint of hares, and no one would kill a hare in the parish. This superstition remained to yesterday; “and even later,” according to Pennant, “when a hare was pursued by dogs, it was believed that if anyone cried ‘God and Saint Monacella be with thee!’ it was sure to escape.”
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