The county of Gwynedd spans the North-West of Wales and is made up predominantly of mountains, with a long coastline to the west that looks out onto the Irish Sea. It is best known for Snowdonia National Park - more recently renamed to its original Eryri - and in particular for the highest Welsh mountain Yr Wyddfa (more commonly known as Snowdon). It boasts many castles, a rich cultural history, spectacular beaches, a wealth of wildlife, and is considered a top holiday destination by tourists. Gwynedd is, because of this, probably one of the better known counties in Wales, but in the eighteenth century it was a very different matter.
Back then the county of Gwynedd was known as Meirionydd, cut off from the rest of the country and England by the sheer mountainous region of Eryri, and the fact there were few easily-navigable paths. Travel was for the most part achieved on foot or by hoof, using the drovers' roads across the hills (routes for droving livestock from one place to another). Many of these roads were ancient and of interminable age, while others were known to date back to the medieval period, and none of them particularly safe over rocky terrain. As a consequence, those who lived in Meirionydd were considered to live in a backwater, with 'backward' manners, and 'backward' ideas.
It was a view encouraged with the dissemination of Welsh culture through English landowners who attempted to ‘tame’ their tenants. Many estates falling to wrack and ruin due to lack of regular income were purchased by Englishmen who spent most of their time absent from them, only using the properties as their summer retreats; by the mid-century only a small handful of great Welsh estates were still owned by the original families, and the English gentry who replaced them insisted that these estates were overhauled to their own modernised designs without much thought to the consequences for the tenants; many natives were uprooted, unable to find work or even put a roof over their heads. Understandably it left a lot of bad feeling in the air, especially as communication was a major barrier – ultimately, however, in the eighteenth century English was the language of power and administration, and was necessary for anyone who wanted to 'advance in life'. As a result, the remaining Welsh gentry became English speakers, but for those of the lower classes this enforcing of an unwanted language often caused discord and occasional rioting, especially in the case of the church and religious reform. Even today, the divide between English and Welsh is still felt in some areas (and considering the dreadful way the English treated the Welsh in the past, this can come as no surprise). [For further reading, see Hope and Heartbreak: A Social History of Wales and the Welsh, 1776– 1871 by Russell Davies, Welsh Gothic by Jane Aaron, and The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century edited by Trevor Herbert and Gareth Elwyn Jones]
The main source of income in the area came from shipbuilding in Barmouth, fishing along the coast, farming inland, and through the mining of slate, copper, lead, iron and gold. Mining was an industry that rapidly developed during the Industrial Revolution, and in time North-West Wales would have some of the largest mining quarries in the world, in turn becoming World Heritage Sites and known of worldwide (the famous jewellery brand Clogau was the product of the gold mine hidden within the hills just outside of Dolgellau). However, it should be noted that the mines generally belonged to the aforementioned gentry, and the men who worked them were overworked and underpaid. Typically a miner was required to purchase their own tools out of their meagre pay and work over ten hours a day - in poor conditions - six days a week, with only Christmas Day off. It was a brutal way of living, with the death toll frighteningly high due to the instability of the environment in which miners worked. One must also point out the controversial Pennants of Penrhyn Castle who had a hand in the slave trade as well as mining, owning several plantations in Jamaica, which goes to show that the gentry of Wales made their money from exploiting what they considered 'the lesser man'.
Despite these harsh realities, Meirionydd was - as it still is today - a beautiful area of Wales that attracted many visitors, which did in many ways help place the county on the map for later generations. Another Pennant (this one the naturalist Thomas), committed to journeying the whole of Wales and writing two volumes celebrating the journey between the years 1778-81. His The Journey to Snowdon featured in Volume II, in which he richly observed his native country with detailed lyricism, is a particularly wonderful eighteenth-century account.
Others made a pilgrimage to Wales, including the Reverend Richard Warner of Bath, who published his own account of his journey in A Walk Through Wales (1799) and A Second Walk Through Wales (1800). Even the Romantic poet William Wordsworth had a soft spot for the country - his first visit was in 1791, where he walked over the greater part of North Wales, a journey which found its place in his ‘Descriptive Sketches.’ He recalls climbing Snowdon at night to see the sunrise, and some of this experience is incorporated into The Prelude:
[...] When from behind that craggy Steep, till then
The bound of the horizon, a huge Cliff,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Uprear’d its head. I struck, and struck again
And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff
Rose up between me and the stars [...]
Gwynedd/Meirionydd is a county rich in history - we often look at its myths and legends such as those found in the stories of The Mabinogi, as well as its Medieval history such as Edward I's conquest between 1277 and 1283, during which he built the castles at Harlech and Caernarfon. And of course, nowadays Wales is a popular place to spend your summer holidays ... but it would behove anyone with a love of the country overall to consider those 'middle years' that appear to have been overlooked for so long and have in so many ways shaped the Wales we know and love today.
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