Llywelyn’s Cave, Aberedw: The final refuge of the last sovereign Prince of Wales

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd's final night as a Prince was spent in this cave in Powys.

Llewellyn's Cave.
Llewellyn's Cave.
(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

Known as Llywelyn the Last, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd went head to head with Edward I and was killed at the Battle of Orewin Bridge in 1282. Mystery surrounds the death of this celebrated Prince of Wales, but there are tales of English foul play and, although his head was sent to the Tower of London, no one is sure where he was buried.

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A standing stone marks the spot near Cilmeri where he is thought to have been killed and a small cave, near Aberedw, on the bank of the River Edw near Llywelyn’s Castle, is the atmospheric spot where Llywelyn the Last is said to have spent his final night.

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(Image credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

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Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.