the legend of caer afanc After the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, Wales was still a wild country to the west of England. The Normans gradually infiltrated their rule, their people and their customs, but in some areas they could not hold sway. The Welsh resisted the erosion of their culture, but they also adopted some of the useful Norman ways they had been exposed to; including the skill of building castles in stone. Caer Afanc was built on an island off the Welsh coast in the twelfth century. During its construction a young girl was washed into the sea and never seen again: it is said that the monster who dwelled in those waters had claimed her for his bride. The Afanc which we know lives in the seas near our island is believed to be their child, the offspring of an unwilling mermaid and a prehistoric water creature. the website This page began as a humble little homepage with a few pretenses to being a good design and intended as not much more than a showcase for my writing. Well, that page had been up online for a few months and I got bored with it and started thinking surely it could be so much more. It was already called Caer Afanc, but it really was not much of a theme page, and seeing as just about everything I do has to have a theme, my brain began ticking away as to how I could make it into more of a real castle. I would like to think it is still a good design. Though I am by no means a web designer and my skill extends no further than basic HTML and Paint Shop Pro, (the imagemap was done in Fireworks), I am an artist in other fields of life and would like to think my artistic talent, however small, has come out somewhat in this page. I have tried to make it readable and easy to navigate but still creative and beautiful, without falling into any of the classic homepage traps. The one thing I have used is animated gifs, and all you diehard web designers out there who think they're corny and classic geocities material are absolutely right, but I love them anyway! email

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