Google Earth Community: The Landsker Line or "Little England beyond Wales"

The Landsker Line or "Little England beyond Wales"

"" (they) keep their language among themselves without receiving the Welsh speech or learning any part thereof, and hold themselves so close to the same that to this day they wonder at a Welshman coming among them, the one neighbour saying to the other 'Look there goeth a Welshman'.
"" George Owen of Henllys - 1603

Landsker Line in 1901

The Landsker Line ( or Little England beyond Wales ) is a term commonly used for the boundary between the Welsh-speaking and English-speaking areas in southwest Wales and applied to an area of southern Pembrokeshire and southwestern Carmarthenshire. Although distant from the English border, it has been English in language and culture since the 12 century.

The word Landsker comes from the Norse word for 'divide'. The Landsker Line today runs broadly from from St Bride's Bay in the east to Carmarthen Bay in the west. However this has moved both north and south over time.

The frontier was not solely linguistic, there were also differences in customs (notably of inheritance), place names and architecture.

When historians began to get interested in the strange linguistic divide in the early part of the 1900s, they started to use the term "landsker." Since then, it has stuck, and remains in common use. Local people may or may not know what the word means, but they certainly recognize that the language divide stretching from St Bride's Bay to Carmarthen Bay exists.

"" yet do these two nations keep each from dealings with the other, as mere strangers, so that the meaner sort of people will not, or do not usually, join together in marriage, although they be in one hundred ( and sometimes in the same parish, nor commerce nor buy but in open fairs, so that you shall find in one parish a pathway parting the Welsh and English, and the one side speak all English, the other all Welsh, and differing in tilling and in measuring of their land, and divers other matters."
"" George Owen of Henllys 1603

Landsker Line and the language boundary at various dates

The area was first settled by Norsemen following the Great Sea Road down the west coast of Britain, these were followed by the Normans in the early 12th century. The Flemish then arrived at the invitation of the Normans after their homelands were inundated by sea water in the mid 12th century. The Flemish population effectively came to create a loyal plantation for the Normans.

The 12th centuries saw both Norman invaders and Welsh defenders built more than fifty castles during a complex period of conflict, effectively to consolidate the line. The southernmost was Laugharne; others included Wiston, Camrose, Narberth, and Roch. These are often referred to as "frontier castles" but they were in fact set back a considerable distance from the frontier itself. In the heart of the Normanised colony, the two great fortresses were at Pembroke and Haverfordwest. There were other fortresses within the colony as well, including Manorbier, Carew and Tenby.

Norman castles and boroughs in southwest Wales

Little England today

As mentioned by Owen, the cultural differences between Little England and the Welshry extend beyond language. Manorial villages are more common in Little England, particularly on the banks of the Daugleddau estuary, while the north has characteristically Welsh scattered settlements. Forms of agriculture are also distinct [9], although this mainly accords with land fertility rather than culture. Parish churches often have a characteristic tall, narrow castellated tower, in contrast with usual tower-less Welsh design. In domestic architecture, the "Flemish chimney" - a detached cylindrical structure - is characteristic of Little England, although it is also occasionally found in North Pembrokeshire. The name is typical of the semi-mythical nature of the "Flemish" influences: no such structures are to be found in Flanders, but they are to be found in southwest England, and this is the probable origin of both the chimneys and their builders. None of these distinctions is anything like as clear-cut as the difference of language. The language of Little England is a dialect most closely related to the English of Somerset and Devon.

Dynamic Ordnance Survey Overlay (r/c to Refresh )

Further Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsker_Line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_England_beyond_Wales

Edited by danescombe (09/25/08 12:27 PM)