Radnorshire Bardic Poems, 46

This is a translation of the bard Llawdden's elergy to Elen Gethin, presumably he composed it for one of her daughters. The tomb which Elen had made for her and her husband can still be seen in Kington parish church. At the end of the poem Llawdden compares Elen to, amongst others, the Helena - mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine - who recovered the true cross from Jerusalem; the Seven Wise Sages of Rome, and the biblical Susanna.

Llawdden's Elergy for Elen Gethin

Since Monday, for me,
The planet is without light.
Monday the fair one was dark,
A day of weeping, Elen’s demise.
Snatched, like a saint’s ascension,
She was of no great age.
A blessed wife, faith’s vision,
Sought the temple of Tomas’s bed.
The fair one who brought his body home
From the pain of the battlefield of Banbury.
And now he, in Kington church,
Cannot sleep because of his Lady.
She was loved, she and her chieftain,
Let them find heaven from the bed she made.
A great white wall, made of marble,
Like the cloak of Mwrog and Mariaith.
The image of a man and his lover in the church,
In the clay before the Son of God.
A stone curtain, a white mantle
Closed for eternity.

A psalm for Elen Gethin, she shared wine,
I bring for her daughter.
The moon is faint to hold court
After Elen and her two courts.
Teams ploughed her lands,
A fair estate, she wasn’t poor.
Her hall never lacked wines for
The world, anymore than Bath.
There was no wall without light
With candlesticks about her corpse.
Gold and coral on her fingers,
Fair lass, to count the saints.
Pointless in her day to
Rebuke her kinsfolk,
She allowed no perjury
Or poverty amongst her people.

A good woman, with Susanna’s sense,
And wine and candles in her court.
A sister to that woman who fetched the Cross,
Until the end of her life,
Lear’s daughter before the goodmen,
Coel’s daughter, great hearted;
Fair Marsia, many mention
Her law and works of old.
Every word from her was strong,
Elen’s learning was expected.
Seven were next to her in speech,
The eighth, her learned tongue.
She was a Sybil, her language was good,
A second Solomon to her breast.
If David had two sons,
From her two sons will spring goodmen:
Master Watcyn, a pure and pleasant lad,
Is there any more powerful? Master Rhosier!
If holy Mary calls Tomas and Elen
To heaven on high,
We expect, God, without doubt,
A golden halo above their heads.

Mike Hawthorn

I can't say I'm a great fan of Mike Hawthorn, doubtless unfairly, he seems to typify, for me, some of the worst aspects of the Fifties. Of course Mike never had the opportunity of moving on from that decade, dying as he did in 1959. Anyway a lot of people do admire Britain's first World Champion and some of them have created this rather wonderful website. There are details there of a splendid book about Hawthorn which has just come out, today infact.

Some film here of Innes Ireland's widow Jean unveiling a plaque commemorating Hawthorn in his birthplace, Mexborough in Yorkshire.

Skating on Thin Ice

Carmarthen's town guide - who appears to be a human being rather than a pamphlet - has written to the Western Mail pointing out a few inaccuracies in a recent article in the paper about Knucklas Castle. Read it here. Well I'm all for historical accuracy, but then the guide spoils it somewhat by bragging up Carmarthen's Arthurian connections at the expense of, well, Knucklas.

The Welsh name for Carmarthen is Caerfyrddin - Myrddin's fortress - or Merlin the Magician as our English friends like to call him. It's also well known that this is etymological nonsense. The name actually derives from the Roman civitas Moridunum (meaning sea fort) - good heavens, there's a wikipedia article explaining the whole process. Well good luck to Carmathen and it's town guide.

Meanwhile that Carmarthenshire bard Lewis Glyn Cothi - and the bard's really are the experts when it comes to this Arthurian business - was quite certain that one of the most note worthy facts about Maelienydd (the district that later made up North East Radnorshire) was that "Yndi'r oedd, hyn adroddir, neithior yr hen Arthur hir." - Herein was, this is reported, the wedding feast of tall Arthur of old.

At the end of the sixteenth century Morgan Meredith of Bryndraenog provided board and lodging to the scholar Sion Dafydd Rhys, who recorded some interesting folk tales linking Arthur and Knucklas Castle. Some giants had captured Gwenhwyfar's brothers and were holding them, north of the River Teme (Tyfediad in Welsh) at Bron Wrgan in the parish of Llanfair Waterdine. Arthur killed the giants and brought the brothers back to Knucklas. In order to cross the Teme he used a giant's skull as a stepping stone, declaring "tyfed yr iad yn yr afon yn lle maen" - meaning that the skull had taken the place of a stepping-stone. Henceforth the river was known as Tyfediad. Complete nonsense of course, just like Carmarthen meaning Merlin's town!

A Welshman in New York

Fingers crossed that Joe Calzaghe's career closing fight at the Garden this Saturday will prove more successful than Jimmy Wilde's defeat by Pancho Villa at the Polo Grounds some 85 years ago. Wilde had come out of a nearly three year retirement to take on the Filipino boxer and was a shadow of his former self. Nat Fleischer, who was, of course, at ringside, wrote "Never ... did a champion pass more gloriously than did Wilde that night." By common consent the greatest flyweight of all time, Ring magazine ranked the tiny Welshman pound for pound the third best puncher in boxing history, behind Joe Louis and Sam Langford.

Now it's a fact that most Welsh families with the surname Wilde have their roots in Radnorshire and a little investigation found Wilde's family in the 1901 census, where they were all recorded as speaking no English. An exaggeration no doubt, but interesting light on the strength of the Welsh language in East Glamorgan before the First World War. Unfortunately I could trace the Wilde family no further back than the 1891 census where Jimmy's father was a guest at Treharris police station. In the cells! So the search for a Radnorian connection will have to wait for another day.

UPDATE: Duffy was a no show but Joe Calzaghe got off the canvas in the first round to win the next eleven and the contest. Career ending? Maybe not. Oh and why did the hopeless Western Mail choose to lead its Saturday front page with a no-account Rugby match?

Musical Interlude

It's 1965 and Welsh girl Tawny Reed is pulling some Duffyesque dance moves to her cover of the Velvelettes' Needle in a Haystack.

The Attack on the Police Station at Llanbadarn Fynydd

Although Victorian Radnorshire had a deserved reputation for being a district where common criminality was rare, at the same time the activities of the Rebeccaites saw the county being compared to the most rebellious parts of Ireland. Rebecca deliberately challenged the authority of the state with her open displays of law-breaking, her public ridicule of an impotent police force and her disdain for a court system that rarely brought any of her unruly children to book.

The month of November 1880 had seen large numbers of Rebeccaites openly taking salmon on the Wye, the Ithon and their tributaries. This activity culminated on the evening of December 6th 1880, when a blackened faced party of one hundred armed men took salmon from the Ithon in the North Radnorshire village of Llanbadarn Fynydd. The local police officer Frederick Cairns, a man with a reputation for brutality, was observing the activity from a distance when he heard a noise beside him. Swinging his torch he claimed to identify a local farmer William Davies, before being struck down with a spear that burst the policeman's nose and left him with a broken arm. Later in the evening, having left the river, the Rebeccaites launched a volley of stones and gunshots at the door and windows of Cairns' police station before disappearing into the night.

William Davies and another local man. John Williams, a farm servant at Llinwent, were brought to court in Penybont, but, as was so often the case in a county where sympathy for Rebecca and her daughters was so strong, both men were discharged.

Guinevere Came From Knucklas

Not having a television and with only sporadic reception available on my crystal ball, I haven't been able to watch the BBC's new Sunday series Merlin. I wonder how many Radnorians are aware that Gwenhwyfar, or Guinevere as our English neighbours call her, actually hailed from Cnwclas. Before anyone gets too excited I don't mean actress Angel Coulby (pictured) but Gwenhwyfar herself, King Arthur's queen.

This fact was well known to the bards and scholars of medieval Wales. Gwenhwyfar was the daughter of Cogfran Gawr of Caer Ochren - that's the hill which later became the site of Knucklas Castle. A fifteenth century local descent group even claimed this Cogfran as their founder, although they probably made it up.

Rebeccaism in Radnorshire

The anti-toll gate campaign of the 1840s was not the last Radnorshire saw of Rebecca and her daughters. Whenever the community felt a sense of injustice she seemed to reappear from the shadows, whether the concern were the game laws, the price of food or some other issue troubling the locality.

Rebeccaism flourished because Radnorians did not feel that they could get justice in the courts. The Rebeccaites openly challenged English law by breaking it in public and in such large numbers that the authorities could do nothing. They wore disguises so that individuals could not be prosecuted when the established order had been reasserted.

The photograph shows a party of Rebeccaites taking salmon on the Edw as late as December 1932. The fishery laws were a particular bone of contention in Radnorshire whose populace had long ago paid the English Crown for the right to fish and hunt in perpetuity, it was a bargain that the Crown had decided to forget. The picture was not grabbed by some intrepid photojournalist, it was posed deliberately and was later displayed in public and sent to the newspapers. It was an open challenge to the authority of the state, which infact failed to convict any of those involved.

It is a pity that the Assembly sponsored Gathering the Jewels website tries to diminish this political act with some half cocked story that attempts to portray these men as dim-wits.

Lead Kindly Light

Good heavens, Powys County Council's decision to switch off some of its plethora of street lights has caused a furore. Never mind that the lights did very little to prevent the regular smashing of shop windows in our main streets, suddenly the citizenry - or at least some of them - are exercised by the prospects of vandalism. According to correspondents to the local papers, potential rapists now lurk around every corner and old aged pensioners have been forced to go out and buy torches.

Faced with such a cacophony of complaint our councillors are rapidly backtracking and blaming everything on their luckless officials, although hopefully a few thousand pounds of taxpayers money will have been saved before common sense finally throws in the towel. My favourite comment comes from Council Chairperson Margaret Morris who complained that the village of Boughrood had been left without a single light. "On Saturday night when people were leaving the pub they were almost falling into the River Wye", the councillor reported. Well yes, no doubt they were.

Book of the Month

Ruth Bidgood's Parishes of the Buzzard was originally published in 2000, although I'm told that the book has recently been reprinted. Ostensibly a history of the two Abergwesyn parishes, in many ways it is a history of a much wider swathe of Builth Hundred.

The book is an example of the very best kind of local history, wide ranging, well-written and full of fascinating detail and insights into life in this, nowadays, remote part of Mid Wales. There is much in this book to hold the reader, I was particularly taken with the contrast between the village schoolmistress Esther Morgan - stoically teaching her Welsh speaking pupils God Save the Queen and the virtues of English nationalism - and a later supply teacher, the brusque but patriotic Annie James.

The appointment of Owen M Edwards as Chief Inspector of Schools for Wales in 1907 led to a far more sympathetic attitude to the use of Welsh in the classroom. It is no surprise to find Miss Bidgood recording an HMI's report of 1911 critical of Miss Morgan's exclusion of the language. Edwards himself visited the school and complimented Miss Morgan on having kept up her own knowledge of Welsh. A quick search of the on-line records shows Miss Morgan being born in 1856 in Llanddetty in the east of Breconshire and having taught for many years in West Bromwich. The change in culture from one that wanted the Welsh language Englished out of Wales must have been difficult for the head teacher.

At £10 this book is a bargain and should be snapped up by everyone interested in the history of Mid Wales.

The Dark Ages

When in the 1440s the folk of Bugeildy saw the newly built Bryndraenog, they asked Ai lleuad yw ai lliw dydd? - Is it the moon or the light of day? At least that's what the bard Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdwal reported, for the light that shone through it's new fangled windows brought: Golau dydd, mae'n glod iddi, i'w gweled nos i'n gwlad ni - Daylight, praise to it, seen at night in our land. Of course that was then. Today the good Radnorians are up in arms about Powys County Council's street light switch-off and the subsequent return to the dark ages.

According to Mr Howse gas street lights arrived in Knighton in 1852 with Presteigne following in 1859, while electricity came to Llandrindod in 1897. So the irate ratepayers do have a point. If the provision of street lighting was possible in the century before last, well ...... oh and of course the County Council's first reaction to any financial shortfall is cut services, rather than cut senior staff.

At the same time the Radnorian blog supports this return to the dark. The urbanisation of our county has surely gone too far and the return of so many stars to our night sky is to be welcomed. No doubt a little common sense could have been displayed as to which lights were switched off, but the principle is right. As to the pensioners complaining that they've had to buy a torch, is that such a hardship? The question of anti-social behaviour is more serious, but surely this is one that our police and courts should be addressing robustly and as a matter of urgency rather than relying on a few lights.

Ms Evans de Lopez

A few years ago I seem to remember that S4C produced a drama documentary that suggested that Carrera Panamericana racer and Mexican film star Jacqueline Evans de Lopez was Welsh. Infact she was born in London, although there did remain the possibility that she belonged to the London Welsh community. Now some members of her family have been in touch with the blog to confirm that Miss Evans had no Welsh connections.

So Jacqueline is yet another "Welsh" racing driver who, together with Stuart Lewis-Evans and Jack Lewis, have been consigned to the ranks of the Englishry by this blog. Where will it end? Wales has had precious few four-wheel stars as it is!

Anyone Got A Time Machine

Not much time for blogging at the moment.

Magic

Oh dear, I've already nominated a book of the month and along comes this offering, which really is a contender for book of the year. There's not a lot of Radnorshire interest here, but we can forgive author Richard Suggett, who has not only devoted an entire book to Radnorshire houses, but has also provided fresh insights into the county's history, with his pioneering work on slander cases in the Court of Great Sessions.

The Witch hunting madness which possessed much of England, Scotland and continental Europe largely passed Wales by. Interestingly the same is true of the other Celtic speaking regions including Brittany. Despite the fact that only five Welsh witches were condemned to death between 1594 and 1655, Suggett pulls off quite a coup by revealing the close link between the authors of two anti-witchcraft books and the first of these judicial victims, Gwen vz Elis. If any Welsh film-maker is looking for a plot, well look no further.

There is a great deal more in this book of course: folk beliefs, Catholic survivals, cursing wells and conjurers, as well as the wider historical context. The book is the product of what must surely be years of diligent and inspired research, and it is written in a thoroughly enjoyable and readable way. An outstanding contribution to Welsh history.

Crime in Radnorshire

Nothing in the Mid Wales Journal? Why not have a browse around the National Library's Crime and Punishment site, who knows you might come across some old relatives. Here’s poor Mary Morgan, hanged for infanticide in 1804 and her body delivered to the surgeons. Her gravestone in Presteigne a permanent rebuke to her betters.

Sheep maiming and hedge breaking were popular Radnorian sports although, no doubt, the class struggle was at the root of the matter. While Cecil Parsons, the Presteigne lawyer and cottagers’ champion, won a libel case against one local gent who described him as “a base, mean, dirty, unprincipled, good for nothing fellow, a consummate ass and a conceited fool.”

A noteworthy crime was rescuing a prisoner from the arms of the law, something that is still occasionally attempted in the wilder Mid-Wales market towns. Blackpatch Godwin, up before the court in 1747, sounds like my kind of gal, oh and one of her co-accused went by the name of Nimrod Powell. Blackpatch and Nimrod, there are two forenames that are due a revival.

Let's be honest, the handful of sexual cases have a certain tabloid fascination. One wonders if Thomas Barber’s profession of breeches-maker played any part in his trial for sodomy, while convictions for rape seemed particularly hard to obtain. Nancy Beavan was found guilty of perjury for making such an accusation and whipped for her troubles. Finally what of poor William Shakespeare of Knighton, falsely accused of attempted bestiality with a mare in 1826. Wasn’t it his more famous namesake who said “The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well?”

Book of the Month

Look in the index of many a book about the English Civil War and you'll be lucky to find more than a couple of passing references to Wales. Perhaps that name, English Civil War, gives the game away a little, ignoring as it does the involvement of the other countries of the British Isles.

Professor Stoyle's book, published in 2005, looks at the period in a new way. The often disregarded English nationalism of the Roundhead cause is contrasted with the underestimated role of the Welsh, Cornish and Irish on the Royalist side. The King relied heavily on non-English troops.

This Welsh support for the King is motivated in large part by a fear of the extreme anti-Welsh attitudes of the Parliamentarians. However, similar prejudices on the Royalist side see the Welsh gradually withdrawing from the fight and the establishment of patriotic third forces such as the quaintly named Peaceable Army.

This is all very interesting stuff and wholly relevant to the current political situation in Britain.

UPDATE: Mr Stoyle has recently published an article, called The Road to Farndon Field, in the latest issue of the English Historical Review. This discusses the atrocity committed against Welsh women camp-followers by the Roundhead cavalry after the Battle of Naseby. Over a hundred were killed and many more mutilated. An atrocity made possible by an unprecedented stream of anti-Welsh Puritan propaganda. As the EHR is not readily available from the shelves of Llandrindod's Dug-Out newspaper emporium, please feel free to send me a copy.

A Small Explosion in Crossgates

I've posted about this incident before, but here's a report from the Canberra Times detailing the 1952 attack on the Elan Valley pipeline. Of course it should read the Fron aqueduct, near Crossgates and three cheers for the Mid-Wales Constabulary for working out that it was an act of sabotage. Interesting that the total cost of the Claerwen dam was only £15.5 million, heaven knows how much it would cost today.

The attack was carried out by members of the Welsh Republican Movement, one of the more serious fringe nationalist groups. Founded in 1949, the WRM folded in 1957. Interestingly one of its better known members Gwilym Prys Davies, now Lord Prys Davies, was the defeated Labour candidate in Gwynfor Evans' historic by-election win in Carmarthen in 1966.

Girl Power

From an Australian newspaper dated February 1882. Presumably this would have concerned lawlessness associated with the fisheries. Rebeccaism certainly seems to have been quite a factor in Nineteenth Century Radnorshire life - not that you would realise the fact from watching Llandrindod's quaint Victorian festival.

A Forgotten Radnorian

While Llandrindod celebrates the promised influx of visitors attracted by the erection of its "internationally acclaimed" inner gateways, spare a thought for another locally born sculptor - Doris Lindner.

Miss Lindner, who was born in Llanyre in 1896, is best known for her work for the Royal Worcester factory. see the illustration of the great racehorse Nijinsky.

As well as her porcelain pieces Miss Lindner, who died in 1979, also took on larger commissions, the statue of Arkle at the Cheltenham racecourse for example.

Given the "success" of the current gateways, perhaps a third gateway could be erected on the town's western approaches and one of Miss Lindner's bulls would surely fit the bill.

Moss Races in Wales

Although Stirling Moss dominated races all over the world, his one excursion west of Offa's Dyke back in 1952 was hardly a success. Driving Swansea born manufacturer Cyril Kieft's works car, Stirling crashed out, while trying to avoid a melee of spinning cars, on the very first corner of his heat of the 500cc Championship of Wales race.

Alan Brown's Cooper ran over the Kieft, clipping Stirling with its wheel. Luclily the boy wonder was unhurt and a great career didn't meet a premature end. Of course the crowd were disappointed at not seeing the star driver in action, so an invitation race was hastily arranged which Brown proceeded to win, with Moss, in a borrowed Kieft, finishing third.

The Championship race itself was won by George Wicken, with Brown second and Les Leston third, all in Coopers. Although he did complete in a couple of non-championship F1 races, Wicken is one of the forgotten men of Fiftes motor sport. A steady driver, the most unusual thing about him seems to have been his membership of an obscure Victorian religious sect called the Jezreelites.

Welsh TT, Eppynt Medal

A regular reader enquires about the origin of this badge. He has good reason to believe that it was a bronze medal awarded for a third place in the Epynt motorcycle races of the late forties and early fifties.

There's no inscription on the medal, so perhaps it came from a stock of unused medals left over when the races ended.

Maybe there's someone out there who has seen a medal like this? It's quite small, no bigger than a 50 pence piece ..... but then they were never given to extravagance south of the Wye!

By the way there's some interesting stuff about the old Epynt community, the wartime evictions and post-war motor sport here.

St John Hankin

St John Emile Clavering Hankin is hardly a name that trips off the tongue, even the tongues of Llandrindod's robustly nostalgic Victorian perambulators. Back in 1909, however, he was one of the country's leading literary figures and his suicide by drowning in Llandrindod's Rock Park made headlines around the world. You can read about him here.

Perhaps one of his plays should be revived during the town's annual festival, although the Edwardian period may be a bit too modern for Llandrindod.

Gone South

During the Nineteenth Century, while the decline of the Welsh language in Radnorshire proceeded with amazing rapidity, a great many local folk migrated to the South Wales mining valleys. Many of these migrants either had to learn or maintain their Welsh, at a time when their country cousins were turning their backs on the language.

Now migrating to the coalfield was not the same as going to America. There was still plenty of contact between Radnorians in the South and their relations back home. A good deal of work needs to be done on these links and the light they throw on the linguistic complexities of the period, something that the family historian is well-equipped to do.

As an example let us examine the lives of five brothers born in and around the Crossgates area of Radnorshire in the middle years of the century. John Mantle was born in 1839, his brother Thomas in 1843, Price in 1846, Evan in 1850 and Septimus in 1855. Their father, another John Mantle, was born in Llandinam and was shown to be bilingual in the 1891 census, their mother Ann was from Llandrindod and died before the census bothered about the Welsh language.

Given the time and place that they were born, none of these five would have been expected to have learnt Welsh at their mothers knee. Eventually all five would end up in the coalfield, three in Fochriw and one in nearby Pontlottyn, with the fifth in Treharris.

Two of the brothers, Septimus and Price married girls from Dowlais. Given this fact it is not wholly surprising that they are both recorded as being bilingual, their children are also shown as bilinguals and indeed Welsh seems to be the language of the hearth in both households. Two of the brothers John and Evan moved to the coalfield much later than the others, their wives were from Radnorshire and their children had been born there. Both their households are shown as being English speaking. The real surprise comes with Thomas and his Nantmel born wife Hannah Morris. Both are shown as being bilingual and it is obvious that Welsh is the language of the hearth, indeed their eldest son, who had left home by the time of the first language census, is recorded as a Welsh monoglot. This suggests to me that Thomas and Hannah already spoke some Welsh when they came to the coalfield. Back home in Radnorshire such bilingualism would have been ditched as the century progressed but in Fochriw this was not the case.

The five brothers kept in close contact both with each other - John, Thomas and Price for example lived in the same street in Fochriw - and with relations back home in Radnorshire. Welsh speaking cousins from the South, coming home to Victorian Radnorshire for holidays and to help with the harvest must have been a familiar sight. Indeed a number of this second generation married locally and moved back to Mid Wales. The Welsh language cannot have been as much of a stranger to local families as the bare census figures of the time suggests.

A Few More Thoughts on the Welsh Language in Radnorshire

If the decline of the Welsh language in Radnorshire has been addressed at all, it has been done so from the viewpoint of geographers. A typical example is the article The Geography of Cultural Transition: The Welsh Borderland 1750-1830 which appeared in the Winter 1979 edition of the National Library of Wales Journal. The article summarises the geographers viewpoint as follows "the upland mass of the county is located between major avenues of anglicisation, the Severn and the Wye Valleys, and so it was cut off from the major Welsh speaking areas to the west."

Ffransis Payne dismissed this viewpoint as "lol i gyd, cynnyrch breuddwydion uwchben y map." ("a load of nonsense, the result of daydreaming over a map.") The truth of Mr Payne's words are well illustrated by one of the maps accompanying the NLWJ article which shows that Welsh language church services persisted in Wye valley parishes such as Boughrood, LlandeiloGraban and Llansteffan long after the language had been dismissed from parishes in the north of the county. The truth is, that far from being an avenue of anglicisation, the Wye valley was something of a stronghold of Welsh, something that the author of the article might have spotted if he had bothered to look at his own maps.

In reality anglicisation spread from the border towns of Presteigne and Knighton, making early inroads - for reasons we will investigate later - into the parishes of the Ithon valley.

The census of 1891 and 1901 shows Welsh persisting at that date to an extent in Cwmteuddwr, Rhayader, St Harmon and parts of Nantmel. There is precious little evidence for it elsewhere in the county, even amongst those who would have been born early in the nineteenth century in parishes where you would have expected at least a few old folk to be recorded as using Welsh. In part this is because the census was asking about language use rather than language ability. I also believe that there was an element of prejudice in Radnorshire towards the language. As an example I know that my great grandmother from Carmarthenshire spoke Welsh occasionally with her husband born in Diserth in the 1850s. In the Diserth census she is listed as bilingual while my great grandfather is not. I spoke about this once with one of my great uncles born in the 1890s. He was most upset at the suggestion that either of his parents spoke Welsh, I might as well have accused them of being thieves.

In order to gain some insight into the position of the language in the first third of the nineteenth century, I have examined the 1891 census for 263 individuals listed as being born in Radnorshire before 1820 but living outside the county itself. Of course it is quite likely that some of these individuals left the county at an early age, while others might have picked up Welsh in the mines of South Wales. Infact hardly any of these Radnorshire migrants went to the Welsh speaking rural counties and surprisingly few to the more Welsh speaking industrial areas. The great majority went to parishes just across the border in Brecon and Montgomery, to rural English speaking Monmouthshire and the more anglicised towns of the South Wales coalfield such as Tredegar.

Of our 263 Radnorshire born individuals aged 70 or over at the time of the 1891 census 29% were bilingual and 4% spoke only Welsh - 67% were English monoglots. When we look at the birth places of these migrants we find that 60% born in Rhayader Hundred use Welsh - those that can't are mainly from Nantmel or have moved to anglicised areas; from Colwyn Hundred the figure of Welsh speakers is 34%, and from Painscastle Hundred 24%. When we look at the Hundreds of Knighton and Cefnllys the position is quite different with only 10% listed as Welsh speakers and most of those coming from Cefnllys parish itself. The figure for Radnor Hundred is 12% but the number of individuals involved, fourteen, is really too small to be of much use.

I believe that these figures provide a fairly accurate view of the position of Welsh in Radnorshire during the first third of the nineteenth century. Welsh is still widely spoken as a hearth language in Rhayader Hundred with English making rapid inroads into Nantmel. A fair amount of Welsh is still spoken in Colwyn parishes such as Diserth, but English is rapidly gaining the upper hand. there is still some Welsh spoken in parishes lower down the Wye such as Bochrwyd and Glasbury but, as a hearth language, Welsh has already disappeared from the north and the east of the county.

Welsh in St Harmon in 1901

The 1901 census shows that around 25% of the population of St Harmon's parish were recorded as being able to speak Welsh at the start of the twentieth century. A good number of these Welsh speakers were actually born in the neighbouring parishes of Llangurig and Cwmteuddwr; among those who were recorded as being born in St Harmon parish itself the number of Welsh speakers fell to 19%. While a majority of locally born people over the age of 60 spoke Welsh and nearly 40% of those aged between 40 and 59, in the 20 to 39 age group the figure falls to 12%, with only 8% of those under 20 being listed as Welsh speakers.

A useful term used in the Victorian period was the language of the hearth, the language spoken by the family around the fireside. It is a good indication of the real strength of the language in a given area. Although there were no Welsh monoglots in St Harmon parish, the fact that everyone in a household was able to speak Welsh suggests it was the hearth language. Of the 138 households in the parish just 19 could be classed as Welsh speaking, 67 were wholly English speaking and 52 had a mixture of bilinguals and English monoglots, indicating that the language of the hearth must have been English. Although a majority of households in St Harmon included at least one Welsh speaker, the fact that in just 14% of homes Welsh was the language of the hearth shows that the parish was approaching the final stages of language shift at the time of the 1901 Census.

It is interesting to look at the position of Welsh amongst children aged 10 and under. This was the era of large families and 20% of the total population of the parish fell into this category. Of the 123 children in this age group just 9 were bilingual, 8 being children of bilingual couples and just 1 having a bilingual father and an English speaking mother. 71 were children of English speaking monoglots, 16 were children of bilingual parents but being brought up as English speakers and a further 27 were English speaking children with one or other of their parents being able to speak Welsh.

Long distance migration was not a factor in the process of language shift in St Harmon, indeed there were only two English households in the parish, although one of these was inevitably the home of the school mistress. The parish did not have a gentry house which probably explains why Welsh language services in the parish church lingered after they had been abandoned in the more Welsh speaking parish of Cwmteuddwr. What we have here is bilingualism, allowing Welsh speaking parents to bring up their children as English monoglots, and the slow wave of language shift hastened by short distance movements of families and marriage partners from neighbouring parishes which had already sunk beneath the tide of Anglicisation.

More Questions than Answers

A one page article about the old Epynt motorcycle circuit in the recent July issue of Classic Bike magazine causes a few thoughts to cross the mind. The most obvious being, you're not going to even begin to do justice to the subject in one page.

Luckily the post-war Epynt races are the subject of one of the best Mid Wales resources on the web, the silverdragons site. Now this may not be the best designed site - in my experience Firefox seems to dislike it intensely - but as far as content goes, well it's irreplaceable. And there's another point, what if it gets taken down? Whereas a book or a magazine is always going to be available, a web site can disappear over night. Perhaps websites are going to be like medieval manuscripts, surviving by sheer chance because someone, somewhere, made a copy.

A final point, Mid Wales may not be famous for very much, but in motorsport terms it has something of an international heritage. So why do local councils and schools not do a lot more to exploit that heritage for the benefit of the local community? Most local people have grown up with and support motorsport, it's a pity that our public bodies don't embrace the fact.

Rebecca's Law

The recent oil price rise seems to have provided an excuse for all manner of businesses to hike their prices. Back in 1854 the good citizens of Mid Wales seem to have had fairly radical ideas of how to deal with such opportunism.

Perhaps we might see an historical reenactment during Llandrindod's eagerly awaited but somewhat overly genteel Victorian Festival?

You may kiss the Bride ..... not you Stirling.

Interesting piece of memorabilia for sale on ebay at the moment. A press photograph of Innes Ireland's wedding to Edna Humphries at Caxton Hall on 7th December 1967. It was Innes's second marriage and Stirling Moss was the bestman, I believe Miss Humphries was employed as a secretary at the British Racing Partnership.

Are Radnorians really Gogs?

In 1897 the great Welsh scholar Sir John Rhys (1840-1915) produced this rough sketch of Welsh dialects in a letter he sent to Sir Edward Anwyl. Rhys believed that dialects could be differentiated by vowel sounds and was hoping to set up, what today would be called a working party, in order to map these vowel changes.

Unfortunately this proposal came to nothing, perhaps because Anwyl believed that there was no method available at the time to gauge the vowel sounds scientifically. Anwyl believed that collecting word lists would be more useful.

This word list approach was followed by Alan R Thomas when he produced his Linguistic Geography of Wales in 1973. Unfortunately, for some reason, that book ignored the Welsh still being spoken at the time in parishes to the east of Llanwrtyd, an unfortunate omission.

For me Rhys's approach seems far more sensible. After all using words originating in rhyming slang doesn't make me a Cockney. What is interesting about the map was that Rhys placed Radnorshire in the same dialect area as Welsh speakers in Meirionydd and South West Montgomeryshire. Rhys came from Ponterwyd and was well acquainted with Welsh speaking natives of the Rhayader area, so here his opinions have great validity. But did the folk of Aberedw speak a different dialect to the folk of Erwood? And while the similarities between the North Radnorshire accent and that of the Welsh speaking areas of Montgomeryshire is plain enough, would Welsh speakers in Clyro have sounded differently from their neighbours in Talgarth? I'm sure that these dialect differences have some bearing on the decline of Welsh in Radnorshire, but what?

These are interesting questions and more than a hundred years after Rhys made his proposal I'm not aware that it has been addressed by our academics. If anyone has any views or comments on this topic I'd be pleased to hear from you!

Didn't Get Very Far

Who knows what you'll find when you're wilfing around the internet and here's a classic from the archives of Mid Wales Motor Sport.

No sign of two of the club's competition stalwarts C H Jones and W S Griffiths, perhaps they were still in the bar. Anyway Mr Griffiths is being encouraged to pen an account of his, never less than colourful, 28 year career around the lanes and forests of Wales. Can't see it happening myself but at least he's come up with a suitable title for the book. I've borrowed it for the title of the post!

Welsh in Cwmteuddwr Parish 1901

According to Professor Geraint Jenkins' Introduction to Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century a volume in the series A Social History of the Welsh Language, of which the Professor is the General Editor: "the sparsely populated county of Radnorshire had lost its native tongue by the early nineteenth century." Here's a little tip Professor, check out the 1901 Census figures for Cwmteuddwr parish.

Infact the 1901 Census figures show 4% of the population of the parish speaking only Welsh, 70% speaking only English and 26% speaking both languages. Of course these figures are distorted by the presence of large numbers of workmen employed on the Elan Valley schemes. This has inflated the number of Welsh monoglots, but, at the same time, has also inflated the figure speaking only English. If we look only at those individuals actually born within the parish itself, a different picture emerges. Now we find that 36% of the Cwmteuddwr born residents are shown as Welsh speaking. In the over 60 age group the figure is 80% and even in the 20-40 age range 49% are still being recorded as Welsh speaking. Only in those aged under 10 does the figure able to speak Welsh fall below 10%.

What we have here is a process of language shift, a generation or so more advanced than that seen in Llanafanfawr. What is incontrovertible is that the viewpoint expressed by the academics that Welsh had disappeared from Radnorshire by the early nineteenth century is wrong, and that the story of the decline of the Welsh language in the county must be told parish by parish.

The Decline of the Welsh language in Radnorshire - Language Shift

The first census to bother itself with the Welsh language was that of 1891, and of subsequent enquiries, only that of 1901 has so far been published in detail. By that time the process of language shift in most Radnorshire parishes was complete, but in order to gain some insight into how the process would have occurred we can examine the 1901 Census figures for the nearby Breconshire parish of Llanafanfawr.

The language of an area can change in two ways: by the replacement of the original population by newcomers, as has happened in Tasmania for example; or as in Tipperary, to take another example, by the original population ditching the old language in favour of the new. Despite some ridiculous claims to the contrary it is this second process that swept across the Radnorshire countryside in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The key to this shift is bilingualism, individuals must speak the new before they can turn their back on the old.

Turning to Llanafanfawr we find that in 1901 the parish could still be considered part of Y Fro Gymraeg with 72.6% of the population being able to speak Welsh. Yet the process of language shift was well under way with the 10% of the population unable to speak English already outnumbered by the 27% who claimed to know no Welsh.

If we examine those individuals speaking English we can see just how language shift occurs. In 15 households we find Welsh speaking parents bringing up their children to speak only English. If we add a further two households where locally born parents claimed, somewhat suspiciously, to speak only English, then these children account for 43 of the 117 English only speakers in the parish.

There are 7 households where a local partner has married a spouse from a nearby but already anglicised parish, here the children are again being brought up as monoglot English speakers. There are also 4 households where families from nearby anglicised parishes have taken farms in Llanafan. Together these account for a further 45 English speakers, mainly children. The fact that the local schoolmaster and his family are also listed as English monoglots is a further nail in the coffin of Welsh.

The reasons why families should want to switch to English are plain enough, after all it was the language of officialdom and, to an ever increasing extent, commerce. The schools, the Anglican church, the railways, the press were all factors driving out Welsh. At the same time bilingualism is largely achieved by day to day contact with the new language and it was the gradual tide of English spreading from Radnorshire and into the Irfon valley, which by 1901 had placed Llanafanfawr in the frontline of language shift.

It is interesting to note that there are 18 households employing English speaking servants. In a number of cases the only domestic servant in a Welsh speaking household was an English monoglot speaker. It seems to me that this may well have been quite deliberate, a means whereby the household could improve its grasp of the English language by daily contact with an English speaker. It is in these ways that the language shift that affected Radnorshire and then much of Builth Hundred would have been achieved.

High Flyers

Discovered some more information about forgotten Brooklands racer Irene Schwedler, I've posted about her before, in the Royal Aero Club records. It seems her full name was Ilse Charlotte Schwedler and she was born in Schwanheim, Germany on 26th January 1906.

The photo isn't Miss Schwedler by the way, it's another lady pilot from the 1930s called Marjorie Clair. A resident of Pinner in Middlesex, she gave her birthplace as Llandrindod Wells. Anyone know who she was? Oh and her house in Pinner was called Cefnllys.

Work of the Forge and not the File

It's a puzzle why so many supporters of the Union think their cause will be furthered by being rude about the Scots and the Welsh. Perhaps they are secret nationalists although somehow I doubt it. Anyway the recent publication of Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Invention of Scotland has certainly given the little England brigade plenty to pontificate about.

Roper's book "identifies" three Scottish myths: the clan tartan, the forged Ossian poems and the ancient Scottish constitution. Now, of course, these three myths were thoroughly debunked long ago, but never mind, it at least gives our friends the frisson of having made some great discovery. Something similar happens quite regularly here in Wales when a visiting journalist hits on the revelation that the Gorsedd and the Welsh National costume were "invented!!"

Of course the really important point, which escapes them, is why the clan tartan or the Welsh costume became so popular or why the Ossianic forgeries had such an influence on the wider cultural scene.

Roper certainly did not identify the Ossianic forgeries as some of his reviewers hint. That was done long ago, not least by Radnorshire's Edward Davies (1756-1831) - he was born at Hendre Einion in Llanfaredd parish. You can read his book, published in 1825, demolishing the Ossian forgery here.

Of course Roper the historian is best remembered for falling hook, line and embarrassing sinker for the forged Hitler Diaries. A sweet irony.

Down Memory Lane

It's September 1962 and your blogger attends his first Formula One event, the Gold Cup race at Oulton Park.

Earlier in the year Stirling Moss had suffered his career ending crash at Goodwood and here we see him attending his first race meeting since leaving hospital.

Old chum Innes Ireland looks pleased to see the maestro back at the track, as does the gentleman with the cap standing between them, Innes's father Bill.

Race winner was Jim Clark in a Lotus 25, so smooth he was boring! The star of the day was undoubtedly Welsh Rhodesian Gary Hocking, killed just a few weeks later, before ever starting a World Championship event, and thus a non-person as far as the encyclopedias are concerned.

The Decline of the Welsh language in Radnorshire - Introduction

The 1891 Census shows two young sisters living at the remote farm of Claerwen in Cwmteuddwr parish. Margaret Lewis was 25 and her sister was 23, they were both born in Radnorshire and neither could speak English. They would surely have agreed with the shepherd girls of Pumlumon who so charmed George Borrow with their guileless hospitality: "What should we do with English here?" In 1891 there were still hundreds of thousands of Welsh people who spoke no English; a third of the population of Merthyr, two thirds of those in the Swansea Valley, a fifth of those in Swansea itself. Even in the Irfon valley parishes to the west of Builth there were hundreds who knew only Welsh.

Radnorshire appeared to be quite different from the rest of Wales. There were less than eighty Welsh monoglots like the Lewis girls in the whole of the county. While the great majority of Radnorshire folk spoke only English, Welsh was still spoken by many in the parishes of Rhaeadr, Cwmteuddwr, and St Harmon, but this was not apparent from the published figures. These were local people and they must have spoken what are now the lost Welsh dialects of Radnorshire. Although many lived on well into the twentieth century, no academics ever bothered to record their speech. Perhaps these professors agreed with the influential scholar Iorweth Peate when he declared that Radnorshire folk were "a deracine society, a people fallen between two stools, a community of half-things." In any case the fact of Radnorshire people speaking Welsh was ignored and the story of the decline of the language in the county, on the rare occasions when it was even addressed, littered with inaccuracies and prejudices.

It is my intention, over the next few months, to address these inaccuracies and prejudices in a series of posts dealing with the decline of the Welsh language in Radnorshire.

Radnor for Obama?

Other than stirring up a language controversy, there's nothing the Western Mail likes better than finding an obscure Welsh connection to someone in the news. Given the number of Welsh folk who emigrated to America at an early date - and after all the continent is named after a Welshman! - finding a Welsh ancestor for presidential hopeful Barack Obama was going to be a dawdle.

Now lets get one thing straight, the township of Radnor in Delaware County, Ohio was not founded by Obama's Anglesey ancestor. No, the Ohio township was founded and was given its name by David Pugh of the parish of Llandeilo Graban in Radnorshire.

Freddie Dixon

This biography of pre-war racer Freddie Dixon is due to be published by Haynes next month. I wonder if there is any chance of a few more such books, concerning the interesting characters who circulated around the tracks in the happy days BBCE, seeing the light of day.

It's surprising how little is really known about these old timers. Even the country's leading motor-sport historian was under the impression that Dixon's 1935 prison sentence followed a fatal accident whilst he was racing Luis Fontes on the public highway.

Infact Freddie was sentenced to three months imprisonment for dangerous and reckless driving on 4th October 1935, in Middlesborough. The incident in which Luis Fontes, a Manchester born ace of Brazilian extraction, killed a motor cyclist, and for which he was subsequently sentenced to three years imprisonment, occurred on 6th October 1935 in Coleshill, Warwickshire. The close proximity of the dates must have led to the subsequent confusion.

Motor Sport history has been dominated to an extent by the rivet counters, after all many of the cars still exist and historic authentication, leading to sales, is big business. Driver biographies haven't usually strayed very far from the race-track. They've also tended towards the hagiographic, with everyone being a bloody good chap. It will be interesting to see where this new biography of Dixon stands.

When Radnor Showed The Way

Here's an interesting letter from the April 1969 edition of Motor Sport. Wonder how much petrol you'd get for a shilling today? About three tablespoons worth if you're lucky!

Y Ffasiynau Diweddaraf

At the beginning of the last century this Llandrindod business found it worthwhile to advertize its products in the Welsh language.

This would have been aimed not just at Welsh speaking visitors to the town, but also at the large market opened up in West Wales via the railway.

More fun than a barrel-load of monkeys!

It seems that the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace (eh?) is going to include a car-chase around Italy's Lake Garda. Old time racing fans will perhaps remember that the lakeside circuit used to host races of the real, rather than the celluloid, variety.

Following the career ending Stirling Moss crash at Goodwood in 1962, Radnorshire based Innes Ireland picked up a number of the great man's scheduled drives. One of these was to compete in that year's Circuito del Garda, driving a works 1 litre Fiat-Abarth. The race saw Innes brushing aside the challenge of team-mate Ludovico Scarfiotti and with victory in the bag the two tiny Abarths cruised in convoy toward the chequered flag as team-orders demanded. A couple of miles from home Scarfiotti saw a chance of some hometown glory and scooted past the surprised Scotsman, hanging-on for a Pironi style victory. No doubt the film will see plenty of similar skulduggery!

Innes was placated somewhat by the cheers of the crowd, who thought he had made a magnanimous gesture to the Italian driver. His opinion of the Abarth provides the title for the post.

Bryn Pennardd

This is a picture of Penarth Mount in the parish of Cregrina, there's a good aerial photograph here. Like most such sites it's classified as a motte and bailey castle, even when, as here, there is no bailey.

To me it seems just as likely to have been the site of Bryn Pennardd, the home of two of Lewis Glyn Cothi's patrons Bedo Chwith and Gwenllian vz Gwilym. It certainly fits the description of the place in Glyn Cothi's poetry.

Welsh history has been seen too much in terms of the Roman, the Norman and English invaders, perhaps there needs to be a reconsideration of such sites from a more native perspective.

Booze in Fifteenth Century Radnorshire

The feast was symbolic of the bardic world view. The man of power, the foundation stone of the civilised society, gives food and drink to his followers, and they repay his generosity with loyalty. Traditionally this drink was mead, and Lewis Glyn Cothi's poetry shows that this was still being drunk in Fifteenth Century Radnorshire. It is interesting to look at those men who served mead; Phelpod ap Rhys of Brilley was a cyfarwydd - a storyteller, Dafydd ap Rhys of New Radnor owned the Book of Taliesin and was able to discuss its archaic language. Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan of Llanfihangel Nant Melan enjoyed reading the tenth century poem Armes Prydain. These men were intellectuals, did Lewis trim his language to suit them, or were they traditionalists in terms of drink as well as literary taste?

The favoured drink of most of Lewis Glyn Cothi's poorer local patrons was ale, especially that produced in the nearby English towns of Ludlow and Weobley. Weobley, the more widely drunk of the two, must have been dark in colour as Lewis describes two dark milk cows, requested as a gift from two ladies of Aberedw, as being darker than the Weobley ale.

While ale and mead were native drinks, wine had to be imported. A common practice was for a local nobleman to buy a shipload of wine direct from the Continent, keeping some for his own consumption and selling the rest from a gwindy or winehouse. Lewis Glyn Cothi was born in the north Carmarthenshire parish of Caio. In the 1390s, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd of that parish was importing 16 tuns of wine per annum from Bordeaux through the port of Carmarthen, 55 bottles for every day of the year!

Less wine may have been drunk in Radnorshire than in some other parts of Wales, probably because of the distance from the sea. Thomas ap Rhys of Llangynllo is described as sending a wagon to Weobley to bring back barrels of ale. He also served bragget - a mixture of beer and honey and an unnamed spirit. His wine was Y Gien - either from the town of Gien on the Loire or Guyenne, the Bordeaux region. Morgan ap Hywel of Llanbister seems to have been an importer of wine. He bought Gwin Borgwin - Burgendy wine, which is dispensed from tunellau and pibau. A tun was a barrel containing 252 gallons, a pipe contained 105 gallons. Sioned vz Rhys of New Radnor had been given orange and claret since birth, she and her husband drank dwsed - doucet, a sweet wine. In Cefnllys Ieuan ap Philip served wine from the pipe and Gwin o Roeg ynys - a wine from a Greek island.

Lewis Glyn Cothi's poetry is full of the names of the wines his patrons served from France, Italy and Spain and even individual villages in France are singled out such as Sant Miliwn - St Emilion. All this goes to show that Fifteenth Century Wales and the districts that later became Radnorshire were far from being rural backwaters - they were part and parcel of a Europe wide economic and cultural order. A bard like Glyn Cothi, visiting the home of Rhys ap Phelpod and his wife Mallt in Llansantffraid yn Elfael, was charged with caring for his patrons mazer-cup, kissing the rim of the sparkling glass six hundred times during the feast. Nice work if you could get it.

The Pound in Your Pocket

Currently for sale on ebay is this £1 note issued by the Rhayader Bank in 1811, starting price is £43.

I can think of one or two Bwgeyites who probably still have a few of these in their wallets waiting to see the light of day.

Rural Housing

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report into the housing scandal in Rural Wales should come as no surprise to anyone. What is disappointing are the half-hearted recommendations for addressing the crisis.

The public sector needs a revision of the points system to give priority to local working families. In the private sector a two-tier market should be created by ensuring that a substantial percentage of new builds can only be sold and subsequently sold-on to locally educated young people.

Our Friends From the North

Here's an interesting image from John Speed's General Description and Severall Divisions of the Principality of Wales published 1n 1676.

As you can see Gwarthrynion, by which Speed means that part of Radnorshire west of the Ithon and consisting in the main of the parishes of Nantmel, Llanyre, Rhayader and St Harmon, was considered to be a part of the cantref of Arwystli. Arwystli was one of the three cantrefs of Meirionydd, which itself was part of Gwynedd.

Now I don't want to upset any of our good friends raised along the banks of the Bwgey but doesn't this mean that Rhayader folk are actually Gogs?

Radnorshire Arts Update

Work continues apace on Llandrindod's newly discovered inner gateway, we'll post pictures as soon as the installations are installed. Can't wait.

Meanwhile some sad news from St Peter's Church, Evancoyd where a 500 year old painting by the Italian artist Bernadino Luini was stolen from the church. Who even knew that such a treasure was to be found there?

Finally lets mention a challenging new work from that little known Breconshire artist Steffan Powell (right) called "Soggy Soggy Soggy Olé Olé Olé" - a collection of sodden Panama hats collected from this year's Hay Literary Festival field.

UPDATE, I've always been a great supporter of Breconshire artist Steffan Powell, sometimes against my better judgement, so it was with sadness I heard that, since his recent critical success, Steffan seems to have ditched his old friends - admittedly a rather sad and desperate bunch - for a newer, trendier crowd. On a totally unrelated matter it was good to hear that the Liuni has been recovered from a Mid-Wales art gallery.

Ffransis Payne

"Et nous, dont le nom connu des goélands et des cormorans, Fut banni de tous les langages humains, De toutes les bibliothèques, de toutes les cartes terrestres"

Having been educated in 1960s Radnorshire it was an easy thing to relate to the words of the Breton singer Alan Stivell. Our history, too, was untold, buried in dusty manuscripts, replaced by stories that had no place for our heroes, our writers, our songs. My first real inkling of all this came in 1968 in the sedate surroundings of the Ty John Penry bookshop in Swansea's St Helen's Road. Here I came across two recently published volumes by Ffransis G. Payne, Crwydro Sir Faesyfed.

Supposedly part of a travelogue series covering the thirteen Welsh counties, the two Radnorshire volumes contained much more, the broad outlines of a suppressed and forgotten history. Two books written about, rather than for, the people of Radnorshire, folk who were, in Payne's words, unaware that the fragrant names of their parishes and farms sparkled like gems in works that would be an adornment for any literature. Struggling to understand these books with the help of a Spurrell's dictionary, I soon became aware of another truth about Wales in the Sixties. Payne's elegant prose was quite beyond many of my Welsh-speaking friends, the education system had left them practically illiterate in their mother tongue. Clearly the liberation struggles of 1968 needed to be fought far closer to home than many imagined.

Ffransis Payne was born in Kington, Herefordshire in 1901 and it was perhaps the tomb of Elen Gethin and Tomas ap Rhosier Fychan in the local parish church, where he was a choirboy, that awakened his interest in the history of Radnorshire and the border lands. In the 1920s Payne got on his bike and cycled west, working as a farm labourer in order to learn the Welsh language. In 1936 he found a post as an assistant keeper at the National Museum of Wales, coming to wider notice in 1943 when a collection of his essays was hailed as a modern classic of Welsh prose. Despite his lack of academic qualifications, Payne's meticulous scholarship saw him appointed as deputy curator of the Welsh Folk Museum in 1948. In later life Payne did infact study for a degree and had the amusing experience of having to answer a question on one of his own essays in his final examination. In 1969 Payne retired from the Folk Museum and moved back to Radnorshire, he died in 1992.

They were not followed by their betters was Payne's judgement on the old uchelwr class who sustained the civilised society in Radnorshire deep into the Sixteenth Century. As a scholar of Radnorshire and her history a similar judgement can surely be passed on Payne.

Llanbister's Outraged Moralists

A quaint Radnorshire custom from 1898, just click on the cutting to enlarge

Verdun Edwards - Wesh Formula One Driver

Welsh Formula One drivers are few and far between but now, thanks to an illuminating post from his grand-daughter on the TNF site, we can safely add another to the list.

Verdun Edwards was born in Brynna, Glamorganshire in 1916. For the 1958 season Verdun and his business partner Ken Flint purchased one of the B-series Connaught Formula One cars which had been auctioned off when the company was wound-up in October 1957 - I wonder if this car had passed through the hands of one Bernie Ecclestone?

In any case, on April 19th 1958, Edwards drove the Connaught in the Formula One Aintree 200 mile race. The event was won by Stirling Moss, a car's length ahead of Jack Brabham, with Salvadori and Scott-Brown third and fourth.

Edwards had spun out - a spectacular gilhooley in the words of Autosport - at Country Corner and did not finish. Although his race ended somewhat ignominiously with a stalled engine, Edwards had joined, on that Easter Saturday afternoon, the select company of Welshmen who raced in Formula One.

100RMI (update)

It's more than a year since I posted about Innes Ireland's Lotus Eleven with the personalised number plate 100RMI. At the time I rather naively believed that this was an Irish registered car with a Wexford plate. Of course I underestimated Radnorshire's most famous racing motorist .... the plate was, as Ireland later admitted, "entirely fictitious."