Ewyas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ewyas was a Welsh kingdom which formed around the time of the withdrawal of Roman forces from Britain in the 5th century. The name was later used for a much smaller commote or administrative sub-division, which covered the area of the modern Vale of Ewyas and the villages of Ewyas Harold and Ewyas Lacy.
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[edit] A legendary kingdom
The capital of the Kingdom of Ewyas was originally at Caerwent (Caer Gwent), previously the Roman town of Isca Silurum.[1] The name Ewyas may mean "sheep district". Its rulers traced their traditional lineage to some of the greatest legendary figures of Celtic British history, the list of ancestors dating back to the landing of Julius Caesar in 55 BC.
Early Ewyas seems to have encompassed much of south-east Wales, including the later kingdoms of Gwent and Ergyng, and extended into what later became Herefordshire. Eudaf Hen of Ewyas supposedly took up the British High Kingship after defeating Trahearn, the brother of King Coel Godhebog, in the fourth century.
[edit] Cantref
By about 430 AD, Ewyas seems to have become dominated by the Kingdom of Powys to the north, under Vortigern, and the wider kingdom as a whole eventually took the name of Gwent, and later Glamorgan.[2] In Ewyas, north of the present site of Longtown, a religious centre was founded at Llanveynoe, where what is probably the oldest stone cross in the modern county of Herefordshire stands, from around 600 AD. At around the same time, a religious centre may have been founded at Llanthony, on the site of the later Priory.[3]
[edit] Lordship
In the mid 10th century there were seven cantrefs in Glamorgan, including "Gwent-uchcoed, and Ystrdyw and Ewyas". In about 1046 Osbern Pentecost, a Norman follower of Edward the Confessor, built a castle at Ewyas Harold, believed to be one of the first built in Britain. By the time of the Domesday Book, Ewyas or Ewias was an autonomous area bounded by the Black Mountains in the west, Craig Serrethin in the south, the line of the Golden Valley in the east, and Yager Hill and Cefn Hill to the north, just below the village of Clifford near Hay-on-Wye.[2] Domesday records that Alfred of Marlborough held the castle of Ewyas of the king; this was presumably the re-built Pentecost Castle.[3] The new town of Longtown was founded in the area around the 12th century.
[edit] Into Herefordshire
In 1536 the administration of Wales was re-organised, and the border between Herefordshire and Wales took more or less its present form, assimilating the Welsh territory of Ewyas Lacy. In 1852 the last Welsh administrative vestige was removed when the Parishes of Clodock with Longtown, Michaelchurch Escley, Craswell, St Margarets, Ewyas Harold, Rowlstone, Llancillo, Walterstone, Dulas and Llanveynoe were transferred from the diocese of St David's to that of Hereford. To the west of Hatterall Ridge, the other old parishes of Ewyas – Llanthony, Cwmyoy and Oldcastle - were transferred from St David's to the diocese of Llandaff.[4]
