Buildings associated with Owain Glyndŵr

There are multiple buildings and sites associated with Owain Glyndwr in Wales.

Buildings associated with Owain Glyndŵr

Sycharth

Sycharth is a

Iolo Goch described Sycharth as containing ‘nine plated buildings on the scale of eighteen mansions, fair wooden buildings on top of a green hill’ and ‘a tiled roof on every house with frowning forehead, and a chimney from which the smoke would grow; nine symmetrical, identical halls, and nine wardrobes by each one’.^[4]

The castle was situated in the Welsh territory of

The best-known building is Owain Glyndŵr's Parliament house in Machynlleth. This building has been substantially altered in more recent times, but fortunately, Edward Pugh published a fine-coloured lithograph of the building in 1816.

There was another Parliament House of Glyndŵr in the centre of Dolgellau. It was moved in 1885 to Newtown, Powys and re-erected in a much altered form. It may have been first referred to as the Parliament House in 1555.^[10] This is building is now known as Plas Cwrt yn Dre. It was an aisled hall house, so is likely to have been a building of considerable importance, but is unlikely to date back to the time of Owain. Much restored by A B Phipson for Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones as a two-storey three-bay house.^[11] Largely timber framed with stone end walls with interlocking herring-bone decorative framing to a jettied first floor, which is supported by vine scroll brackets. There is an external stone staircase to a plank door at extreme left and square panelled timber framing to ground floor. The right stone bay incorporates re-used medieval masonry and a two-light window with a central stone mullion. Arcade patterns in tile inset to stack may reproduce the arcade designs on the chimney stack shown in a lithograph of 1810 by Cornelius Varley.^[12]

Pennal Church

By 1405, most French forces had withdrawn after politics in Paris shifted toward peace with the Hundred Years' War continuing between England and France.^[13] On 31 March 1406 Glyndŵr wrote a letter to be sent to Charles VI King of France during a synod at the Welsh Church at Pennal, hence its name. Glyndŵr's letter requested maintained military support from the French to fend off the English in Wales. Glyndŵr suggested that in return, he would recognise Benedict XIII of Avignon as the Pope. The letter sets out the ambitions of Glyndŵr of an independent Wales with its own parliament, led by himself as Prince of Wales. These ambitions also included the return of the traditional law of Hywel Dda, rather than the enforced English law, establishment of an independent Welsh church as well as two universities, one in south Wales, and one in north Wales.^[14]

It is thought that the church was so named by Glyndŵr in competition with the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London, one of the chapels royal of his rival, King Henry IV of England. Pennal was regarded with honour because of its status as one of the 21 llysoedd, the courts of the native Welsh Princes of Gwynedd.^[15]

The church is the last site of the last Senedd meeting held by Owain Glyndŵr.^[16]

Owain Glyndwr (prison)

At Carrog near Corwen parts of Owain's Prison stood, possibly into the 20th century. Thomas Pennant wrote in about 1776 that "The prison where Owen confined his captives was not far from his house, in the parish of Llansantfraid Glyndwrdwy and the place is to this day called 'Carchardy Owen Glyndwrdwy'. Some remains are still to be seen near the church, which forms part of a habitable house. It consists of a room 13 feet square and ten and a half high. The sides consist of three horizontal beams, with upright planks, not four inches asunder, mortised into them. In these are groves in the bottom, as if there had been cross bars or grates. The roof is exceedingly strong, composed of strong planks almost contiguous. It seems as if there had been two stories, but the upper part at present is evidently modern".^[17] In 1794 John Ingleby was employed to make a watercolour record of the building, which stood just to the SE of the church and overlooked the River Dee. The building was thatched and has some timber close studding and also a Gothic arched window and Gothic arched doors. There seems to be evidence for an outer stair leading to a first-floor hall, which suggests that parts of the building could well have been contemporary with Owain Glyndŵr. The site of the building was on the modern Glyndŵr Terrace.^[18]

Mornington Straddle

Nothing certain is known of Glyndŵr after 1412. Despite enormous rewards being offered, he was neither captured nor betrayed. He ignored royal pardons. Tradition has it that he died and was buried possibly in the church of Saints Mael and Sulien at Corwen close to his home, or possibly on his estate in Sycharth or on the estates of his daughters' husband: Kentchurch in south Herefordshire or Monnington in west Herefordshire.^[19]

In his book The Mystery of Jack of Kent and the Fate of Owain Glyndŵr, Alex Gibbon argues that the folk hero

In 1875, the Rev. Francis Kilvert wrote in his diary that he saw the grave of "Owen Glendower" in the churchyard at Monnington "[h]ard by the church porch and on the western side of it ... It is a flat stone of whitish-grey shaped like a rude obelisk figure, sunk deep into the ground in the middle of an oblong patch of earth from which the turf has been pared away, and, alas, smashed into several fragments."^[22]

In 2006, Adrien Jones, the president of the Owain Glyndŵr Society, said, "Four years ago we visited a direct descendant of Glyndŵr, a John Skidmore, at