About – Caer Gwyn

map of Caer Gwynt territory The Shire of Caer Gwyn is a a young but plucky branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. located in the East Central Illinois area, including Champaign-Urbana, Charleston, Effingham, Danville, and the surrounding areas.

We are a “living history” organization, a non-profit international organization dedicated to researching and recreating pre-17th-century history. The SCA’s core mission is educational. We do historical reenactment and martial arts inspired by medieval and renaissance documents and artifacts. We focus on keeping the arts of an earlier age alive and vital in the hands of people today. We strive to create a “current middle ages” or “middle ages as they should have been.” Please contact one of the local officers if your organization wants to sponsor a demonstration.

Our History

Caer Gwyn began when two much older shires, Würm Wald and St. Carol on the Moor, realized that they had been working together to hold several events and had become stronger together than they had been when they worked apart. Würm Wald saw series of changes over the course of SCA history, starting as a barony on the University of Illinois campus in 1973 before re-purposing itself into a shire in the 2000s.

St. Carol on the Moor was founded in 1979 by newlyweds Myrra and Carlo at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.

The tower represented on Caer Gwyn’s device hearkens back to the tower that existed on St. Carol’s original arms, and now represents the iconic towers of Altgeld Hall on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus as well as the Old Main “Castle” tower on the Eastern Illinois University campus in Charleston.

Caer Gwyn was recognized as an official shire in 2019 at Festival of Maidens / 12th Night. Caer Gwyn inherited the stewardship of the Festival of Maidens, which historically has been one of the earliest combat events of the year for the Midrealm. While Maidens is heavily combat focused, many of Caer Gwyn’s denizens are currently focused on the Arts and Sciences. However, we also currently have a small number of archers and are trying to increase our fighter ranks.

Fun Facts

Shire members sometimes refer to themselves as Caer Baers.
Caer Gwyn originally applied to become a new group under the name Caer Gwynt. This was unfortunately too close to the Welsh name for Winchester, which the College of Heralds rejected. Although the group officially dropped the “t” in order to pass, it still occasionally shows up sometimes by accident or when a Caer Baer opts to “bring the T.”

This is the recognized website for the Shire of Caer Gwyn, Middle Kingdom (The Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc.) and is maintained by Maerwynn of Caer Gwyn. This site may contain electronic versions of the group’s governing documents. Any discrepancies between the electronic version of any information on this site and the printed version that is available from the originating office will be decided in favor of the printed version.

All external links are not part of the Caer Gwyn web site. Inclusion of a page or site here is neither implicit nor explicit endorsement of the site. Further, SCA, Inc. is not responsible for content outside of midrealm.org/caergwyn.