Welsh Journals

CASTLES AND THE ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS OF WALES: A STUDY OF NAMES IT is a familiar fact of history that a castle and its dependent territory commonly have the same name. This, of course, is not in any way surprising; but whereas in England it is the district which commonly takes the name of the castle, in Wales the position is reversed more often than not. An English castlery is unlikely to have coincided with the older Anglo-Saxon administrative divisions of shire and hundred, for the former was generally too large an unit to allot to a single feudatory under the practice of the Conquest settlement, while the latter was almost exclusively a juridical division. Accordingly, we find castles with names of their own, sometimes particular names like Newcastle- on-Tyne, Richmond, Rougemont, Belvoir, Chastellion, but more often the name of the place where they were built, generally that of a township, but sometimes that of some natural feature-Estrighoiel at the bends of the river, Tickhill on the tyke's hill. The area subject to the castle and devolving with it then takes its name. This state of affairs is not unheard-of in Wales; for instance, Cilgerran (a name of ecclesiastical origin) is a castle which gave its name to a lordship which covered a commote, Emlyn is Cych; while the lordship formed about the castle of St. Clear's covers several of the commotes in the cantref of Gwarthaf. On the other hand, there are a number of cases where a castle built to command a Welsh administrative area has taken that area's name -for all these divisions, except perhaps for some of the commotes in the south, were formed and named before the Normans and their castles appeared in Wales. One of the kingdoms of mediaeval Wales- Powys, or at least its southern half, Powys Wenwynwyn-has given its name to Powis castle; but this is in fact a modem name, for the red castle overlooking Welshpool was known as Pool or Trallwng in the middle ages, and afterwards as Castell Coch. It is only when we reach the level of the province or gwlad that we find clear examples of this kind. These are particularly striking, for the two castles in question had alternative place-names which they might very well have taken; nevertheless, the castle at Aberteifi in Ceredigion became generally known as Cardigan, while that at Aberhonddu in Brycheiniog took the name of Brecon. In each case the name was passed to the neigh- bouring town, and as both of these became county towns when their territory was 'shired' their names, in the English fashion, passed to