Medieval Beaumaris

The Past website has an interesting article from Current Archaeology about an excavation in the charming town of Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey.

Beaumaris is famous for its castle, which never was completed to its intended design but which still served as part of the network of Edwardian castles to control and defend North Wales.

However, unlike Conwy and Caernarfon, it would today appear not to have had town walls. So far as I recall there was no mention in guide books when I visited on annual holidays in the 1960s. The implication appeared to be that the town only had a ditch to act as a defence or delineator. However I now learn from this article, and can see, that on John Speed’s plan of the town on his 1610 map of Anglesey there was a town wall on at least two sides of the urban area. 

John Speed’s plan of 1610 of Beaumaris showing the castle, the town walls, and the town. Llanfaes is at the top.

Image: Wikipedia 

The walks were a creation of the early fifteenth century, long after building work on the castle had been abandoned, and built as a result of the Glyndŵr rising.

The town of Beaumaris remained important as  as a major port for links to Dublin before losing out to Holyhead in the early nineteenth century.  It appears to have been the place of arrival for the future King Henry V and his cousin Humphrey Earl of Buckingham, the son of Thomas Duke of Gloucester, from Ireland in 1399, that for the Duke of York in 1450 and for the Earl of Essex in his 1590s campaigns in Ireland. The castle served as the last recorded place of imprisonment from 1449-52 to of the disgraced Eleanor Cobham, the former wife of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester.

The recent excavation has also produced a lot of material about the much more recent social history of the town.

The article can be seen at If walls could talk: Tracing the lost defences of Beaumaris

Wikipedia has more about the medieval and later history of the castle, town and walls at Beaumaris Castle, at Beaumaris town walls, at Beaumaris, and at Llanfaes Friary

Llanfaes is the likely burial place of the Earl of Buckingham and the onetime Duchess of Gloucester.