RADNORIAN

Bill Sikes the Radnorian

2012-02-03T08:57:00.029Z

I've blogged about Bill Sheen before, see here.

I believe he was a model for the Dickens character Bill Sikes, although now we learn that the great novelist used the names of everyday folk from his teenage neighbourhood for some of his best-known creations. William Sykes, it seems, was a harmless tallow seller.

While not doubting that Dickens may have found the surname in that way, the character of Sikes is surely based in part on the Radnorian Sheen, once pursued from London to the Severn Arms in Penybont after slicing off the head of his jade Letitia's infant son and being subsequently found not-guilty of the murder on a legal nicety - twice!

Now Bill Sheen was not some anonymous Radnorian abroad in the smoke, he was famous, a 19C celebrity if you like. He was Sheen the infanticide, Sheen the child murderer, whose every scandalous court appearance for twenty years was reported assiduously in the public press - not least by the Thunderer itself.

Bill and his notorious mother Ann Sheen* ran brothels in Spitalfields, in particular in Wentworth Street. A street that was also home to another well known criminal, the receiver of stolen goods, Ikey Solomon - who many agree was the model for the Dickens character Fagin.

Sheen's brothels were infamous dens of child criminality where youngsters were lodged and sent out to pick pockets and plunder. Take a look at this evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Commons from 1837, just a year before the publication of Oliver Twist, evidence which was quoted verbatim in the Times.

And what of Sikes' moll, the unfortunate Nancy? Well in 1847 Bill Sheen was sentenced to two years with hard labour for violently assaulting and slashing his common law wife of eighteen years, one Mary Ann Sullivan. The Times reported that Sullivan had been "the subject of constant ill-usage" during her nearly two decades with Sheen and had frequently needed hospital attention after the brutal beatings she received. Was this violent relationship known to Dickens perhaps? He could certainly have read of the court case in 1836 where Bill had threatened to "rip up the bowels" of a lass called Mary Moore.

Radnorians may be interested in an obsequious letter Sheen wrote to the Lambeth Street magistrates from the New Prison in Clerkenwell, following the rescue of eight young mites from his clutches. Sheen boasted of "the respectability of my relations in Radnorshire." There was: a Mr___, a respectable farmer, and Mr___, shopkeeper and farmer at ___, and "aunt Sheen who lives on her own freehold estate at a place called ___, where my grandfather lived and kept his hounds for 70 years." Unfortunately the Times omits the actual names, no doubt to spare his relatives' blushes. If only the magistrates would release him, Sheen promised, he would leave London and go to Radnorshire and "never more trouble you." Thankfully for Radnorshire the magistrates ignored his plea and sent him down for 18 months.

* Like her neighbour Ikey Solomon Ann Sheen was a well-known fence - she owned a chandler's shop in Spitalfields. In 1840 at the age of 59 she was sentenced to be transported for 14 years. In the event Mrs Sheen pined away in the Millbank Penitentiary, dying in 1842. Ann left her not inconsiderable fortune in Bank Stock and properties to her favourite son, Bill.

Goodbye to all that

2012-01-09T13:28:00.007Z

This blog is six years old which seems a long enough run.

When I started back in 2006 there wasn't a lot of Radnorshire history on the web and some of it was nonsense.

Now we have this and this and this. More than enough to be getting on with.

By all means check back occasionally, I'll probably post something but not on a regular basis.

BBC mysteriously relocate mock town to Brecon Beacons*

2012-01-07T09:51:00.006Z

I'm not sure what to make of this. Expelling an entire community for pressing reasons of war and peace might have some justification ......... but paintballing?

Perhaps it's time that Epynt was handed back to the Welsh nation, but what would we do with it?

An adventure playground for off-roaders and weekend bikers perhaps
Smallholdings for "Good Life" downshifters
A nature reserve for the re-introduction of lost species - wolves, bear etc.
A sanctuary for banksters fleeing well-deserved retribution.

What about the establishment of welsh-speaking kibbutzim? This would have the added advantage that it could go ahead before the land was officially handed back - somewhat along the lines of the "illegal" settlements on the West Bank - and there wouldn't be much controversy as to who actually owned the land either.

Any ideas?

* So have the BBC relocated the mock town in the Brecon Beacons because:

a) They don't have much idea of Welsh geography north of Rhiwbeina
b) They want to write the Epynt story out of history

2012 - Bring it on

2011-12-31T12:49:00.002Z

Radnorian wishes all readers, and especially those who take the trouble to leave comments, a happy and prosperous - ok fat chance of that - New Year.

They have a dream ......

2011-12-30T11:20:00.007Z

It's December 31st 1965 and the Labour government has just received a report it commissioned on the building of a new town in Mid-Wales. The report recommends a town of some 60000 stretching 17 miles between Llani and Newtown. It looks like the dream of various businessmen, council officials and local politicians is coming to fruition. Then in March a bomb explodes at the nearby Clywedog reservoir, followed in July by Gwynfor Evans' victory at Carmarthen .... the plan to extend the West Midlands into Mid Wales is quietly dropped.

Never mind there are other cards to play and in the meantime we can all enjoy Brumbeat legends the Applejacks ... the Honeycombs might have had a girl drummer but the Solihull group had Megan Davies on bass.

Some More Radnorshire Surnames

2011-12-29T10:41:00.014Z

Addis - A surname that turns up in Radnorshire as early as 1634 and which was found mainly in Bugeildy parish well into the 19C. The name is said to derive from a pet form of Adam and occurs most commonly in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Gloucestershire, see here. Ade also occurs as a Welsh patronym - the Werdutvil daughter of Ade of Bleddfa in the tax assessment of 1293 and a local princeling Meurig ab Ade, fined 100 marks for rebelling against King John in 1211, are examples. It could be that the Radnorshire families owe their origin to this forename and their name is as patronymical as their Price and Cadwallader neighbours.

Minton - The surname can be found in the 1670 Hearth Tax for Colva and was there as early as the 1650s. Researchers might miss it though since it is omitted from the index to the tax published in the 1991 Radnorshire Society Transactions. The family may have originally come from Minton in Shropshire, although by 1688 John Minton was happy enough to see his daughter christened Gwenllian in Colva parish church. There were still Mintons in Glascwm, Rhiwlen and Bryngwyn in the 19C although others had migrated to the coalfield. I'm not claiming any Radnorian connection with this "date from hell" mind.

Wozencroft - Can there be a local surname with more spelling variations: Woozencroft, Worsencroft, Wosencraft, Wostencraft, Wostencroft, Wozencraft are just some from the 1841 Census. It's a name that was found in the Radnorshire parishes of Bugeildy, Llanbister and Llanyre in the 1670 Hearth Tax, having come into the county from Montgomeryshire where it crops up in Llanidloes as early as 1578. Said to originate from the Lancashire placename Wolstencroft it no doubt entered Wales as part of the Elizabethan plantation in Western Montgomeryshire. The 19C censuses show that Wozencroft and Wozencraft are overwhelmingly names associated with Mid Wales, see here for example. Who knows, perhaps the family of the author of the book on which this cult movie is based - it's available to view on youtube - came from Radnorshire.

We will come if we are fetched......

2011-12-27T11:18:00.011Z

Although Powlett Milbank, the Tory elected to serve Radnorshire in Parliament in 1895, decided not to contest the 1900 election because of ill-health, he continued as Lord Lieutenant of the county until his death in January 1918. It was in this capacity that in 1915 he expressed his keen disappointment that the men of Radnorshire were reluctant to join the army and go to war. When Sir Powlett challenged them they would respond "we will come if we are fetched."

The Military Service Act of 1916 ensured that reluctant Radnorians were indeed fetched to the colours, although in the case of the Davenport brothers, Len and Ernie, this was unnecessary, both having joined the South Wales Borderers before the start of the War. Indeed 1914 found Len in China participating in the Japanese led attack on the German controlled port of Tsintao. Later he would serve in Gallipoli before being killed in France in July 1917. His brother Ernie was gassed during the retreat from Mons and discharged as being medically unfit. Ernie died in Mardy hospital a few days before his older brother. Eighteen year old Arthur, the last surviving Davenport boy, was killed in France on 28th October 1918.

All three names are recorded on the War Memorial in Llandrindod - the loss of three brothers was not at all unusual, indeed the same memorial lists the names of three Hope brothers who also died in the First World War. The Davenport names can also be seen, although spelt incorrectly, on the memorial in St David's church Howey.

Years ago I read some letters belonging to the Davenports - a little notebook Len had used when hospitalised in England, containing snatches of conversation written down, perhaps because he was deaf. There was a bitterness about the war in various hands as well as comments that suggested that the unangelic nurse is not just a modern-day phenomenon. A fatalistic letter to his sister sent a couple of days before he was killed expressed Len's gratitude that at least his discharged brother Ernie would survive the war. As it happened Ernie had died just a few days before the letter was posted. There was a bombastic letter to his brother in France from a youthful Arthur describing a cinema newsreel he had seen and a letter to their sister Gwladys from the matron of the hospital where Ernie had been treated. "Your brother suffered a great deal before he died" it explained with a good deal more honesty than compassion.

How wise those Radnorians were who informed the bellicose Sir Powlett that they would only come if they were fetched.

D-Day Dodgers

2011-12-26T00:37:00.008Z

We're the D-Day Dodgers out in Italy
Always on the vino, always on the spree

My father, with the 'tache, doing a bit of D-Day dodging out in Italy, although I suppose it might be North Africa. He would have been 100 today!

Putting on Weight

2011-12-21T23:50:00.008Z

The Radnorshire Society Transactions - and many thanks to the National Library for making so much historical information available on-line - has a couple of references to a murder committed in 1554 by a William Treylo of Ackhill. William had killed one John Hebbe in Presteigne by striking him a single blow to the head with a hedge bill.

Another Treylo - a name probably derived from a local placename Maes Treylow near Discoed and responsible for modern day surnames such as Traylor, Trelloe and Trillo - who fell foul of the law was John Treylo, also of Ackhill, who was seemingly pressed to death in 1578, the punishment reserved for those who refused to plead and sometimes chosen in order to avoid a guilty verdict and the subsequent confiscation of family property by the crown. Pressing continued until 1741 while burning at the stake, a punishment by then reserved for women, wasn't abolished until 1790.

Welsh in New Radnor

2011-12-19T01:41:00.008Z

How to reconcile these two quotes:

"New Radnor was planted as a Saxon colony by Harold, after his victory here over the Britons, two years before his death at Hastings. This people have never since had any sympathies with the Welsh in language, nor many in habits .." - Sir William Cockburn of Downton House, evidence to the Commission of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, February 1847.

"... all English here, New Radnor is not four miles from hence, where there is nothing but Welsh." - Lewis Morris in a letter written from the King's Head, Kington, February 1742.

Of course Cockburn is correct in believing that there was Saxon settlement in the area, local placenames provide abundant evidence of that, but he is certainly wrong in believing that this was a district where the Welsh language never flourished. The local gentry were patrons of the bards until the 17C and a quick glance at the Lay Subsidy of 1543 should settle the matter. Nor was there any great divide between those with English style surnames and those with patronyms. Wills from the period and names like Morgan Hoddell or Dyddgu Stones - an interesting local surname probably derived from the Four Stones at Walton - are evidence of that. And what of Anne Sasnes - Anne the Englishwoman - who witnessed a New Radnor will in 1548, a strange name in a town which had no sympathy for the Welsh language.

Perhaps Cockburn thought he was doing his neighbours a favour by disassociating them from any taint Welshness. After all this was a time when the Eton boys who were the leading Liberal political bigwigs in the area believed the Welsh to be a race of "miserable Celtic savages."

So what then of Lewis Morris? Some Welsh academics have doubted his evidence but it seems to me that it was consistent with what we know. In 1827, while describing the Welsh dialect of Llandrindod, the correspondent of the monthly magazine Y Gwyliedydd informs us that the language had retreated twenty miles in living memory - more than enough to encompass New Radnor some 80 years before. James Beaumont of the Gore, the Methodist exhorter who died in 1750, was said to be happier preaching in Welsh than in English. In 1744 a traveller to Llandrindod encountered an old man in Bleddfa who could speak no English, and between there and Llanfihangel Rhydithon heard little Engish except for an innkeeper who spoke the language "indifferent good". If the language survived in these two parishes, which from surname evidence had seen a good deal of in-migration, why not in New Radnor which had not.

Finally Sir William Cockburn might have considered the field names of Downton itself. When the railway came to New Radnor around 1860, local fields such as Pwll Mawn, Clos y Garreg, Plocau Melyn and Maes Downton were mentioned - evidence of a Welsh speaking past and a fairly recent one at that.

Musical Interlude

2011-12-18T12:24:00.003Z

With a German hegemony likely in the EU will this be the future of popular music? These girls are getting bigger and blonder and those serial-killer smiles even more unsettling. I like them and at least we'd get good beer and good sausage. Of course we might get this, in which case scrub the beer and sausage.

The Stately Homes of Radnor

2011-12-18T12:07:00.009Z

Did you miss this characteristically snobbish headline in the Daily Mail from a couple of weeks ago? It suggests that Downton Abbey - a popular television entertainment - is based on an "aristocratic pile" in Radnorshire. I doubt if the series would have had much success if creator Julian Fellowes, his grandmother was from Llandegley, had called the blockbuster Penybont Hall. Perhaps in coming up with the name Fellowes had in mind two other Radnorian houses - Downton House and Abbeycwmhir Hall?

Book of the Week

2011-12-07T12:43:00.010Z

Real Powys, that's a good one, for a county dreamt up in the 1970s by bureaucrats with a passing but imprecise knowledge of medieval history. Anyway it's part of a series from Seren Books that includes Real Llanelli, Real Merthyr and the like, so we can excuse the faintly oxymoronic title.

The paperback consists of 39 offbeat pieces based around towns and districts in the county, some 200 pages in all. As well as the expected, Richard Booth and Adelina Patti, we also get more rootsy stuff, Harry Tuffin's, or a day at Penybont races for example. Mind you I could have done without the author's exploits with a hairy 'lumberjack' in the Abergwesyn pass.

Mistakes? Well you don't have to ford the Ithon to get from Cilmeri to Llanynys but Parker certainly knows his subject. There's an I-spy game for Gogs to while away the happy hours on the A470 - 3 points if you see a car scrape it's hubcaps on the metalled kerbing going on to Builth Bridge.

Who should read this book? Certainly the author's soap-dodging, dream-weaving, down-shifting, white-flighting, Guardian-reading, gastro-pubbing incomers. Also locals who like to read other viewpoints on the familiar, Llandrindod's fresh air for instance is "Patchouli, with faint opiate top notes." Yes we've all caught a whiff of those. At £9.99 it might also make a useful Christmas present for whichever public servant was responsible for an information board recording "the legend of Prince Llewelyn."

Verdict. It's not Paul Theroux but it'll do.

Innes Ireland - The Golden Age of Motorsport

2011-12-03T08:10:00.003Z

Since the blog started I've posted a lot about Innes Ireland, the Grand Prix driver who once lived at Downton House, New Radnor, so I guess I shouldn't ignore this hour-long documentary which has just appeared on youtube.

Brycheiniog

2011-12-03T00:37:00.003Z

Charitable Radnorians will be pleased that the journal Brycheiniog is now available on the Welsh Journals Online site, see here.

South will meet with North

2011-11-30T16:08:00.004Z

For too long all roads led east, little wonder that Wales was an end-of-the-line country with a dead-end economy. Radnorian salutes the workers who completed this section of the north-south link ahead of time and on budget. We look forward to the by-passing of Builth and a Radnorshire in the middle of Wales rather than the middle of nowhere.

Tip: If you don't like the soundtrack mute it or better still play this.

Ignorance, Drunkenness and the Clergy

2011-11-24T23:36:00.006Z

No doubt peeved by the unexpected defeat of Frank Edwards in the 1895 General Election by the Tory candidate Powlett Milbank, the newspaper Cymro returned to a familiar theme of the Victorian Welsh language press, the immorality of the Radnorshire population. How the 48.7% of the electorate who had actually supported Edwards fitted into their paganistic fantasy I don't know.

Meanwhile Baner ac Amserau Cymru put the defeat down to drunkenness, ignorance and the clergy. If that sounds a little similar to the usual Unionist accusations against the priest-ridden Irish then it was a tad ironic that Milbank's campaign had been supported by Ulstermen shipped into the county to canvass on behalf of the anti-Home Rulers. Poor Radnorshire in need of fire and brimstone missionaries from both the unionist and nationalist perspective.

Daniel Carter - Who He?

2011-11-22T11:25:00.005Z

I thought my copy of Meic Stephens' Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales was pretty well-thumbed but, somehow or other, one entry of Radnorshire interest managed to escape attention for the last 25 years.

Daniel Carter, it seems, was the author of a book-length descriptive poem published in Llanidloes in 1863 entitled Rhaiadr Gwy. Now this poem, the Radnorshire Museum have a copy, may well be worth reading for its "notes historical and topographical, antiquarian and archaeological." The Oxford Companion also mentions two other works - The Legend of Devil's Bridge and The Rose of Pont Vathew - although these have so far escaped the notice of the internet.

So who was this Daniel Carter, whose "life's work" was as Master of the Foundation Grammar School at Rhayader, an institution which seems to be as obscure as Carter's connection with the town? In 1840 when he wrote Rhaiadr Gwy he was living, by his own account, at Ffynnon Fair Cottage in the town. His full name was Daniel Pepper Carter, born in Lambeth around 1808 with no apparent connection to Wales. I can first spot him in the 1851 Census when he was living in Newtown and described as a teacher of languages. His wife Elizabeth, they had recently married, was from Hay, or more likely Betws Clyro. By 1861 the couple had moved to Ashby de la Zouch and Carter had promoted himself to be a professor of languages. In 1871 he is at Hereford, an author-miscellaneous and blind. Carter died a few weeks later on 30th June 1871.

Does someone know more about the elusive Mr Carter or his Foundation Grammar School at Rhayader?

Till the people will bear it no more.

2011-11-17T00:01:00.009Z

A journalistic view of the Rhayader district from 1843

I wonder how accurate a description it was? Stuffing rags or turf in a window opening doesn't sound very likely. I know there was something similar in the Blue Books, turf walls, leaking roofs, dung heaps, but I do wonder if there is a degree of culture shock behind these viewpoints. Surely the Radnorshire housewife would have demanded as much comfort as possible in her hovel, a dry roof at least. While the dung/compost heap against the wall sounds like a good source of heat. I'm surprised that the councils haven't made it compulsory.

Er ... and the other 31% are what exactly?

2011-11-14T10:42:00.009Z

Click to enlarge. As to the gist well it sounds like a good idea but what about the malicious and frivolous accusations it's bound to engender? More jobs for the salaried classes of course, more pressure on low paid carers doing their best to cope. Out-of-hours, unannounced, get-up-go-round-and-gaze inspections rather than relying on the current announced paper-trail visits might be an idea. Mind you this would involve public servants getting up in the middle of the night, so it's probably a no-no.

Oh and isn't there already a body who investigate all allegations of physical abuse...... the police.

Musical Interlude

2011-11-14T10:06:00.002Z

Obviously the revival of Irish hasn't gone quite as well as it should have.

But never mind, here we have the best motor sport song since Arriva Tazio by Trio Lescano, plus some epic bad driving and a guest appearance by everyone's favourite rally marshal.

Nothing on the Blog?

2011-11-14T08:37:00.004Z

No new posts? I'm blaming a bit of a breakthrough I recently made on the family history front in finally identifying a great grandfather from Monmouthshire's Black Domain. This led to far too much time spent investigating such interesting topics as the anti-Irish riots in Pontlottyn in 1869 - an idea for a future post here, Radnorians involved in South Wales riots.

It turns out that this difficult to track down ancestor's paternal line ends up in New Quay in Cardiganshire or Cei Newy as his father informed the census enumerator. The maternal line goes back to that little bit of Radnor irredenta that is the Herefordshire parish of Huntington.

More posts to come? Well Piers Corbyn is predicting a December as cold and as snowy as that of 2010. So hopefully enforced shopping trips, at least, will be at a minimum.

Hamlet the Dane

2011-11-02T11:58:00.007Z

The Welsh Land Commission, set up by the government to enquire into the relationship between tenants and landlords, came to Rhayader to take evidence in May 1894. As well as hearing from tenants who had suffered injustices, such as being evicted without compensation for the improvements they had made to their holdings, the commissioners also took evidence from tenants who had nothing but praise for the landowning class. One such claimed that he doubted if many tenants would come forward to complain, "We take pride in believing that we are descended from Hamlet the Dane. We are not exactly Cymro in Radnorshire."

"Then how came you to have the name David Lloyd?" asked commissioner Rhys to laughter from the audience.

"A colony of Danes settled in Radnor from whom I say we are descended" replied the tenant, which was no doubt news to the eminent chair of Celtic at Jesus College, Oxford.

So why did Mr Lloyd claim kinship with the Danes? A hint of something had been reported in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1881: "I have heard a legend in Radnorshire that the 'Denes' (Danes) ploughed the hills; and if you ask who the 'Denes' were, you will be told simply that the 'Denes' were red men."

So there may well have been some legend or other floating around. The real reason though must lie with the attitudes of the day. The Welsh, for "Radnorshire's most distinguished son" George Cornewall Lewis and his circle of Liberal Old Etonian chums, had been "a miserable race of Celtic savages." Meanwhile scientists obsessed about negrescence and the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon to the Celts of Wales and Ireland. Little wonder that the occasional Radnorian might clutch at the straw, however farfetched, of belonging to a Teutonic tribe.

Myfanwy Fenton

2011-11-01T22:58:00.008Z

While wilfing around the internet I came across this reprint of a book originally published in 1863, you can actually read an online version if you have the time to spare!

So who was this Myfanwy Fenton who also translated a book from Icelandic, published in 1877, called Three Sketches of Life in Iceland and a book of poems, St. Lawrence Orphanage published in Copenhagen in 1874?

Myfanwy was the grand-daughter of the Pembrokeshire literary figure Richard Fenton, in the 1851 Census she is living at Glynamel, Fishguard with her uncle John Fenton. She is described as being a governess, 25, born in Waltham, Lincolnshire. From other sources she can be identified as being the daughter of John's brother Richard, a clergyman.

John Fenton was an interesting character, an artist, a musician and archaeologist and Examiner at the Foreign Branch of the War Office. According to his nephew he was "a man of dissipated life, learnt in the circle of Carlton House and association there with the Prince Regent and his companions."

Myfanwy/Myvanwy was an unusual name in Wales in the first half of the 19C, with just 3 examples in the 1851 Census, although maybe there were a few more transcribed incorrectly. In the 1841 Census John Fenton is recorded as staying in the Denbighshire home of Jane, wife of his brother-in-law the Welsh scholar Aneurin Owen. The Owens also had a daughter Myvanwy, born around the same time as Fenton's niece.

Myfanwy Fenton isn't found in any census after 1851. In the 1870s she was a language teacher living in Copenhagen. The book of poetry she published there was dedicated to Baroness Mohrenheim, wife of the Russian envoy to Denmark. Given her uncle's association with the War Office I'd like to imagine that Myfanwy was a spy.

A Radnorshire Jury ..... to be continued

2011-10-30T23:27:00.005Z

It seemed an open and shut case, Samuel Williams of Norton had stolen Richard Stephens' coat. There was surprise when the jury asked if they could retire to consider the verdict and incredulity when they returned three hours later with a not guilty verdict. They had been unable to agree the jurymen admitted, so in the end they had cast lots. One public spirited member having sacrificed his walking stick for the purpose.

The magistrates were outraged, the verdict was set aside and the matter sent forward to the next Assize. As for the jurymen they were fined £5 each, a sizeable sum in 1834.

Jo-Jo and the Chambermaid

2011-10-30T20:45:00.010Z

In 1910 it seems that a husband was legally responsible for the slanderous words uttered by his wife, which is why Mr J found himself as a defendant in a slander case brought at Glamorgan Assizes by a former employee of his Llandrindod hotel.

The plaintiff, 25 year old Miss L, owed her French surname not to Paris but to her Jersey born father. Infact she was from Brynmelin in Swansea. Mary, the hotel management insisted on calling her Edith, had something of a chequered past, having been dismissed from previous posts for dishonesty. Still Mr J, a prominent Liberal politician in the county, had given the girl a second chance, although, no doubt, his wife kept a watchful eye on the new recruit.

One permanent resident of the hotel was the talented Mr B. He had previously been engaged to Mr J's daughter but she had tragically died. A favourite of the maids who christened him Jo-Jo, the young but sickly Mr B was manager of the town's Electric Light Company and chairman of its Steam Laundry Company.

One evening Mrs J suspected that Mr B was entertaining Miss L in his room and barged in, conducting a search by looking under the bed and in the wardrobe. Finding nothing Mrs J went to look for Miss L, only to catch a glimpse of the errant maid leaving the room she had just examined. Accusations were levelled and the maid dismissed from her employment. This it was that led the blameless Mr J and his accusatory spouse to be sat in Cardiff while the hotel's dirty washing was displayed before a courtroom audience populated, the papers sniggered, by a large number of ministers of religion.

Yes, said one witness, a couple of the maids at the hotel, let's call it Hill Breeze, did spend time in guests' rooms of an evening. Maggie and Hetty and Polly gave evidence that favoured their mistress, while Miss L's employment history was dissected by the hotel owners' counsel, the MP for Carmarthenshire East and the MP for Anglesey - I did mention that Mr J was a prominent local Liberal. Mind you the maid (a labourer's daughter, so hardly wealthy) was represented by a KC. It makes one think that there may have been some political skulduggery afoot.

Indeed it was the maid's counsel who won the day, producing a medical certificate which confirmed that Miss L was ........ well the newspapers didn't spell it out. In the light of this revelation Mrs J was forced to concede that her suspicions must have been ill-founded. Verdict £100 and costs to the plaintiff.

Nothing in the Papers

2011-10-30T10:23:00.006Z

I bought this book - it's a general history of Britain up to the present day - a few years ago and I'd happily pass it on to Oxfam except for the fact I wouldn't want the unsuspecting to read nonsense like this:

"If she could speak, would her words be in Old English - a Germanic language - rather than the Gaelic and Latin used by the townspeople of Roman Dorchester."

It isn't an isolated example of the author - he was Chief Archaeologist with English Heritage - using Gaelic when he means Brythonic, the ancestral language of Welsh not Irish.

According to the Sunday Times this "massively informative" volume will help cure "our current identity crisis." If the English do have an identity crisis it might help if widely held prejudices be put aside and the Welsh/British contribution to their history be given a little more consideration.

All in all a book that suggests that archaeologists should stick to bonekicking.

Moving on .......... There are those who believe that the 15C bard Llawdden comes from Loughor while others maintain he was from Machynlleth. I think I'm correct in saying that the earliest manuscript reference to his origins says he was Maelienydd, which later went to contribute much of modern day Radnorshire. Certainly there is agreement that his poems show that he lived here, possibly in Cefnllys. It seems that Llawdden was a very rare Welsh forename, and here's an example from 16C Radnorshire. It's from the 1546 Lay Subsidy for that part of Llanddewi Ystradenni parish in Knighton hundred: Llowthen ap David. It's Lloyden in the 1543 version and in the Radnorshire Society's index to the Lay Subsidy, so I guess it could get overlooked. Who knows, maybe a grandson of the bard.

Hwntws or Gogs (part One)

2011-10-22T23:13:00.005+01:00

If the Welsh dialect of St Harmon and Cwmteuddwr was similar to that of neighbouring Montgomeryshire and the lost dialects of places like Glasbury and Boughrood were similar to close at hand Breconshire parishes such as Talgarth, then somewhere within Radnorshire, south must have met with north.

As far as I know the dialectologists never managed to get hold of a speaker of Radnorian Welsh from the Rhayader area, even though some, doubtless as rare and unnoticed as pine martens, must have lived on well into the 20C. Fat chance of them interviewing folk who lived in parishes where Welsh had disappeared by the 19C then.

But hang on, riding to the rescue is Richard Suggett, the fellow who authored that splendid book on Radnorshire houses. Rotting away in the archives he discovered reports of slander cases where the words of long dead Radnorians come back to life. An example from Gladestry in 1726 "Di gyrn di dorrws y twlle sydd in di hatt di" - "Your horns tore the holes that are in your hat." Now the interesting thing here is the use of the verb ending ws rather than odd - dorrws not dorrodd - this is a feature of the dialects of South East Wales. The map shows the use of these two endings in Radnorshire slander cases from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries - info from here.

From the look of things Elfael - at least the hundred of Painscastle and maybe Colwyn as well - seems more influenced by Gwenhwyseg (Gwentian Welsh) than do Maelienydd and Gwerthrynion - the hundreds of Knighton, Cefnllys and Rhayader.

Nothing to report

2011-10-21T20:30:00.009+01:00

Just imagine what the BBC and its media pals would have made of this if it had been said by someone whose politics they didn't like, Condi Rice for example.

Keywords

2011-10-20T00:53:00.006+01:00

It's always interesting to check out the keywords used to find the blog. Some provide ideas for a post, while others just leave you puzzled. Why for example should I get regular hits from searchers looking for "London transport bus found on the moon?"

I'm not sure what to make of the following search term that popped up a couple of days ago. I could understand if it originated in Builth, but this was from Lyon in France:

The Spannerman's Tale

2011-10-19T13:34:00.009+01:00

Maybe it's old age but even today's stars seem less interesting than the spannermen of the 1950s. I doubt for example if Button or Hamilton will ever inspire a volume as good as the 1957 autobiography (as told to Peter Lewis) Alf Francis, Racing Mechanic.

Someone who figured prominently in that book was Alf's youthful protege Tony Robinson. Now, getting on for 60 years after he first worked with the Polish-born Francis, we're promised an autobiography of Robinson himself (as told to Ian Wagstaff).

No doubt tales of Stirling Moss will dominate but hopefully Innes Ireland will get a look-in, Robinson was chief mechanic with the BRP team when the Scotsman led them on the track in 1962, 1963 and 1964. You can watch the pair around the 0.54 mark in this rather wonderful footage as Innes explains to a patient Tony how he's just bent the car.

Will it match up to the Francis book? With a promised 160 pages and 120 photographs compared to the dense, 300 plus information packed pages of the 1950s page-turner it's doubtful. But at least it's not another Hamilton bio.

Bedo Brwynllys

2011-10-17T22:56:00.007+01:00

For me Welsh lessons in Llandrindod Grammar School lasted for the five minutes or so it took the headmaster E. V. Howells to ask the newly arrived first formers if they wanted to take French or Welsh. I chose French because that was what my pals from the National School were signing up for. My father, who like many working-class Radnorians wished he could speak the language, was disappointed and as it turned out I hated French. I would probably have hated Welsh as well, if I'd taken that. Years later when I'd picked up a bit of the lingo I translated a load of bardic poems with the help of Geiriadur Mawr. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the three translations below probably include some howlers. Perhaps I should take another look at them with the help of the online Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru but I really can't spare the time. What can't be translated, of course, is the intricate metre and craftmanship of these poems.

They are examples of the type of poem composed by young bards advising brides not to wed and married women to take a lover. I'd guess they were just a bit of fun and performed for the amusement of the assembly in the presence of the potential or actual spouse. I'd doubt if they expressed any real romantic attachment, these bards were in the business of making a living, not parading their emotions. The first certainly sounds as if it was being declaimed to a bride and groom at a wedding feast, the second laments the cutting down of a wood by a jealous husband and the third is an example of dyfalu, the piling up of metaphor, in this case to describe an eyebrow.

The poems are by the 15C bard Bedo Brwynllys who the experts say was from Bronllys near Talgarth. Why couldn't he be from the township of Brwynllys in Llanbister parish?

Y fun ddifai, fwyn ddwyfes

The blameless girl, a gentle goddess
White-necked, bright as the sun on the gable,
Jet brows upon two rosy cheeks,
With a face like fresh snow;
For beauty and grace,
There’s no seabird as fair as you!
God placed a roof of burnished gold
Upon your hair, newly roofed gold.
Is it any wonder then
That love has me in its thrall,
Has me languishing with sickness,
Fair one, my world’s without comfort!
Fair one, the girl who makes me ill,
Gentle fair one, should make me well!
Come fair one with your hair of gold,
To the greenwood, you with the golden hair,
For fear of misfortune, some sheltered bank,
Fair one, your husband has an evil nature.

Your kindred, fair brilliant girl,
Would love to sell you, fair one:
Come, to me, I’d not turn you away,
Look he’s an old man!
Don’t strike a bargain with an old miser
And upon false promises;
When he has you, the arch-miser will break his oath,
You’ll never be free of him.
You’ll never enjoy happiness again
Not one day in ten,
Only scolding each day, and anger,
That will leave you pining.

Graceful fair one, gossamer of light,
You have a beautiful face,
Love a young man who loves you,
Well respected in his country,
Place your faith in hands that respect you,
Avoid the hands of anger;
Fair one, for your life, don’t of your own free will
Seek foolish servitude, not even if you’re forced.

Y ddyn fwyn addwyn feinawl

The slim, gentle, kindly girl,
My plighted love, my rightful goddess;
Such terrible work, alas for lovers,
May your husband be speared, an easy task?
There’s no single spot in creation
Where he does not have his spies!
Yet my desire is greater
And he fears me, more and more.

There was, for those who would make love,
A pleasant grove, just ready for May;
He’s killed that pretty thicket -
A slaughter like that of wretched Troy!
Two fellows, yesterday, with axes
Came to the wood, two stupid men,
And death came to the innocent crowd.
It was Eiddig and his servant
Who left the fair vale naked,
Those enemies of the ash lined brook.
This was their cruel purpose,
(Let them be chased by devils!
A thief whom all despise)
To murder with evil hands.
A bad life for such filthy wretches,
Let Eiddig’s house suffer,
Let a swollen rumped hangman’s horse
Sit under his evil servant.

He grew bitter about a fair spoken girl,
He grew eager for fire,
(Oh see the place where love once was whispered)
The desolate grove is now a clearing
Full of stumps and pathways,
Where once there was wood,
Tree stumps and tangled roots,
Woodchips from some yokel’s axe.
Little wonder that on yonder slope
Eiddig is left bereft of birch trees,
He keeps no wooded parkland,
He tolerates no branches.
This very day the man has
Felled a woodland to the ground.
He’d cut down the Lord’s prayer itself
With his great sword in his hand!
That very hand cut down the wood.
A shelter for every gentle person
Brought there by desire.

There’s an evil about his house,
A spear for his belly, the arch villain,
Oh let summer give sprout to it.
A disaster‘s overtaken the world,
There’ll be no small saplings,
Isn’t it wretched, a stockpile of logs
Which will never bear their need of leaves?
Where a poet was once beneath the hazels,
In a shady place with a message of love,
A bare expanse has now been created.

Yet there’s a means, let me recite,
To take revenge when summer comes:
I’ll love the maid more than ever
The churl will pay for burning the wood!

Gwelais mewn ffair ddisgleirddyn

I saw a radiant girl at a fair,
She had the look of a bright mirror.
I saw fine brows like a squirrel’s,
How wretched there’s no better word!
I saw in the wink of her eye,
A sweet smile, shining and frownless.
I saw again a slim-browed maid,
A queen playing tricks on her lord,
I responded to Olwen’s gesture,
I’m mocked, caught by a fair girl.
A girl’s lashes made me weep,
Alas I was ever born!
Not a red brow, a quiet spoken girl,
Not blond nor yellow, by Mary:
A slim, black brow mocked me,
And left me lost for words.

It’s colour was drawn with berry juice,
A thin line like a rainbow;
A black circle on chalk,
An elegant wheel rim;
Appointed, from fine velvet,
To a high place, a tiny brow.
Black placed in a prominent place
On the sweet-wise queen, a pure black straw,
A shallow boss, a compass line on chalk,
The fresh hue of the blackbird,
A girl’s brow (let her come to the greenwood)
Of smithy soot, exceedingly thin,
A handle of gleaming black marble
Beneath a radiant osier chaplet.
God was good, he was blameless,
Placing a seal on a girl’s temple.
A rod’s trace on her forehead,
Part of the head’s hair,
A black sign as the forehead’s seam.
A fresh weld of crystal.
Prettily the party placed on a maid,
A pleated and divided mane;
A slim guard over a blush,
Gossamer on the vine’s face,
And the colour, like chalk on a sheet
Spattered with blackberry.
A round of silk, a chosen dress,
The soldered brow, a discreet mark.
The tip of a wing in the snow,
A barely visible string of jet beads.
Slim-browed queen, a glove seam,
A silk loom, fair silver brow,
An untwisted thread
Over the rose petals.
Your brow is faultless, powder of Liere,
Poppy seed blackening paper;
Not a mark on a sheet,
No such thing, that’s too thick.
A copy of a chapel print,
An exquisite stitch around a ball,
An ink-crest, God’s cross,
The merest wand of a round letter.

I received a memorable wink,
A subtle smile from a whinberry brow.
My surmise on receiving the pretty nod
Was that the girl would fall into my arms.
She loved to play tricks on her lord,
She’d not cheapen her body with a fool.
Despite her winking she seeks no tryst,
She’ll not come, she never said she would!

"Died for England"

2011-10-14T08:59:00.012+01:00

Above is the somewhat Gothic war memorial in the Radnorshire village of Norton, it was designed to serve as a horse trough and drinking fountain. The wording on the memorial is of interest since it was "erected by the grateful village of Norton to commemorate the names of its faithful sons who fought and died for England and liberty."

Should this wording annoy patriotic Cymry? There was a time when no sooner had some Welsh folk set foot on mainland Europe than they would boast, maddeningly, about England or how they had met "another English couple." As if their new found friends were saying the same about them! Nowadays I think we can excuse the good villagers of Norton for this historical anomaly. In any case the wording on the memorial is probably quite accurate. I did look-up the census records of the two First World War names on the monument and was surprised that the elder brother of one, a 20 year old born in Heyop, was listed as being able to speak Welsh. An error or perhaps the result of a period of work in a Welsh speaking area?

Mind you when I saw this during a Google search I did have a potentially dangerous rise in blood pressure, only saved by the realisation that it was a cock-up confusion with some place in Leicestershire rather than a plot to tweeify Radnorshire :

Averse to acknowledge any Lord

2011-10-12T09:24:00.005+01:00

In the early 1630s a strapped-for-cash King Charles sold the crown estate of Maelienydd to some rogues or other, much to the consternation of the citizenry of Radnorshire. Their solution was to make a collection, they raised £741 12s, which they then gave to the king as a gift, with the helpful suggestion that he might like to use the windfall to buy back what he had so recently sold. Charles did indeed re-purchase the lordship of Maelienydd but was soon in negotiation with Thomas Harley of Brampton Bryan to lease out the land. Harley's plan was to charge rent to the many hundreds of squatters on the commons. This caused such a kerfuffle that the plan was abandoned, although the Harleys were able to get their paws on the lordship during Cromwell's dictatorship.

Moving on to 1758 and King George leased out the wastes and commons of the lordship of Maelienydd - a substantial portion of the parishes of Llanddewi, Llanbister, Bugeildy, Heyop, Llanbadarn Fynydd, Llananno, Llanfihangel Rhydeithon, Llangynllo, Gladestry, Colfa, St Harmon, Cwmteuddwr and Nantmel. Again the plan was to squeeze the hundreds of squatter families by charging them rent. Such was the opposition both physical and legal, that the scheme was abandoned, the crown agent, John Lewis of Harpton, complaining of "'the natural dispositions of people being averse to turn tenants and acknowledge any Lord."

Of course the resistance of the cottagers to enclosure was to be a feature of 19C Radnorshire, just as it had been in the previous two centuries. Radnorshire had a larger percentage of freeholders than in some Welsh counties and these, together with the squatters, meant that there were a substantial number of folk who were indeed "averse to turn tenants and acknowledge any Lord." I wonder if they were the descendants of the troublesome class called manwyr in the works of the bard Sion Ceri, poor folk with a pedigree, the younger sons of younger sons. They certainly seem ready to use the law and even physical force to uphold their rights.

Perhaps these independently minded folk were responsible for the very rapid process of language shift in Radnorshire. Firstly they lived in proximity to England and so had the possiblity of picking up the English language through everyday discourse. Secondly they had every reason to learn English in order to protect themselves from men who would be their masters.

A 150 years before Saunders Lewis' lecture Tynged yr Iaith the Radnorshire historian Jonathan Williams discussed language shift in the border parish of Bugeildy. His analysis of why this had occured seems very modern:

"An increased intercourse with England, a more general interchange of the commodities and produce of these two countries respectively, and, above all, the introduction of that jurisprudence with which the inhabitants of Wales found it necessary to be familiarized, as well as the diction in which all legal pleadings, deeds, conveyances, processes, &c., are executed, soon undermined that predilection for their mother tongue which was before their distinguishing character, and rendered the study and acquisition of the English language necessary, not only as an accomplishment, but also as a matter of indispensable interest."

Well it made me laugh

2011-10-11T00:47:00.004+01:00

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walked into a bar ............ the Welshman was still in New Zealand.

Forgotten Radnorian?

2011-10-01T08:03:00.006+01:00

On the face of it Enoch Powell isn't a Forgotten Radnorian at all. His Radnorshire connections are mentioned in biographies written by competent authors and put out by reliable publishers.

Mr Powell would make a worthy addition to the list of those Radnorians who have made a contribution to Welsh scholarship. After all he was the joint editor of Llyfr Blegywryd, an edition of a version of the Laws of Hywel Dda published by the University Of Wales.

Unfortunately when we look for a Radnorian connection what do we find? It's easy enough to trace the Powells as far back as the mid 18C, they come from Somerset. Likewise his mother's family, the Breezes, are found in Newport, Shropshire. His other grandparents' lines show no recent Radnorshire roots either.

A case of authors repeating "a fact" for which they have no evidence?

At Least it's not a €

2011-09-30T19:22:00.007+01:00

So the new £50 note, featuring former Radnorshire resident James Watt, comes into circulation on 2nd November.

By the time the current generation of politicians have finished bailing out their banker pals we'll be lucky if it'll buy a packet of wine gums from Doldowlod's Spar Shop.

Theomania in Llanyre

2011-09-28T23:18:00.010+01:00

Since 120 years is hardly any time at all in Radnorshire terms, you will forgive your blogger for being somewhat reticent in naming names and places in the following tale of religious mania from 1890.

The events, which created quite a stir in and around Llandrindod, commenced when two farming brothers began purchasing astrological materials which, together with articles in the religious press, convinced them that they were Moses and Aaron, some reports say Jesus and the Anti-Christ, and that their sister was Miriam. Their behaviour had already set tongues wagging but on one February morning the pair visited neighbours imploring them to come with them as they were journeying to heaven. No-one took up their offer except for a servant girl of sixteen who tagged along as they proceeded from Llanyre towards Llandrindod and then on towards Crossgates, singing hymns and shouting ecstatically as they went.

The servant girl's master rode after the party, persuading a Constable Price to give chase. The pilgrims were eventually overtaken and fisticuffs ensued, Moses and Aaron being subdued with the help of a local farmer and a gardener. The pilgrimage, now joined by curious on-lookers, continued, but this time in the direction of the cells at Penybont police station rather than the promised land. There was no police station in Llandrindod at that time, indeed Penybont was the headquarters of the Radnorshire Constabulary. Safely lodged in the cells, their young convert had wanted to join them but was chased away, the brothers were soon committed to the asylum in Abergavenny. Their sister Miriam, who was gripped with the same mania was deemed safe to remain at home.

The brothers couldn't have remained in Abergavenny very long, within a couple of months the eldest brother had married a sixteen year old bride, presumably their young convert. The couple were still farming in the locality at the time of the 1911 census.

"Some Young Cymro"

2011-09-27T08:36:00.007+01:00

I knew that Winifred the mother of the poet Kit Smart was a Radnorian, indeed he boasted of the fact - who wouldn't - in Jubilate Agno: For I am the seed of the Welch Woman and speak the truth from my heart. What I didn't know was that Winifred was the daughter or less likely the grand-daughter of Jeremiah Griffiths of Downton House, New Radnor, which of course is where Innes Ireland lived during his time in Radnorshire.

While wilfing around the matter I also noticed that the novelist Thackery was the great grandson of one Sarah Griffiths of Downton House, the niece of said Winifred. I'm not going to claim Thackery as a Radnorian but Christopher Smart? Certainly.

Radnor on Taff

2011-09-18T18:25:00.009+01:00

Your blogger has been looking at the 1901 Census for the town of Merthyr Tydfil, specifically at Radnorian migrants. At not much more than 1% of the population Radnorshire born folk were not a major element in the town, but with over 250 households headed by a Radnorian and an additional 90 householders having a Radnorian wife, they were not an insignificant contingent in Radnorshire terms. Indeed with some 750 sons and daughters in those households in 1901, a number which would have been swelled by off-spring who had already left home or had yet to be born, the town's influence on our county must have been sizeable.

What can we say about these migrants? Well the great majority were industrial workers, mainly in the mines (over 40%) but also in the steel works and on the railways. The town attracted it's share of craftsmen and traders - builders, tailors, drapers, half a dozen publicans, a watchmaker, even a town crier, one Richard Lewis Williams from Nantmel. A handful of residents of the town were even listed as agricultural labourers.

They came from every part of Radnorshire including places like Presteigne and Knighton. In the 1851 census migrants from those border towns were absent and one wonders if this was because much less English would have been spoken in Merthyr at the earlier date? Could migration figures perhaps reveal which parts of Radnorshire were more at ease moving to an over-whelmingly Welsh speaking locality in the days before the census took an interest in linguistic matters?

30% of the Radnorshire born householders had married spouses born in the county, 57% were married to wives from elsewhere in Wales and 12% had married English women. When we look at the Radnorshire born wives of non-Radnorian householders we find 45% had married Englishmen. Now getting on for half those marriages involved men from parishes just across the border in Herefordshire and Shropshire but there is a marked difference between the marriage preferences of men and women. One wonders why?

Some 17% of Radnorian householders in Merthyr in 1901 could speak Welsh, the figure was nearer 30% for their wives (remember this figure includes wives born elsewhere), around 17% of sons and daughters in Radnorian households could also speak Welsh - not necessarily in households where a parent was bilingual. Merthyr was in the process of language shift at this time and Radnorian migrants would obviously have contributed to the anglicisation of the town. As a supporter of bilingualism Radnorian was pleased to see that his great great uncle, Septimus Mantle, originally from Crossgates, spoke both languages, as did his wife and four offspring.

Of course there were many other valley towns to which Radnorians had migrated: the Rhondda Valleys (which had at least as many Radnorians as Merthyr), Aberdare, Ebbw Vale, Tredegar - over 500 household heads in Monmouthshire, more than a 1000 in Glamorgan in 1901. Far from being "backward and beautiful" as the seekers after a rural idyll are prone to suggest, even the remotest Radnorshire farmstead would have had family ties with the vibrant, proletarian culture of the despoiled industrial south.

Work In Progress

2011-09-13T17:13:00.009+01:00

Radnorian was glancing through an old book, well one published in 2006, which stated that there had been no inter-breeding between Neanderthals and modern humans. By last year it was believed that modern humans, at least in Europe and Asia, had indeed interbred with Neanderthals and also with another group of hominids christened Denisovans. This year we find evidence that suggests that Africans, who only twelve months ago were seen as "pure" homo sapiens sapiens, have also interbred with other extinct hominids. Who knows what the position will be next year, I'm still hoping for an appearance by the abominable snowman.

A few years ago Radnorian was excited by the prospect that DNA was going to clear up various historical mysteries and I suppose it has sorted out a few, while creating many more. Was there an extermination or mass replacement of the British population of the West Midlands by the Anglo-Saxons? I don't know, I can't keep up.

What does seem apparent is that there has been very little DNA testing of populations in the British Isles compared with many other parts of the world. You still see articles about Welsh DNA, relying in part on the testing carried out in Llanidloes a few years. ago. An interesting location in its own right, being at the centre of the 16C English plantation of Arwystli, but maybe not typical of Wales as a whole - and I doubt if you could find anywhere that was typical of Wales as a whole. The presence of seemingly Balkan male DNA in Abergele, 7 out of 18 tested, is fascinating but how much more could be discovered with wider testing?

I wonder if political correctness has anything to do with the limited DNA testing in Wales. Victorians are correctly criticised for allowing their political prejudices about Empire, Protestantism, race and the German origins of the Royal Family to infect their work. But isn't something similar happening today, except the prejudices are more likely to be in favour of multi-culturalism and pro-Europeanism.

Anyway I'm adding this site to my blog-list.

Knowing Your Place

2011-09-08T17:57:00.008+01:00

Did Radnorian miss something?

While he was hiding out at Lloches Lewsyn (see new header pic) did some subliminal message broadcast by the BBC cause irreparable damage to the brains of his fellow countrymen?

How else to explain the above effort (click to enlarge) from a site purporting to be the National Museum of Wales? You can check out the original here. If you wish you can click on the cymraeg tab in the top right hand corner to discover that not only did someone write this nonsense, someone translated it as well. I'm assuming the English version is the original.

There you go, whatever, shakes head, returns to cave.

The Largest Greek City in the World

2011-09-07T09:14:00.016+01:00

Well actually it's Athens although Melbourne may well be third. Look back at the census returns for the beginning of the twentieth century and the town with the most heads of household born in Radnorshire isn't Rhayader or Knighton and certainly not Llandrindod. Infact it was Merthyr Tydfil.

So while some might see Radnorshire as a rather fey, in-between land, a place which incomers can safely colonise without having to rub shoulders with prickly North Walians or perspicacious Southerners, the better-informed will know that the county has always been part and parcel of mainstream Wales.

Back to the song. In the 80s you'd often find it on jukeboxes in South Wales pubs. We used to play it - much to his annoyance - for a workmate from Tylorstown. There are not enough Welsh songs in English. It never bothered the Irish but in Wales I think there's been a tendency to think Welsh songs should only be in the Welsh language.

Forgotten Radnorians

2011-09-01T14:07:00.013+01:00

Pictured is a Radnorian hero, Thomas Weale (1791-1863) a leader of the opposition to the Watt family's enclosure of the manor of Iscoed in the parishes of Llanyre, Nantmel and Llanfihagel Helygen.

Weale, his story is outlined - somewhat unsympathetically - in this book, refused to pay rent on the three acre Tŷ un nos which he had held freely according to the traditions of Wales - traditions which, of course, cut no ice with the British state. Early in 1830 the under-sheriff's men attempted an eviction. Initially beaten back by Weale and his neighbours, officialdom eventually succeeded in evicting the family on to the common during a snow storm and the house was demolished.

Weale, a carpenter by trade, was not overawed by this defeat and in 1836 he was sued by Watt for encroachment on his old holding, from which Weale had taken a load of hay. A Radnorshire jury found in favour of the local man, a decision the authorities declared to be perverse and which was subsequently retried in Hereford to Watt's advantage. In the meantime Weale had raised a force of a hundred men at Rhayader market who proceeded to tear down fences on former tai unnos occupied by Watt and around his ornamental plantations.

Postscript: In the 1938 Transactions of the Radnorshire Society there is an article tracking down old placenames, by one W. A. J. Weale (1883-1966). The article makes use of poetry by the likes of Lewis Glyn Cothi and Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr and the author is not afraid to disagree, surely correctly, with more well-known Welsh scholars such as Sir John Morris-Jones and Gwenogvryn Evans. The son of a Newbridge-on-Wye joiner, Mr Weale was living in Pontypridd when the article was published, although he seems to have retired to Llanyre after the war. He was the grandson of that bold defender of Radnorian rights Thomas Weale.

More Radnorshire Names

2011-08-20T23:17:00.008+01:00

A minor celeb - I think a pit lane reporter for Radio Five still counts as minor - got engaged last week to someone called Walbyoff - a Russian mafia boss perhaps or a Polish plumber? No, Walbyoff and Walbeoff are Welsh names, as Welsh as Evans or Lloyd. They are found mainly in southern Breconshire and Monmouthshire and if you go back nearly a thousand years originated with a Norman French settler in the old kingdom of Brycheiniog.

I don't know if the Walbeoff's ever made it into Radnorshire, but other Cambro-Norman families certainly did: the Havards, the Baskervilles, the Gunters, the Aubreys and even an occasional Turberville. There were others who although Norman in origin took the name of their possessions in the March, such as the Cliffords and the Whitneys. Indeed Whitney was the most common "English" surname in Radnorshire at the time of the 1670 Hearth Tax.

Of course Radnorshire had far fewer such names than the more French influenced counties of South East Wales. It's also true that some families became so Cymricised that they forgot their original surname and adopted the patronymic system.

The Welsh bards detailed these people in their genealogies, many of them being upholders of the traditional bardic culture. In addition they reveal other surnames that at first glance give an impression of being English rather than Welsh. The digitization of the Bartrum collection of these bardic genealogies can be found here. Radnorshire families listed who fall or seem to fall outside the traditional patronymic naming system include names such as Baskerville, Bull, Gunter, Havard, Hergest, Hoby, Holl, Knyll, Philpot, Sollers and Whitney.

Exposed

2011-08-20T17:34:00.007+01:00

Despite the occasional success of the bloggers Private Eye remains head and shoulders above the rest of the media in exposing the greed and corruption of looters of the public purse. At the same time I have to doubt the authenticity of this letter to the Surrey Advertiser highlighted in this fortnight's copy of the magazine. Would any Radnorian deliberately leave perfectly serviceable items of underwear in a tree? An Incomer perhaps, but a native Radnorian, surely not?

A Radnorshire Jury

2011-08-16T23:20:00.008+01:00

"The only thing that can save that hare is a Radnorshire jury" a judge is supposed to have remarked when watching the creature coursed by two greyhounds. And indeed Radnorian applauds the determination of 19C Radnorshire juries to sometimes make a stand for common-sense against the directions of their betters.

An example came with the death of the spinster sister of the rector of Llanbadarn Fawr in September 1872, a Miss Mary Morgan. The rector, a native of the Vale of Glamorgan, convinced himself that his sister had been poisoned by her maidservant Mary Ann Davies. The girl was arrested and the dead woman's stomach and part of her intestine, together with her medication and samples of a jelly she had been served, were taken in two glass jars by Chief Constable Penry Lloyd to Guys Hospital for testing.

A fortnight later the Coroner's jury reconvened to consider the report from London. No poison was found. Two local doctors who attended Miss Morgan both considered that she had died of natural causes while her brother continued to insist she had been poisoned. The Coroner, Mr Cheese, advised the jury to record an open verdict, but after a few minutes they returned with a unanimous verdict of death by natural causes, adding that there was no cause of suspicion against Mary Ann Davies whatever and that they regretted that she had been held in custody for so long.

The Rev Morgan fumed against the verdict and accused the maid of being a thief. The country, however, was against him and one wonders how he fared in the twenty or more years he continued to serve the parishioners of Llanbadarn.

So Mary Davies was relieved of suspicion and the toxicology tests which had "yielded reaction which raised a suspicion of the presence of antimony" were filed away to gather dust.

Miss Hathaway

2011-08-16T15:03:00.008+01:00

A contemporary newspaper illustration purporting to show the murder of Mary Ann Hathaway at Nantmel in 1884. I blogged about it here.

Big Enders, Little Enders

2011-08-15T10:04:00.005+01:00

The cities may burn, capitalism collapses but the good citizens of one Radnorshire parish have weightier things on their minds. What to do with the bell from the old village school.

Should the bell be placed outside the village hall or outside the village church? A minor issue you might think, but one that has divided the parish into two opposing camps. Petitions are drawn up, friendships are reportedly ended and the community council seeks the opinion of residents in an online poll.

Now Radnorian is unable to give a ringing endorsement to either side in the dispute. A bell in the middle of a village would seem to invite disturbance in the early hours and a wishing well in a churchyard? Isn't that a bit pagan?

Musical Interlude

2011-08-10T19:51:00.002+01:00

Twilight Zone

2011-08-10T15:49:00.008+01:00

Photo leak from a parallel universe where peacekeeping forces from Dyfed and Powys have just entered the streets of a London torn apart by civil war..

Oh hang on .....ditch the parallel universe bit.

East of the Border

2011-08-09T10:30:00.002+01:00

Regular readers will know that Radnorian has a passing interest in the continuing use of the Welsh language in parts of Shropshire. It's a subject I don't know a great deal about and I was surprised to read a comment concerning the last day at the Ifton colliery in 1968 and a young man's failure to hold back the last two tubs of coal to come out of the pit for the press photographers:

"They were going mad because, to be fair, they had written instructions on the side in Welsh to leave the tubs alone but I hadn't seen them."

The Ifton Colliery was in St Martins, Shropshire.

Radnorshire's Brainy Brides

2011-08-07T16:43:00.011+01:00

In 1894 O M Edwards launched a magazine called Wales, a National Magazine for the English Speaking Parts of Wales. In his introduction to the new magazine Edwards makes the following comment which was hardly likely to win him friends amongst the working classes of Radnorshire:

"It is to be hoped that, some day, the Radnorshire farmer will be as fond of reading as the Lleyn farmer, the working man of the Montgomery borders will be as intelligent as the working man of Cardigan or Merioneth, that the peasant of eastern Monmouth will be as intelligent as the peasant of Arvon or the Vale of Towy."

Now Radnorian believes that there was a prejudice in Welsh speaking Wales towards anglicised districts like Radnorshire dating back to the Blue Books of the 1840s. These had condemned the Welsh as being ignorant and immoral, placing the blame on the continued use of the Welsh language. What better way to refute this libel than to point to largely English speaking Radnorshire which had, for example, the highest illegitimacy rates in the principality.

Of course this is a prejudice that still lingers today but was Edwards right? Were the somewhat mythical gwerin of Welsh-speaking Wales more learned than their English-speaking compatriots?

A rough estimate of literacy levels in 19C Wales is found in the Registrar General's returns detailing the numbers signing the marriage registers rather than making a mark. Look at the closest available figures to when Edwards was writing, those for 1884, and he has a point. 20.1% of Radnor men used a mark compared with 12.3% in the Pwllheli district. Likewise men in the English speaking districts of Montgomery and Monmouth were marginally more likely to make a mark than those in the districts to which they were compared in the quote above.

The really remarkable figures are those for women. Now we find that Radnorshire brides are far more likely to sign than any of their fellow countrywomen elsewhere. Here are the figures for women signing the marriage register in 1884 for example: Monmouth 76.2%, Glamorgan 73.7%, Carmarthen 72.7%, Pembroke 84.4%, Cardigan 70.5%, Brecon 74.7%, Montgomery 81.8%, Flint 74.9%, Denbigh 74.8%, Merioneth 80.4%, Caernarfon 79.5%, Anglesey 77.2, and Radnor 90.3%. Indeed throughout the Victorian period Radnorian women head the lists with 56.9% signing the register in 1845 and 99.1% sixty years later.

Of course these figures were for registration counties, which in Radnorshire's case included many parishes in Herefordshire and Shropshire. But if we look at the Rhayader district for 1884, which contained no English parishes we see that 91.9% of brides signed the register, an even higher figure than for the county as a whole. The district in Wales with the highest figure of all was Hay with 94.2% signing and the Hay district contained most of Southern Radnorshire. Compare these figures with the dim sisters of say Pontypool 71.1% signing or Merthyr 65.3% or Lampeter, a mere 56%.

Forgotten Radnorians

2011-08-06T08:35:00.013+01:00

The picture shows Sir Hamar Greenwood, Chief Secretary for Ireland between 1920 and 1922, inspecting RIC Auxiliaries in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Born in Ontario, Canada, Greenwood was created Baron Greenwood of Llanbister in 1929.

Originally named Thomas Hamer Hubbard Greenwood, the Liberal, later Tory, politician's father John Hamer Greenwood had emigrated to Canada from Radnorshire in 1850. The later Viscount Greenwood's grandfather William, an agricultural labourer, having married a Mary Hamer in Llanbister in 1825.

The Greenwoods are another of those Radnorshire families who appear in the Llanddewi Ystradenni/Llanbister area in the 17C. There is a Thomas Greenwood in the 1670 Hearth Tax for Llanddewi parish and you can find the 1755 will of William Greenwood of the same parish here.

A John Greenwood was Overseer of the Poor for Llanbister in 1793 when he was accused of the unusual crime of conspiracy to procure a marriage between a local woman and a John Moss from Llanfihangel Nant Melan. No doubt he wanted to offload a burden on the local ratepayers to a neighbouring parish. Nothing came of the case. In the 1891 and 1901 Censuses an Edward Greenwood, born in Llanbister in 1839, but living in Llanfechain, Montgomeryshire, is recorded as being able to speak Welsh. One imagines he picked up the language away from Llanbister.

Note: In the 19C censuses the main Greenwood settlement is a farm called Dolau-farian in Llanbister parish which the modern day map makers now call Dol-y-Fran.

Howey Corinthians 1923-1924

2011-08-03T22:39:00.001+01:00

Forgotten Radnorians

2011-08-03T08:22:00.012+01:00

When he died, aged 49, in 1831, following an operation in Shrewsbury to remove a cancer from his left hand, over 5000 inhabitants of Newtown, Montgomeryshire attended the funeral of local Baptist minister John Jones. Indeed factories and shops in the town were closed to honour a man who was described as one of most popular Baptist preachers in Wales.

John Jones was born in Llandrindod to Radnorshire parents in 1782 - his father was from Aberedw (John's brother Evan farmed Danycoed in that parish as late as 1876) and his mother was a Watkins from Trefonnen. In 1807 John Jones married Elizabeth Jones of Woodcastle Farm, Newbridge-on-Wye in Llanyre parish church. By 1811 John had given up farming and the couple, who would have seven children, moved from Llanyre to Newtown, where Jones laboured as the pastor of the Baptist church for the next twenty years.

According to his obituary in Greal y Bedyddwyr John Jones was a fluent preacher in both English and Welsh. He is buried at Rhydyfelin Baptist Church in Aberhafesp.

Powys Local History Encyclopedia

2011-08-02T08:45:00.008+01:00

Well here's an interesting site which I haven't seen before.

Meanwhile, how bright are Radnorian's readers? Well over the last year Firefox accounted for 59.68% of visitors, Chrome for 6.76% and Safari for 5.93%. Only 0.54% were super-bright Opera users and our readers have obviously never heard of Camino. Me neither. Internet Explorer users made up 26.47% of the total over the last twelve months, down from 31.22% in the previous year and 49.58% in the year before that. The figures speak for themselves, reading this blog increases your IQ.

UPDATE: The BBC now admit that the IE users are stupid story was a hoax based on dodgy data ..... now what does that remind me of?

The Ageing Process

2011-07-27T18:36:00.005+01:00

Looking through old census returns isn't quite as much fun as it used to be. You check out some young fellow of 30 in 1841, follow him through to the age of 60 in 1871 and then fail to find him in 1881. It makes you think. Maybe that shed you've been meaning to tidy up for the last 20 years is actually going to be sorted out by someone else. Good luck to them.

The ageing process must be even more of a problem in the little Radnorshire parish of Bryngwyn. Of course time seems to speed up for all of us but in Bryngwyn it gallops along. Take Edward Williams, a 103 year old resident of the parish, who turns up in the 1881 Census. "Hearty as a two year old" the enumerator notes in the margin of the return. Check back to the 1871 Census and we find Mr Williams has aged twenty years in ten, for he was a stripling of 83 in that year. And between 1861 and 1871 the Nantmel born former agricultural labourer had already aged fifteen years.

Mr Williams died in 1882, which by my reckoning would have made him 107. His wife, being a more conventional timekeeper, informed the authorities that he was in fact 88.

Radnorminster

2011-07-15T13:18:00.009+01:00

I don't think that the United Kingdom's decline can be blamed entirely on the abolition of the Radnor Boroughs parliamentary seat in 1885 or even on the disappearance of the Radnorshire constituency in 1918. Although it can't have helped. Now even Brecon and Radnor is set to disappear as Welsh representation at Westminster is reduced from 40 to 30.

What will become of Brecon and Radnor? Will it gain the necessary 23000 extra voters from a dissected Montgomeryshire, making the seat even more of a Liberal stronghold? Perhaps the additional headcount will come from Labour voting seats in the south, after all Cefn Coed and Brynmawr used to be part of Brecknockshire, or will they come from Abergavenny and Monmouth?

Thankfully the days when Radnorshire could have been annexed into Leominster or Hereford are long gone. Although the idea would, doubtless, still appeal to a metropolitan mindset which will happily consign parts of Cornwall into Devonwall.

Radnorian will now be taking a short break to go on what looks likely to be a storm chasing holiday.

Forgotten Radnorians

2011-07-09T10:32:00.002+01:00

Now here's a name that shouts out a Radnorshire origin. His father was from Presteigne but the family roots were in Llanbister, where else.

Musical Interlude

2011-07-08T18:08:00.001+01:00

Hi ya hi ya ho

Mere Welsh

2011-07-07T16:04:00.014+01:00

Researchers sometimes fail to note that the boundaries of Wales in the Victorian census records are not the same as the borders we take for granted today. Parishes were assigned to the country where their local workhouse was situated. So in 1891, for example,Welsh language statistics were collected for Bedstone in Shropshire (part of the Knighton Union) but not for Glascwm in Radnorshire (part of the Kington Union).

This anomaly could have been useful if some of the Shropshire parishes where Welsh survived - Llanyblodwel, Sychtyn and Selattyn - had been in a Welsh Union. It would have provided evidence of the language's strength in those districts at the end of the 19C. The inhabitants of many English parishes were indeed asked about their ability to speak Welsh - from the Gloucester parish of Tidenham to Shocklach in Cheshire. Unfortunately none of these places were in areas where one or two old people born in the locality might still have spoken the language, Llanveynoe in Herefordshire for example. As a reader of the blog recently pointed out, there were certainly Welsh speakers native to the neighbouring Monmouthshire parish of Cwmyoy at this time.

Now as it happens there was, until it was transferred to Monmouthshire in 1893, a small detached part of Herefordshire within Cwmyoy parish called Fwthog. And here in 1891 there were still a handful of locally born Herefordians who spoke Welsh, this household for example, click to enlarge.

Dr Dee

2011-07-03T11:27:00.008+01:00

A correspondent informs me that Damon Albarn (ex-Blur) has recently staged the premiere of his English folk opera Dr Dee, here's the BBC report. Now although Radnorian is in favour of anyone who wants to "express something about England" and is "tracing modern English identity" he does wonder if Albarn is aware of Dee's Radnorshire roots. You can find Dr Dee's descent from Bedo Ddu of Nantygroes, Pilleth here.

Albarn is fascinated by Dee's "lasting influence on English identity" which I suppose is correct, although I would say that the influence was in helping create the confusion between "British" and "English" which the junior partners in the Union find so annoying. Before Dee's time "British" meant "Welsh" so I guess his coining of the term "British Empire" and the subsequent history of the word as a useful term to describe the union of the English and Scottish thrones under James the Sixth/First did contribute to the confused modern-day English/British identity.

Turning back to John Dee's pedigree we note that his English mother was called Jane Wilde. It's a fact that from the 1600s on Wilde was a Radnorshire name. Indeed by the 19C a quarter of all the Wilde's in Wales were born in Radnorshire. I wonder if marriages between 16C Radnorians on the make like John Dee's father and English brides might have been responsible for English cousins inheriting land in 17C Radnorshire?

A Brit Pop take on Elizabeth the First is to be welcomed, but if you like your music with tunes then Bob Tai'r Felin's recording of Pan oedd Bess yn teyrnasu can't be bettered. Not on You Tube, shamefully, although there's a brief snatch on Amazon. Certainly Radnorian's first choice for Desert Isamd Discs.

People From Off

2011-07-01T09:42:00.004+01:00

This map shows parishes which in 1670 had significant numbers of surnames of English origin not found in the locality at the time of the Acts of Union in the previous century.

It's sometimes said that these incomers were Cromwellian soldiery settled in the county after the Civil War. Infact wills show that some of the more familiar names were settled in Radnorshire before that time: Mantle (1617), Harding (1628), Wilde (1637), Russell (1625), Jarman (1629), Gregory (1620), Mason (1625), Bebb (1620), Bufton (1633), Hamer (1639).

Some of these names and others found in 1670 such as Kinsey, Wozencroft, Wilson, Hatfied, Bright and Ingram are associated with the 16C plantations in Montgomeryshire, see here. One has to ask if something similar happened in some of the parishes in Maelienydd? Because there was no religious divide these newcomers were quickly integrated into the mainstream community.

In the 1540s the Knighton was a very Welsh place with the great majority using patronyms, by 1670 the town had probably doubled in size, to around 600, and some 40% of the householders had English names. Interestingly only a couple of these surnames - Woolley and Norgrove - are used by natives of the town by the time of the 1881 Census. Who were these here today gone tomorrow 17C Knightonians and what became of them?

"my name is ap Rhys ap Davy ap Flood"

2011-06-28T22:15:00.008+01:00

This map shows how the great majority of Radnorshire folk still adhered to the patronymical naming system at the time of the establishment of the county in the 1540s

In most parishes more than 90% still used the ap and vz formations signifying "son of" and "daughter of", indeed in a majority of such parishes the figure was a 100%.

In the south of the county there was a belt of three parishes, Bryngwyn, Newchurch and Michaelchurch where the figure falls just below 90%. And the same was true of Llangynllo, Knighton and Stanage further north.

Only in and around Presteigne was the traditional Welsh system replaced to any extent by the Anglo-Norman fashion for surnames, although even here Discoed has over 60% with patronyms. The figure falls below 50% in the parishes of Norton, Old Radnor and New Radnor. Presteigne itself has the lowest usage of patronyms in Radnorshire, around 10%.

Note: The map is based on Mr Faraday's publication of the Lay Subsidy of 1543-45 in the 1996 and 2003 editions of the Radnorshire Society Transactions which, although some names are missing, list well over 2000 heads of households in the county. The map could show greater detail as the figures were published for townships - for example Nantmel is made up of four townships - but I have amalgamated these into parish totals. If someone can point me to a good and free map making download please do so, as it is I've had to rely on a parish map. For most of the county this doesn't make much difference but the variety in the various Old Radnor townships is missing, for example Weythel had 100% patronyms whereas Walton had just 12.5%. In a minority of names where an ap or vz is obviously missing I've counted the name as a patronym. The most obvious example is where someone has a father called Bedo (a pet form of Maredudd). More often than not the ap is missing. Why? My theory is that the proximity of a P and a B made ap Bedo sound clumsy - maybe the academics have a word for this.

It's Only Rock and Roll

2011-06-28T19:29:00.004+01:00

Ireland meets North Korea, Slightly mad but fascinating ...

A Letter From Radnorshire

2011-06-27T09:39:00.006+01:00

Dear Radnorian Exile,

Missing the green green grass of home, filled with nostalgia for a Radnorshire accent? Well here's a You Tube treat for exiles everywhere and as an added bonus it was uploaded by representatives of another fine old Radnorshire tradition - people from off who've established a natural holistic retreat. On their facebook site you can even download a ringtone of some Radnorian sheep.

As they probably say where you are: Enjoy.

The Liberation of Litton Hill

2011-06-25T10:50:00.021+01:00

One man's enclave is another man's exclave and this list shows that such geographical anomalies are more common than one might expect, even within Western Europe.

Until 20th October 1844 Hereforshire ruled the roost over a small enclave in Cascob parish, eastern Radnorshire. You can just about make out the borders of the enclave at the centre of this old map (pictured).

No doubt Radnorian joy at regaining Litton was tempered by the loss, to Brecknockshire, of that part of Glasbury parish lying south of the river Wye.

Coming up to date, it could be argued that the Shropshire hamlets of Brompton and Pentreheyling be transferred to Powys. Although not enclaves they cannot be accessed by road from anywhere in England without crossing into Wales.

UPDATE: Anon in the comments draws my attention to the Baarle Hertog enclaves in Belgium and the Netherlands. This website explains a complicated situation very well.

Forgotten Voices

2011-06-23T10:05:00.005+01:00

In 1946 the headmistress of the primary school in Selattyn, Shropshire, in reply to a query, stated that just 5 of her 46 pupils were fluent in the Welsh language.

I guess for most the obvious riposte to this information is "So what!" After all, at around the same time, there were first language Welsh speakers in John Lennon's class at the Dovedale Primary School in Mossley Hill, Liverpool and compared to the 957,490 pupils currently in English schools, for whom English is not a first language, it's a fact of no importance whatsoever.

At the same time there is a difference between John Lennon's school pals and those million non-English pupils on the one hand and the five stalwarts of Selattyn school on the other. The Shropshire children were speaking a language that was indigenous to their parish and had been spoken by natives of the place for generations.

Radnorshire Places, Radnorshire Surnames

2011-06-16T23:10:00.010+01:00

This week's Radnor Express reports that Mr Trevor Gummer has been appointed manager of Presteigne St Andrews football club, this follows his success in winning the Edwin Traylor Cup with the Under-18 team.

In Radnorshire and Herefordshire the surname Gummer is in all probability derived from the Gumma farm in Discoed (see post below). Of course elsewhere in England the name may well have other origins and that applies to most of the names discussed in this post. What about Traylor? A search of the 1881 Census shows it to be a surname of the Radnorshire border area, see here. I think there must be a chance that, together with the names Trillo and Trelloe, it is derived from another local farm Maes-Treylow, there were certainly Treylowes in the 16C Lay Subsidy.

Some other local surnames in use at one time or another and which were probably derived from places along the Radnorshire/Herefordshire border include: Badland, Barland, Bilymore, Dyke, Gilla, Gore, Hargest/Hergest, Hoddell, Impton. Knill, Knoke, Lingen, Nash, Norton, Radnor, Rodd, Slough, Weston, Whitney and Whitton.

Seeing a surname like Bach or Bache or even Bage, I suppose the obvious derivation is from the Welsh word bach. However names in the historical record such as A'Bache suggest that in Radnorshire the name might instead derive from the Bache farm between Kinnerton and New Radnor. Bache in this case being an Old English word for a stream. Blackbach or Black Patch in Norton parish has the same origin. In the 14C Llywelyn Blackbache was a court official in Maelienydd and the name was common enough in the 16C. The surname seems to have disappeared since then, although Blackpatch Godwin, a Presteigne lass, was found guilty of forcible entry in 1747.

As far as I know local placenames made no contribution to the stock of Radnorshire surnames away from the eastern fringe, although it would be nice if Gwenllian Goustrey came from Gwystre.

UPDATE: Since this was posted the National Library of Wales Journal has been added to Welsh Journals Online site and I see that Rhodri's brother Prys Morgan contributed an article on Welsh surnames derived from placenames. For Radnorshire he lists Badarn, Blayney, Bykeldy, Cascoppe, Hodoll, Radnor, Rayad or Ryatt, Treylowe and Trillo. Some of those names would never have been used in Radnorshire of course - Rayad for example is found in Pembrokeshire but possibly derived from Rhayader. Mr Morgan ignores names like Hargest from just across the present-day border which is fair enough. He also makes a good point in relation to the Inner and Outer Wales theory which has been fashionable for a while - a theory which takes a shifting line, the divide between Welsh and English speaking areas and treats it as if it was some permanent feature. Anyway Morgan's point is that the paucity of surnames derived from places in Radnorshire shows it to have been an area of resistance to rather than penetration of English influence.

Beast House

2011-06-10T19:28:00.013+01:00

Here's a pretty little map from the National Museum of Wales showing Welsh dialect words for cowshed.

I think it's obvious from the map that any remaining Welsh speakers in Builth Hundred don't keep cows, or if they do, they all live outside - the cows that is.

I suppose it is possible that the last Welsh speakers around Llanwrtyd and Llangammarch have finally passed away, or more likely the map is based on that 1970s volume The Linguistic Geography of Wales, which for some strange reason consigned Builth Hundred to the lands where the traditional Welsh dialects had died out. Yes I have moaned about this before.

As it happens in the 1970s Welsh speakers made up 48% of the population of Llanwrtyd town, in the Upper Irfon Valley it was 73%, in and around Tirabad 32%, and in and around Llangammarch 37%. Surely some old fellow could have been found to tell the researchers the local Welsh name for a cowshed. The trouble is maps like these may get re-used to tell a story that isn't necessarily true. Who knows what a decision maker with such a map in the back of their mind might decide.

Given that Builth Hundred has been reduced to the ranks of the terminally anglicised - and OK there have been more realistic studies such as this chapter on the dialect of the area, starting at page 97 of this book - is there any chance of a study of the lost Welsh dialect(s) of Radnorshire? I'm sure there is enough material in field names, slander cases and a study of vowel sounds to come up with something worthwhile. Radnorshire would have been an area where the dialects of North, South East and West Wales came into contact. My uneducated guess would be to agree with John Rhys, see here, with perhaps the dialect of Gwent a stronger iinfluence in Painscastle Hundred and up the eastern side of the county.

Anyway all this is inspired by the fact that S4C is screening a series on dialects called Ar Lafar, facebook page here.

Chocks Away

2011-06-07T10:31:00.007+01:00

I like the cover of this booklet, currently for sale on Ebay.

Will it mention Corbett Wilson landing in a Colfa farmer's field in 1912 or the flying shows held in Llandrindod in 1913 and 1914 by the pioneer aviator Gustav Hamel?

The entrepreneurial Tom Norton should be a central character, his art deco garage still bearing the logo "Aircraft" to mystify travellers through the Spa town. In the 1930s Norton dreamed of running regular air services from Llandrindod's Ddole racecourse and the Rock Park even advertised for a hotel and aerodrome manager. Robert Kronfeld was said to be involved in the plan and two aircraft purchased, an Avro 504K - 9d per passenger mile and a Rolls Royce Falcon engined Bristol Fighter at 1/6.

Adventurous Radnorians, my mother for one, took to the air as paying passengers at 1930s flying demonstrations, piloted from the Ddole field by the likes of Alan Cobham, Campbell Blac k and Owen Cathcart Jones.

Musical Interlude

2011-06-03T11:09:00.009+01:00

A rare glimpse of the girl group genius that was Coventry's The Orchids.

I don't know if Val Jones, Georgina Oliver or Pamela Jarman had Radnorshire roots, but with those surnames they certainly could have.

Gwlithyn

2011-05-31T17:52:00.008+01:00

If Dansey/Danzey is an unusual forename that often hints at a Radnorian origin then Gwlithyn might be considered its distaff equivalent. Certainly the name is to be found more commonly along the Upper Wye and its tributaries than anywhere else. I used to think this was because it was the made-up name of a character in a novel by a local author - something by Hilda Vaughan perhaps? But no, the first recorded use of the forename dates back a little earlier to the birth of Gwlithyn Pugh of Coedmynach, Cwmteuddwr in October 1877.

The child Gwlithyn was commemorated in a weak poem probably composed by a regular paying guest at Coedmynach, a retired solicitor from Bridgnorth called Hubert Smith. The poem was for many years pinned to the inside of a cupboard door at the farm and the tale written up in the Radnorshire Transactions for 1965, with a follow-up letter in the 1966 edition identifying the young girl's family. Gwlithyn's parents Llewelyn Pugh (1850-1899) born in St Harmon, and Catherine Evans (1857-1930) born in Cwmteuddwr, are both recorded as Welsh speakers in the Census returns, something which was not true for any of their fourteen children. What an impact on the linguistic position in the area if the parents of large families like this had chosen not to raise their children as English monoglots. In the Victorian period failure to pass on the language didn't neccessarily indicate a rejection of Welsh identity, the Pughs being quite happy to give Welsh names to some of their children - Gwlithyn, Llewelyn, Esyllt, Aneurin.

Hubert Smith was the author of a book Tent Life with English Gypsies in Norway and it was in that country in 1874 that the 51 year old town clerk married the teenage Romani juval Esmeralda Lock - photo, the groom proudly announcing the fact in the Times - in the Romani language. Smith and his bride spent a fortnight at Coedmynach in the autumn of 1874 but the spirited Esmeralda soon eloped to Cardiff with the young folklorist Francis Hindes Groome. The subsequent divorce case in 1876 was the subject of much hilarity in the popular press, with the cuckold Smith admitting that he occasionally boxed Esmeralda's ears, in self-defence, he claimed, and she always replied in kind. It's said, possibly in error, that Esmeralda Lock was a model for the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she eventually left Groome and returned to the open road, dying in a traffic accident in Rhyl in 1939.

Who's That Girl?

2011-05-31T09:52:00.005+01:00

There may not be much about Dame Annie in the press at the moment, but I did wonder about this 12" single cover.

It looks like a posed photo to me, for a start where are her goggles? Don't recognize the pilot or the voiturette. Maybe from an old film or a magazine, like this Vogue shoot from 1927 featuring actress Colette Salomon, who I believe may actually have competed in a race or two.

Lingogidda?

2011-05-28T01:23:00.005+01:00

See, see the wide horizons glorious blaze!
The setting sun descending low,
Beyond the fervid mountain's brow.
And high Carnedda's top reflects the lingering rays:
But now yon russet heath attracts our eyes,
Where sable Lingogidda's vapours rise.

Here oft 'tis said
The wand'ring spirits of the dead,
By magic's awful art confin'd,
Th' affrghted hind and rustic dame
See glowing in the lambent flame,
Hear howling in the wind.

These are the closing lines of the poem Petraeia by the artist Thomas Jones of Pencerrig and published in a book of 1791 "Picturesque Guide to the Beauties of South Wales."

Now the reference to the Carneddau hills is clear enough and on a late summer evening the sun certainly does reflect from its brow as the painter says, but can anyone tell me about Lingogidda? I guess the poem refers to corpse candles, the spontaneous combustion of methane and phosphane you get over bogland and, no doubt, bogland around Pencerrig. Lingogidda? Llyn Gogidda? There's a verb gogyddio - which refers to making millstones but who knows?

Comment is Free ..ish

2011-05-27T20:16:00.010+01:00

It's always interesting when readers comment on posts that have disappeared off the front page months or even years before. Since they are moderated, unlike more immediate posts, I get to read them, but who else? I think this recent anonymous comment is the longest one the blog has ever received and it makes some good points. So rather than let it languish in the depths I'm reposting it here:

"I think what the Elystan Glodrydd event at Llanbister last year showed was that there is not enough knowledge of the area's history, and many people outside Wales had not realised how intimately connected they were to Radnorshire, not that this area had been a rich centre of welsh culture or that there had been any local welsh rulers and princes, but assumed it was just pure marcher territory.

This is one of the many reasons why Dai Hawkins' translation of Ffrancis Payne's work is of such importance - he has unlocked a treasure-trove of knowledge and rich welsh culture that was only otherwise available to those who could read Payne's work in Welsh.

The princes and kingdoms of Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth are all often quoted by historians, culture experts and tourism promoters, but Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, Mealienydd and Elfael are names almost completely unknown to the vast majority of people in Britain. Go into any major bookshop in Britain and look at the history section allotted to Wales - less than a dozen books are squeezed in, almost as an after-sight. Ireland and Scotland have overflowing shelves. This in part must speak to a lack of connectivity to Welsh roots. If you are a McTavish (etc), you know not only what clan you belong to but exactly where in the world your people came from - not just 'Scotland' but the precise locale. So, consciousness of Scottishness and kinship is easy to gain, and there is interest all over the world. Some may say "oh but its all such bunkum" etc. Some of it may be, but the numbers of people who came from across the planet to share in the celebration of the year of homecoming in Scotland is testament to the power of a sense of a belonging and identity, and the historical threads that bring people together. Each year in Scotland, clan gatherings occur, bringing people from the world to the place, powerfully harnessing history and family together in celebration, to enjoy the ties of kinship.

The day at Llanbister last October had a special quality about it, which only those who were there could fully appreciate. It was not designed to be mournful like the event at Cilmeri, nor nationalistic, but rather a simple celebration of a forgotten history and the bringing together of long-separated branches of a family to mark a thousand year anniversary. It was a chance for people to come from all over Britain, and places as far away as California to visit and learn about a place from where they sprung and have a great time doing so.

Most importantly it was a fun and thoroughly enjoyable warm-hearted, family gathering that connected people to a very old song that hadn't been sung for hundreds of years. When was the last time that the elegy to Cadwallon ap Madog, prince of Maelienydd, written by Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr had been read out in Welsh to such a gathering in Radnorshire? When else have any of the ‘5 Royal Tribes of Wales’ gathered happily together, without coming to blows! It was a quite historical gathering of related families, with a shared history.

We all had an enjoyable time and the day was full of smiles, pleasure, and joy at discovering how good it was to have a shared Welsh origin and a strong connection with a history that has been almost completely forgotten. It was positive, embracing and welcoming, leaving cheerful and pleasurable memories for people to hold forever. It enabled the misty history of the past to catch up with the present in a happy way.

In so doing, it played a part in bringing Radnorshire to the fore and the story of the place’s history to people from afar who had no idea how beautiful the place is, nor how fascinating its history and hospitable its local community.

I’m sure Rebecca didn’t mind that for just one day, the name of Elystan rang out joyfully in the hills around Llanbister, echoing along with the names of people like Cadwallon ap Madog, Einion Clud and Phylip Dorddu, and a wonderfully enjoyable and special day was shared by many."

Aliz D'Eberveni

2011-05-25T08:23:00.012+01:00

I wonder how many Welsh folk are like me and look up Wales in the index pages while browsing in bookshops. You'll rarely find anything, even when there is plenty to say, since English historians tend to block out Wales in much the same way as Salopians and Herefordians block out the Welsh element in their county histories. How many inhabitants of those border counties know that a Celtic language continued to be spoken in some of their parishes long after proud Cornwall had lost its native tongue?

The Irish are little better with their ghastly lumping together of their neighbours, even the inhabitants of the Gaelic Western Isles, under the catch-all term Brits - a term that historically would be better applied to the Welsh alone. Anyway I did manage to see a recent episode of the BBC series The Story of Ireland with Fergal Keane. Far from breaking new ground the episode that I saw resembled nothing more than a school textbook retelling, and a pretty dull and unquestioning textbook at that.

From a Welsh point of view the episode was particularly annoying - the Norman conquest of Ireland was seemingly achieved by the English or, at best, the Anglo-Normans. A better term for these half-Welsh conquerors, few of whom would have even been able to speak English, is Cambro-Normans. Frustrated by their failure to make progress in Wales these descendants of Princess Nest turned to a more profitable field of conquest. I suppose Irish pride is better served by blaming the English rather than admitting the role of men like Robert Fitz Stephen who boasted of his Trojan, that is his Welsh blood:

"We derive our descent, originally, in part from the blood of the Trojans, and partly we are of the French race. From the one we have our native courage, from the other the use of armour. Since, then, inheriting such generous blood on both sides, we are not only brave, but well armed."

If the Cambro-Norman element in the conquest of Ireland is ignored then I suppose it is not surprising that Keane gave a new name, Alice the Vicious, to the murderous lady who axed 70 Irish prisoners to death. Her story is found in the French verse chronicle Chanson de Dermot et du comte where she is know as Aliz D'Eberveni or Alice of Abergavenny. If only she had been called something like Alice of Guildford she might have more easily fitted the victim agenda that the BBC claim the series avoids.

By the way this is a lively discussion site for keeping up with Irish happenings, history, prejudices etc.

Brecon and Radnor - Regional List Vote

2011-05-20T14:28:00.006+01:00

The Brecon and Radnor constituency voted as follows on the Regional List at the recent Assembly Elections:

Tory 9181 (32.5%), Lib Dem 8271 (29.3%), Labour 5091 (18%), Plaid 2071 (7.3%), UKIP 1371 (4.8%), Green 1251 (4.4%), Socialist Labour 471 (1.7%), BNP 291 (1%), Christian 193 (0.7%), Communist 75 (0.3%)

Not much change from 2007 when the Tories also won on the regional list - Tories down 0.4%, Liberals down 2.1%, Labour up 5.3%, Plaid down 0.6%, UKIP up 0.3%, Greens no change, BNP down 1.7%

Vote in the actual constituency vote is here.

Gummer or Gummey

2011-05-17T00:37:00.015+01:00

I can't say that I'm a great fan of the politician John Selwyn Gummer although I did applaud when he encouraged his young daughter to eat a nourishing beefburger during the CJD panic a few years ago. It's well known that Gummer's father was a South Walian but how many are aware that his family originated on the Radnorshire/Herefordshire border? Gummer's grandfather was born in Kington and his great-grandfather in Lyonshall, although to agricultural labouring Radnorshire parents from Old Radnor, who sensibly moved back over the border.

So who were these Gummers or Gumma as it is sometimes recorded in the census returns? For although the name is found elsewhere in England there is certainly a hotspot in the Presteigne and Kington areas. The obvious answer would be that it is derived from the Gumma farm on the road between Discoed and Presteigne, after all there's a Ieuan Voghan Gumma mentioned in a document dated 1481 and brought to light in E J L Cole's article Clandestine Marriages, The Awful Evidence From A Consistory Court, which appeared in the Radnorshire Society Transactions for 1976. Of course you can't be sure of such a connection without a lot more evidence and it's true that there are no Gummers in subsequent records such as the 1670 Hearth Tax. What you do find are names like Gummey, Gommey etc. which could, I suppose, be derived from another local placename Combe - there's a Rees Combe mentioned in Mr Cole's article along with his wife Deylee Wythell (I used to imagine that could be translated as Irish Deylee but it's more likely to be another local placename Weythell). Mr Cole considers that the name Agomey indeed means "of Gumma" so perhaps Baron Deben's roots are to be found in that particular farm after all.

Ramblings aside it is clear that the eastern fringe of Radnorshire - and it is very much a fringe in a county where the Welsh patronymic system predominated - did give rise to hereditary surnames derived from local villages and farms. I'll look at some of them later.

Radnorshire Names - Introduction

2011-05-12T12:35:00.001+01:00

I suppose the classic work on Welsh surnames is the book of that name by T J and Prys Morgan, the father and brother of the blessed Rhodri. Another book well worth purchasing is The Surnames of Wales by John and Sheila Rowlands. I particularly like this latter book, which maps the geographical distribution of surnames based on marriages from the period 1813-1837. The maps reveal overlooked facts and pose a variety of questions. For example surnames as supposedly ubiquitous as Jones and Davies are shown to have quite striking regional strengths and weaknesses, being comparatively absent from some administrative hundreds.

Radnorshire contributes its share of puzzles, it falls for example within the South Wales range of the surname Gwynn which disappears in North Wales to be replaced by Wynn. Meredith seems to be a particularly Radnorian surname although one which spreads north west into Montgomeryshire and Merioneth. Of course Radnorshire, along with North Breconshire, is also the heartland for surnames formed from AP - Powell, Price, Prosser, Probert etc.

One wonders if these local variations are purely random or whether they reveal some cultural difference. If you look at Christian names in the 1670 Hearth Tax for Radnorshire you find some distinct variations between Rhayader and Painscastle Hundreds. In Painscastle names like Roger and Robert are fairly common whereas they are rare in Rhayader. Conversely Edward is a common Christian name in Rhayader Hundred but virtually absent from Painscastle. Does it mean anything?

Anyone growing up in Radnorshire would be aware of local surnames that don't quite fit the usual pattern of those names derived from the Welsh patronymic system - the Joneses, Davieses, Evanses and so on. You could call them English surnames if you wished, although some would have originated in the east of the county or just across the modern day border - Knill, Hargest, Rodd, Gummey, Whitney etc. and many others - Jarman, Cleaton, Ingram, Kinsey, Bound etc. - spread into the county from Montgomeryshire. Certainly numbers of such surnames have been in Radnorshire for as long as the "Welsh" surnames, since these were only adopted by Radnorshire folk in the late 16th to 18th Centuries - tor example there were Mantles living in Llanbister by the end of the 16C and the Buftons appeared on the scene before the Civil War.

While most Radnorians will be familiar with surnames like Hamer, Bywater, Bumford, Wosencraft, Weale, Wilding and so forth, some old names might well have dipped beneath the radar. In my case I wasn't aware of the longevity of surnames like Minton, Boulter and Tudge. It seems to me that it would be well worth examining the story of various Radnorian surnames (and Christian names) on the blog, not forgetting the added spice of the surnames of the Presteigne area, which are somewhat different to the rest of the county. Expect more posts on these topics.

Union Jock

2011-05-08T16:59:00.004+01:00

So I guess circa 2016 the Union flag could look something like this.

Old Soldier

2011-04-24T10:44:00.010+01:00

I thought this was quite an interesting cutting (click to enlarge) when I originally posted it back in 2007, but it hasn't attracted many hits. I guess that's because there weren't enough key words in the post for the search engines to pick up.

The Zulu prince who Joe Davenport and his companions from the 24th Foot captured was Dabulamanzi kaMpande who commanded the Zulu force at Rorke's Drift and fought at Isandlwana. The capture of Cetshwayo caused something of a controversy as Lord Giifard was awarded a £300 gratuity by Parliament which many felt should have gone to Major Marter, whose patrol actually captured the Zulu king.

Mr Davenport's three sons who were killed in the First World War are commemorated on this plaque in Howey Church. Unfortunately their name is spelt incorrectly. To compound that error the website has reassigned St David's church to St George. Heaven forbid!

For Sale

2011-04-20T18:21:00.004+01:00

Bankers with £500K+ to spare might be interested in this Aston Martin DB 2/4 Cabriolet which Bonhams will be selling at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Did Innes Ireland once own the car? Well Bonhams say he did, so it must be true.

I know Ireland drove Aston Martin roadcars for many years while Sir David Brown was involved with the company. Employed as a Consulting Engineer his onerous task was to use the latest Aston as his daily transport and report back occasionally on the car's performance.

Innes was particularly fond of a Bahama Yellow DBS V8 which, like the others he drove, was actually the property of the company, not Ireland himself. Eventually the car had to be swapped for a less colourful version, it had became too well known to speed cops up and down the country.

The car driven by Roger Moore in the youtube clip above taken from the 1970s TV show The Persuaders is actually a faux version of Innes's car, an older six cylinder version badged up to look like the V8.

A Beautiful Prison?

2011-04-18T13:31:00.010+01:00

How many of our local councillors and administrators ever use a local bus service? I'd hazard a guess that it would be a fairly rare event, although they might find it instructive to occasionally leave the comfort zone of the car.

For example I remember overhearing some elderly widows on a once-a-week Radnorshire bus service discussing the problems of being stuck in the countryside without transport. Having retired to the area from England, with no relatives within a hundred miles and their car driving husbands having subsequently kicked the bucket, Radnorshire was indeed their beautiful prison.

Some Belfast academics have been examining migration into the community council areas of Diserth and Llanyre. You can download a summary of their findings here.

From Melbourne to Monte Carlo

2011-04-14T00:17:00.008+01:00

The posh and not-so-posh totty who raced around Brooklands and other pre-war motor circuits really were a remarkable bunch. Adventurers, mistresses, devourers of family fortunes, serial divorcees, admirers of Hitler, consumers of toyboys and members of the aristocracy competed against the top male racers of the day and sometimes beat them. One who did just that was the Australian Joan Richmond who drove her Riley to the start of the 1932 Monte Carlo Rally ..... from Melbourne! Later that year, with co-driver Elsie Wisdom, she took on the men in the Brooklands 1000 Mile race and won.

It's a shame that the exploits of these ladies have escaped much attention. Miranda Seymour wrote a book about the French racer Helle-Nice which gained a lot of media attention, having been written by a famous author; and Fay Taylour merited a biography which mainly concentrated on her speedway career. Meanwhile the likes of the stylish Kay Petre and Gwenda Hawkes, two of just sixteen racers to have lapped Brooklands at more than 130mph, are forgotten. Indeed Barbara Cartland's pathetic faux-race at Brooklands is better remembered than their real achievements.

Anyway it seems that a short book about Joan Richmond is being published in Australia, see here.

Llananno Girl?

2011-04-07T10:17:00.005+01:00

I think my favourite Radnorian poem is Lewis Glyn Cothi's 15C request for a bed, made to four local good women. Here's a short extract followed by my attempted at a translation:

Y nos y câr fy nisyn,
Fwrw ei led ar gylched gwyn,
Cysgu awr, o cwsg erof
Estynnu uwch sidan of.
Tew o led, motlai ydyw,
Tyner rhag y tanrhew yw.
Lle meddal mal y plu man
Lle esmyth oll i hwsman.
Dis ysgwâr o gadas gwyn
Dôr uchel rhwng dau erchwyn,
Erw o ddillad werdd wellwell,
Allor gwsg yn llawr y gell.

My little dice loves the night, he throws himself on the white coverlet, to sleep an hour, stretched out on pure silk, away from me. It is thick and many coloured, tender against the scorching frost, a soft place of small feathers, a place of rest for a labourer. Square dice of white braid, a high door between two bed walls, an acre of superior green bedding, an altar of sleep on the cell floor.

Of course what the bard is really describing is the grave, in a poem which recalls, by the use of the words fy nisyn - my little dice, the well known elergy to his small son Siôn y Glyn:

Fy nwy ais, farw fy nisyn,
Y sy'n glaf am Siôn y Glyn.
Udo fyth yr ydwyf i
Am benaig mabinogi.

My ribs ache for Siôn y Glyn, my little dice is dead. I'll weep for evermore for a chieftain of childhood games.

So who were the four goodwomen? The editor of the 1995 edition of the bard's work identifies them as Gwenllian, the daughter of Owain Glyndwr who lived at Cenarth, St Harmon; Efa vz Llywelyn of Rhayader and Elen, a daughter of one Gruffudd Goch. His fourth identification Mallt, the daughter of Ieuan Fychan of the descent group of Rhys ap Tewdwr doesn't seem right at all to me. That Mallt came from Bryn Coch in Llansantffraid-yn-Elfael whereas the Mallt of this poem is described as:

Mallt ferch Ieuan Fychan fydd
Moliannus ym Maelienydd;
Elystan yn Llananno,
Hon yw y ferch o'i hyn fo.

Mallt the daughter of Ieuan Fychan will be praised in Maelienydd; this girl in Llananno is formed from the being of Elystan.

Now I don't know how accurate my translation is, but it seems to me that the bard is saying that she comes from Llananno and is descended from Elystan Glodrydd. A candidate might be an unnamed daughter of Ieuan Fychan of the small local descent group of Y Dean Du, her mother would have been from one of the many families claiming descent from Elystan.

Radnor Lad in a Daft Hat

2011-04-07T08:47:00.005+01:00

A great sna p of Innes Ireland pursuing one of his favourite hobbies, stalking game birds. In 1962 Innes earned £32,000 - anywhere between £500K and a million in present day terms. Mind you he did earn it, as his record for that year shows:

11/2, Daytona, 3 Hr, Ferrari 250 SWB, No7, retired lap 59
23/3, Sebring, 3 Hr, Austin Healey Sprite, No17, 7th
24/3, Sebring, GP d'Endurance Ferrari 250 TRI, No26, disq lap 128
1/4, Heysel, Brussels GP, Lotus 18/21, No2, 3rd
7/4, Oulton Park, GT Race, Ferrari 250 GTO, No3, 4th
7/4, Oulton Park, SC Race, Lotus 19, 1st
14/4, Snetterton, Lombank Tphy, Lotus 18/21, No6, retired lap 7
23/4, Goodwood, Glover Trophy, Lotus 18/21-Climax, No8, 3rd
23/4, Sussex Trophy, Lotus 19, No71, 1st
28/4, Aintree, 200, Lotus 18/21-Climax, No8, retired
28/4, Aintree, SC Race, Lotus 19, 1st
1/5, Circuit of Garda, Abarth 1000, No52, 2nd
12/5, Silverstone, Ferrari 156, No9, 4th
12/5, Silverstone, SC Race, Lotus 19, 1st
12/5, Silverstone, Saloon Car Race, Ford Zodiac, 1st in class
20/5, Zandvoort, Dutch GP, Lotus 24-Climax, No9, retired lap 61
27/5, Brands Hatch, BRSCC, Ferrari 250 GTO, 1st
3/6, Monaco GP, Lotus 24-Climax, No34, retired lap 63
9/6, Mosport, Players 200, Ferrari 246S, retired
11/6, Crystal Palace, Trophy, Lotus 24_BRM, 1st
17/6, Spa, Belgian GP, Lotus 24-Climax, No20, retired lap 8
23.24/6, Le Mans, 24 Hour Race, Ferrari 250 GTO, No20, retired lap 165, with Masten Gregory
1/7, Reims Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No30, 3rd
8/7, Rouen, French Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No36, retired lap 1
21/7, Aintree, British Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No32, retired lap 16
29/7. Indianapolis, Hoosier Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No11, retired
5/8, Brands Hatch, Guards Tphy, Lotus 19, 2nd
5/8, Brands Hatch, Peco Tphy, Ferrari 250 GTO, No76, 3rd
12/8, Karlskoga, Kannonloppet, Lotus 24-Climax, No4, 4th
18/8, Goodwood, Tourist Trophy, Ferrari 250 GTO, No15, 1st
18/8, Goodwood, SC Race, Lotus Monte Carlo, No11, 1st
26/8, Roskilde, Danish GP, Lotus 24-Climax, No10, 3rd
1/9, Oulton Park, Gold Cup, Lotus 24-Climax, No14, retired
1/9, Oulton Park, SC Race, Lotus 19, No15, 1st
11/9, Monza, Italian Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No40, retired lap45
22/9, Mosport, Canadian GP, Lotus 19, retired
30/9, Kent, Pacific NW GP, Lotus 19, retired
7/10, Watkins Glen, American Grand Prix, No15, 8th
14/10, Riverside LA Times GP, Lotus 19, 5th overall, 1st in class
21/10 Laguna Seca, Pacific GP, Lotus 19, retired
4/11, Mexico City, Mexican Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No15, 3rd
2/12, Nassau, TT prelim, Ferrari 250 GTO, No4, 2nd
2/12, Nassau Tourist Trphy, Ferrari 250 GTO, No 4, 3rd
8/12, Nassau, Texas Race, Ferrari 250 GTO, No4, 3rd
9/12, Nassau, Governor's Trophy, Lotus 19, No 6, 1st
16/12, Kyalami, Rand Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No5, retired
29/12, East London, South African Grand Prix, Lotus 24-Climax, No11, 5th

This was at the start of the jet set age with Innes able to race in Canada on a Saturday afternoon and still make it back for a Formula One race at Crystal Palace on Whit Monday - no time to practice though, Ireland started at the back of the grid, passed everyone and won the race. Making the Rand Grand Prix in South Africa, however, meant missing the prize-giving evening at Nassau in the Bahamas. The organisers were so pleased they withheld Ireland's race winnings.

At a time when most of our rock-stars were still pimply faced youths, racing drivers like Innes and actors such as Burton were pioneering the hell-raising lifestyle emulated by so many in the years to come. A good thing? Check out your local High Street on a Friday night.

A Little Local Colour

2011-04-06T15:29:00.006+01:00

What a pleasure, after the minus 20C temperatures of December, to find the hedgerows and fields of Radnorshire festooned once again with colour. Yes, the Assembly Election approaches and our Liberal and Tory supporters have been out in the sunshine planting their bright Kirsty and Chris placards.

How different things are today, with both parties in happy union at Westminster, compared to the bitter rivalries of the 1890s. Then the Welsh Land Commission was set up by Gladstone to conduct "a thorough, searching, impartial and dispassionate inquiry" into Welsh agriculture and its problems. For the Tories this meant extolling the virtues of landlordism, while the Liberals were able to once again relate the iniquities of tenants being evicted for voting Liberal or for attending the wrong church.

Whereas in much of Wales this all harked back to the last non-secret vote of 1868, in Radnorshire the accusations were of a more recent nature. Evan Bufton, a Llandrindod auctioneer who had recently lost his Liberal seat on Radnorshire County Council to a Tory, accused J P Severn of Penybont Hall and his elderly sister of evicting tenants for refusing to say which way they would vote.

The tenants were unwilling to testify in person but Jeffrey Jones, a thirty something Llandovery born haulier and prominent Llandrindod Liberal - he was later proprietor of the Brynawel (now the Glen Usk) Hotel - was willing to stand up and be counted. Interestingly Thomas Owen, the 78 year old Abbeycwmhir born gardener Miss Severn was accused of dismissing from her employ, was recorded in the 1891 Census as being a Welsh speaker.

Last of the old school, first of the new

2011-03-27T15:08:00.011+01:00

Surprised to see an article about Innes Ireland in today's Sunday Herald newspaper.

Also very surprised to find that my long deceased Innes Ireland website has reappeared on the web, albeit in zombie like form.

Brampton Bryan

2011-03-26T18:14:00.004Z

Following on from the previous post, most of Sion Ceri's praise poems were composed to patrons living in Montgomeryshire although a few do concern Radnorshire folk. One example is a praise poem to Siams ap Rhys (James Price) of Mynachdy (Monaughty).

According to the editor of the 1996 edition of Sion Ceri's work there was a puzzle about whom and where one of the couplets in the poem referred:

Iarlles oedd i'r llys heddiw,
A'i braint o nen Brontyn yw.

No doubt this little mystery was cleared up long ago, but if not I'd say it refers to Siams' second wife Elsbedd Harley of Brampton Bryan.

If that's the case the Welsh name of the Herefordshire village must have been Brontyn.

UPDATE: Would just like to clarify that Brontyn would have been a Cymricised version of an original English name, just like Prestatyn and Rhyl.

The People's Castle

2011-03-26T17:54:00.004Z

I'd quite forgotten about the moves to purchase the site of Knucklas Castle for the nation. Like most local castles, the perspicacious Radnorians have long ago plundered the stone here for other purposes. Anyway the group behind the move have a blog which, like myself, readers may have overlooked, see here.

Of course Knucklas - and isn't the name unusual this far east in Wales for being partly Irish in origin - was linked by the medieval bards with King Arthur and Guinevere. Nearby Heyop was also a place of some significance, the 16C bard Sion Ceri comparing the town of Oswestry to the former glories of Heiob. Perhaps a lost tale would have explained the comparison.

All very mysterious. The Cornish have built a tourist industry on less.

Just Saying

2011-03-24T12:12:00.007Z

Look I'm no expert but why do Welsh language media and bloggers, including the BBC and Golwg, use the name Gaddafi, surely it should be Gadaffi? After all the guy himself spells/spelt his name القذافي and that should be transliterated according to the rules of the Welsh alphabet, not that of its next door neighbour.

Thought Police

2011-03-21T15:34:00.007Z

Google frightens me, I just had a hit from a keyword search for Seven Ages of Britain Anglocentric and I hadn't even posted anything like that, although I was certainly thinking about it. So since I've already been outed, here goes. I really shouldn't watch history programmes since I just end up shouting at the screen, which was why I stopped watching Question Time about 20 years ago.

Bettany Hughes on Roman Britain in the Seven Ages of Britain series on C4 was a case in point. Ms H didn't mention Wales, which was fair enough, no such country existed during that period, although England and the English seemed to crop-up fairly often. There was no mention of Caratacus or the slaughter of the Druids in Anglesey although Boudica did feature, more as some frustrated proto-UKIP supporter opposed by all those right-thinking Brits who'd signed up for the European project. Although she didn't have much time for the locals Ms Hughes also slipped in another bit of modern day PCism by trumpeting the multi-cultural nature of Roman Britain ( I wonder where all these folk are in the DNA record, it would be fascinating if they turned up). Her quotes from the tomb of Regina, the British wife of a Syrian flag-seller were revealing. Ms H read out the, well she called it Palmirian, inscription in an all-purpose Middle-Eastern accent, but the Latin sections in her normal RP voice. Couldn't she have used a cod-Italian accent for the Latin? Maybe public-school types see themselves as successors to the Patricians and therefore in no need of a silly accent when mangling Latin? Anyway we never did find out why flag-selling was such a profitable business in Roman "England."

Meanwhile ......... the Western Mail announces "a month-long investigation by the top historians of Wales into those people and concepts viewed as saints and sinners throughout Welsh history." The announcement comes complete with pen-portraits of the top historians and examples of their own personal heroes and villains. These tend to be decidedly boring: Bush, Murdoch, Thatcher (yawn) . I think I could enjoy a pint with the fellow who lists Tom Pryce as a hero and a pair of "snivelling traitors" from 1283 as villains though. Pride of place in the eccentricity stakes must go to the historian who lists Mike German as a hero and Lloyd George as a villain.

Magnificent Mid Wales

2011-03-20T08:52:00.002Z

Chattering Classes

2011-03-15T23:57:00.020Z

The usual crowd are up in arms because Midsomer Murders employs no Black actors and therefore doesn't reflect contemporary Britain. Oh yes it does reply the usual crowd, since there are certainly no blacks here in Scratchy Bottom or wherever.

Er .... haven't any of these people noticed that Midsomer is a fantasy? There are no Scots in Midsomer, no Irish, no Geordies or Brummies or Scousers. No working class characters, (OK you might glimpse the occasional cleaning lady) no council houses, no houses with unthatched roofs for that matter. Yet surely the English middle class should be allowed their magic realism? Costume dramas no, but after all foreigners seem to like John Nettles and it's made by ITV, so no poor people have been dragged through the courts in order to pay for it.

No, what I object to is the one ethnic minority who have been featured in Midsomer ...the Welsh. An episode that was actually filmed in North Wales, that starred Sharon Morgan - for my Builth readers, she's the one who played the topless French bird in Grand Slam. Good heavens the soundtrack even featured Myfanwy. This can only mean that the fantasy world of the English middle class encompasses the Welsh - Welsh scenery and male voice choirs at least. How wrong is that!

UPDATE: A spoilsport points out that DS Ben Jones was also Welsh, this is true but is rarely mentioned, also he was from Cardiff and hence only mildly exotic.

Is Batman Welsh?

2011-03-11T10:55:00.005Z

Radnorians with an interest in family history are quite well served by the internet. As well as the collection of pre-1858 wills mentioned in the last post, there is also the huge collection of pre-1600 genealogies compiled by the late P C Bartrum - and yes it does seem as if Batman was Welsh. With the digitisation of the Radnorshire Transactions, the 1670 Hearth Tax return for the county is now available on-line, as is the Lay Subsidy of 1543-45, another record which lists hundreds of heads of households in the county at the time of its formation.

Looking at the Lay Subsidy the overwhelming majority of Radnorians alive when the Acts of Union were passed were still using the patronymic system. Surprisingly this is true even for Stanage in the far east of the county. Only in and around Presteigne do surnames predominate, some of very local origin. In the town itself we find the Welsh bard Morgan Elfael listed, as well as a harper and a crwth player. Apart from the occasional plague it must have been an interesting place with its mix of languages and probable bilingualism. Knighton, on the other hand is a smaller and much more Welsh place in 1543 compared to 1670. In the rest of the county surnames are rare and the occasional Tailer or Smyth is clearly a job description rather than an hereditary surname.

Around 200 of the heads of household listed in the county are women and some 90% use patronyms, mostly using the vz = ferch formula. Welsh forenames are still common, around 20% are called Gwenllian and versions of Angharad, Goleu, Tanglust and Dyddgu make the top ten of most popular names. Other Welsh names are Gwenhwyfar, Tudo, Lleucu and a name which one comes across in Radnorshire and only rarely elsewhere: Deili. Other popular female names are versions of (spelling wasn't formalised in the 16C) Margaret, Agnes, Maud, Elen and Catherine.

Roots in the Air

2011-03-10T08:40:00.009Z

The 16th Century wills transcribed by the late Mr E J L Cole in numerous editions of the Radnorshire Society Transactions must have been an eye-opener to any member labouring under the misapprehension that the county was somehow not part and parcel of mainstream Wales. After all the likes of Angharad verch Lello Bedo ap Madock of Llanvihangell Rhidython (1563) or Jevan ap Hoell ap Gwallter of Nantmell (1587) were hardly likely to have sprung out of an anglicised society. Indeed for the majority of Radnorians, not able to grapple with the extensive bardic literature or the elegant prose of Mr Payne's book Crwydro Sir Faesyfed, these wills must have been a most obvious confirmation of the area's Cymric heritage.

As one of those for whom the word mañana suggests an unnecessary degree of urgency, I'm full of admiration for the likes of Mr Cole, beavering away in the archives during their leisure time, and long before the internet made most Radnorshire wills available at the click of a mouse. Mr Cole also had that tabloid sense for a good story which makes history more accessible, this for example.

What to make of this enigmatic article by Mr Cole in the Radnorshire Transactions? Radnorians should be able to guess the location of "the great rock that stands close to the church of Paternus" and with the census available on-line, at a price, it's now easy enough to identify the people, but what was Mr Cole's relationship to the old lady who in true Radnorshire fashion would not want to see her name in print "bringing shame and notoriety on her family."

The Time Between

2011-03-05T20:14:00.008Z

Here's Innes Ireland explaining to British Racing Partnership chief mechanic Tony Robinson how he has just crashed out of the 1964 French Grand Prix at 135 mph. This is from an old BP film, the full version of which also has some footage of Innes flying his plane and at home in Radnorshire.

A feature of the film I found interesting was that Innes and Graham Hill, neither of whom came from well-off backgrounds, speak with those posh 1950s accents you hear in films of that period, while Mike Hailwood, a millionaire's son, doesn't. Mike was ten years younger than Innes and Graham and, I guess, a product of the more egalitarian 1960s.

Motor sport fans can spot Bette Hill, Bruce McLaren, his wife Pattie is on the pit counter, Americans Phil Hill and race winner Dan Gurney, Jack Brabham, Stirling Moss, Raymond Mays, Tim Parnell and is the bearded mechanic jazz musician Owen Maddock? I'd like to know who the kohl-eyed lass in the BRP pit is though.

Elephant on the Doorstep

2011-03-03T17:02:00.009Z

Well my fears for the referendum proved groundless with a resounding swing across all parts of Wales. People rightly complain about the turn-out but there's nothing to suggest that the stay-at-homes would have voted any differently.

This is the result we should have had in 1979, but which, thanks mainly to the Kinnockites, was delayed for a third of a century. The future belongs to those who have no memory of that defeat and the shrinking band who oppose Home Rule have to realise that there's a rather large elephant sat on their doorstep.