Town in Gwynedd, Wales
Caernarfon
A castle built to crush Wales became the stage for two Prince of Wales investitures, and the town below it speaks one of Wales's most distinctive dialects.
Key information
- County
- Gwynedd
- Nation
- Wales
- Known for
- Caernarfon Castle, the 1911 and 1969 investitures of the Prince of Wales, the Menai Strait waterfront
- What locals are called
- Cofis (the local Welsh dialect is Cofi)
- Famous people
- David Lloyd George, Edward II, Sir Hugh Owen
- Football clubs
- Caernarfon Town (the Canaries), who play at The Oval
About Caernarfon
A castle designed to look like an empire
Caernarfon Castle is one of the most theatrical buildings in Britain, and that was the point. Edward I began it in 1283, after his conquest of Gwynedd, and his master mason James of St George gave it polygonal towers and bands of different coloured stone. The look is often said to echo the great walls of Constantinople, a deliberate nod to imperial power. The Eagle Tower, the grandest of the towers, is topped with carved eagles. The castle and the town walls were built together as one scheme. The walls still wrap around the old town, so Caernarfon is a rare place where the fortified streets survive alongside the fortress that created them. The work dragged on for decades and the castle was never quite finished. It is still a formidable sight.
The Prince of Wales, twice invested in a conquered castle
Tradition says Edward II was born at Caernarfon in 1284 and later became the first English Prince of Wales. Whatever the truth of the story, the castle's link with the title stuck. In 1911 David Lloyd George, then Constable of the Castle, staged the investiture of the future Edward VIII here. It was a piece of pageantry that gave the castle a new, much more Welsh-friendly image. In 1969 it happened again, with Charles. He had spent a term studying Welsh at Aberystwyth beforehand. The ceremony was designed by Lord Snowdon, who was Constable of the Castle for decades. For many Welsh people the ceremonies remain a mixed memory, which is part of why the castle is such a talking point.
Why a Roman fort sits on the hill above
Long before Edward, the Romans were here. Segontium, a fort on the edge of today's town, was founded in the first century AD to control the north-western edge of their territory. It was occupied for around three centuries. It also lives on in Welsh legend. In the medieval tale Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig, in the Mabinogion, the Roman emperor Macsen dreams of a beautiful woman, Elen, and travels the world to find her. He finds her at Segontium. The Welsh name Caernarfon, meaning roughly the fort in Arfon, preserves the older sense of a stronghold facing across the Menai Strait to Anglesey.
The Cofis and the sound of the Maes
Locals are called Cofis, and the Welsh they speak has its own flavour, quite distinct from the Welsh of other parts of Wales. Caernarfon is one of the most Welsh-speaking towns of its size in Wales, and you hear the language in shops, pubs and on the street. The heart of the town is the Maes, the open square beside the castle walls. Statues here include the educationalist Sir Hugh Owen and Lloyd George, a reminder that this was a place of politics as much as soldiers. Lloyd George was MP for Caernarfon Boroughs for 55 years, from 1890 to 1945, and went on to become Prime Minister during the First World War. He was born in Manchester, but he grew up nearby in Llanystumdwy and is firmly claimed as a local hero.
Slate, steam and the waterfront
Caernarfon's harbour once shipped slate from the quarries of Snowdonia to roofs around the world. The old slate quay and Victoria Dock still shape the waterfront, and the Welsh Highland Railway's steam trains now run from the town towards the mountains. The Menai Strait provides the town's food heritage too: mussels from its waters are a local favourite, alongside Welsh lamb from the hills behind. Out on the coast, the beach at Dinas Dinlle has an Iron Age hillfort above it and an aviation museum beside it. On match days, the focus is The Oval, home of Caernarfon Town, nicknamed the Canaries for their yellow and green colours.