Parc le Breos

This article is about the medieval deer park on the Gower peninsula. For the early Neolithic cromlech, see Parc Cwm long cairn.

Cairn in the distance in sunshine, with trees in leaf to its left, right and rear. To its front lies flat ground of short grass. An asphalt path leads from the left past the cromlech. The shaded foreground has a kissing gate, a wooden fence and a Forestry Commission welcome sign in Welsh (first) and English.
Parc le Breos Cwm
from the entrance of Coed y Parc

Parc le Breos was a great medieval deer park in the south of the Gower Peninsula, about eight miles (13 km) west of Swansea, Wales, and about 1+1⁄4 miles (2.0 km) north of the Bristol Channel. The park was an enclosed, oval area of 6.7 miles (10.8 km) in circumference, covering about 2,000 acres (810 ha) and measuring 2+1⁄2 miles (east–west) by just over 1+3⁄4 miles (4.1 km by 2.9 km). Parc le Breos was established in the 1220s CE by John de Braose (of the powerful Cambro-Norman de Braose dynasty), Marcher Lord of Gower and husband to Margaret Ferch Llywelyn, Llywelyn Fawr's daughter.[1] Other than for deer husbandry, the park received an income from agistment, pannage, and from sales of wild honey, ferns and dead wood. There is evidence of rabbit warrens in the park. Whether the warrens were free or domestic is unknown.[2]

The park's boundary was originally marked by a wooden fence, or pale, on the top of an earth bank inside a ditch. Some parts of the pale survive.[3]

Prehistoric finds and an Iron Age enclosure (above Parkmill) show the area of Parc le Breos to have been settled by modern humans since the earliest times.

  1. ^ Davies, John; Jenkins, Nigel; Baines, Menna; Lynch, Peredur, eds. (2008). The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. p. 577. ISBN 978-0-7083-1953-6.
  2. ^ "Parc le Breos, medieval deer-park (300001)". Coflein. RCAHMW. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  3. ^ "Gower065 Lunnon". Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust website. Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust. 2008. Retrieved 2 December 2008.