Reproduced from Elizabeth Chadwick's blog 'Living The History' by kind permission of the author.

"While preparing a couple of other blog posts, I thought I'd break off to mention Garth Celyn . 'Who'? or 'What'? you might justifiably ask. Like me, you may have come across it in Sharon Kay Penman's novels Here Be Dragons and The Reckoning, or Edith Pargeter's Brothers of Gwynedd novels, but it probably won't have registered beyond the moment of reading."

"Even for me, when it cropped up again via a couple of Facebook acquaintances, I am ashamed to say that at first it passed me by. At one point I was even under the mistaken impression that it was a person! My excuse for this is my very busy schedule and I hang my head and apologise. Belatedly I came to realise that Garth Celyn is perhaps the most important historical sites in Wales and the place where Llewelyn Fawr (Llewelyn the Great) built his royal palace, overlooking the Menai Strait. That palace still stands today and is in the custody of the Gibson family who bought it all unknowing as a chicken farm in 1988."

"Here are some urls to some excellent articles about Garth Celyn and it would be mad for me to spend a couple of hours typing out the contents when readers can go to them with a single click, so here are some web pages that you might find very interesting. I know I did once I'd been shaken awake! The other matter to note is that Garth Celyn could so easily have been lost to developers in the 1990's and now there is a campaign to preserve this unique and wonderful site for posterity. Please do join if you feel it's appropriate."