Why Bryneich?

Bryneich is probably the oldest known name for this area of the country.

Before the rise of the kingdom of Northumbria (which, at its height, stretched from the River Humber to the Firth of Forth) from the Seventh Century CE, the region north of the River Tees was known as Bernicia, an early Anglian kingdom.

Before Bernicia, however, this was a Brythonic (British Celtic) land, like the rest of Great Britain. Being north of Hadrian’s Wall, Romanisation in the area was likely minimal. Before the coming of Germanic tribes, therefore, the people, culture and language remained Celtic, culturally and linguistically similar to those who became the modern Cymry, or Welsh, and distinct from the Goidelic (Gaelic) culture that emerged from Ireland. It was these people who built and used the hillforts that crown so many Northumbrian hills.

This ancient, tribal area was quickly subsumed from the Fifth Century by ‘English’ newcomers from the Germanic areas of the European continent. However, its memory was preserved in the writing of Medieval Welsh historians and poets, who maintained a strong feeling of connection to the old, Celtic history of Britain, and who referred to this kingdom by the Brythonic name of Bryneich.