THE KEYS TO AVALON The True Location Of Arthur's Kingdom Revealed By Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd Published By ELEMENT BOOKS

In the Brut we are told that Caer Loyw was founded by a Roman emperor called Gloyw (the Welsh name for Claudius) in honour of Gweirydd, a British king better known under his Latin name Arviragus. - Arviragus also appears in the satires of juvenal, the contemporary Roman author, where he is described as 'king of the Britons',' while the 16th-century poet Robert Chester refers to him as the 'King of Venedotia' (North Wales ) The fact that Arviragus's son Marius is traditionally held to have built the walls of Chester led us to consider the possibility that this important Roman city was the original site of Caer Loyw, even though it was on the River Dee in North Wales. The traditional view locates Caer Loyw at the cathedral city of Gloucester on the river Severn, despite the fact that Nennius describes the original foundation of that city in his Historia Brittonum as the work of 'Glovi, who built a great city on the bank of the river Sabrina, which is called in the British tongue Cair Glovi, but in Saxon Gloecester . Glovi was the great-grandfather of Vortigern and lived 300 years later than the Roman Emperor Claudius (Welsh 'Glow'),who as we have just seen was the founder of Caer Loyw according to the Brut. Gloucester, or Caer Glovi, with the independent story of its foundation, was therefore not Caer Loyw.

We found further evidence to identify Chester as the location of the original Caer Loyw in the Brut, which states that the Roman legions wintered in Caer Loyw and went to conquer lwerddon (Ireland). Many of the later chronicles regarding the history of Britain mention the fact that the Emperor Claudius, having succeeded where Julius Caeser had failed and conquered the Britons, wintered with his troops in Chester. The mounting evidence from the texts, combined with archaeological evidence for the early Roman origins of Chester, with its magnificent circuit of city walls, amphitheatre and other extensive remains, led us to conclude that Chester was indeed the site of Caer Loyw. As Chester is on the River Dee, this led us to ask ourselves whether the Dee had ever been known as the 'Hafren'. In a version of the Brut written by Gutyn Owain (c.1470) we found a reference to the Battle of Bangor, which had been fought on the River Dee in 601: 'And after they had been fighting thus for a long time, Brochwel had to retreat through the River Afren, because of the number of Saxons.'
The above evidence led us to the conclusion that, contrary to the traditional view, the River -Hafren referred to in the Brut is the River Dee, not the River Severn as stated in Geoffrey's translation 0f 1136.

Although we had earlier established that the town of Caer Loyw was indeed Chester, we still needed to identify the principal city and seat of one of the three archbishoprics that was associated with the River Hafren. In the Brut this city is named as Caerlleon ar Wysg, but in Geoffrey's Historia we find it called Urbs Legionum (City of the Legions), with the additional information 'situated as it is in Glamorganshire on the river Usk, not far from the Severn Sea'. This addition is not in the Welsh Brut, for Caerlleon simply means 'City of the Legions, a name that also applied to Chester. The Historia's identification of Caerlleon with the site of the Roman town of Isca on the River Usk - the modern town of Caerlleon on the Usk - is a prime example of how the geography of Ynys Prydein / Britannia has been corrupted through its translation into Latin. As far as we know, there is no record of there ever having been an archbishopric at Caerleon. However, Chester was made the centre of a palatine earldom in 1071 and has been the seat of a bishopric ever since. Was Chester in fact the archbishopric of Caerlleon ar Wysg? We needed to be absolutely certain that we were correct in this identification, for throughout the Brut, The Mabinogion and the romances Caerlleon is referred to as the major court of Arthur.

We turned back to the texts again and in a Welsh tract known as The Twenty -Four Mightiest Kings (c.1475), which describes the cities founded by noble kings of the past, we found accounts of the foundation of both Caerlleon and Caerlleon ar Wysg:
He [Lleon Gawr] founded a city on the bank of the river Dee and called it Caerlleon from his own name. And so it is still called in Welsh and in English Chester.

Bell founded a great city on the bank of the river Wysg, where Lleon Gawr had his castle. And that fortress was known as Caerlleon ar Wysg.

Lleon Gawr founded Chester on the River Dee and Beli had founded Caerlleon ar Wysg on the same site, which suggested to us that Caerlleon ar Wysg was on the River Dee. We found confirmation of this in two different descriptions of the same event in Welsh and Saxon texts. Under the entry for the year 973, the Welsh Brut Y Tywysogjon (Chronicle of the Princes) reads: 'And then Edward king of the Saxons gathered a huge fleet to Kaerllion ar wysc.' In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the entry for the same event is given under the year 972 as: 'The king [Edward] led his whole raiding ship army to Chester.'
Caerlleon ar Wysg was indeed Chester, so what did Wysg actually mean if it was not a Welsh name for the River Usk? We found the answer in a book called Drych Y Prif Oesoedd (Mirror of the Chief Ages) written by Theophilus Evans in 1710: 'Everyone knows that the Wysc is the name of a big river in Wales; and that the Con-wy, Tywi and Wy[e] are just separate names for the same meaning ... Nobody knows the meaning of the word but the Gwyddel of Ireland only have one other word for Dwfr (waters) which is visc

What Evans is saying is that wysc means the same as dwfr (the Welsh word for 'waters') and uses visc (the Irish word for 'waters') to prove the point. This was very important as it meant that 'Caerlleon ar Wysg' could also mean 'Caerlleon ar Dwfr' (Caerlleon on the waters) and the Welsh name for the River Dee on which Caerlleon is situated is Dyfrdwy, meaning 'the Waters of the Goddess'. We therefore felt certain that Caerlleon ar Wysg had absolutely nothing to do with the Caerleon on the Usk in South Wales. Our identification of Caerlleon ar Wysg with Chester also made sense of the lands of Cymru said to be under the jurisdiction of this archbishopric in the Brut. As we have already seen, the region of Cymru corresponds with Gwynedd, and Chester was indeed the major city in the Kingdom of Gwynedd.
In conclusion, the River Hafren and town of Caerlleon referred to in Geoffrey's source, the Welsh Brut, are not the River Severn and Caerleon on Usk as the traditional view would have us believe . They are the River Dee and the City of Chester.

The River Dee has been regarded as a sacred river since the earliest times, with many myths and legends of the Britons set along her course, but the first recorded mention of the Dee dates from the ancient geographer Ptolemy (c. 150) and she has since been recorded in every historical period. In the Antonine itinerary (c.200) she is referred to as the Deva, the feminine of the Celtic word Devos, which denotes a goddess, a holy or divine being, or a sacred river.' In Roman times the river's name was attached to the city of Chester that stood on her banks, and so within the Roman records Chester became Deva, or the City of the Goddess. It was perhaps for this reason that from a very early period the lands about the River Dee were given the regional name Deifyr (from the Welsh for Deva) or Deira, a province of the Welsh 'Northumbria'.

As explained earlier, in modem Welsh the sacred River Dee is known as Dyfrdwy (Waters of the Goddess), while an older form of her name is recorded as Aerfen, meaning 'battle goddess' or 'goddess of war', from aer (battle) and fen or men (fate). According to one ancient tradition Aerfen was said to need three human sacrifices each year in order to ensure success in battle, and a tradition relating to the warlike aspect of the goddess of the River Dee was recorded as late as c.1188 by Giraldus Cambrensis in his journey through Wales. Giraldus informs us that ' the local inhabitants maintain that the Dee moves its fords every month and that, as it inclines more towards England or Wales in this change of channel, so they can prognosticate which nation will beat the other or be unsuccessful in war in any particular year.' It is possible that Aerfen may be the original name of the river and that Deva/Dee is a euphemism resulting from the original name of the Goddess being too sacred to be profaned by common use, in much the same way as 'the son of the Mother' could be used in place of the deity's proper name in an everyday, non-sacred context. There is still a remnant of this practice within modem Christianity in that Jesus and Mary are often referred to as 'Our Lord' and 'Our Lady .

Place-Names and Street - Names at Chester By John McNeal Dodgson 1968

IT is not the purpose of this paper to recite all the history of the names of the streets of Chester as recorded in the last 700 years or more. The detailed material for an historical gazetteer will be more concisely presented in my forthcoming The Place-Names of Chester.' Furthermore, much of the available information is already displayed adequately in the articles by W. E. Brown and G. W. Haswell, and by the countless notes and queries from various contributor scattered about in The Cheshire Sheaf; and by the admirable map by Mary E Finch and F. H. Thompson, No. 51 in The Historical Atlas of Cheshire (Chester 1958) ..............

Although this approach depends upon the safe assumption that the history of the city and its parts is already known to this Society, certain background commonplaces need to he stated at the outset for the sake of convenient reference. We are, at Chester, dealing with a Roman legionary fortress which grew into a medieval city. Archaeology and the town street-plan together exhibit the shape of the Roman town, the rectangle enclosed by the north and east city-wall, by Pepper Street, White Friars, Weaver Street, Linenhall Street and St. Martin's Fields.

The name of Chester is a figurative model of the change. It appears first as Deva. called by the Romans after the holy river, Dee ( Lat. diva 'the goddess' ) on which it stood. It was called Carlegion in British. reported by Bede in 734 who translates it civitas Legionum in Latin, Legacaestir in Old English . The Anglo - Saxon name Legacaestir arises from the addition of their word ceaster 'a Roman city', to the name Leon, which they took from Carlegion, Caerlleon. The English name means the Roman city called Legion a translation of Caerlleon. In the eleventh century the Legion theme, the Lega - element of the English name, was dropped. Legaceaster gave was' to simple ceaster, Chester otherwise the modern form of the city-name would have been something like Leicester.

There was no need to identify which chester this Chester had been in British times, it was to the English the chester. Similarly, in Welsh. Chester was v Gaer 'the city'. As the capita! of the north-west and of Wales. and as lying more westerly than less distinguished chesters elsewhere in the land, it was sometimes called West-chester the Chester of the west'. It can he estimated from historical record that the Romano-British city Carlegion became the English Legaceaster during the period 616 to 689. i.e. between the battle of Chester in 616 between Ethelfrith of Northuinbria and the forces of Gwvnedd, and the foundation in 689 of St. John's church by Ethelred of Mercia, a period during which Penda's Mercia assumed the political responsibility for containing the Northumbrian power and asserted for itself a status more independent than that of a mere ally of Cadwallon's Welsh power: a period in which began that withdrawal of the Welsh frontier, from a line along R. Gowy between Tarvin and Macefen, hack to the line established by Offa's Dyke.