Anglesey ( ), or (), is an island off the north-west coast of Wales. It forms the majority of the county of the Isle of Anglesey, which also includes Holy Island to the west and some islets and skerries. The county borders Gwynedd across the Menai Strait to the south-east and is otherwise surrounded by the Irish Sea. Holyhead is the largest town, and the administrative centre is Llangefni.
The county has an area of and had a population of in . Holyhead is on the north coast of Holy Island. Llangefni is in the centre of Anglesey; other settlements include Amlwch on the north coast and Beaumaris, Menai Bridge and Llanfairpwllgwyngyll on the Menai Strait. The economy of the county is mostly based on agriculture, energy, and tourism, the latter especially on the coast. Holyhead is also a major ferry port for Dublin, Ireland. The county has the second-highest percentage of Welsh speakers in Wales, at 57.2%, and is considered a heartland of the language. The county is part of the preserved county of Gwynedd.
The island of Anglesey, at , is the largest in Wales and the Irish Sea and the seventh largest in Britain. The northern and eastern coasts of the island are rugged, and the southern and western coasts are generally gentler; the interior is gently undulating. In the north of the island is Llyn Alaw, a reservoir with an area of , which supplies drinking water to the northern half of the island. Holy Island has a similar landscape, with a rugged north and west coast and beaches to the east and south. The two larger islands are surrounded by smaller islands; several, including South Stack and Puffin Island, are home to seabird colonies. Large parts of the county's coastline have been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Since 2015 the whole county has been designated as a UNESCO Global Geopark for its unique and wide-ranging geology.
The county has many prehistoric monuments, such as Bryn Celli Ddu burial chamber. The medieval House of Aberffraw, which ruled the Kingdom of Gwynedd until 1283, originated on Anglesey and maintained courts on the island at Aberffraw and Rhosyr. After the Conquest of Wales by Edward I, Beaumaris Castle was constructed at the south-eastern corner of Anglesey; today it is part of the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd World Heritage Site. During the nineteenth century the Menai Strait to the mainland was spanned by two bridges: the Menai Suspension Bridge, designed by Thomas Telford in 1826, and the Britannia Bridge, originally designed by Robert Stephenson in 1850.
Toponymy
The English name for Anglesey might be derived from the Old Norse, either "Hook Island" or "Ǫngli's Island". No record of such an Ǫngli survives, but the place name was used by Viking raiders as early as the 10th century and later adopted by the Normans during their invasions of Gwynedd. The traditional folk etymology reading the name as the "Island of the Angles (English)" may account for its Norman use but has no merit; the Angles' name itself is probably cognate with the shape of the Angeln peninsula. All of them ultimately derive from the proposed Proto-Indo-European root *ank- ("to flex, bend, angle"). Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and into the 20th, it was usually spelt Anglesea in documents, a spelling that is still occasionally used today.
Ynys Môn, the island and county's Welsh name, first appeared in the Latin of various Roman sources. and Agricola, XIV.14 & 18. It was likewise known to the Saxons as Monez. The Brittonic original was in the past taken to have meant "Island of the Cow".
The name is probably cognate with the Gaelic name of the Isle of Man, Koch, John T. (2006). Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 676 & 679. ISBN 978-1-85109-440-0 ( in Welsh), usually derived from a Celtic word for 'mountain' (reflected in Welsh , Breton and Scottish Gaelic ),Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch: Record number 1277 (Root / lemma: men-1) from a Proto-Celtic *moniyos.
Poetic names for the island of Anglesey include the Old Welsh Ynys Dywyll (Shady or Dark Isle) for its former groves and Ynys y Cedairn (Isle of the Brave) for its royal courts; Gerald of Wales' Môn Mam Cymru ("Môn, Mother of Wales") for its agricultural productivity; and Y fêl Ynys (Honey Isle).
History Prehistory The history of the settlement of the local people of Anglesey starts in the Mesolithic period. Anglesey and Great Britain were uninhabitable until after the previous ice age. It was not until 12,000 years ago that the island of Great Britain became hospitable. The oldest excavated sites on Anglesey include Trwyn Du () at Aberffraw. The Mesolithic site located at Aberffraw Bay (Porth Terfyn) was buried underneath a Bronze Age 'kerb cairn' which was constructed . The bowl barrow (kerb cairn) covered a material deposited from the early Mesolithic period; the archeological find dates to 7000 BC. After millennia of hunter-gather civilisation in the British Isles, the first villages were constructed from 4000 BC. Neolithic settlements were built in the form of long houses, and one of the first villages in Wales was built at Llanfaethlu on Anglesey. Another example of a permanent settlement on Anglesey is the Bronze Age burial mound, Bryn Celli Ddu (). The mound started as a henge enclosure around 3000 BC and was adapted several times over a millennium.
There are numerous megalithic monuments and menhirs in the county, testifying to the presence of humans in prehistory. Plas Newydd is near one of 28 cromlechs that remain on uplands overlooking the sea. The Welsh Triads claim that the island of Anglesey was once part of the mainland.
Bronze Age to Roman times
After the Neolithic age, the Bronze Age began ( – 800 BC). Some sites were continually used for thousands of years from original henge enclosures, then during the Iron Age, and also some of these sites were later adapted by Celts into hillforts and finally were in use during the Roman period (c. 100 AD) as roundhouses. Castell Bryn Gwyn (, also called Bryn Beddau, or the "hill of graves") near Llanidan, Anglesey is an example of a Neolithic site that became a hillfort that was used until the Roman period by the Ordovices, the local tribe who were defeated in battle by a Roman legion (c. 78 AD). Bronze Age monuments were also built throughout the British Isles. During this period, the Mynydd Bach cairn in South-west Anglesey was being used. It is a Beaker period prehistoric funerary monument.
During the Iron Age the Celts built dwellings huts, also known as roundhouses. These were established near the previous settlements. Some huts with walled enclosures were discovered on the banks of the river () Gwna near. An example of a well-preserved hut circle is over the Cymyran Strait on Holy Island. The Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles (, Big house / "Irishmen's Huts") were inhabited by ancient Celts and were first occupied before the Iron Age, . The Anglesey Iron Age began after 500 BC. Archeological research discovered limpet shells which were found from 200 BC on a wall at Tŷ Mawr and Roman-era pottery from the 3rd to 4th centuries AD. Some of these huts were still being used for agricultural purposes as late as the 6th century. The first excavation of Ty Mawr was conducted by William Owen Stanley of Penrhos, Anglesey (son of Baron Stanley of Alderley).
Modern Anglesey Roman occupation Historically, Anglesey has long been associated with the druids. The Roman conquest of Anglesey began in 60 AD when the Roman general Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, determined to break the power of the druids, attacked the island using his amphibious Batavian contingent as a surprise vanguard assaultTacitus Agricola 18.3–5. and then destroyed the shrine and the nemeta (sacred groves). News of Boudica's revolt reached him just after his victory, causing him to withdraw his army before consolidating his conquest. The island was finally brought into the Roman Empire by Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain, in 78 AD. During the Roman occupation, the area was notable for the mining of copper. The foundations of Caer Gybi, a fort in Holyhead, are Roman, and the present road from Holyhead to Llanfairpwllgwyngyll was originally a Roman road. The island was grouped by Ptolemy with Ireland ("Hibernia") rather than with Britain ("Albion").
Kingdom of Gwynedd and House of Aberffraw
After the Roman departure from Britain in the early 5th century, pirates from Ireland colonised Anglesey and the nearby Llŷn Peninsula. In response to this, Cunedda ap Edern, a Gododdin warlord from Scotland, came to the area and began to drive the Irish out. This was continued by his son Einion Yrth ap Cunedda and grandson Cadwallon Lawhir ap Einion; the last Irish invaders were finally defeated in battle in 470.
During the 9th century, King Rhodri Mawr unified Wales and separated the country into at least 3 provinces between his sons. He gave Gwynedd to his son, Anarawd ap Rhodri, who founded the medieval Welsh dynasty, The House of Aberffraw on Anglesey. The island had a good defensive position, and so Aberffraw became the site of the royal court () of the Kingdom of Gwynedd. Apart from devastating Danish raids in 853 and 968 in Aberffraw, it remained the capital until the 13th century, after Rhodri Mawr had moved his family seat from Caernarfon and built a royal palace at Aberffraw in 873. This is when improvements to the English navy made the location indefensible. Anglesey was also briefly the most southerly possession of the Norwegian Empire.
After the Irish, the island was invaded by Vikings—some raids were noted in famous sagas (see Menai Strait History) such as the Jómsvíkinga—and by Saxons, and Normans, before falling to Edward I of England in the 13th century. The connection with the Vikings can be seen in the name of the island. In ancient times it was called "Maenige" and received the name "Ongulsey" or Angelsoen, from where the current name originates.
Anglesey (with Holy Island) is one of the 13 historic counties of Wales. In medieval times, before the conquest of Wales in 1283, Môn often had periods of temporary independence, when frequently bequeathed to the heirs of kings as a sub-kingdom of Gwynedd, an example of this was Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn I, the Great c. 1200s) who was styled the Prince of Aberffraw. After the Norman invasion of Wales was one of the last times this occurred a few years after 1171, after the death of Owain Gwynedd, when the island was inherited by Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd, and between 1246 and about 1255 when it was granted to Owain Goch as his share of the kingdom. After the conquest of Wales by Edward I, Anglesey became a county under the terms of the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284. Hitherto it had been divided into the cantrefi of Aberffraw, Rhosyr and Cemaes.
During 1294 as a rebellion of the former house of Aberffraw, Prince Madog ap Llywelyn had attacked King Edward I's castles in North Wales. As a direct response, Beaumaris Castle was constructed to control Edward's interests in Anglesey, but by the 1320s the build was abandoned and never complete. The castle was besieged by Owain Glyndŵr in the early 15th century. It was ruinous by 1609; however, the 6th Viscount Bulkeley purchased the castle from the Crown in 1807 and it has been open to the public under the guardianship of the Crown ever since 1925.
17th to 20th centuries