LLANDOVERY
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SUMMARY
A small town developed outside Llandovery Castle during the twelfth century. The late thirteenth century was a period of rapid expansion and new burgages were laid out around a triangular-shaped marketplace. In 1317, 81 burgages were recorded. This may have been the high point of the medieval town and in the sixteenth century it consisted of just one street. It was not until the early nineteenth century that the town expanded. Archaeological investigation in the town consists of a single small evaluation with negative results.
KEY FACTS
Status: 1485 town charter granted. Three annual fairs.
Size: 1317 81 burgages recorded.
Archaeology: One evaluation with negative results.
LOCATION
Llandovery in Carmarthenshire lies on level ground at c.65m above sea level in the Towy valley, immediately upstream of the confluence of Afon Towy and Afon Brân and where the Afon Gwydderig meets the Brân (SN 7675 3427). Llandovery stands at the nexus of route-ways: the Towy valley provides a corridor to the west to Llandeilo, Carmarthen and beyond and the Brân valley gives access to mid-Wales. Roads into north Carmarthenshire follow the upper Towy valley and those to the east the Gwydderig valley.
HISTORY
In the early twelfth century during the Anglo-Norman conquest of southwest Wales Richard Fitz Pons established a castle at Llandovery on the north bank of the Afon Gwydderig, 1km to the southwest of the Roman fort at Llanfair-ar-y-Bryn and 0.4km to the east of the current parish church of Llandingat. It is likely that a settlement rapidly developed outside the castle as in 1185 burgesses are recorded and in 1201 reference is made to a town. Fitz Pons also founded a Benedictine priory cell, probably at Llanfair-ar-y-Bryn, but this was closed by Rhys ap Gruffudd in 1185 when the brethren, who had been interfering with the townsfolk, were expelled. Throughout the thirteenth century the castle was frequently attacked, regularly changing hands between the English and Welsh. Consequently the town had little opportunity to develop until a period of political stability in the late thirteenth century. In 1276 Edward I granted Llandovery to John Giffard. He strengthened the castle and invited English settlers into the town. Rapid expansion took place with the number of burgages increasing from 37 in 1299 to 81 in 1317. By the end of the fourteenth century money from rentals had greatly increased suggesting a growth in population; three annual fairs are recorded. However, although Llandovery was functioning as a borough no charter is recorded until Richard III granted one in 1485. There has never been a church within the borough and there is no documentary evidence to indicate that the town was ever provided with defences. In common with other places in southwest Wales the grant of a charter at a relatively late date seems to have been an attempt to breathe life into a town in severe decline; this had limited success as in 1535 John Leland described Llandovery as ‘but one street, and that poorely builded of thatchid houses’. 76 burgages were recorded in 1659, which is close to the maximum recorded in 1317, but only 61 resident burgesses were present in 1661, indicating areas in the town were devoid of buildings. In 1695, when the town had been divided into six wards, little development had occurred outside its medieval core as a survey records: 23 burgesses living in Broad Street, 14 in Queen Street, 11 in Castle Street, 13 in Lower Street and 15 in High Street. The burgesses in High Street were living towards its western end as later documents record fields at its eastern end. Although the town hall was rebuilt in 1752, having been first mentioned in 1592, there was little overall improvement in the town’s fortunes for when Benjamin Heath Malkin visited in 1804 he described it as ‘the worst in Wales. Its buildings are mean, irregular and unconnected; its streets filthy and disgusting’. However, the first few decades on the nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable upturn in the town’s fortunes as in 1833 Samuel Lewis reported Llandovery ‘consists principally of two streets meeting nearly at right angles’ and that ‘the houses at present are well built and of respectable appearance’. The numerous fine late Georgian and Victorian houses attest to the town’s increase in status in this period. The population increased significantly in the mid-nineteenth century; the tithe map of c.1840 shows newly established houses on both sides of Stone Street, Queen Street, Orchard Street and High Street as far as the Afon Brân. Further expansion had occurred when the Ordnance Survey published the First Edition 1:2500 map in 1880. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the town expanded in all directions apart from south where the Afon Brân provides a natural boundary.
MORPHOLOGY
Llandovery Castle consists of the remains of a masonry D-shaped tower, gatehouse and curtain wall sitting on a prominent, artificially scarped, natural rocky outcrop with a small inner ward or bailey attached to its east side. Outlying earth banks formerly lay to the southwest. There may originally have been a large outer bailey or enclosure on the level ground immediately to the north, known in the later medieval period as Castle Yard (now a car park); this is the most plausible location for the earliest settlement, which may have been protected by earthen defences. No surviving archaeological remains were found in the possible outer bailey in a 1991 evaluation.
Conjectural plan of Llandovery at its maximum extent in the medieval period, c.1320.
The earliest settlement probably developed organically outside the castle gates but the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century town was a planned settlement, centred around a triangular-shaped marketplace (its plan is still clearly visible on modern maps although infilling has obscured the original layout). Burgages would have been laid out on either side of Market Square and Broad Street. Certainly it would appear that the 81 burgages recorded in 1317 could easily be accommodated in Market Square, Broad Street, Castle Street and the close environs. Property boundaries, particularly those on the north side of Market Square and Broad Street still preserve burgage layouts. Llandingat church stood to the west, isolated from the town. Even by 1695 there had been only modest expansion to the east along the western ends of High Street and Queen Street, with some development east of the Afon Brân where Llandovery’s most famous son, Vicar Pritchard, had built a house.
An interesting feature of the town was the Nant Bawddwr, a stream that frequently featured in medieval and later documents, which an open sewer flowing through the centre of the marketplace and down Broad Street until it was culverted, probably in the early nineteenth century.
