1917 Birkenhead National Eisteddfod of Wales
Eisteddfod held in Birkenhead, Cheshire in 1917
The 1917 Birkenhead National Eisteddfod of Wales (Welsh: Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru, Penbedw 1917) was held in Birkenhead Park, Birkenhead, Cheshire in England on 5 and 6 September 1917. This was the third time the National Eisteddfod of Wales had been held in Birkenhead.
The 1917 Eisteddfod became known as The Eisteddfod of the Black Chair, as a result of the Chair winner Ellis Humphrey Evans (known as Hedd Wyn) having been killed shortly beforehand in the Great War of 1914-1918.
Background
The National Eisteddfod of Wales had been held every year since 1861, with the exception of 1914. Generally it was held in Wales, but had also been held in Chester, London and Liverpool and twice previously in Birkenhead. The Wirral Peninsula had historic connections to Wales with Wallasey, for example, meaning 'Island of the Welsh'.
The main competition events are the Chairing of the Bard and Crowning of the Bard.
The 1914-18 Great War was still raging at the time of the Eisteddfod and there was criticism of the Eisteddfod being held in a time of national stress. The wartime Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was the Welsh-speaking David Lloyd George, who attended the event - the last time a prime minister had attended the eisteddfod was in 1873 when William Gladstone had attended in Mold.
Proclamation
The proclamation event of the Birkenhead Eisteddfod took place on Cannon Hill in the town on 24 June 1916.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1917 Birkenhead National Eisteddfod of Wales” as eisteddfod held in Birkenhead, Cheshire in 1917. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13128198. Authority coordinates are 53.393, -3.041. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1914, 1918 and 1861.
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This entry incorporates text from “1917 Birkenhead National Eisteddfod of Wales” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.