castles: A fortified defensive building or structure. Strictly speaking, a castle was also a home, whereas a fort was purely defensive, but I have used castle for any fortified place. A castle may also have had a dungeon or donjon, a sort of prison for offenders and captured soldiers.
Synonyms:
fort, keep, garrison
Wales, one of three divisions of Great Britain; is 135 m. in length and from 37 to 95 m. in breadth, and bounded on the NW. and S. by the sea; it is divided into 12 counties, of which 6 form North Wales and 6 South Wales; is a mountainous country, intersected by beautiful valleys, which are traversed by a number of streams; it is largely agricultural; has mines of coal and iron, lead and copper, as well as large slate-quarries, which are extensively wrought; the Church of England is the church established, but the majority of the people are Nonconformists; it is represented in Parliament by 30 members; the natives are Celts, and the native language Celtic, which is still the language of a goodly number of the people.
Population (1907) 1,519,000
