Strathclyde

Strathclyde [Gaelic,=Clyde valley], one of several early medieval Celtic or Welsh kingdoms in present-day S Scotland and N England. Strathclyde was in SW Scotland. To the east was the kingdom of Manaw Gododdin and to the south, Rheged. Little is known of the history of Strathclyde and the other Welsh (Cumbrian) kingdoms. The origin of Strathclyde is uncertain, but there is evidence that the kingdom had been consolidated by the middle of the 5th cent. In 945, King Edmund of Wessex defeated Strathclyde and awarded it to King Malcolm of Scotland; however, Scotland did not permanently absorb the kingdom until the 11th cent. The reason for the disappearance of the ancient British language and culture in the kingdoms is not definitely known. Dumbarton was the principal town in Strathclyde.

Bibliography: See J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (1882); F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (1947); P. H. Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (1962).

Strathclyde [ScG srath, valley; cf. cluden, a pre-Celtic name for water]. P-Celtic or British kingdom in Scotland, from the watershed of the Clyde River down to perhaps the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, flourishing from the 5th to the 8th centuries. Its capital was the great fortified rock of Dumbarton. Although Strathclyde was subsumed into the new kingdom of Scotland (844) formed by Cináed mac Ailpín [Kenneth MacAlpin], with Picts and the Scotti of Dál Riada, its men played an increasingly important part in the life of the country. The name Strathclyde was reborn in 1974 when Scotland was rearranged by district; the new county of Strathclyde includes areas from the former shires of Ayr, Lanark, Renfrew, Dunbarton, Stirling, and Argyll.