The language boundary is an example of a cultural frontier that has persisted, without legal status, for ten centuries or more. The boundary (with Welsh to the north and east, and English to the south and west) starts on St Bride’s Bay and follows a serpentine course eastwards until it meets the River Taf just north of Laugharne in Carmarthenshire. Traces of a boundary also persist across the Llansteffan peninsula and the country near Kidwelly, and it reappears strongly in the boundary between English and Welsh Gower. The area to the south of the line was referred to in the 16th century as "Anglia Transwalliana" (Little England beyond Wales).