County town: Caernarfon
Caernarvonshire was the heartland of the kingdom of Gwynedd and the centre of Welsh resistance to English conquest. It became a shire county in 1284 under the Statute of Rhuddlan following Edward I's conquest.
Caernarvonshire is a county of mountains and sea, encompassing Snowdonia — the highest mountains in England and Wales — and a dramatic coastline on the Menai Strait and Cardigan Bay. Caernarfon Castle, built by Edward I from 1283, is the grandest of his Welsh fortresses and the most complete medieval town wall circuit in Wales. The Welsh princes of Gwynedd — Llywelyn the Great, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd — were the most powerful rulers in medieval Wales, and the county was their heartland. Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), the highest peak in Wales at 1,085m, dominates the county's interior. The area remains the most Welsh-speaking part of Wales.
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 Caernarvonshire 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.
This page introduces the historic county of Caernarvonshire. A full Aubrey report for a location within it pulls together everything the record actually holds about that ground, from the geology beneath it to the last coin dropped in a field:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Read in-depth research reports on notable historical places across the UK — explore →
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Caernarvonshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.