A new book has been published to mark Owain Glyndŵr Day on 16 September. 

‘Glyndŵr’s People – Life for the Tenants of Sycharth in 1400 by Paul Hughes’ (Y Lolfa) looks at the local context of Owain Glyndŵr’s uprising in 1400 against the English king. 

Glyndŵr claimed the title ‘Prince of Wales’ back from the English crown in the early fifteenth century and almost succeeded in creating an independent Welsh state. But great men don’t operate in a vacuum. Where did he come from? What was life like on Glyndŵr’s manor of Sycharth, and who were the ordinary folk that kept everything going there? Written with the focus entirely on the ordinary tenants of Glyndŵr’s manor Sycharth (Powys), Glyndŵr’s People offers, for the first time, an understanding of what life would have been like for the common folk living on Glyndŵr’s estate just before the revolt which shaped Wales. 

Author Paul said: “We have a clear picture of the causes and courses of the revolt [Owain Glyndŵr] led and of the man himself.

“In contrast, but in common with most humble folk of the time, we know virtually nothing about the ordinary people who lived in Sycharth, Llansilin or the wider Cynllaith Valley.

“They lived at a time before parish churches kept registers of births, marriages and deaths and the records of Owain’s manorial court have not survived.

“We have thus been left to recreate the settlement of Sycharth and its inhabitants using only the topography of the site, limited archaelogical evidence from a dig in the 1960s, a more recent archaeological survey of the site and anything we can glean from Iolo Goch’s famous poem, Llys Owain Glyndŵr.” 

A free event to launch the book will be held at Owain Glyndŵr Parliament in Machynlleth at 3pm on Saturday, 19 September.