Pen Y Bryn The Princes’ Tower :: British History

Pen Y Bryn The Princes jerk Wales has long been known as a country of myth and magic. She hides her secrets in her hollow hills. Pen Y Bryn, The Princes Tower is the latest treasure that has come to light and one of the most fascinating. In 1992 Kathryn and Brian Pritchard Gibson bought what they believed to be a thirty-six acre chicken farm with a 17th degree centigrade Elizabethan manor house and it has changed their lives dramatically. The stone manor and out buildings are nestled against a forested hill in Snowdonia. It is just north of Bangor higher up the shores of Abergwyngregyn, the mouth of the white shell river overlooking the Menai Straights with the mountains forming a protective backdrop behind. Kathryn Gibson says, The locals, it seems, have always called the house Twr Llewelyn, or Llewelyns Tower. They told us thats where the princes lived and that down the stairs it theres a Roman settlement and a bronze age fort. When asked how they came by this knowledge they a lways answered, Nain (Grandmother) told me. It was only the academics who ignored this local apprehension that had been handed down for centuries. When you first see the house it is obvious the tower is by far the oldest section. You can also see where windows and doors have been blocked up. thither is a distinct difference in the stones or the tower and those of the rest of the house but it has only recently been authenticated that the tower does indeed naming back to Llewelyns time. Shortly after moving in the Gibsons noticed a hollow sound in a part of the living live floor. Pulling up floorboards they quickly discovered secret stairways, hidden rooms, hollow walls, tunnels, tales of princes and prisoners, lovers and war. As Kathryn Gibson says We live in the middle of a giant historical jigsaw puzzle. In fact Pen y Bryn is the lost palace of the Princes Llywelyn, Llywelyn Fawr (the Great) and his grandson, Llywelyn the Last, dating back to 1211. It is where Joan, King Johns daughter and wife of Llywelyn Fawr lived and died, and it holds the key to the sad story of Gwenllian, the first and last true born Princess of Wales. Gwenllian was the only daughter of Llywelyn the Last. Llewelyn had reluctantly been granted the title of Prince of Wales in perpetuity by the English treetop at the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267.