Hay-on-Wye (Y Gelli)

The History of Hay-on-Wye (or Y Gelli)

Called Hay-on-Wye by the English and Y Gelli by the Welsh, Hay-on-Wye has been a border town for as long as recorded history. Sitting by the Wye river, at the foot of the Brecon Beacons it has long been a strategic point in the Anglo-Welsh wars. King Offa built his massive dyke nearby in order to keep out Welsh raiders. Its castle was repeatedly attacked and taken by one side or the other until it was finally destroyed in 1216 by King John. Just to make a point, the Welsh Prince Llywelyn would later come by and set fire to the remains.

King Richard Booth and the Birth of the Town of Books

As the conflict between England and Wales settled down, the town of Hay became less important and slowly forgotten. A massive Jacobean mansion was built straight into the broken remains of the old castle, but little other development took place. This all changed in the early sixties. At that time, an Oxford graduate named Richard Booth opened his first bookstore in Hay. The son of a garage worker from a family that had lived in Hay for generations, Richard Booth saw a way of saving his hometown from the slow decay that was affecting many small villages. Working tirelessly to grow his own bookstore, while at the same time attracting other book dealers to come set up shop, Booth transformed Hay into a “Town of Books” with an international reputation.

In order to enhance this reputation, Richard declared Hay an independent country in 1977. Richard Booth was crowned king, which was fitting as he had already taken up residence in the Mansion/Castle. It was a blatant publicity stunt, but a good one. In 1988 Hay held its first literary festival, an event that now attracts nearly 70,000 visitors to its week-long festivities.

Hay-on-Wye Today

Today, Hay-on-Wye retains much of the charm of a small English/Welsh town, with its attractive riverside setting and impressive castle ruins. It also boasts around 30 bookstores. During summer days, its one large public parking lot fills with day trippers and book browsers, but by about six o'clock the parking lot is nearly empty. There are a number of good places to stay in the town or just outside it, including Baskerville Hall, a large hostel-like hotel that claims to be the inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle apparently moved the location of the hall to keep away the tourists). Hay has a nice informative tourist information centre where you can obtain a map of the town listing all of the bookshops and a guide with all of the places to stay and eat (though there are notably few of the later).

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