The Mysterious Lost Land of Llys Helig

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Lost Kingdom of Llys Helig

There is a local legend in North Wales about a lost kingdom - or more precisely a principality that once occupied much of north Wales, but no longer exists. The legend tells this story:

Once, way back in the sixth century, there was a Prince named "Helig Ap Glannwg" (Helig son of Glannwg). His son became famous for founding many churches in the North Wales region. Prince Helig owned large tracts of land lying between the Menai Strait, off the north coast of Gwynedd and the Great Ormes Head, near Llandudno in North Wales. His palace was known as Llys Helig (Court of Helig)

Was this once the site of the Fabled Llys Helig?

Prince Helig's daughter was in love with a young man. Unfortunately, he was not a nobleman, and as a commoner had no right to marry her. The girl had a number of other suitors, but  this young man was the only one she was interested in. Prince Helig, realizing that his daughter would never be happy with anyone else, took the young man to one side and told him that if he were to leave and return with a golden torque (the symbol of a nobleman) around his neck, then he would allow him to marry his daughter.

The young man went off to seek his fortune. However, he was under pressure. He realized that the longer he was gone, the more likely it was that the girl would find someone else to marry, so he reasoned that he needed to acquire his golden torque as soon as possible.


Before very long, the young man came across a nobleman riding through the forest. At this juncture, the legend becomes a bit vague, and it is unclear whether the Nobleman was a rival suitor and a duel followed, or whether the young man saw an easy chance to acquire a torque by force. In any case, the result was the same. The nobleman lay dead and the young man rode back to Helig wearing golden torque, to claim his bride.

 The Mark of a Nobleman - A Golden Torque

Everything went well. Prince Helig accepted the young man as a nobleman, agreed to the marriage and a date was fixed. But when the young man confessed to Helig's daughter, about how he had managed to become the owner of a torque in such a short time, she insisted that he went back to get rid of the corpse, so that no one would suspect what he had done. He returned to the scene and began to bury the body beneath some shrubbery. According to the legend, as he dug, he could hear the ghostly sound of a Welsh voice saying  "Dial a Ddaw - Dial a Ddaw" (Revenge will come - revenge will come).

When the act was done, the young man returned to Helig's daughter and told her about the ghostly voice, she basically reasuured him, telling him it was all nonsense. They married and lived happily for many years. One night, decades later,they were holding a big celebration at Llys Helig, when the sea suddenly rolled in, submerging the palace and drowning almost all the inhabitants thereof. According to the legend, the only ones who escaped were a serving girl who gave the alarm when she saw the sea bursting into the basement of the palace, and her lover, the court fool.

The Lost Kingdom - Surely a Legend?

But are these stories just legends, or are they something that may have really happened long ago in the mists of time? What  proof is there - if any?

It is clear that forests once flourished along many parts of the coast of Wales which are now covered by sea . At low tide , the stumps of ancient trees are visible from the coast of Borth, in West Wales, to as far east as Splash Point in Rhyl, North Wales.

The remains of ancient submerged forests can be seen at low tide at Borth in West Wales

But of course, this story of a lost kingdom... it is a legend ... Isn't it?
Well ... The interesting thing about the legend of the drowned Kingdom of Llys Helig is that this is not the only lost kingdom, which had vanished by drowning off the coast of Wales. There are others, such as "Cantre'r Gwaelod (the Lowland Hundreds), which was described as a large region of fertile land lying between the island and Bardsay and  Ramsay Island beneath what is now Cardigan Bay, west Wales.

Cardigan bay once the land of Cantre'r Gwaelod?

A number of expeditions were created in the past to try to figure out the exact location (if any) of the legendary lost kingdom of Llys Helig. In 1864, The two Reverends Richard Parry and Charlton Hall drafted an article for the Liverpool Geological Society. In the company of a geologist and two local boatmen, they explored the shallows off the coast of Penmaenmawr, North Wales.

The report indicates that although the area was completely covered by the large areas of seaweed, it was obvious to them that beneath all the vegetation lay the remains of walls that ran in perfectly straight and regular lines. They took some rough measurements of what they thought were the walls and developed a plan for a building of at least 100 meters long - This, they concluded, might well have been the fabled Helig's Palace

One last interesting point concerns the Church of St. Michael, situated in the peaceful market town of Abergele on the north coast of Wales. St. Michael's church was built on the site of an even earlier church, which is said to date from pre-medieval times. Hidden away in the north wall of the cemetery is a very special tombstone.

The present tombstone is a substitute for the original which had become badly eroded. The legend written on the stone is recorded in both the Welsh and English languages, and says: "Here Lyeth in St. Michael's Churchyard, a man who had his dwelling three miles to the north". If you find a map and measure three miles north of the cemetary you will find that you are, in fact - two and a half miles out to sea!



Link: The Legend of the Welsh Werewolf

My Local UFO Crash - The Welsh Roswell

How it Started

It began on a dark blustery night here in North Wales - It was 1974, and about 30miles from my home, over the Denbigh Moors and crouching beneath the Berwyn Mountains was the little village of Llandrillo. It has to be said that Llandrillo is a very tranquil village, not many unusual things happen in Llandrillo - In fact very little ever happens at all.

Tonight however, all that was about to change because of an incident that would shock and intrigue people for decades to come. Something massive and puzzling would occur. Allegatons of conspiracy would be raised as the UK government first denied anything had happened, then produced changing excuses over the years. Some residents of Llandrillo still maintain today that the government's official version of events was not what they remember happening.

What really happened then?   Was it something ordinary, mundane? or was it something extraordinary? - Listen to the story - you decide for yourself.

In was a cold unwelcoming night in Llandrillo North Wales. The date, January 23rd 1974. The time was  just after 6.40pm. It was just another night and the villagers were going about their normal business. Two friends, Elgar Hughes and Geraint Edwards observed something strange in the sky, which they described as saucer shaped and glowing coal-red. the object remained still in the sky for at least ten minutes before suddenly darting off at high speed, along the horizon. The two puzzled friends  continued on their way to the pub to tell the locals what they had seen.

A little after 8.30 it started. There was a massive explosive bang and a huge brilliant light was seen above the Berwyn mountains. This was followed by a tremendous shaking causing objects and ornaments in many of the houses (including an Inn in Bala - 10 miles away) to crash to the ground. Fireman Adrian Roberts was thrown from his sofa by the violence of the tremor.
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Llandrillo Village

Source: John Clift

 

Was it a UFO Crash?

Villagers were dashing out into the street, they thought that there had been some sort of plane crash. Way up on the Berwyn Mountains odd lights could be seen.The local emergency services went into hyperdrive. A helicopter was scrambled from it's base at RAF Valley (Where Prince William is now stationed) and directed to the scene.  A retired North Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Elfed Roberts, who at this time was a Police Sergeant, was speeding towards Llandrillo with his superior, shortly after the quake when they saw the strange lights on the mountain, he said: 'As we were driving, all of a sudden we saw this green light in the sky ahead of us and it seemed to be an arcing light, but it was very sudden, totally unexpected, different to anything we had ever seen before.'

Pat Evans, a District Nurse who lived locally at Llanderfel got an emergency phone call from the Main Police HQ at Colwyn Bay informing her that a plane had come down and asking her to attend the scene. She put together her medical kit and set off for the location she had been given. There was no one available to look after her two teenage daughters, so she took them with her. She drove there via the lonely B4391 road which skirts the south of the Cader Bronwen area. It was 10pm on a fridgid winters night and no other cars were to be seen.

Nurse Pat followed a track up the hillside towards the top of the range and halted within a couple of hundred feet of something astounding sitting on the ground which she said "absolutely staggered" her .It was an very large sphere, glowing orange which she described as "quite intact". She just sat there with  her daughters watching it for some ten minutes debating what to do - There was no chance of a mistake - it was clearly some sort of UFO.

The Military eventually approached her vehicle and ordered her to go away. She tried to explain that she had been sent there by Police HQ and asked what was happening. She did not recieve an explanation. The soldiers told her that she was unauthorised to be there and that she must go immediately. Fearing for her daughters safety she did as she was told and was escorted down the mountain.

 

Searching for UFO's ?

For many days afterwards, the whole area was cordoned off and only accessible by the military. The local sheep farmers were beginning to get angry as they were prevented even from attending their sheep on certain areas of the mountain. A few days after the incident, the same Bala hotel that had sustained breakages because of the quake played host to a number of "strange men" who stayed with them for several days.

They were certainly not local people and were noticed in the community because their presence helped to fill the Hotel which usually tended to be virtually empty during the winter months. They seemed to have some official status and made a lot of trips to and from the "crash site" on the Berwyn mountain, but refused to reveal what it was they were doing. Then as quickly as they came- they departed, leaving the locals none the wiser.

There have even been revelations by alleged military staff who say they were part of a lorry convoy called to the Berwyn mountain to box up and remove non-human cadavers which they transported to the Porton Down research facility in Wiltshire!
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Space Alien

 

The UFO Explanations

The UK Government deny that any activities of a military nature took place that night, saying that the local villagers are confusing that event with a plane crash that happened several years earlier. The original explanation for the event was that it was an "earthquake". The strange men were, they said, part of a geological survey, and the odd lights on the mountain were nothing more than poacher's lights. They offered  no explanation at that time for the phenomena seen in the sky other than "they could have been earthquake lights".

After a number of "tweakings" through the years, the official explanation is now that the light phenomena in the sky was caused by a meteorite which exploded above the Berwyn mountain creating the bang and flash. The aerial explosion, they say,  was the reason why there was no debris or impact crater at the site. The ground-shake was due to a landslide which just happened to coincide with the meteorite burst. The lights on the mountain continued to be attributed to the poachers.

However, many of the locals who actually witnessed the event continue to be unhappy with the "official" explanation. One of the poachers who was actually on the mountain that night insists that the lights they saw could not possibly have been their poaching lamps because they had already finished for the night by that time and all their lamps were switched off.

A local farmer Huw Lloyd, who is now 48, but was a teenager at the time of the event said: 'Whatever it was, it was kept quiet. I think there are things we should know about. And things that have happened have been covered up.

The District Nurse Pat Evans continues to be angry. She is adamant that there was a huge cover-up of some yet to be resolved incident on that lonely mountainside.

Geraint Evans is on record as having said  'It was definitely a flying saucer. It was a pity I didn't have a camera because it was there for at least 10 minutes, just hovering - If we were coming back from the pub, people would be saying, "They've had one or two." But we were going TO the pub"