Penyberth

Penyberth () was a farmhouse at Penrhos, on the Llŷn Peninsula near Pwllheli, Gwynedd, which had been the home to generations of patrons of poets, and also a way-station for pilgrims to Bardsey Island, but destroyed in 1936 in order to build a training camp and aerodrome for the RAF.

History

Background

In 1936, the government's Air Ministry announced its plans to establish RAF Penrhos, an airfield which would also function as an air observer, gunnery and bombing school at Penyberth on the Llŷn peninsula in Gwynedd. This led to widespread nationalist protests in Wales, known as Tân yn Llŷn (Fire in Llŷn), helped define Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (National Party of Wales).John Davies, A History of Wales, Penguin, 1994, , Page 593 The government settled on Llŷn as the site for the airfield after similar locations in Northumberland and Dorset were met with protests.Davies, op cit, page 592

However, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the case against the airfield in Penrhos, despite a deputation representing half a million Welsh protesters.Davies, op cit, page 592 The Welsh writer and nationalist Saunders Lewis summed up public opinion in Wales when he claimed that the government was intent upon turning one of the "essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom, and literature" into a place for promoting what Lewis viewed as a barbaric method of warfare.Davies, op cit, page 592

Fire and sentencing

On 8 September 1936, three Plaid Cymru members, Saunders Lewis, the poet and preacher Lewis Valentine and the novelist David John Williams, committed an arson attack against RAF Penrhos and then went to give themselves up at Pwllheli police station, in accordance with Gandhian principles. Legend has it that they then spent the evening discussing poetry with the duty sergeant.Davies, op cit, page 592 The trial at Caernarfon failed to agree on a verdict and the case was sent to the Old Bailey in London. The "Three" were sentenced to nine months imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs, and on their release they were greeted as heroes by a crowd of 15,000 people at a pavilion in Caernarfon.Davies, op cit, page 592

Public response Many Welsh people were angered by the judge's scornful treatment of the Welsh language, by the decision to move the trial to London, and by the decision of University College, Swansea, to dismiss Lewis from his post before he had been found guilty.Davies, op cit, page 593 Dafydd Glyn Jones wrote of the fire that it was "the first time in five centuries that Wales struck back at England with a measure of violence... To the Welsh people, who had long ceased to believe that they had it in them, it was a profound shock."Davies, op cit, page 593

Symbolism

This incident is known in the Welsh language as (The bombing school burning) or (Fire in Llŷn), and has attained iconic status in Welsh nationalist circles.

Current use Penyberth was the site of the Wakestock contemporary music festival from 2000 to 2014.

Penyberth

Bron en licentie