Emily Hobhouse - a Great Nuisance

Let's be honest all sides in the Syrian conflict are capable of starving, torturing and killing their opponents.  It's also no surprise to find a big atrocity story surfacing on the eve of the Geneva conference - a conference that, with the exclusion of the Iranians, the West must think are negotiations aimed at Syrian government surrender rather than finding a lasting peace.

Listening to this lunchtime's BBC reporting of the Syrian atrocity photographs the casual observer might be impressed with the Corporations's impartiality.  Seemingly hard questions were asked - were the photographs photo-shopped or faked, did the fact that the project was funded by the Qatari government mean that the forensic experts had been bought off?  Of course these were meaningless questions, no doubt the pictures are genuine and the experts completely professional and unbiased in their work.  The most important questions weren't asked though  - who were the victims shown in the photographs and who abused them?

It's the type of question the Cornishwoman Emily Hobhouse would probably have asked.  Largely remembered for exposing the British Boer War concentration camps - responsible for the death of 24000 Boer children -  her Wikipedia entry doesn't really do Hobhouse justice.  For example it doesn't mention her role in the creation of the Save the Children charity (neither does the charity's website) and it ignores her journey to occupied Belgium in the First World War to ascertain the truth of the atrocity stories being used to rally young men to the colours.

Today Emily Hobhouse is something of a hero in South Africa with streets and even a town named after her.  Anglophone historians criticise Hobhouse because she only visited Boer camps and not the black concentration camps also established by the British.  In reality she was only allowed to visit a handful of camps and that was curtailed as soon as the authorities realised what a great nuisance she had become.  Revisionists, relying on British government reports, even claim that the deaths of the Boer women and children were the result of their inate ignorance and lack of hygiene rather than the scorched earth policies of an Empire humiliated by the successes of the Boer fighters.  It smacks of the Blue Books familiar to us in Wales.

Unlike those Malthusian ancestors of today's politically correct elite Hobhouse spoke plainly of the need for black rights.  Her speech at the dedication of the memorial to the Boer women and children victims of the British Empire was recalled by Thablo Mbeki in a 2004 speech:

"At an earlier time, 90 years ago, the speech of an English woman, Emily Hobhouse, who opposed the cruel war waged by her country against the people of South Africa was read at the ceremony to unveil the Women's Monument in Bloemfontein. On that occasion, she said: 

'The old watchword 'Liberty, Fraternity, Equality' cries from the tomb; what these women, so simple that they did not know they were heroines, valued and died for, all other human beings desire with equal fervour. Should not the justice and liberties you love so well, extend to all within your borders?'

She went on to say: 'We too, the great civilised nations of the world, are still but barbarians in our degree, so long as we continue to spend vast sums in killing or planning to kill each other for greed of land and gold. Does not justice bid us remember today how many thousands of the dark race perished also in Concentration Camps in a quarrel that was not theirs? Did they not redeem their past? Was it not an instance of that community of interest, which bonding all in one, roots out racial animosity? And may it not come about that the associations linked with this day will change, merging into nobler thoughts as year by year you celebrate the more inspiring Vrouewen-Dag we now inaugurate?'

It is a tragedy for the Afrikaner people - for a majority of those speaking the language as a mother tongue are not categorised as white - that her plea was ignored.

It seems to me that unlike so many present-day human rights activists Hobhouse was not motivated by support for one side against another.  She campaigned against the concentration camps because of the disgraceful conditions pertaining there, not because she supported the Boer war effort.  In 1916 Hobhouse crossed the Swiss border into Germany and went on to visit the Belgian city of Louvain and the German camp for British internees at Ruhleben even meeting with the German foreign minister. Again not because she supported Germany but because she wanted to see for herself if the atrocity stories in the British press were true and investigate avenues for peace.  Hobhouse reported what she saw while making clear the restrictions placed upon her visit by the German authorities.  Like Gareth Jones in 1930s Ukraine she was that rare thing, an honest reporter.

For her troubles Hobhouse was condemned as a traitor and the law quickly changed to make such future visits illegal.  Emily replied to her critics in a letter to the Times:

"I went to Germany quite simply and openly, contravening no law: I went under my own name with a 'humanitarian pass' in the interests of truth, peace and humanity; and I am proud and thankful to have done so."

The British state has seen fit to celebrate Kitchener - architect of the scorched-earth policy that saw some 30000 Boer farms destroyed, the women and children placed in concentration camps and the men shipped off to the more remote corners of the Empire - by placing his portrait on the £2 coin.  It's said that a new coin will be produced each year to commemorate the centenary of the Great War, perhaps Hobhouse might be a suitable candidate for 2016?

After all as one historian states "in the entire course of the deadliest conflict the world had ever seen, she was the sole person from any of the warring countries who actually journeyed to the other side in search of peace."  It's worth remembering.

Go West

Like any right-thinking Cymro I'm sure that America was named after the Bristol merchant Richard Amerike, a descendant of Hywel ap Meurig - who may have been a quisling, but at least was our very own Radnorian quisling.

  

Another early explorer of the North Atlantic was the Bristol customs officer Thomas Croft, whose ships sailed in 1481 - reportedly in search of the mythical Isle of Brasil.   Since his two vessels contained a cargo of salt it's more likely they intended to exploit the rich, and secret, Newfoundland fishing banks.  Whatever his intentions Croft could boast of a far more illustrious Welsh pedigree than Amerike since his great grandfather was none other than Owain Glyndwr.  As we know Glyndwr married-off his daughters to the leading lights in the strategic Central March - a Mortimer, a Scudamore and a Croft.  Thomas Croft's grandmother was Glyndwr's daughter Sioned.

It's sometimes said that in the aftermath of Glyndwr's war no-one in Wales wanted to be reminded of the great patriot.  This is clearly not the case in respect of his daughter Gwenllian of Cenarth, St Harmon - all the bardic poetry to her family boasts of the connection.  It's not even true of the Herefordshire Crofts.  When Thomas's great niece Margaret married Ieuan Gwyn of Llangynllo and Clun, a bard was on hand to remind the audience of the bride's ancestry:

Crofft, Glyndwr, milwr moliant

Of course an earlier Atlantic sea-farer was Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd, whose story and subsequent myth are told in a marvellous book by Gwyn Alf Williams.  Although Gwyn mentions the reference to Madoc in the poetry of the 15C bard Maredudd ap Rhys, even he - and most everyone else - miss another reference to the seafarer in the work of another 15C bard Deio ab Ieuan Du:

Fal Madog, marchog medd

Baun gwyn, ab Owain Gwynedd.

Y gwr, siwrneio a gai

Ar foroedd, yr arferai.

Clearly Madoc's exploits were common knowledge to the bards of the 15C and, no doubt, to the patrons they rubbed shoulders with.  Who knows if men like Croft and the Welsh captain John Lloyd ("the most expert shipmaster in all England") were inspired by such tales.  Certainly Wales - and Radnorshire for that matter - has never been a backwater.

Camp Bastion ar Ieithon

When Sir Richard Hoare visited Radnorshire in the early 1800s a local named John Williams informed him that the extensive Roman remains in Llanfihangel Helygen parish went by the name of Castell Collen.  This may have been news to some locals who, it's said and in common with folk up and down Wales, called such sites Y Gaer, but Castell Collen ended up in print and that was that.  What the unfortunate Roman auxiliaries sent to such a remote outpost of empire called the place is not recorded, although another John Williams, the county's 19C historian, believed it was Magos.

So you're a Sarmatian cavalryman newly drafted into the Roman army and where do they post you - with an entire empire to choose from, Camp Bastion ar Ieithon.  Not a small place, it had room for a 1000 troops, it must still have felt like drawing the short straw. OK there was a bath house and some fancy latrines, but the weather was miserable and the neighbourhood was troublesome.  That's the thing, away from the legion towns of Chester and Caerleon, the only places in third century Wales where you were likely to find the military were Cardiff, Caernarfon, Caersws, Forden, Castell Collen and, just over the modern border, Leintwardine.

If Cardiff and Caernarfon can be explained by the need to combat Irish pirates, what were the military bases in East Central Wales all about?  Well the archaeologists tell us they were to combat the Ordovices -  a tribe who just couldn't be trusted to behave in polite society.  Certainly those military forts did a fine job of encircling the later-day kingdom of Maelienydd - like we said troublesome neighbours.

The archaeologists seem pretty convinced that the Ordovices were a tribe of Central Wales while the historians tend to favour Gwynedd*.  T M Charles-Edwards, for example, plumps for Gwynedd because a tribe based on the upper Severn valley "would hardly have been so formidable a people as they appear in Tacitus's narrative."   Maybe so, although Central Wales would play a fairly pivotal role in resisting the later Saxon and Norman power.  I tend to think that Meirionnydd was the centre of Ordovician power and  there are certainly historic and linguistic ties between it and Arwystli, Gwerthrynion and Maelienydd.  Southern Radnorshire, especially Elfael Is Mynydd, may well have been part of Silurian territory.

I've been reading some informative online stuff from Cadw about developing a visitor experience package for, amongst other sites,  Castell Collen - yes I know - it seemingly appeals to cultural explorers.  I guess this means improving access and maybe putting up a few information boards.  The report also reminds us that some Welsh people might actually sympathise with the natives rather than the Romans and that this needs to be borne in mind when developing those visitor experience packages.

Well I'm certainly rather proud of the fact that our Radnorian forebears proved a bit of a handful for the Roman invader, so too later generations and their resistance to the Normans and their role in supporting Glyndwr at Bryn Glas.  Reading of how the 19C squirearchy stretched the law for fear of the Rebeccaites also makes me smile - the magistrate who dismissed a case against some locals engaged in midnight fisticuffs with the river bailiffs because the officials had failed to show their letters of appointment was a highlight.  As the franchise expanded Radnorians gradually took control of their own local governance - seeking to oppose the excesses of the Malthusian workhouses and trying to keep local lads away for the trenches of the Great War.  Of course it all came to an end with the ever increasing power of the centralised state and its bureaucracy, typified locally by the establishment of Powys and bodies like the DBRW.

I've also been reading a paper from that very county council, it's basically a justification for high pay for top officials - "large complex bodies with multi-million pound budgets."  All that 1970s talk about halting rural depopulation is summed up by a comment that the county has a low birth rate - Malthusians again - and a large outward migration of young people with a large inward migration of old people.  Depopulation solved by methods that might appeal to folk in the Balkans.

Never mind that Powys might "employ very few young people under the age of 21" the high pay for top officials will have "a beneficial impact on the quality of life in the community as well as on the local economy."  Oh and of course recruitment to those senior grades "will ideally include people from the private sector as well as the public sector and from outside as well as inside Wales."  Well of course it will.

Where are the Ordovices when you need them?

* Some, the BBC are an example,  mention that a mosaic map in the Forum at Rome does not include Gwynedd as part of the Empire, what they fail to tell us is that the mosaic was the work of Mussolini!

Patriots and Pacifists

Llandrindod's Baptist Tabernacle would hardly seem a likely setting for a mini-riot; but such was the case in the summer of 1917 when the Welsh branches of the Fellowship of Reconciliation - who had been holding a conference in the town - organised a public meeting entitled "The Church and the World after the War."

Word got about that the meeting might be of a pacifist nature, which soon attracted the interest of a sizeable party of "patriots" also visiting the town for a bowling tournament.  They were not disappointed because the first speaker - John Davies, the Dowlais miner's agent and a former Labour mayor of Merthyr Tydfil - was soon ranting about profiteers and "other gamblers in the lives and blood of their fellow men."

These sentiments naturally outraged the patriotic section of the audience who were soon singing Rule Britannia and God Save the King.  Faced with disorder the Llandrindod deacons hurriedly ran up the white flag and abandoned the meeting.  The mob, by now some hundreds strong, repaired to South Crescent to pass resolutions in favour of the war while Mr Davies and his friends were forced to beat a hasty retreat.

Handily the newspapers have left us the names of some of the more strident patriots, and with the help of the 1911 census we find:

Goodfellow, solicitor, born Devon, age 49, from Caerphilly

Errington, commercial traveller, born Durham, age 56, from Cardiff

Atkinson, agent, born Lancashire, age 53, from Swansea

Am I spotting something of a pattern here?

Of course this had little to do with Radnorshire, with both patriots and pacifists being mainly summer visitors to the town. What I think you can find in local attitudes to the war is the age-old Radnorian search for a modus vivendi, a means of quietly getting on with life alongside far more powerful outside forces.

We can see this in the frustrated work of that angel of death Captain Shrimpton, the county's  military recruiter.  Shrimpton had worked out that there were 2173 unstarred men in the county - males between the ages of 18 and 41, eligible for military service and not working in reserved occupations.  His job was to get these fellows into khaki.  It must have seemed to him that the job of the local appeals tribunal was to keep them safe at home.

Out of 1035 appeals heard in the summer months of 1916 only 35 had been disallowed (3.4%). Since the county tribunal system - it's members in the main were local councillors - had been set up in Radnorshire just 33% of appeals from those in urban districts had been disallowed, while in the rural districts only 13% had failed to get an exemption or a delay.

How long this reluctance to send local men to the colours was kept-up I'm not sure and most of the appeals allowed were in respect of perceived work and family commitments. There were a few Radnorshire conscientious objectors though - the three Jenkins boys from Penybont, who served with the Friends Ambulance Unit, for example.

"My name is Manoa"

Wales may have some of the dullest children politicians in Europe but at least it has decent online-history resources - this one covering Wales and the First World War is a recent example.  Maybe the search could do with some tweaking but all is forgiven when you come across headlines like this, from the Brecon County Times of 25th February 1915:

The unfortunate individual imprisoned under the Defence of the Realm Act was a Bugeildy labourer, one Manoah Davies.  His employer - a local farmer - had passed on a recruiting card, which Davies then handed back, but not before adding the following pencilled comments:

Why should I serve in the Army?  I have no country - Germany for ever!

Let England be a German republic and not pay £1000 a week to King.

Soon Sergeant Bufton of the Radnorshire Constabulary was on Manoah's trail and his admission that "I can't disown my own writing" saw him up before the Knighton beaks.  Coltman Rogers, the chairman of the Court pointed out that Davies could easily have been court-martialed for his display of disaffection towards the king and that in Germany he would most certainly have been executed.  After a suitable amount of huffing and puffing Davies was imprisoned for a month.

I doubt if Manoah was a man of principle, after all he apologised to the court for his actions.  More likely he was a bit of a smart-aleck.  Just three months later Manoah was summoned by the Knighton Guardians, accused of being the father of an illegitimate child.  Davies did not attend the hearing but sent a note saying he would "pay nine pence a week, or as an alternative if the registrar will put up the banns free will take the lot."  Unimpressed by this unromantic proposal of marriage the Guardians ordered that he pay 3/6 a week until the child was fourteen.

The Patriot Game

So who led Plaid Cymru's official delegation to Berlin in 1940?  J E Daniel?  Saunders Lewis perhaps?  And wasn't that young Gwynfor booking into the Hotel Kaiserhof; right next door to the mighty Reichskanzlei itself?  Soon our gallant band would be sitting down with Adolf and discussing the imminent downfall of the British Empire.

You might think my scenario is tripe, nonsense, poppycock, claptrap, balderdash?   No doubt you'd be right, but don't tell me, tell the readers of the well-regarded book Patriots, National Identity in Britain 1940-2000.  Here are some reviews:

Wide ranging, intelligent, sensible, and important - Sunday Telegraph
A major work - The Independent

A treasure trove - Daily Mail

Many perceptive thoughts - The Guardian
Marvellously rich - Financial Times

His research is formidable - Sunday Times

So the book went down well in the Metropolis then.  The Guardian did complain about a lack of footnotes but no reviewer thought to query one rather astounding claim:

"Plaid Cymru was less circumspect, sending an official delegation to Berlin in the summer of 1940 to convince Hitler that in return for some measure of Welsh independence they would support a Nazi regime elsewhere on the island."

You have to wonder how such a tall-tale ever got into the mainstream.  Perhaps it stems back to MI5's fantasy Welsh-nationalist Arthur Jenkins (Snow) and his imaginary pals.  Certainly one of their number, the British agent "Jack Brown" visited Germany in 1940 as a guest of the Abwehr.  The eisteddfodwr Leigh Vaughan Henry is also said to have had links with German Intelligence, but he was a member of the British Union of Fascists  and by the summer of 1940 was safely interned in one of His Majesty's establishments.

In an email the author of Patriots told me that the "official delegation" story came from a Welsh historical monograph on the early history of the party.  It's a monograph, unreferenced in the book, which is unknown to other academics versed in the history of Plaid Cymru.  The author's other Welsh researches do not inspire much confidence - for example he confuses MAC and the FWA, who seemingly sent a letter-bomb responsible for "blowing the hands off a small girl."  Once out into the mainstream, like black propaganda, such accusations fester and are reprinted in other books and taken-up by bloggers and tweeters. It soon becomes, as one English author of a subsequent re-telling informed me, "fairly well documented."  A documentation built on sand.

It says a lot about the relationship between England and Wales that none of the distinguished reviewers of the book thought a Plaid "official delegation" to Berlin in 1940 at all shocking or unbelievable.  It's also telling that such a visit was not worth the bother of any subsequent follow-up or investigation.  The Welsh are clearly untrustworthy but also unimportant.  Yes, they would have scuttled-off to Berlin - presumably in one of those mythical U-boats that used to call into Cardigan Bay for fresh eggs and a sing-song in the local pub - but who cares.

Radnorshire From Above - Review

Let's get the praise out of the way first; this is a beautifully produced book - in Aberystwyth - containing more than a hundred aerial photographs illustrating the archaeology and landscape of the old county of Radnorshire.  The colour photographs are accompanied by an informative text describing the background to aerial archaeology and what each of the often stunning images tells us about the past.

Anyone with the slightest interest in our Radnorian heimat should snap up a copy without delay.  Published by the Radnorshire Society and the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust, it costs just £9 from the Society and a still great value £12.99 from local bookshops.  Congratulations to all involved in its production.

Here you'll find snowscapes, landscapes, the complexities of the Walton basin, hill forts, castles plundered of every last stone by the perspicacious Radnorshire folk and the churchyard of Newbridge-on-Wye with the graves of the local toffs shielded from the hoi polloi by a neat hedge.  Innes Ireland's old home at Downton merits a page, there are splendid shots of the Elan Valley including nostalgic shots of dried-out 2003, Roman marching camps, tai un nos and traces of the Glasbury church which ended up on the wrong side of the Wye after one 17C flood.

Any complaints I have may seem trivial to those who view the world through anglocentric spectacles, but here you go:

First off the text does recognize that the Anglo-Norman hold on Radnorshire castles was pretty precarious.  For long periods they were back home in Herefordshire and at others, a bit like the British army in Basra, confined to barracks.  So where were successful local rulers like Cadwallon ap Madog hanging out, since they tended to despoil the Norman castles rather than move in?   In Welsh castles more than likely, places like Buddugre - I would have liked to have seen some discussion about that.

Castell Cwm Aran?  This monstrosity may be perpetrated by the Ordnance Survey and the local High School but it's just wrong.  I'm far from being a language purist, I'm not vexed by the use Rhayader instead of Rhaeadr and I positively welcome the use of a localism like Noyadd instead of Neuadd.  But there is no river Aran in Radnorshire - the river and the castle are properly called Cymaron.  It was good enough for the bards and it should be good enough for the Radnorshire Society.

Likewise the use of placenames like Crug Erydd (Crug Eryr) and Penarth Mount (Bryn Pennardd).  Indeed the names used by the bards for these supposedly Norman sites might offer a big clue that they were in use by the local uchelwyr in the 15C.  None of them have been - so perhaps it's time CPAT dug one of them up?  I guess archaeologists don't like documentary evidence much, but Lewis Glyn Cothi describes Cefnllys Castle being rebuilt and occupied in the 15C - he even names the builder!

To me it illustrates the fact that in order to get a fuller picture of medieval and early modern Radnorshire history you really have to get to grips with the bards and their work.

Mistakes?   Well no-one was transported for  Rebeccaite attacks on toll gates in and around Rhayader, p87.

Radnorshire, the South, Senghennydd

Visit Llandrindod during its Victorian Festival and you'd think that the average Radnorian of the period must have been a swaggerer with a top hat and a cane.  Those not given to such fantasies might guess that the agricultural labourer would be a more honest representative of the pre-World War One county.  Up to a point they'd be right, but would also be forgetting that just as many, perhaps more, Radnorshire folk had found work in the mines and ironworks of South Wales.

A small county - even the next smallest Welsh county had twice as many people - Radnorshire cannot be expected to have had much impact* on the Valleys, but the coalfield would certainly have had a great impact on Radnorshire.  Look at the 1911 Census and you'll find that nearly a quarter of family heads born in Radnorshire lived in industrial South Wales, mainly in the Merthyr, Pontypridd and Bedwellty registration districts

Far from being a world apart from industrialised Glamorgan and Monmouthshire - as modern-day seekers after tranquility might imagine - there can have been few Radnorshire families without close relatives who had gone off to work in the south.

Over the next month or so we'll hear a good deal about Senghenydd and 1913.  It was not a village that had attracted many Radnorians.  Certainly among the 41 victims of the disaster who had a home in Commercial Street we find 21 year old George Herritts of Presteigne and Edward Thomas, a 51 year old from Old Radnor.  Evan Jones (32) of Kingsley Place, a native of Rhayader, was one of 43 with that surname to be lost.  There may have been others amongst the victims with Radnorshire connections not so easy to spot.

The local MP for East Glamorganshire was Knighton born Liberal Clem Edwards.  He played a frustrated part in the rescue work - offering to organize a trainload of much needed sand to fight the fire, the offer was turned down - and subsequently representing many of the relatives at the public inquiry into the disaster.  It's interesting to note that when Edwards won his seat in 1910 he had pushed Labour's syndicalist firebrand C B Stanton into third place.  Both would end up as National Democratic Party MPs after 1918, with Edwards defeating Arthur Henderson in East Ham.  No doubt disasters like Senghenydd did much to win support for the emerging Labour Party and its centralist,  top-down version of socialism.  Salopian Alfred Onions would win the new Caerphilly seat in 1918, with Radnorshire native Charles Edwards, he was from Llangynllo, topping the poll in neighbouring Bedwellty.

It will be interesting to see what the remembrancers make of the Universal colliery's manager Edward Shaw, he was certainly fined £24 for eight violations of the Coal Mines Act in the aftermath of the disaster.  A 41 year old Welsh speaker and Baptist, Shaw must have been popular with the villagers since as an Independent he had recently topped the poll in the local council election.  Shaw too had a Radnorshire connection, recently married, his wife Jessie Lloyd was from Llandrindod.

*  We shouldn't forget the Radnorshire family background of movers and shakers like Arthur Horner and Nye Bevan.

Welsh Slackers

Head out of Crossgates on the Aberystwyth road and you can't fail to notice a rather pretty building in the mock Tudor style.  Originally called Glanclywedog, it was rebuilt by a Wolverhampton industrialist - one Luther Greenway  - and imaginatively renamed Greenway Manor.

In June 1915 Mr Greenway threw open the doors of his Welsh pile to the general public.  A problem had been identified and the great and the good wanted to do something about it - the youth of Radnorshire were failing to rally to the colours in sufficient numbers.  Parents were said to be encouraging their sons to stay at home, indeed married men were more likely to come forward than the single - what does this tell us about Radnorshire wives.  Many young men were echoing a popular local refrain "they would not go, until they were fetched."

After the public meeting had been entertained by the bands of the Shropshire Light Infantry and the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry, Radnor's Lord Lieutenant and former Tory MP Sir Powlett Milbank reassured the mothers present that it was "better to be the parent of a dead hero than a living coward."

Not to be outdone the prospective Liberal candidate for the county, a Liverpool based shipowner, William Lewis launched into a fierce attack on his potential constituents.  Young men who needed to be fetched "were not worth fetching", they would only "soil a soldier's uniform" and were "cowardly and unworthy of the traditions of their race."

The star speaker of the evening was Mrs Lloyd George herself and there is a familiar ring to her comments.  She had been reading the Bryce Report - a government concoction of alleged German rapes and child murders in Belgium.  There were some who were reluctant to believe such tales, the good lady admitted, but the report proved that a "wild beast had been let loose in Europe" and "such deeds of cruelty had been wrought, that had not been seen for 300 years."  The Germans had, Maggie Owen declared, "gone back to the dark ages."

At the end of the meeting "several" new recruits came forward to the colours.  It seems small reward for the expenditure of so much hot air.

From Ramallah to Radnorshire

It's well-known that the Catholics include Hereford within their Cardiff archdiocese, although that may be because of  the West-British outlook prevalent at the time of its formation. Another institution with an ambiguous attitude towards Hereford's identity was the British Army.  Why else would the Herefordshire Regiment - whose ranks included many young Radnorians -  have campaigned as part of the 53rd Welsh Division in both World Wars?

So it was that in December 1917 two Llandrindod brothers - Frank and Tom Edwards, sons of a local watchmaker -  found themselves engaged in the Battle for Jerusalem.  During a break in the fighting, the brothers took the opportunity to visit the newly 'liberated' town of Ramallah.  They wanted to meet the town's mayor, one Elias Audi.  The Sheikh was of interest to them because they knew his brother Joseph Audi Debeni, a popular Llandrindod figure and owner of the Spa's Oriental Bazaar.

By his own account Joseph Audi was born around 1860.  He was almost certainly educated at Ramallah's Quaker school and had originally come to Europe in order to study medicine in Edinburgh.  When Audi's daughter Zarifeh visited England in the early 1890s, she and her companion were described in the press as being the first Arab women to have entered the country - can that be true?

Audi subsequently earned a living as a lecturer on Middle Eastern topics and as a guide accompanying travellers to the Holy Land on behalf of the once well-known travel agency of Henry Gage and Son.  By the mid-1890s he'd opened his Oriental Bazaar (see poster) in Station Crescent's Britannia House; spending the winter months in Palestine conducting tour parties.

Audi was described as a quiet, dignified man, with many friends in the town, and in August 1913 he was granted British nationality.  The Great War put paid to anymore visits home - this photo includes members of Joseph's family, including his mother - and early in 1919 Joseph Audi died.

I wonder if any readers know where Joseph Audi Debeni is buried?  He was a Christian Arab, as were the overwhelming majority of Ramallah's population at that time.  Ramallah is often in the news and it's estimated that nowadays 25% of its 27000 inhabitants are Christians; many of its former citizens having migrated to the United States and South America.

Widows and Spinsters

You don't find much written about the Welsh businesswomen of the Victorian and Edwardian period.  Such females did exist of course, although it helped to be a widow or a spinster or otherwise unencumbered with a spouse.

The Hotel trade in pre-First World War Llandrindod was no small beer, as the buildings of the town, now somewhat decayed, still testify.  And it was a trade which was dominated by the women who owned, or managed, the majority of the most important such businesses in the town.

Look at the 1911 Census and you'll find Miss Duggan and her sister, they were from Hundred House, the owners of Duggan's Temperance Hotel.  Then there was the Llanyre born Miss Sheen, manager of Plas Winton - now the Commodore.  Miss Ace ran the Waverley, Miss Jenkins York House and Miss Smith the Montpelier.  If they weren't spinsters they were widows like Mrs Bentley of the Spring Hotel and Mrs Smith of Ye Wells - currently occupied by Coleg Powys's Llandrindod campus.

The largest hotel in the town, indeed in the whole of Wales, was the Pump House; with its posh clientele and Continental cuisine - one of my aunts married the son of a Swiss chef from there.  It was managed for many years by the Monmouthshire born Miss Duffield, who interestingly enough was elected to the town council in 1900.

 The great rival of the Pump House was the Bridge, which would eventually supplant it as the largest hotel in the country.

Like many of the businesses in the town it was originally built and operated by local Radnorshire families.  For even though Llandrindod has been described as "not a Welsh town, but a town in Wales," most of the entrepreneurial spirit that built the place was Welsh.  In 1897 the five Wilding sisters and their two brothers sold the Bridge Hotel to the redoubtable Mrs Miles (see picture) for a tidy £7850.

Born in Treforest in 1847, Elizabeth Miles (nee Spencer) was the daughter of Pontypridd innkeepers.  Married at 20, she found herself widowed by the age of 24, and with two young sons to boot.  Perhaps because of this setback Elizabeth went on to own or lease some 10 hotels in South Wales, including the Angel in Cardiff.  A Welsh speaker - and so were her two sons - Mrs Miles eventually changed the name of her Llandrindod purchase to the Metropole Hotel.  This was for the rather frugal reason that she had bought a quantity of bankrupt linen and crockery, all  inscribed with the letter M.

So why aren't such women, and others like them elsewhere, better known?   Well, apart from the fact that history has largely been written by men, such successes may not have suited the agendas of those who tend to sell Wales short.

Radnorshire Picts?

Take an interest in the historical uses of DNA and you soon learn not to get too excited about the latest headline.

Humans and Neanderthals never interbred says one piece of research, oh yes they did say subsequent articles; the Welsh and the English have quite different DNA says one, no they're remarkably similar says another.  Throw in the tendency of the media to sensationalize and the best thing to do is take things with a pinch of salt and await further developments.

A couple of months ago we were told that a Pictish marker had been isolated, see here for example.  All very interesting and who knows it might even turn-out to be true ...... possibly.  One of the flies in the ointment of this Pictish theory is a possible hotspot that shares the same marker, L1335+, which is said to be centred in Radnorshire.  It's even got a name "Wales II Cadwgon."

Why Cadwgon?  Well here it get's a bit daft.  The marker turned up in some fellow called Miles whose ancestor took part in Radnorshire's Quaker migration to Pennsylvania in the 17C.  With a complete misunderstanding of how Welsh surnames are formed, this Miles was then assumed to be linked to the Miles family of Kinnerton* - who by the way preserved the Book of Taliesin for posterity.  The Kinnerton Miles family traced it's ancestry to the 11C ruler of East Central Wales, Cadwgan ab Elystan Glodrydd, hence "Wales II Cadwgon."

Of course this may all be true.  We're talking about male-to-male Y-chromosones here, and although democrats like to think they're the direct descendant in the male-line from some hardy medieval peasant, chances are they're not.  Bottlenecks ensure you're far more likely to be a male-line descendant of a roguish prince or baron, someone like Cadwgan ab Elystan Glodrydd.

So let's accept for a moment that Pictish ancestry can indeed be identified and that the Radnorshire examples are also descendants of Picts.  Is there any historical evidence?  Now I've posted a theory that minor kingdoms like Gwerthrynion and Arwystli were formed to protect the headwaters of the Wye and the Severn from 5C Irish expansion - see here.  Who better to add a bit of backbone than to import a few warlike Pictish mercenaries to the area.  Of course that's just my outlandish theory, so here's something a bit more  substantial from the Jesus College MS 20 genealogies: 

Einyaw a Katwallawn llawhir Deu vroder oedynt. Ac eu dwy vam oedynt chwioryd merchet y didlet brenhin gwydyl fichti ym pywys.

The relevant bit translates as "Didlet king of the gwydyl fichti in Powys." The gwydyl fichti meaning either Irish Picts or wild Picts but definitely Picts.

Radnorshire Picts?  Perhaps our friends at Llwyth Elystan need to get tested, perhaps they already have?

* That's Kinnerton in Radnorshire not the one in Flintshire

The talented Mr Henry

Richard Wyn Jones' new book (see previous post) provoked quite a reaction on twitter, well two tweets at least.  But then as Professor Jones pointed out there's a reluctance in Wales to get to grips with the real history of Welsh fascism rather than banging-on about Saunders Lewis.  Let's try and help fill in one or two blanks.

To students of British fascism Leigh Vaughan-Henry is one of the more obnoxious Jew haters of the 1930s.  A one time director of music for the British Union of Fascists, a "notorious pro-Nazi" according to the Home Office and someone suspected of having links with German intelligence.  Little wonder that he was picked-up in the summer of 1940 and sat out the rest of the war in various of His Majesty's establishments.

Dig a little deeper and you find that Leigh Henry - the Vaughan was a later addition - was born in Liverpool in 1889, the son of a man who features in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, John Henry the Porthmadoc born composer of favourites such as Gwlad y Delyn.  Young Leigh was also a talented musician and joined Edward Gordon Craig as director of music at his experimental theatre institute in Florence. Leigh Henry was fortunate to avoid the bloodbath of the First World War as a civilian internee in the Ruhleben Camp; while, back home, his wife Nancy - they had married in 1911 - pursued a friendship with D H Lawrence.

It was in the 1920s, after the closure of his radical cultural journal Fanfare that Leigh Henry returned with a vengeance to his Welsh roots.  He joined the Gorsedd in 1923 and often figured in Eisteddfodic proceedings as a composer, conductor and lecturer.  His poetry and short-stories were published in magazines such as Welsh Outlook and he appeared regularly on the radio. In 1926 for example Henry hosted a St David's Day programme of Welsh folk music on 2LO.  A pleasant appointment at this time must have been as musical adviser to Clara Novello's Royal Welsh Ladies Choir on a tour of Australia and Noth America.

Divorced from his first wife, Leigh Henry was briefly married, it seems, to the vivacious American war correspondent Paula Lecler - forgotten now, but a woman whose globe trotting derring-do made Martha Gellhorn look like a stay-at-home.  Subsequently Henry married (bigamously it later transpired) a German woman, while always paying attention to wealthy ladies such as Winifred Coombe-Tennant and his fellow composer and musicologist Margaret Glyn.  The latter left him her fortune in 1945.  Shortly before she died Henry is said to have conducted the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in a symphony composed by Glyn at the 1945 National Eisteddfod.

A Radnorshire connection?  Well Henry wrote a biography and a rather badly received play about the composer John Bull (1563-1628), although he was unaware that Bull probably came from Old Radnor.

Leigh Henry died in 1958, having seemingly managed to keep his various identities quite separate - the progressive English musicologist and composer, the Welsh eisteddfodwr and the Union Jack waving anti-Semite.

Showtime

I've often thought that, left to its own devices, Wales would have developed a system of government somewhat along the lines of the Swiss cantons.  Fat chance of that happening of course, when we had the misfortune to share an island with such ambitious neighbours.

You find tantalising hints of the potential democratic canton in references like Lewis Glyn Cothi's request poem to the men of Elfael, or the men of Maelienydd paying £500 to confirm their medieval hunting rights.  Even in the 1630s the good people of Maelienydd were able to raise over £740, which they gave to King Charles to enable him to buy back the local Commons.  He had absent-mindedly sold them off to some rouge or other.  All these things, and we can find other examples, demanded an organisation of some sort and an organisation that had a fairly wide membership.  Even before the election of the first county council in 1889 the Radnorshire squirearchy realised that it had to rub along with the common herd, with arrogant newcomers soon learning that life was more comfortable if you didn't antagonise the locality.

It must have been this sense of localism that prompted some Radnorshire and Breconshire councillors to dip into their own pockets to raise much of the £23000 necessary to purchase the old Llanelwedd Hall estate in the early 1960s.  This was then gifted to the RWAS, enabling that organisation to provide a permanent home for the Royal Welsh Show. It's a bit hard to believe isn't it, not handing over a grant, but dipping into their own pockets!

I wonder what young people imagine life was like in 1960s Radnorshire?  One of my earliest political memories was of Tudor Watkins MP making a speech in our village street.  The gist of his message was that he knew exactly what the local councillors were up to, and he was the man to put a stop to them.  So what exactly were they guilty of?  Building council houses in almost every village? Maintaining roads that were the envy of  our neighbours; schools; libraries; social services; refuse collections, we had all that.  And all run without the assistance of the droves of imported officials deemed necessary for such things to function nowadays.

Of course a saintly few might have seen it as unfair that local families got the council houses and local school leavers got the council jobs, but at least the councillors could be voted off.  How do you get rid of an anonymous apparatchik without at least providing them with a cosy nest-egg?  Back in the 1960s we still had a degree of local government and now, perhaps for the first time in a thousand years, it doesn't feel very local at all.

Mythology .....you couldn't make it up

"let's build some modern myths and legends"

Well that's the opinion expressed in one anonymous comment to the blog.  Now of course this implies that there are not-so-modern myths and legends, which is obviously true, although you won't find them here.

When we occasionally discuss the more than 250 year resistance of the rulers of East Central Wales to the Norman invaders, we're not making it up.  You can read all about it in the contemporary record - not so much in the works of our Welsh historians mind,  indeed the best summary is to be found in a book by the UKIP candidate for Weaver Vale.

Welsh bardic poets and their Radnorshire patrons?  Again you don't need to invent a thing, for example more than 50 of the works of Lewis Glyn Cothi addressed to Radnorshire folk have survived, as well as poems by other bards too numerous to mention.  No need to go chasing after Shelley and his brief sojourn in Cwm Elan or Wordsworth's Radnorshire cousins.  There's a far more substantial body of work relevant to us as Radnorshire folk, we don't have to search for crumbs under another man's table.

The Rebeccaite organisation of Victorian Radnorshire?  Well it clearly existed, although I'll admit that they didn't donate their minute books and papers to the National Library. 

 If you want modern myths and legends best tune in to the BBC and not just their news output.  Be guided by their costume drama department and you'd hardly guess that most of the kings of England, pre-15C, spoke French or that all those RADA accents in Jane Austen are just so much codswallop.  The Welsh? Well according to the BBC's world view we didn't even exist back then. I suppose it serves a purpose though, to inform the masses that power properly belongs to people who sound like, that's right, the lads and lasses at the BBC.

Modern myths?  I'd nominate the attempt by the heritage crowd to turn Radnorshire into Kilvert Country and, as another comment pointed out, we have the Llandoddies.  These grotesques have spawned a series of children's books - the first rather disconcertingly published by Y Lolfa - authored by one Griswallt ap Llechitwyt - hilarious name what.  There was a time Radnorians did have names that appeared strange to foreign eyes:  Angharad verch Lello Bedo ap Madock of Llanvihangell Rhidython to give just one example.  Not joke names to amuse the ill-informed, but the real names of our Radnorshire forebears.

Radnorshire Favouritism

Anyone interested in history - and I'm one of those who believe you can't understand the present without knowing a bit about the past - will welcome the ever-expanding coverage of Welsh Newspapers Online.

A couple of stories that caught my eye from the most recent upload were:

A report of two court cases at Presteigne Assizes in 1903 before Mr Justice Phillimore.  First-up a case involving seven Rhayader men accused of viciously assaulting water bailiffs in the employ of the Wye Board of Conservators.  A dangerous job being a bailiff on the upper Wye; and, as so often at Rhayader, the taking of salmon seems to have involved a large crowd acting in broad daylight.  Verdict - Not Guilty, with the judge accepting that in three cases this was fair, but as for the others ......

Next up six Newbridge men also accused of battering employees of the Wye Board - and on Christmas Eve as well.  This time the judge was more forthright in his summing-up, he regretted that the previous jury had either lacked sense or honesty and he hoped that the present jury would not entertain the idea of dismissing the defendants solely on the grounds that they were Radnorshire men.  Suitably warned the jurors withdrew, only to return shortly with another not guilty verdict. They obviously believed the men's story that they were innocent carol singers. This left the judge with nothing much to say, other than to express the wish that such cases no longer be heard in the county.

One lesson we can learn from old court cases such as these is how speedily they were dealt with, nowadays the legal profession would make sure they spent far longer feeding at the public trough. In the interests of justice, of course.

The second story concerns the Festival of Welsh Beauty held at Llandrindod's Albert Hall in 1910 and run by an organization called the International Association of Beauty Queens Ltd.  With travel and accommodation costs paid for, some 29 ladies - the competition was open to any girl of Welsh descent aged over 17 - descended on the resort from all over Wales and beyond.  First prize was a lightweight bicycle worth ten guineas and the promise of a trip to Paris in the company of  the organiser Mr Forsyth.  H'm.

The competition was to be judged  by the votes of the entire audience at the town's Albert Hall and perhaps this was a mistake:  First - Miss Annie Brick of Howey 347 votes, Second - Miss Jackson of Manchester 119 votes, Third - Miss Lily Davies of Llandrindod.  Foul cried the South Wales papers, they blamed local favouritism for the defeat of their local beauties.

Take it down from the mast....

Flags matter, symbols matter, slogans matter.  Would I have been quite such a jolly welshman if I hadn't grown-up seeing all the "Free Wales" slogans painted on walls in Mid-Wales during the 1960s.  At least they showed that not everyone agreed with the status quo and that there was another point of view.  Even today my heart lifts a little when I see Owain Glyndwr's banner fluttering in the streets of a border town or outside a cottage in some unexpected corner of Radnorshire.  Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if one 1960s "Home Rule" slogan had more impact on the general population than any number of our modern-day blog posts.  So I don't decry the part-time patriots of the National Stadium or the dressing-up associated with St David's day, better that than nothing at all.

The flag at the top of this post is a proposed Radnorshire flag which is being pushed by some (thanks to poster Fferllys for bringing it to my attention).  It's a pretty design incorporating the boar's head of Elystan Glodrydd with the azure and gold colours of the Mortimer family.  And there you have the problem.  The Mortimers were petty conquistadores who attempted to steal the lands of the Radnorshire folk and murder their leaders and patriots.  Why on earth would any Radnorian want to celebrate these rogues?  Let them stay in Wigmore where they belong.  At least the banner flown by the good folk of Llwyth Elystan - it's based on the arms of Cadwgan ab Elystan - has none of this Mortimer nonsense.

Of course there's a good chance that the Mortimer design could be adopted, after all Pembrokeshire already has a county flag which is seemingly flown from public buildings, you can even buy one on ebay.  Oh and look how it's advertised

Isn't that the truth of the matter, these flags appeal to those who would prefer to live in the English county of Pembrokeshire?

Wales has a flag and let's not forget that it only achieved official recognition in 1959.  The enemies of Wales have always seen the value of symbols, which is why they fought a rearguard action against Y Ddraig Goch, even trying to foist this monstrosity on the country as recently as the mid 1950s.

Radnorshire Redneckery

The previous post highlighted some of the less than complimentary statements about Radnorshire found in the Welsh language press of the Victorian era.   In reality, apart from the decades long, politically astute and well-organised activities of the Radnorshire Rebeccas, the county was noted for its lack of crime; for example, in its 90 year plus existence the Radnorshire Constabulary only had to investigate four murders.  Even in matters of religion the locality was not quite as pagan as the devout scribes of Pura Wallia would have it, see here. .  ........ But hang on, what if those Bible punchers were onto something, what if Radnorshire was indeed the pagan, immoral and ignorant place the press described.

In the past I've made the point that we should differentiate between language shift and anglicization.  Radnorians were certainly better able to pick up fluency in the English language than those living far away from the border.  It was mainly a matter of geography. With the Teme, the Lugg, the Arrow and the Wye all running eastward into England and much of the county lying within the orbit of English-speaking market towns, surely sparsely populated Radnorshire should be praised for holding back the tide of language shift for so long?

The language aside it seems that Radnorshire maintained many of the traditions of Hen Gymru Lawen and in these aspects, at least, it was less anglicised than it's respectable Welsh speaking neighbours. Take this report from 1861 concerning Aberedw published in Baner ac Amserau Cymru:

The other day I was in Aberedw, to see the ruins of the castle and Llywelyn’s cave. Aberedw is a place on the Radnorshire side (of the Wye). We went to sit for a while in a house that was known to one of our company. The niece of the man of the house happened be there on a visit.

“When are you going home?” someone asked.

“I’m not going home” replied the young girl, “ until after the feast.

“When is the feast?”

“Next Sunday”

“What feast is that” I asked.

“Aberedw Feast” said the girl.

“What sort of feast is that?”

But the young lady could not give an explanation, other than it was Aberedw feast, a little amazed that I should enquire about a subject of which everyone was aware.

"Gwlabsant” explained her uncle “that’s the feast.”

“Perhaps.” he said “you don’t know what gwlabsant is?”

I knew a little from history, but only from history. I had never before been in a district where the gwyl y mabsant, the feast of the patron saint was still alive.

Even the very mention of a saint’s feast has died out long ago in every other part of Wales. There’s barely one in a thousand who even knows the meaning of the word. The Sunday schools have extinguished virtually all of the old country customs except in Radnorshire. Here they have a refuge and a burial place.

Here's another description of the gwyl y mabsant in the parish of Betws Diserth, it appeared in the  Radnorshire Standard in 1898 but was recalling events much earlier in the century:

"I remember well attending the Betws Feast ....... Early on Sunday morning the guests would be in high spirits, and eager to exhibit their prowess in wrestling, jumping, ball playing, fighting etc.  The parson would arrive at the usual hour to hold a sacred service at the church, but suddenly his prayer would be interrupted by roars of imbecile laughter from the maudlin brains outside.  Some hundreds used to attend this gathering from all parts of Radnorshire and the neighbouring counties.  Here could be met the champion wrestler as well as the champion fighter of the county.  On the following Monday the hounds would be brought, the disciples of Diana would forsake Bacchus for a few hours.  Here for a whole week drunkenness and debauchery might be witnessed."

Even in Radnorshire respectability eventually managed to outlaw the merry-making associated with the parish wakes - although if Builth during show week is anything to go by, that may well have been a good thing!  There were those who regretted the passing of the old world.  In 1893 a correspondent to a Swansea paper recalled conversations with an old footballer who had played for Breconshire against Radnorshire at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  This, of course, was football as a mass-participation sport ranging over the countryside.  The writer remembers a couple of technical footballing terms from the time, namwn and hanner namwn, although I don't think you'll find these in the University's Geiriadur.

Regretting the passing of country sports and dancing the writer turns his ire on what he sees as the downside of chapel life:

"The Welshman had all the manliness preached out of him.  He became afraid of his landlord, afraid of the agent, afraid of the Set Fawr and the preacher, till his life became a burden to him, and there naturally developed in him low cunning and deceitfulness and so it has come to pass that Wales has acquired an unpleasant notoriety for untruthfulness and want of straightforwardness."

Of course now we are back with the prejudices of the Anglo-Saxon head measurers who were saying much the same thing:

"To paint the character of the sly, insincere, deceptive and cunning Welshman i.e. those unfavourable features which may be considered to distinguish him from his fellow subject of England, would take up too much space."

A Rock and a Hard Place

So you're an inquisitive child in Victorian Radnorshire and, thanks to the gradual introduction of elementary school education, you're able to read.  Read a book like the liberal scholar E A Freeman's - he would soon be appointed Regius Professor of History at Oxford University -  Old English History for Children.  What would the young reader make of Freeman's celebration of the Anglo-Saxon takeover of lowland Britain, and, yes, he's honest enough to call the dispossessed natives Welsh, not Celts or Romano-Brits:

"it has turned out much better in the end that our forefathers did thus kill or drive out nearly all the people whom they found in the land ...... (otherwise)..I cannot think that we should ever have been so great and free a people as we have been for many ages."

Meanwhile the Liberal MP for Herefordshire considers the Welsh a "miserable race of Celtic savages" and various scientists are running around the countryside measuring heads and noting down hair colour - a kind of proto-DNA research. Radnorians had a "nigrescence" score of 57.3% and scored particularly highly for "Celtic-eye", a dead give away for all those Anglo-Saxon obsessives who wished to identify the lesser breeds within the kingdom.

Now everyone in Wales had to put up with this nonsense but the poor Radnorians also got it in the neck from their fellow countrymen.  The animus shown towards Radnorshire in the Welsh Language Press of the period is at least understandable and can surely be traced back to the Blue Books.  These accused the Welsh of ignorance and immorality and blamed her language for the country's woes.  What better riposte to point to, by then, largely English speaking Radnorshire, a county with, for example, the highest illegitimacy rate in Britain.

Here are a few examples:

it is one of the darkest and most backward parts of the whole kingdom in terms of morality and learning. It is as if the human mind has disappeared from view as regards the population in general. Only the animal aspect of humanity can be seen living there. - Baner Cymru 1858 

Everywhere which has lost or denied the Welsh language ... those districts are full of immorality, cursing, blasphemy and prisons.  If you want proof look at Radnorshire. - Aberystwyth Observer 1876

There's no more pagan county in Wales than Radnorshire - Y Celt 1896

Fie Radnorshire! But there again, what can be expected from a people with no regard for their country's language and customs.  It's said that on the whole the natives of Radnorshire are remarkably ignorant and unable to speak either Welsh or English with any great alacrity - Tarian y Gweithiwr 1910

Even when someone came to the county's defence, such as Painscastle's Baptist minister, it serves only to illustrate the widespread prejudice against the county.

I note that an ill-founded impression of Radnorshire has arisen that its people are ungodly, ignorant and without morals - Seren Cymru 1885

My favourite quote of all comes from Iorwerth Peate, writing in 1933 he described the inhabitants of Radnorshire as "a deracine people, a people fallen between two stools a community of half-things."  I wonder what his colleague Ffransis Payne made of such sentiments?

Have such attitudes completely disappeared?  I doubt it.  

Squeezing the Orange

Back in the 1890s Alexander Richardson Binnie, the chief engineer at London County Council, had big plans for Radnorshire and Breconshire.  He intended to construct a series of reservoirs which would pipe water to the thirsty multitudes of the Great Wen.  In addition to drowning communities such as Llangammarch, Garth, Cregrina, Llanbister and Abbeycwmhir, the plan also envisaged the clearance of the population from the surrounding water catchment areas - these would be left to the sheep.

Some 18% of the acreage of Radnorshire would be commandeered by London and an incredible 58% of Breconshire - some 488 square miles in total.  With Birmingham and Liverpool also vying for Welsh water it was little wonder that the country was described by Swansea's Liberal MP Sir Henry Vivian as "a carcass which is to be divided between them according to their own needs and wishes."

Binnie's proposals, he had first noted the suitability of the valleys while building railways in the 1860s, was strongly supported by Sidney Webb and the Fabian backed Progressives who controlled London County Council.  By the end of the decade a less ambitious plan, supported by Welsh MPs from DLG to Mabon, would have seen the damming of just the Upper Wye and the Irfon.  This, too, fell by the wayside due to the opposition of the Tories, no doubt mindful of the interests of London's existing private water supply companies.

Although Binnie died in 1917 it's interesting to learn that the company that he founded designed Llyn Brianne in the 1970s ( see note below). Could his plans be dusted down again at some future date?  Surely no supporter of the one nation agenda could object to sacrificing our countryside to the greater good of the United Kingdom's most important city.  Indeed a British patriot should be flushed with pride at the very thought.

Note:  According to this page Brianne is not a local placename.  It is a near anagram of A R Binnie though.