MONTGOMERYSHIRE has been the battleground for a host of pivotal bloody meetings throughout Welsh history.

As soon as the Romans departed the new Welsh kingdoms born in the aftermath had come to defend their lands and new found independence from the invading Saxons.

Time and time again the warring Welsh kingdoms and its royal houses went to war - often pitting family on each side - and leading to blood feuds which would continue to divide the early Welsh kingdoms.

Battles would break out regularly across Wales with several of the most important being waged in the lands which would one day become Montgomeryshire.

Here are some of the historic battlegrounds around the county.

The Battle of Cefn Digoll

THE battle is also known as Battle of the Long Mynd and had been fought on the slopes of Long Mountain near modern day Welshpool in 630.

While not among the most famous battles in Welsh history it can perhaps lay claim to being historic for preventing the Northumbrian kingdom ruling Wales.

It is also noteworthy as evidence of the Christian Welsh kingdoms and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia allying against a mutual enemy as Northumbria had become in the seventh century.

The rise of Northumbria under King Edwin had brought King Cadwallon of Gwynedd and his neighbour Penda, King of Mercia, into alliance upon the Northumbrian invasion of Anglesey in 629.

The alliance ended Northumbrian domination of north Wales and led to the death of Edwin and brief rule of Cadwallon over his supposed step-brother’s kingdom.

Cadwallon ruled Northumbria for a year after the death of King Edwin and his son Osfrith in the Battle of Hatfield Chase in 633.

Cadwallon killed the pagan kings Osric and Eanrith to expand his Welsh kingdom as far as modern day south eastern Scotland soon after before his own death in battle at the hands of an army led by Eanrith’s brother, Oswald, at the Battle of Heavenfield to reunite Northumbria as one kingdom.

Cadwallon would be celebrated a hero by the Welsh tribes and damned a tyrant by the Anglo Saxons of Northumbria while Oswald would be venerated as a saintly king within a century of his own death at the Battle of Maserfield in 641.

The site is agreed to be modern day Oswestry by historians.

The death of King Oswald fractured the Northumbrian kingdom and the triumphant King Penda of Mercia would rule the most prominent kingdom in Britain for the remainder of his life.

The Battle of Buttington

The Battle of Buttington was fought between a Viking army and an alliance of Anglo Saxons and Welsh in 893.

The Danish king Hastein had landed a large army in Kent earlier that year and more ships arrived soon after from settled Danes from further north who would go on to lay siege to the city of Exeter.

Soon the invaders were in modern day mid Wales.

The English King, Alfred the Great, assembled a great army of Saxons and Welsh to lay siege to the Viking built fortification in Buttington.

The English and Welsh army came up the River Severn, and besieged all sides of the fortification where the Vikings had taken refuge.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that ‘after many weeks had passed, some of the heathen Vikings died of hunger, but some, having by then eaten their horses, broke out of the fortress, and joined battle with those who were on the east bank of the river.

'But, when many thousands of pagans had been slain, and all the others had been put to flight, the Christians (English and Welsh) were masters of the place of death.'

Although the battle seems to have been a bloody one, some Vikings did survive and were spared as they promised they would leave that region but their numbers were replenished with men from the Danelaw and went on to Chester but by the time the English got there they had left for Wales

The Buttington Oak was said to have been planted by local people to commemorate the battle and survived until February 2018.

The oak was said to have been planted by locals to mark the victory of an allied Mercian, Wessex and Welsh force against invading Vikings or as a boundary marker on Offa's Dyke between Mercia and the Kingdom of Powys.

Battle of Carno

THE hills near Carno were the stage for a bloody dynastic battle in 950.

The death of King Hywel the Good led to a battle for supremacy between the exiled sons of his cousin Idwal Foel, Iago and Ieuaf and his own sons Owen Rhun, Roderic and Edwin on the border between north and south Wales.

Carno had been the stage for the pivotal battle, then in the region of Arwystli.

Welsh historians and antiquaries associate the carneddau on the high land between the parishes of Carno and Llanbrynmair, and especially the carnedd known as Twr Gwyn Mawr as the area where the battle was waged.

The victory secured the sovereignty of North Wales but the sons of Idwal Foel's reign of supremacy would prove brief.

Four years later the sons of Hywel Dda retaliated and invaded North Wales, venturing as far as Llanwrst before finally being defeated and falling back as far as Ceredigion.

With the border secured the sons of Idwal Foel turned on each other when Iago imprisoned Ieauf and ruled the kingdom on his own until his nephew, Hywel, usurped him in 979, and the Welsh kingdoms began a new generation of warfare.