County town: Beaumaris
Anglesey was historically the heartland of the kingdom of Gwynedd, described by the Romans as the granary of Wales. Edward I built Beaumaris Castle, one of his great concentric fortresses, to control the island after his conquest of Wales in 1282–3.
Anglesey is an island off the north-west coast of Wales, separated from the mainland by the Menai Strait, and was known in Welsh tradition as 'Môn mam Cymru' — Anglesey, mother of Wales — for the fertility of its farmland that fed the mountains beyond. The Druids made their last stand against the Roman legions here in 60 AD, and the island's prehistoric remains — burial chambers, standing stones, hillforts — are exceptional. Beaumaris Castle, the last and most technically perfect of Edward I's Welsh castles, stands on the shore. The Menai Suspension Bridge (1826) and Britannia Bridge connect it to the mainland.
The historic counties of Wales were created under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–42, overlying a much older landscape of Welsh kingdoms — Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth, and Morgannwg — that had shaped settlement, culture, and lordship for centuries. The county of Anglesey incorporates territory from these earlier political divisions, and its boundaries preserve traces of the medieval Welsh landscape.
Wales's 13 historic counties were created under the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–42, which brought Wales into the English legal and administrative system. Based partly on medieval Welsh kingdoms and Norman lordships, they were the framework of Welsh administration until 1974.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Anglesey draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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