Penyberth () was a farmhouse at Penrhos, on the Llŷn Peninsula near Pwllheli, Gwynedd, which had been the home to generations of patrons of poets, and also a way-station for pilgrims to Bardsey Island, but destroyed in 1936 in order to build a training camp and aerodrome for the RAF.
History
Background
Welsh nationalism was ignited in 1936 when the UK government settled on establishing the
RAF Penrhos bombing school at Penyberth on the Llŷn peninsula in
Gwynedd. The events surrounding the protest, known as
Tân yn Llŷn (
Fire in Llŷn), helped define
Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (National Party of Wales).
[John Davies, A History of Wales, Penguin, 1994, , Page 593] The UK government settled on Llŷn as the site for its new bombing school after similar locations in
Northumberland and
Dorset were met with protests.
[Davies, op cit, page 592]
However, UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the case against the bombing school in Wales, despite a deputation representing half a million Welsh protesters.[Davies, op cit, page 592] Protest against the bombing school was summed up by Saunders Lewis when he wrote that the UK government was intent upon turning one of the 'essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom, and literature' into a place for promoting a barbaric method of warfare.[Davies, op cit, page 592] Construction of the bombing school building began exactly 400 years after the first part of the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 which brought Wales into the same legal jurisdiction and administrative state as the rest of the Kingdom of England.[Davies, op cit, page 592]
Fire and sentencing
On 8 September 1936, three Plaid Cymru members, dramatist and lecturer Saunders Lewis, poet and preacher
Lewis Valentine and novelist DJ Williams, set fire to the bombing school and then went to give themselves up at Pwllheli police station, in accordance with
Gandhian principles. Legend has it that they then spent the evening discussing poetry with the duty sergeant.
[Davies, op cit, page 592] The trial at
Caernarfon failed to agree on a verdict and the case was sent to the
Old Bailey in London. The "Three" were sentenced to nine months imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs, and on their release they were greeted as heroes by fifteen thousand Welsh at a pavilion in
Caernarfon.
[Davies, op cit, page 592]
Public response
Many Welsh people were angered by the judge's scornful treatment of the Welsh language, by the decision to move the trial to London, and by the decision of University College, Swansea, to dismiss Lewis from his post before he had been found guilty.
[Davies, op cit, page 593] Dafydd Glyn Jones wrote of the fire that it was "the first time in five centuries that Wales struck back at England with a measure of violence... To the Welsh people, who had long ceased to believe that they had it in them, it was a profound shock."
[Davies, op cit, page 593]
Symbolism
This incident is known in the Welsh language as Llosgi'r ysgol fomio (The bombing school burning) or Tân yn Llŷn (Fire in Llŷn), and has attained iconic status in Welsh nationalist circles.
Current use
Penyberth was the site of the Wakestock contemporary music festival from 2000 to 2014.
See also
-
Jenkins, Dafydd (1998), A nation on trial: Penyberth, 1936. Translated by Ann Corkett. Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press. .
External links
