Caernarfon
Though established as a bastion of English dominance over North Wales , Caernarfon with its fabulous imposing castle, a World Heritage Site, is today is a predominantly Welsh speaking town and a focal point for Welsh nationalism.
Caernarfon was built on a small peninsula between the River Seiont and what’s now the Menai Strait. Like nearby Conwy , Caernarfon was one of a chain of walled castle towns built to secure the English King Edward I’s stranglehold on North Wales. Overlooking the Menai Strait is Caernarfon Castle , which was completed in around 1330. Again like Conwy, Caernarfon Castle was built by Edward I’s military architect; James of St George, master mason of Savoy.
Built as to be a palace as well as a citadel, Caernarfon Castle has long been the venue of the investiture of the Prince of Wales, a ceremony that was established with a little subterfuge by Edward I. On becoming their overlord, so the legend goes, Edward told the Welsh he would give them a prince who was born in Wales and could speak not a word of English. When his son was born in Caernarfon Castle, Edward proclaimed the infant Edward II, Prince of Wales, since then the next in line to the English throne has always been known as the Prince or Princess of Wales. But when the investiture ceremony returned to Caernarfon in 1911 for the future King Edward VIII and more recently in 1969 for Prince Charles , protests from the locals almost matched the pomp and ceremony of the event.
Ironically for a town established as an English settlement and built to repel the Welsh, it literally buzzes with the native language. Many Welsh national heroes are also remembered in its square such as the Prime Minister Lloyd George and the 19th Century educationalist Sir Hugh Owen.
Other prime features to Caernarfon include the medieval town walls stretching for over 700 metres almost encasing the town. They include eight towers and two towering gateways, they stretch almost around the town and down to the harbour beside the castle and form a backdrop to narrow cobbled alleyways and arcades of bars and shops. One such example is ‘Four and Six’ street a throw back to the town’s maritime heyday and the charge in shillings and pence a sailor would pay for an evening’s entertainment.
