Quotations from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (henceforth SGGK) are from the edition of Tolkien and Gordon, rev. Davis (1967); translations into Modern English are by Michael Twomey. Passages from SGGK that suggest Gawain’s itinerary are given below in the same order as in the list of contents for “Travels With Sir Gawain” in the sidebar at the left. Key words are in italics and are given a commentary immediately following the passage. Map references are provided before each passage. OSR 6 = Ordnance Survey Road Map no. 6.

Anglesey and North Wales

Gawain’s journey divides into three stages, separated in the text by Middle English til ("until” in the Modern English translation; in bold face below): (1) Leaving Arthur’s kingdom of Logres (691-96), Gawain enters (2) North Wales (697-700), keeping Anglesey on his left. From there he proceeds to the “Holy Head” (700), crossing from there by ford into (3) the Wirral, a wilderness in NW England.

Text:

Now ridez þis renk þurʒ þe ryalme of Logres,

Sir Gauan, on Godez halue, þaʒ hym no gomen þoʒt.

Oft leudlez alone he lengez on nyʒtez

Þer he fonde noʒt hym byfore þe fare þat he lyked.

Hade he no fere bot his fole bi frythez and dounez,

Ne no gome bot God bi gate wyth to karp,

Til þat he neʒed ful neghe into þe Norþe Walez.

Alle þe iles of Anglesay on lyft he haldez,

And farez ouer þe fordez by þe forlondez,

Ouer at þe Holy Hede, til he hade eft bonk

In þe wyldrenesse of Wyrale; wonde þer bot lyte

Þat auþer God oþer gome wyth goud hert louied. (691-702)

[Now the man rides through the realm of Logres,

Sir Gawain, in the cause of God, though it seemed no game to him.

Often companionless, he is alone at night

In a place where he did not find the food that he liked before him.

He had no companion but his horse in the woods and the hills,

Nor no man but God with whom to speak along the way

Until he approached full near North Wales.

All the isles of Angeley he holds on his left,

And fares over the fords by the forelands

Over at the Holy Head, until he reached shore once again

In the wilderness of the Wirral; few there dwelled

Who either God or man with good heart loved.]

Commentary:

Norþe Walez (697): The name is well-attested in the medieval period. Note its association with enchantment in Arthurian literature via the Queen of North Wales, one of Morgan le Fay’s companions (see Twomey 2000).

iles of Anglesay (698) [OSR 6: G4-1, K4-1]: The poet says “all the isles of Anglesey,” though there is only one island named Anglesey; Elliott does not comment on the plural of “isles”. Colledge and Marler (p. 422, citing Burrow p. 190) point out that in the Middle Ages the NW point of Anglesey, called Holyhead, was separated from the rest of the island by a strip of water; Eadie (p. 193) notes that there is now a bridge linking Holyhead to the rest of Anglesey. However, offshore from Anglesey are small out-islands (Puffin Island, OSR 6: L-2; West Mouse and the Skerries, OSR 6: H-1 and G-1). If the poet knew of these, then perhaps the plural “isles” refers to them plus the main island.

On the route Gawain would have taken from Anglesey, Eadie cites the Gough Map, ca. 1360, which shows the road from Bangor to Chester. This is the Roman road “roughly along the line of the modern A5 up to about Betws Y Coed [M-5], [after which Gawain] then took a line down the east side of the Conway valley to somewhere in the region on modern Colwyn Bay [A470 north to Colwyn Bay, N-3]. From there it seems to have taken more or less the same line as the modern A55 to Chester. Like the modern A55 the medieval road seems to have been a good few miles inland from the coast, crossing rivers at places where it would have been perfectly possible to bridge them” (p. 192, citing Darby 1936, p. 260 fig. 43, and Darby 1973, p. 175 fig. 39). Elliott says the route probably followed the “Earl’s Way,” which led from Chester eastwards to just north of Sandbach and on to Leek. This would be the modern A51-A54 to Congleton, from which there is a country road direct to Leek. Around Leek is the intersection of Staffordhire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire, where the poet’s dialect has been placed and where topographical terms used in SGGK appear in place-names such as Knar, Knotbury, and Flash. In this area are several caves that might have inspired the Green Chapel (Elliott 1997, p. 116).

The Holy Head and the Wirral

Text:

And farez ouer þe fordez by þe forlondez / Ouer at þe Holy Hede, til he hade eft bonk / In þe wyldrenesse of Wyrale (699-701): The crux of this line is the location of the Holy Head, for which there are three proposed candidates: Holyhead on Anglesey; the Cistercian abbey at Poulton--modern Pulford in Wales, across from which is Aldford in England; and Holywell in Wales.

Commentary:

Eadie 1983 locates the Holy Head in its current location, Holyhead on Anglesey (OSR 6: G-2); Elliott places it either in modern Holywell (OSR 6: R-3) or in Poulton, noting that like “the North Wales it is oddly preceded by the article “the” and that in the MS “holy head” is not capitalized. Therefore “the Holy Head” could well refer to the holy waters (“head” in the sense of “spring” or “fountain”) at the old abbey at Poulton (1997, p. 115, and 1984, p. 66).

Eadie observes that after passing Anglesey on the left, Gawain would have to cross the rivers Conwy (=Conway) and Clwyd in Wales (OSR 6: M2-5, Q2-4), noting that medieval people preferred to cross rivers by bridge or ferry, not by ford (p. 192, citing Davies). Nevertheless, he identifies “the Holy Head” with modern Holyhead on Holy Island just off Anglesey, because it is associated with forelands and fords, and because in medieval reference it is prefaced with the article “the”--for example, in this note by William Worcestre (1478): “Memorandum quod unum Forland vocatum le Holyhede iacet in le west northwest insule de Anglesey et est bonus portus” (It is to be remembered that a foreland called the Holy Head lies in the west-northwest of the island of Anglesey and is a good port; Eadie, p. 193, citing Worcestre). Eadie cites five fords linking Holy Island to Anglesey, all in the vicinity of the modern Four Mile Bridge (p. 194). Eadie thus has Gawain coming up into North Wales by an unspecified route that keeps Anglesey on the left, then crossing to Anglesey and then from there by ford to Holyhead. Anglesey being on the left has “more thematic than geographical significance”: Gawain is later told to look for the Green Chapel “on thy left hand” (2146). “Gawain has come to North Wales looking specifically for the Green Knight and he must reasonably think that somewhere known as ‘þe Holy Hede’ would be a suitable place to find a creature, associated with a Green Chapel, who cut off people’s heads for no apparent good reason. That such a place would be on his left side as he approached would make it appear all the more ominous. . . . That the sole purpose of Gawain’s journey into North Wales was to visit this mysterious 'Holy Hede’ is emphasized by the fact that ‘þe Holy Hede’ is part of a triadic pattern, ‘Norþe Walez’, ‘Anglesay’, ‘Holy Hede’, which reflects the triadic structure as a whole” (Eadie, p. 195).

Elliott proposes two possible routes to the east from the Anglesey area to the Wirral: “Where exactly Gawain crossed the Dee into Wirral the poet does not say, but two places merit special attention. One is Aldford (OSR 6: T-5), the ‘old ford’ where Watling Street crossed the river south of Chester. . .; the other is close to Holywell (OSR 6: R-3), which is about a mile inland on the Welsh side of the estuary. The latter may well be the poet’s ‘Holy Hede’, for it was here, according to tradition, that Prince Caradoc, failing to seduce St Winefride, struck off the saint’s head. The spot became the most famous healing well in the British Isles and a popular place of pilgrimage. To make Gawain pass this very place on the way to his own expected decapitation adds a touch of irony to the poem. . .” (Elliott 1997, p. 115). Earlier Colledge and Marler had also proposed Holywell on the same grounds, citing parallels to the Winefride legend but noting that no medieval reference to Holywell as “the holy head” exists. They therefore suggest that the poet referred to it as such in order to invoke the legend of St Winefride and remind the reader of Gawain’s adventure with the headless (last time Gawain saw him) Green Knight (pp. 422-23). In 1984 Elliott favored the Aldford crossing; in 1997 he added the Holywell crossing as a second possibility.

Elliott 1984 (p. 65) notes that the main route eastwards from Anglesey was to follow the River Dee through the holdings of the Cistercian abbey of Dieulacres, which was founded in Poulton (no longer extant but between modern Pulford and Aldford, OSR 6: T-5) in 1146 and then moved to the Churnet Valley north of Leek in Staffordshire (OSR 6: Z-5) in 1214 (Elliott 1984, p. 64). He argues that that this region explains the plural form “fords,” as the traveller would have to ford more than one stream or river by this route. “Poulton is now a collection of farms (one of them Chapelhouse Farm) in the low-lying country along the Dee halfway between the foothills of the Welsh mountains to the west and the Peckforton, Bickerton, and Broxton range to the east. It is land criss-crossed by small streams, with numerous place-names testifying to ancient fords: Pulford, Marford, Gresford, and more particularly Aldford across the Dee itself. Aldford was old indeed: Watling Street, which had led across the river at Chester by Bridge Gate, here crossed the Dee again just north of Aldford church. A medieval traveller approaching along another ancient route through North Wales from the direction of Anglesey and St Asaph (OSR 6: Q-3) would travel parallel to the Dee estuary to meet the north-south road between Aldford and Chester, within a mile or two of the old abbey lands at Poulton, cross the Dee either at Aldford or in Chester itself, and then gain the Earlsway towards the east. There is good reason to believe that the Gawain-poet had this route in mind” (Elliott 1984, p. 65).

Forlondez, on the other hand, is rare in ME. Elliott (1984, p. 66, and 1997, p. 115) derives it from ON forlendi ‘land between sea and hills.’ Elliott 1997: This “aptly describes the low-lying coastal strip between the Clwdian Range and the tidal estuary of the Dee where Holywell is situated. Three hundred years after Gawain another intrepid traveller, Celia Fiennes, crossed the Dee after leaving Holywell, describing in her diary the shifting fords (fordez) created by tide and quicksand” (p. 115).

Hautdesert

Map references: Ordnance Survey Explorer Map OL24 (The Peak District: White Peak Area), locator horizontal 65, vertical 97.

Commentary:

Elliott 1984 and 1997 “places Hautdesert at the site of Swythamley Grange in Staffordshire, on the property of the Cistercian abbey at Dieulacres. Just as Bertilak’s castle is only two miles from the Green Chapel (line 1078), the grange is only two miles from Ludchurch, a possible candidate for the site of the Green Chapel. Swythamley sits on a height looking south over the Leekfrith valley towards Dieulacres, east towards a rocky escarpment called the Roaches, and west towards Gun Hill. Once known as ‘Knight’s Low,’ a name that recalls the poet’s word lawe to describe its setting in line 765, it is surrounded by a wilderness forest known in the Middle Ages as the High Forest, which was used for hunting, just as Bertilak hunted in the area around his castle. If the name Hautdesert refers to the castle, then it would have been chosen because of the castle’s situation above the valley and because of the surrounding wild countryside, whose name, the High Forest, could even have suggested the castle’s name” (Twomey 2001, pp. 106-07).

The abbey was founded at Poulton near Aldford (hence possibly "holy head" in line 700 refers to the holy origin of the abbey at Poulton--see above), and was moved to Staffordshire moorlands near Leek to keep it safe from the Welsh (Elliott 1997, p. 117).

Topographical terms that place Hautdesert in the valley of the river Dane are discussed in Elliott 1984, pp. 85-152.

The Green Chapel: Wetton Mill Cave

Map references: Ordnance Survey Explorer Map OL24 (The Peak District: White Peak Area), locator horizontal 56, vertical 10.

Text:

[G saw nothing] Bot hyʒe bonkkez and brent vpon boþe halue,

And ruʒe knokled knarrez with knorned stonez;

Þe skwez of þe scowtes skayned hym þo3t. (2165-67)

Saue, a lyttel on a launde, a lawe as hit were;

A balʒ berʒ bi a bonke þe brymme bysyde,

Bi a forʒ of a flode þat ferked þare;

Þe borne blubred þerinne as hit boyled hade. (2171-74)

Hit [the cave] hade a hole on þe ende and on ayþer syde,

And ouergrowen with gresse in glodes aywhere,

And al watz holʒ inwith, nobot an old caue,

Or a creuisse of an old cragge, he couþe hit noʒt deme with spelle. (2180-84)

Þene herde he [G] of þat hyʒe hil, in a harde roche

Biʒonde þe broke, in a bonk, a wonder breme noyse. (2199-2200)

And syþen he [the GK] keuerez bi a cragge, and comez of a hole,

Whyrlande out of a wro wyth a felle weppen. (2221-22)

[(G saw nothing) but high hills, and steep, on both sides,

And rough, knuckled crags with rugged stones;

The skies grazed off the jutting rocks, it seemed to him. (2165-67)

Except, a little way off, across a lawn, a mound as it were,

A smooth barrow on the side of a slope next to the water,

By the channel of a stream that forked there,

The brook blubbered in it as if it were boiling. (2171-74)

It (the cave) had a hole at the end and on each side,

And overgrown with grass in patches everywhere,

And it was entirely hollow inside, nothing but an old cave,

Or a crevice of an old crag, he could not say which it was. (2180-84)

Then from that high hill he (G) heard, in a hard rock

Beyond the brook, in a hillside, an exceedingly loud noise. (2199-2200)

And then he (the GK) comes around a crag, and comes out of a hole,

Whirling out of a corner with a fell weapon. (2221-22)]

Commentary:

Caves in the area of Leek that might have served as the Green Chapel include:

Wetton Mill, near Thor’s Cave and also on the River Manifold. Proposed by Kaske 1970 and Day 1940. Maps: Kaske used Ordnance Survey One-Inch Map, Sheet 111, “Buxton and Matlock” (national Grid SK), 0956. Also indicated on Original OS Sheet 34, “Stafford” (locator W lat. 1,51; N lat. 54,6 at top of map); AA Big Road Atlas p. 31 (circled) and modern OS Road Map 6, locator BB, 5.

Ludchurch, 2 mi. from Swythamley Grange above the River Dane on the Staffordshire-Cheshire border, “truly half-cave, half-crevice, as the poet says, overlooked by a group of oddly-twisted knarrez whose apprearance earned them the name Castle Cliff Rocks.” (Elliott 1997, p. 116). Owned by Dieulacres in the 14th c. Maps: See Swythamley.

Elliott 1984 and 1997 prefers Ludchurch as the site of the Green Chapel. Day 1940 and Kaske 1970 would seem to have a stronger case for Wetton Mill, however. Against the Ludchurch site is that it is not near a brook or stream, and that across from it there is no landscape feature fitting the poet's description of the terrain from which the noise of the Green Knight sharpening his axe emerges in lines 2199-2200. In favor of the Wetton Mill site is its proximity to Swythamley, its situation "across a lawn, a mound as it were" (2171); its proximity to a stream (for that is what the River Manifold is); its appearance as a "smooth barrow" and its location "on the side of a slope next to the water" (2172). As the poet notes, it has openings at two ends, and it is hollow inside; but once inside, one cannot decide whether it is a proper cave or a crevice. Although Ludchurch does have entrances at either end, it is open to the sky at the top, and cannot be confused with a cave.

Bibliography

Burrow, J. A. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London 1965.

Colledge, Edmund and J. C. Marler. “‘Céphalologie’: A Recurring Theme in Classical and Mediaeval Lore.” Traditio 37 (1981): 411-26.

Darby, H. C., ed. An Historical Geography of England Before A.D. 1800. Cambridge 1936.

Darby, H. C., ed. A New Historical Geography of England. Cambridge 1973.

David, Christopher. St. Winefride’s Well: A History and Guide. 2nd ed. Llandysul, Ceredigion 2002.

Davies, H. R. The Conway and the Menai Ferries. Cardiff 1942.

Day, Mabel. “Introduction” to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Ed. Israel Gollancz. EETS 210. London 1940. p. xx.

Eadie, J. “Sir Gawain’s Travels in North Wales.” RES ns 34 (1983): 191-95.

Elliott, Ralph. “Landscape and Geography.” A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. Ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson. Arthurian Studies 38. Woodbridge, Suffolk / Rochester, NY 1997. pp. 105-117.

Elliott, R. W. V. The Gawain Country. Leeds Texts and Monographs ns 8. Leeds 1984.

Kaske, R. E. “Gawain’s Green Chapel and the Cave at Wetton Mill.” Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley. Eds. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg. New Brunswick, NJ 1970. pp. 11-21.

Tolkien, J. R. R. and E. V. Gordon, eds. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 2nd ed. rev. Norman Davis. Oxford 1967.

Twomey, Michael W. "How Green Was the Green Knight? Forest Ecology at Hautdesert." Arthurian Literature 30 (2013): 27-53.

Twomey, Michael W. “Morgan le Fay at Hautdesert.” Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst. Dallas 2001. pp. 103-19.

Worcestre, William. Itineraries. Ed. John H. Harvey. Oxford 1969.

All text and photographs on this site, except for photographs by Fiona Tolhurst and Joyce Coleman, are copyright © Michael Twomey. Photographs by Fiona Tolhurst and Joyce Coleman are copyright © by Fiona Tolhurst and Joyce Coleman. Last updated 17 September 2020.