IndiaAIFounders — Country diary: A tangle of butterflies and battle re-enactments

The Marches, Shropshire: On a day of micro-dramas past and present, we witness a Welsh victory over the English, just as it was 861 years ago

I’m telling the story from a pub in the bailey opposite the ruins of Oswestry Castle. There in 1165, Henry II, the Angevin (Anglo-Norman) king of England, gathered troops from the Marcher Lords to advance on an alliance of Welsh princes for control of the Marches.

The previous Sunday, 861 years later, we went the same way as Henry’s army to Chirk Castle, Castell Y Waun a’r Ardd, to see a re-enactment of the Battle of Crogen. The present castle wasn’t built back then and the battle at Crogen was in the Ceiriog Valley below. Henry had sent woodsmen to raze woodland in the valley to remove the Welsh advantage, but he left one oak, Quercus petraea, at which Owain Gwynedd gathered his army.

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Country diary: A tangle of butterflies and battle re-enactments | Paul Evans