The peaceful South Wales town of Hay-on-Wye offers few clues today of its brutal past on a violent frontier. A monument to this history can be found in Hay Castle. Once right on the border between England and Wales, it sits in a region densely packed with castles that saw border skirmishes and bitter warfare for centuries.
Known as the Welsh Marches, this borderland attracted tough people seeking their fortune at the expense of the Welsh people. There are few better examples of these folk than William and Matilda de Braose, the Lord and Lady of Hay. Their story is steeped in blood and myth before a dramatic and gory fall from favour.
Open to the public for the first time in its 900 year history, Matt Lewis visited Hay Castle to find out what it can reveal about life in England’s medieval Wild West.
Up Next in Digging up History
-
The Cutting Edge: Testing the Stone Age
History Hit visits Kent State University, Ohio to film a fascinating ‘cutting-edge’ experiment that takes us to the beginnings of the Stone Age, over 2.6 million years ago.
Kent State is home to one of the world’s leading experimental archaeology laboratories, scientifically exploring the distan...
-
Mary Anning: The Forgotten Fossil Hunter
Born in Lyme Regis in 1799, Mary Anning was a pioneering palaeontologist and fossil collector who's story continues to inspire so many scientists to this day. In this documentary Dr Anjana Khatwa, Dr Liz Hide, David Tucker and Anya Pearson explore Anning's life and legacy.
-
The Rollright Stones: Mind, Myre and ...
The Rollright Stones are some of Britain’s most remarkable and mysterious ancient monuments. They consist of three separate sites - a looming funerary monument built to contain dismembered corpses, a venerated stone circle, and a single monolith with an innominate purpose. Alice Loxton traces six...
15 Comments