Pushing the boundaries of early medieval Wales: An edition of the earliest Welsh charters

This project will produce the first comprehensive edition and analysis of the principal corpus of primary documentary evidence for the history of Wales during the early medieval period (c. 600–1100). Approximately 180 documents survive from Wales in this period, deriving from four ecclesiastical archives located in different parts of Wales: Llandeilo Fawr in Carmarthenshire, Llancarfan and Llandaf in the south-east, and Clynnog Fawr in Gwynedd. They preserve precious evidence for early political and social organisation in Wales, a place not otherwise well represented in primary sources, and collectively form the single most substantial source for the earliest stage of the Welsh language, known as ‘Old Welsh’. Although the bare texts of these documents have been published before, chiefly in nineteenth-century editions, they all still lack reliable and scholarly modern editions that could form a secure basis for using them. One aim of this project is thus to create the first comprehensive academic edition of the early Welsh charters dating to the period 600–1100. This would provide a valuable and enduring resource for scholars interested in a variety of topics, including the history of Wales, the development of the Welsh language, Welsh place-names and topography, and the development of documentary culture in medieval Britain. A remarkable feature of these documents, which distinguishes them from most similar documents across Europe outside England, is that they contain approximately 118 detailed descriptions of the boundaries pertaining to the estates that are granted in them. Most of these are written in Old Welsh. Altogether, this forms the earliest detailed written record of the Welsh landscape in relation to its usage and its residents. It can be highly challenging to relate these boundary descriptions to the modern map: place-names can change, some regions of Wales have subsequently been Anglicised, and even the physical morphology of the landscape has shifted over time. Nonetheless, it is possible to make substantial progress in our understanding of these records through a focused programme of research. Hitherto, most early boundary descriptions have been compared only with published sources, such as nineteenth-century OS maps. By contrast, little use has been made of estate and enclosure maps from earlier periods, despite the fact that these maps preserve a greater proportion of the early local toponomy than the later published sources. It is the intention of this project to make a systematic comparison of the early boundary descriptions with surviving estate and enclosure maps, alongside other estate records such as the sixteenth-century records of the Court of Augmentations, since this will substantially enhance our understanding of the boundary descriptions and generate new knowledge about the historical development of the landscape over time. The facilitation of access to this record would be of wide interest and benefit others such as archaeologists, the heritage sector, and local Welsh communities. A second key output of this project will therefore be a freely accessible online historical atlas, where the new research into these boundary descriptions can be approached by means of a layered 3D digital map.