Anglesey

Following the establishment of Beaumaris the inhabitants of the nearby township of Llanfaes were resettled at the village of Rhosfair in the south of Anglesey, renamed Llanfaes Newborough or simply Newborough. The charter of 1303 was confirmed and amplified throughout the middle ages. By the 16th century the town was governed by a mayor assisted by two bailiffs. Situated more conveniently than Beaumaris for administrative purposes and within four miles of the centre of government for North Wales at Caernarvon, it was made the shire town by Henry VII.

Sited at the eastern end of the Menai straits, Beaumaris was the last of the Welsh fortresses to be founded by Edward I. Sacked and then captured by Owen Glynd?r in 1403-5, it was quickly repaired. By the sixteenth century the borough, which commanded ‘a fair, safe, and capacious haven and road’, had become the main port on the north coast of Wales, trading with Lancashire for grain, general merchandise from Chester and salt and wine from France, Ireland and Scotland.I. Soulsby, Towns of Medieval Wales, 78-80; E.A. Lewis, Medieval Bors. Snowdonia, 204, 206; L.

Beaumaris, Anglesey’s county and assize town, was a seaport, resort and castellated borough situated at the northern entrance to the Menai Straits almost five miles east of Porthaethwy (later Menai Bridge) and three miles north across the Straits from Bangor in Caernarvonshire. Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i. 139. Its decaying port had lost trade to Amlwch and Holyhead, but neither could equal its 190 entries in Pigot’s National and Commercial Directory for 1828-9.