Vortigern Studies Index

Bedd Gwrtheyrn Cairn Lleyn, Gwynedd

Around 1781, Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) was travelling through North Wales writing his "Tours of Wales". He wrote about a cairn or a tumulus which was near the sea at the bottom of Nant Gwrtheyrn close to Nefyn on the Lleyn peninsula. At least until around the year 1700 a stone grave covered with earth existed there, which was called Bedd Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern's Grave) by the sparse local population.

There was a high and verdant mount, natural; but the top and sides worked by art...this might have been the residence of the unfortunate prince. .. Till the beginning of last century [i.e. 1600], a tumulus or stone within, and externally covered with turf, was to be seen here; it was known by the name of Bedd Gwrtheyrn: tradition having regularly delivered down that this was the place of his internment. (Tours in Wales, 1883, 380-1).

Pennant also said that the people of the Nant had opened the grave "and found a coffin containing the bones of a tall man".

San Marte mentioned in 1854 that it was discovered 'lately' (neuerlich), so maybe it had been opened twice, the first time before the 1770s and again before the 1850s. The name of this place on the early Ordnance Survey maps was 'Castel Gwrtheyrn' (Gwrtheyrn's Castle).

George Borrow, writing in 1862 (Wild Wales), described it as follows: "It was in a wind-beaten valley of Snowdon, near the sea, that his dead body decked in green armour had a mound of earth and stones raised over it". A later visitor, Owen Rhoscomyl in 1905, mentioned "a green mound under which his ashes are believed to be buried."

I have not been able to re-trace the exact location on modern maps, not even on those of the Ordnance Survey Landranger series. It might be lost, or remain as one of the unnamed cairns in the vicinity of the valley of Nant Gwrtheyrn. Most probably it can be found in the valley, maybe close to the hamlet of Porth y Nant, or else the hut circle on the northern slope.

Bibliography

• Bartrum, P.C. (1993): A Welsh Classical Dictionary, (Cardiff).*
• Borrow, George Henry (1862): Wild Wales: Its People, Language and Scenery, at: http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/english/wildwales/chap30.html.
• Geoffrey of Monmouth: Gottfried's von Monmouth Historia Regum Britanniae, mit literar-historischer Einleitung und ausführlichen Anmerkungen, und Brut Tysylio, altwälsche Chronik in deutscher Uebersetzung, A.S. San Marte, (Halle 1854).*
• Kirby, D.P.: Vortigern, in: The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies XXIII, 1970, pp. 37-59.*
• Pennant, Thomas (1781): A Tour in Wales, (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch 1998).

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