On The Trail Of The Marcher Lords

The rural Marches, historic borderlands between England and Wales, still carry echoes of their frontier past in their romantic castles and medieval towns

- Neil Jones

When William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings in 1066 he lost no time in consolidating his victory in England. But the canny king left the tricky task of controlling the borderlands with Wales to his most loyal followers: rewarding them with land grants and allowing them to build castles that would create a buffer zone to protect England while extending Anglo-Norman influences into Wales.

Three of William’s closest confidants, William FitzOsbern, Roger de Montgomerie and Hugh d’Avranches (‘the Fat’) were made Earls of Hereford, Shrewsbury and Chester respectively, overseeing the southern, central and northern Welsh Marches as the area became known (from French ‘marche’, or Anglo- Saxon ‘mearc’ meaning ‘border’).

In between these strategic locations, smaller Marcher Lordships and hundreds of castles sprang up (the Marches contain Britain’s densest concentration of motte-and-bailey castles) until about half of Wales had been parcelled out. Not only that, as Magna Carta (1215) would make clear: ‘the law of the March’ was distinct from that in England or Wales, with individual Marcher Lords ruling more or less independently over their territories, raising their own armies and taxes and dishing out their own justice.

Through the centuries the borders of the Marches constantly shifted as native Welsh princes fought or made uneasy peace with the Anglo-Norman interlopers. England’s kings, too, grew wary of the over-powerful Marcher Lords. In the end Edward I’s ruthless 14th century conquests brought Wales to heel and by the Acts of Union of England and Wales (1536 and 1543) the Marcher Lordships were converted into new Welsh shires or added into England’s old border counties.