Ein brenin a fu, ein brenin a fydd

Legendary  Landmarks

Cantre’r gwaelod

Being submerged under Cardigan bay it may be a little tricky to reach Cantre’r Gwaelod these days!  However the best places to visit in relation to it are the beaches at Borth and Ynyslas when at low tide the remains of submerged tree stumps can be seen and Sarn Gynfelyn between Borth and Clarach at SN 584857 which is said to be the remains of the causeway between the current coastline and the capital of the submerged kingdom Caer Gwyddno, seven miles to the west.  Ynyslas beach is where the main work will be sited but an earlier series of works at Sarn Gynfelyn and the groins at Borth can also be seen here below.

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Legend

In around 490 AD there was born a great king, brother of the mighty Maelgwn of Gwynedd, Gwyddno Garanhir (Longshanks) was his name and he ruled a kingdom in west Wales encompassing much of what is now Ceredigion.  This lowland kingdom was constantly serviced by several great estuaries resulting in land so fertile that an acre there was said to be worth four acres in the rest of Wales.  These fertile flood plains depended, much like modern day Holland, on a well maintained network of dykes and sluices to hold the sea at bay. On ebb tides the gates would be opened to drain the land but as the tide turned and began to flood back in the gates were closed maintaining the land for the farmers. 

During the reign of Gwyddno Garanhir the man charged with responsibility over the dyke network’s maintenance was named Seithenin.  Seithenin was very proud of his responsibilities and used to make much boast of them in the ale house, in fact he was more than a little fond of drinking and many warned him against the error of his ways but he would not heed them.  One night, the night of the highest tide of the year, there happened to blow in a great storm from the west and the folk of that country shut themselves away from the foul weather in Gwyddno’s palace at Caer Gwyddno.  Feasting and drinking the atrocious weather was soon forgotten and Seithenin drank far too much wine and becoming drowsy fell asleep against the wall of the great hall. All through the night the gale rushed in from the south west, a storm surge whipping up the dark waters of Cardigan Bay.  In his hurry to get out of the storm and to enjoy his evening’s drinking Seithenin had forgotten to secure the sluice gates to the west and as the tide turned around midnight the icy waves of the towering sea rushed in. The land was defenceless and all sixteen villages of the low lying district were drowned under the swirling waters. 

Gwyddno Garahir and his people fled in terror from the surging waters and were forced to scrape a poorer living on the higher ground inland. The court was hurriedly relocated from the ruined Caer Gwyddno and the main port established at Porth Wyddno on the site of modern day Borth, in early Welsh poetry said to be one of the three great ports of the Isle of Britain.  Supposedly, on quiet mornings, the bells of the lost kingdom can still be heard, stirred by currents, tolling beneath the waves.

Amazingly the locations of this fanciful legend survive to this day, at Borth the low tide reveals a truly strange sight in the form of the tree stumps of an ancient forest emerging from the breakers.  All along Cardigan bay there can also be seen the supposed remains of the dykes and causeways stretching out into the sea for many miles. Sarn Badrig, Sarn y Bwch, Sarn Gynfelyn, Sarn Dewi and Sarn Cadwgan are officially very unusual shallow subtidal reefs, which extend many miles into Cardigan Bay from the coast. They are glacial moraines resulting from the last glaciation and are composed entirely of boulders, cobbles and pebbles mixed with various grades of sediments.  Legend however makes them the remains of Cantre’r Gwaelod’s failed defences and Sarn Gynfelyn, a couple of miles north of Aberystwyth, is the remains of the causeway along which King Gwyddno and his people escaped the floods.  At its end, seven miles west out into the sea lies patch of shallower water through which great boulders in the shape of foundation stones can be made out at low tide, the name for this area is Caerwyddno, the city of Gwyddno.

ARTIST:

A fossilized tree stump: part of the submerged forest that lies of the coast of Borth in Ceredigion.

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E-mail: legendarylandmarks@hotmail.co.uk

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To the left you can see a fragment of an old chart which, although tricky to make out, displays the extent of Sarn Gynfelyn which terminates seven miles west off shore at Caerwyddno.  The annotation on the chart reads ‘Dry at Low Water’ and goes on as follows: ‘Sarn Gynfelyn extending to Sea about Seven Miles at the End of Which is that patch of foul ground called Caerwyddno which comes Dry on Spring Tides’.  Below is a photograph of  Sarn Gynfelyn where the first series of installations begin, stretching along this shoreline to the submerged forest at Borth.  These locations offer the most tangible link to the legendary kingdom lost below the waves.

The map shown to the right shows the extent of the shallow water areas around Cardigan Bay including the highly unusual Sarn features.  At the bottom of the map can be seen Sarn Gynfelyn as described above, terminating at Caer Gwyddno.  I have also marked on the location of present day Borth.  Could these shallower waters originally have been the low lying lands of Cantre’r Gwaelod?

Autumn2006

Chris Collier

The October 2005 Series...

Proposed Ynyslas Artwork:

The installation will deal primarily with the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod: the story of the ancient kingdom lost beneath the sea and said to have taken place locally.  It will take inspiration of another ancient structure lost to the sea: Seahenge in Norfolk, England, as the starting point for an artwork that is part sculptural, part land art.  The piece will form an imagined relic of the legendary lost kingdom, evoking the foundation timbers of a ruined and semi-submerged hut or such like and also a tree stump, referencing  both the upturned stump at Seahenge and the submerged prehistoric forest visible locally in Borth at low tide.  The piece will hold contemporary relevance by linking ancient civilisations lost to the sea both real (Seahenge - Norfolk) and mythical (Cantre’r Gwaelod) in two areas that are current extremely vulnerable to the predicted sea level rises in the coming decades that will result from accelerating climate change.  The piece could be accompanied by an interpretation board, perhaps by the visitors centre, explaining the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod and linking the story of it’s flooding with contemporary warnings regarding predicted sea level rises.

Above: How the proposed artwork may look.  The piece will be sited on the sea side of the headland as opposed to the estuary side, at the end of the path that passes over the dunes from the visitors’ centre.