Landsker Line

The English-speaking areas, south of the Landsker line and known as Little England beyond Wales, are notable for having been English linguistically and culturally for many centuries despite being far from the England–Wales border.

During the 11th and 12th centuries both invaders and defenders built more than fifty castles during a complex period of conflict, effectively to consolidate the line.

The Landsker has changed position many times, first moving north into the foothills of Mynydd Preseli during the military campaigns of the Early Middle Ages, and then moving southwards again in more peaceful times, as the English colonists found that farming and feudalism were difficult to maintain on cold acid soils and exposed hillsides.

[citation needed] The differences in the proportion of Welsh speakers persists in the 21st century and is illustrated by the map derived from the 2011 census.

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics reported in 2015 "unexpectedly stark differences between inhabitants in the north and south of the Welsh county of Pembrokeshire" in DNA signatures.

This provides the “traditional” view: that the area was cleared of native Welsh by the Norman invaders in the early 12th century, and was planted with Flemings from elsewhere in England.

Attempts to set up a number of Norman/English “planned villages” (e.g. Letterston and New Moat) were made north of the current frontier in the mediæval period.

A number lie close to the language boundary (e.g. Roch, Wiston, Llawhaden, Narberth, Laugharne) and are sometimes referred to as “frontier castles”, but the whole of Dyfed (the territory south of the River Teifi and west of the Towy and Gwili) was in the hands of Norman marcher lords.

A visible boundary which represents the Landsker line is Brandy Brook which runs through Newgale, remarked upon by Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810.