Early Welsh Geographical Learning

Keynote speaker: Dr Euryn Roberts (Lecturer in Medieval and Welsh History)

Before there were graphic representations of Wales in the form of maps, there were topographical lists and descriptive treatise which sought to makes sense of the country’s regions and boundaries. These short texts, written in Middle Welsh, Latin and English, and mainly on the form of cantref-lists, were compiled from at least the early thirteenth-century onwards, and survive in over 30 manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Despite their importance as evidence for geographical learning in medieval Wales, to date no extensive study of their form, their textual relationships or function has been published. This paper sets out to remedy this neglect.