This half term I made a brief visit to Wales and Shropshire. Although the holiday was rather haphazard with regard to the historical significance of the places visited, I nevertheless did my best to seek out the strange and obscure detritus of the past. For the first night I stayed in Shrewsbury, and paid my respects to some of the local aristocracy at W—— Hall close by. I also visited Pradoe House, seat of the Kenyons. Sadly, neither family has any Jacobite connections and both arrived in the locality as recently as the 18th century. In Shrewsbury itself I had very little time, but I did manage to inspect a curious stone, allegedly a Saxon tombstone fragment, displayed on the wall of the Lion Hotel. I am reliably informed, however, that the letter forms are unlikely to be older than the 12th century.
My main purpose for staying in Shrewsbury, however, was to see Wroxeter – Viroconium Cornoviorum, Britain’s best preserved Roman city. The preservation of Viroconium has been greatly aided by the fact that, unusually, nothing was built on top of it – although it was only a few days ago that I visited another completely abandoned Roman town at Venta Icenorum (Caistor St. Edmund). Viroconium is essentially just the bath house, but that is impressive enough. I was pleased that the booklet on the site dwelt on the end of Viroconium, which had a sub-Roman life right into the 6th century as an ‘Arthurian’ city – the tomb of one of whose leaders, Cunorix, survives. In some ways, I should love to see Venta Icenorum excavated and preserved as Viroconium is – but on the other hand, every archaeologist knows that the best way to conserve a site is often to bury it again, and it is only because a decision was made to leave Viriconium open to the elements was made at an early date that it remains in that state.
After Viroconium, I headed into Wales and stayed the second night in Dolgellau. Although the church of St. Mary was rebuilt in 1716, the tomb of Meurig ap Ynyr Fychan (d. 1350), ostensibly a quizzling who aided the English in their occupation, was moved into the new church. It is in an impressive state of preservation. Apart from this effigy, Dolgellau’s most interesting artefact is the plaster coat of arms (pictured above) on the wall of ‘Y Sospan’ restaurant – which was once the court and gaol house. It is dated 1606 and is a peculiar variant of the royal arms. There is no crown, and the supporters are a crowned lion and a dragon (i.e. the Tudor supporters rather than the Stuart lion and unicorn). The arms of England and France are present in the achievement, but the Prince of Wales feathers are there too. Heraldically, the arms are thoroughly anomalous – were they the work of some provincial artist with no sense of protocol, and if so, to what extent do they reflect the nature of Stuart authority in Wales?
On the way back from Dolgellau I stopped at Llangollen, whose church of St. Collen was sadly closed. The story of St. Collen (who beheaded a giantess, apparently) made me aware of the terrible poverty imposed on Welsh Christianity by the total absence of history suffered as a result of English destruction of chronicles. At least, there seems to be no other explanation for why so few primary sources for early Welsh history survive. Virtually every church in Wales has its own individual saint – but because the lives of these saints did not survive, the people were forced to turn to the tallest tales (doubtless aided by the Celtic love of tall tales) in order to give an account of these saints. Wales and its culture cannot be understood unless as a persecuted culture under colonial rule – no tombstone I encountered in the churchyards I visited pre-dated 1709. Wales fascinates me precisely because it is so unlike England – with the exception of very early tombs like that of Meurig, the Welsh go uncommemorated and the only monuments that survive from the earliest times are those of the English-speaking elites.
