Go Figure

Top picture is the A483 at Howey, 7 busy junctions, 2 residential caravan sites, 4 housing estates, a narrow pavement used daily by dozens of folk, a couple of accident blackspots and a village.

Below is the A44 at Llanfihangel Nant Melan, a pub and a couple of farms and that's about it.

Now guess which one has a 40 MPH speed limit and which has the 50 MPH limit.

Yes, that's right .......

Here Today

Just a reminder that my Innes Ireland website will disappear into cyberspace later this month. Yahoo are taking down all their free sites and I don't feel like paying to keep it going. I guess in some ways the internet is like the manuscript age before the printing press and the permanency of books. Some things will last, some will be copied and survive in part, but most will just disappear.

Simmering Discontent or Hyperbole?

As one of those Radnorians who still think of Llandrindod as something of a Johnny-come-lately on the local scene, I can't say that I am at all well-informed about the storms that occasionally boil over in that particular tea-cup. Wilfing around the internet I was surprised to discover that back in the summer the Spa town was simmering with discontent. As things turned out this "groundswell" amounted to no more than a couple of dozen votes, as Mr Gary Price romped home to an easy victory.

Anyway it now seems that Mr Price has joined the "ultra-right" Montgomeryshire Independent group on Powys County Council. Wow! I knew that Nick Griffin lived in the Welshpool area but I hadn't realised that some Montgomeryshire version of the Iron Guard had been elected to the County Council.

Of course it could be that this is just hyperbole and that the Montgomeryshire Independent Group are merely a bunch of well-meaning souls who happen to disagree with the Liberal Democrats.

Secure in Valour's Station?

No part of Wales welcomed continued membership of the European Community more than Radnorshire in the 1975 Referendum. With Powys voting 74% YES, a figure doubtless depressed by NO votes in the old Breconshire coalfield, the more rural parts of the county would surely have outstripped the most pro areas of England in enthusiasm for Europe.

Your correspondent was one of that small minority of Radnorians to vote NO in 1975, so it was with a degree of sadness that I noted the YES vote in Ireland over the weekend, the good voters of Donegal excepted. The main reason voters gave for giving up their country's hard-won independence seemed to be money. Unlike the Scottish Parliament in 1707, the Irish voters were admitting to have been bought for European rather than English gold.

Now I realise that the chances of a referendum in the UK are fairly remote, but if by some mishap it should happen, how should Radnorian vote? As a supporter of Welsh Independence it seems somewhat eccentric to vote to give away that independence before it has even been won. At the same time a victory for the NO side would be a massive fillip to the old myopic English Nationalism that defines itself by what it doesn't like, the Welsh and Scots in particular, rather than what it does.

A Walk in the Park

Can't think what came over me posting modern stuff like Jemma Griffiths, apologies. Now here's some Sixties pop genius from Coventry schoolgirls The Orchids. Oh and if you want to complete your collection of Adamsdown Soul, here's Tawney Reed and My Heart Cries, the B-side of her second and final single.

Daydreaming Over a Map

So many books touching on the Welsh language reproduce the maps of W T R Pryce, which use returns from Anglican churches to map the state of the language across Wales at a particular date. The illustration shows Radnorshire circa 1850, with monoglot Welsh and English areas divided by a bilingual zone, the darker shading.

Now I think that these maps, especially those for earlier years, are misleading as far as Radnorshire is concerned. It seems to me that Anglican churches in Radnorshire dropped Welsh services as quickly as possible, as soon as the last generation of monoglot Welsh speakers had died, if not long before. For example Nantmel is shown as part of the English monoglot zone in the mid-Eighteenth century map, at least a hundred years before that was infact the case.

Where the 1850's map gets somewhat ridiculous is in linking up Cwmteuddwr and Abergwesyn - where by the way there was precious little English fifty years later - into a bilingual area based on the language of Anglican church services. The only language heard over most of this peopleless "zone" would have been the song of the skylark and the occasional bleating sheep.

Bilingualism and Radnorshire Farmers in 1901

Some evidence of how the Welsh language persisted in North West Radnorshire, long after the academics had it buried, is provided by the numbers of bilingual farmers found in the 1901 census.

The figures shown on the map are for the parishes of Cwmteuddwr, St Harmon, Abbeycwmhir and Nantmel; and range from 88% in Dyffryn Elan to 5% in Coedglasson. Of course the figures include farmers who have moved into the county from elsewhere (although most are locally born) and disguises the fact that children were being brought up as English speaking monoglots

What's in a Name

I'm not sure how much of a connection there is between Colin Chapman's outfit and the new Team Lotus which will be returning to the F1 grid in 2010. Perhaps as much as that between Stan Chapman's pub on the Tottenham Lane and it's current incarnation as the Funky Brownz Shisha Lounge. Of course what is important is the name and history which the new team will no doubt seek to capitalize on, no matter how tenuous the link.

An old Lotus mechanic once informed me that it was the likes of Innes Ireland, Cliff Allison and Graham Hill who took the development risks from which later drivers like Clark benefited. Those were the days when Chapman's cars usually fell apart during the race, and the mechanics could be found still welding a chassis on the grid.

Anyway, I wonder if anyone will remember that it was Innes who scored Lotus's first ever F1 victory and who also gave the team their first World Championship win? Of course even in the Eighties all that counted for little. Lotus sponsor Camel held a big post-race party to which all the F1 journalists were invited, with the sole exception of the correspondent of the American magazine Road and Track, who was somehow overlooked ..... one Innes Ireland.

Lost in Translation

Welsh has been added to Google Translate. Now there are some fairly dire Welsh language translations out there already, but just wait until our public bodies latch on to this.

Book Review

I'm almost resigned to the fact that any new book about Radnorshire is going to quote that old chestnut about Richard Fowler of Abbeycwmhir and his five hundred a year. Conradi's At the Bright Hem of God, Radnorshire Pastoral doesn't fail in this respect, although, justifiably, he is quoting his friend Iris Murdoch. He also makes a good point by saying that the doggerel reflects the preponderance in the county of small independent farmers rather than big landlords.

Conradi makes no bones about the fact that this is an outsiders book, the natives providing a romantic backdrop for those who retreat to the county in search of "inwardness". The book deals almost exclusively with writers and Conradi's Radnorshire is drawn rather large - George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne are the subjects of one chapter for example. Indeed Marcher Pastoral might have been a more accurate subtitle for the book.

We should be grateful to Conradi for bringing Ffransis Payne to the attention of a wider audience and the book does not ignore some of the great Welsh language poetry composed for patrons living in the county. I do wish the translation of Elen Gethin as Elen the Terrible could somehow be abolished, it means olive or swarthy skinned. Does anyone really think that bards like Lewis Glyn Cothi and Llawdden would have called Elen terrible to her and her family's face? One thing the book does make apparent is the paucity of Radnorshire born writers, even Hilda Vaughan was born in Builth.

Did I learn anything new about Radnorshire? Yes, quite a lot, perhaps if I had paid more attention to the Mid-Wales Journal I would have known of R S Thomas's Presteigne connections for example. All in all there are enough "ideas" in the book to keep your blogger in topics for quite a while. Conradi shares Kilvert's ability to paint a picture in a few words and at just £9.99 this Seren publication should certainly find a place on any Radnorian's bookshelf.

Who Knew?

I must admit that I couldn't stand Simon Dee in the days when he was the BBC's "golden boy." On reflection and comparing him with the likes of Graham Norton and Russell Brand, well, actually he was just as bad.

Anyway perhaps my opinion of Simon might have been different if I had known he was a namesake of that proud Radnorian, the Elizabethan polymath Simon Dee ...... at least that's what this Independent book review calls someone the rest of us know as plain John. OK we've all made similar mistakes, but it did make me smile.

Anyway expect a favourable review of the Conradi book before too long. I haven't read it but any author who claims that Radnorshire "has been the central repository of the true spirit of Welshness since the 12th century" gets my vote!

What's the Welsh for Wilfing?

OK, I guessed that Welsh language blogs dealing with Radnorshire topics would be thin on the ground but there are a couple. Y Dysgwr Araf seemingly lives in Llandrindod and you certainly have to agree with his comments in this post. No translation necessary surely!

The author of O'r Parsel Canol lives in Aberystwyth but her posts seem to indicate a Radnorshire connection. There's mention of an old primary schoolmistress of mine on the blog who I seem to remember teaching us about the likes of eighteenth century Republican Jac Glan y Gors - pretty heady stuff for Radnorshire in 1960. I like this blogger's use of colour, as in this photo of some tiles at Old Radnor church. It makes me want to dust off my cameras and start snapping.

Mynyddoedd y Cambrian?

The only time i buy a copy of the Western Mail nowadays is on a Saturday for the TV and radio magazine, after all there are only so many letters from the likes of Gwilym Levell that you would want to inflict on yourself in one lifetime. Two columnists in the magazine who I usually read are Tryst Williams, who I find annoyingly sanctimonious, and Lefi Gruffudd, whose mildly anti-establishment viewpoint makes a refreshing change from the usual politically-correct consensus in Wales.

This week Lefi criticises the mountain bike community for inflicting names on the countryside like "Windy Alley" and "Italian Job", completely ignoring the Welsh names for such places. You get something similar in the world of rallying with monstrosities such as "Sweet Lamb". So far so good, but then Lefi spoils it all somewhat by asking for the establishment of a national park to cover the Cambrian mountains. Why anyone would want to hand over control of any part of Wales to an unelected body is beyond me. I well remember an article in one of the English magazines back in the Sixties, New Society perhaps, which advocated putting up a fence around the area, expelling the locals and populating the hills with bear, wolves, beaver and reindeer. I'm sure such ideas are still knocking around in the back of the minds of the environmentalists, with the addition of a few wind-farms of course.

Anyway Lefi spoils his article somewhat by referring to the area as mynyddoedd y Cambrian - surely the district has a perfectly good Welsh name already ...... Elenydd.

Happy Holiday Folks

The Engineer pulled the throttle, Conductor rang the bell,
The Brakeman hollered "ALL ABOARD" and the banks all went to hell.

The Maestro Speaks

Some candid quotes from Stirling Moss in this month's Motor Sport. Of course he's too much of a gentleman to be other than, well, gentlemanly:

"Fangio, to my mind, was the best F1 driver in World" ..... ok if you say so Stirl', although I'm sticking with that guy Moss.

Graham Hill "a driver who attained more success with less ability than most." ...... and really that's quite a compliment.

Phil Hill "he was good in as much as he could drive most cars fairly well" ..... mmmh I can feel some Americans reaching for their word processor.

Hawthorn "he was fast, but one has to say what he did at Le Mans was rather foolhardy." ...... C'mon Stirling don't you know that the default Britisher position is that it was all Levegh's fault, stop being fair.

and so it goes on .........

Oh and Sirling's opinion of Radnorshire based racer Innes Ireland:

"One of the most underrated drivers, he was very fast. If Colin Chapman had been able to control him the way he did Jimmy Clark, I think he would have been up there with him. I don't think Innes got as much assistance from Chapman as he could have had."

Plantation

Looking at a sample of over a thousand Radnorshire wills from the 17C we find that a majority of folk from across the county are using traditional Welsh patronyms, Rees ap David of Gladestry (1660) for example, or Gwenllian vch Hugh of Aberedw (1671).

The new fangled surnames are certainly making headway, although a subtantial number of these are infact hidden patronyms. For instance it's highly unlikely that John David Bedo Mayn of Llanyre (1640) was actually a Mr Mayn!

Surnames that denote an English ethnic origin are absent from most parishes but in Llanddewi Ystradenni, Llangynllo and Llanbadarn Fynydd they make up between 20% and 25% of the population. Familiar names from in and around these parishes include Mason, Clark, Bufton, Payne, Hamer, Harding, Wilde, Ingram, Worthen and Mantle. These families soon inter-married with the local population and Buftons, Hamers and Ingrams etc are found in the last generation of native speakers of Radnorshire Welsh. At the same time they no doubt introduced a degree of bilingualism into North Radnorshire which would have been sustained by contact with the border towns of Knighton and Presteigne. It is this bilingualism that is the key to the later anglicisation of the county and it is the upper Ithon valley and the hill country of Maelienydd that is the conduit not the Wye valley as supposed by many.

My old chemistry teacher, Ll. Hooson Owen, in his thesis on the Welsh language in Radnorshire seemingly believed that it was a planted Cromwellian soldiery that introduced this English element into the county, but the names cited above are found before the Civil War. Perhaps they were settled on lands confiscated from the monks of Abbey Cwmhir, does anyone know?

Re-Writing History

It's always been a pleasure to point out to the more bumptious Anglo-Saxon that, from the Welsh point of view, the English are themselves fairly recent immigrants to this sceptred isle. Now along comes Stephen Oppenheimer with the claim that the English have been inhabitants of Britain for much longer than previously thought. Indeed his more extreme followers even go as far as to say that parts of Ireland have also been English for 2000 years.

Oppenheimer bases his theory on the belief (dismissed by specialists) that the Belgae of Southern England were a Germanic speaking tribe and, well that's about it, except for the fact that how else to explain that England is, you know, English rather than Welsh.

Of course Oppenheimer's book is manner from heaven for those English folk whose confidence has been shaken by the loss of Empire, immigration, bolshie Scots and rule from Brussels, but is it true?

Firstly the Belgae only occupied a small area of Southern England so, even if they were Germanic speakers, it doesn't explain what happened to all the other Celtic tribes of what became England, the Iceni for example. Secondly how is it possible that so few Latin loan words ended up in Anglo-Saxon, far fewer than in Welsh. After all according to Oppenheimer the "English" lived in the most Romanised part of Britain, Southern England, yet the Romans seem to have had precious little influence on their language, culture or religion.

How then can those of us who find little of value in Oppenheimer's work explain the comparative absence of Welsh placenames and loan-words in England? Well how about the extreme weather events of the 530s and the great plague of the 540s. This all fits in with Gildas and would explain how the Anglo-Saxons were so easily able to move into an under-populated landscape.

Big Cat Myth

It fooled the gentlemen of the Victorian press, it even fooled the perspicacious author of the Radnorian blog, but it seems that the tale of the escaped tiger of Aberedw was a hoax.

Next they'll be saying that the Llandrindod town councillor who once suggested purchasing a breeding pair of gondolas for the town's famous lake never existed either.

Thought for the Day

Following on from my Raglan Castle post, I see that Clive Betts - the doyen of Welsh political journalism - has also been exercised by the Anglocentric viewpoints of the Assembly's historical monuments branch. I certainly agree with Betts' comment that "much of Wales's history has been characterised by militant – even military – opposition to England. It’s about time someone reminded Cadw of this."

In the same way Radnorians cannot escape the fact that our area's history is part and parcel of this opposition. It should be a matter of pride that at a time when Norman rule stretched from Limerick to Jerusalem, it failed to progress much beyond Knighton. The princes of what later became Radnorshire stood shoulder to shoulder with Llywelyn and his brother Dafydd until the bitter end, and Glyndwr owed his greatest victory to the actions of the archers of Maelienydd at Bryn Glas. Likewise two of the great works of world literature - the Book of Taliesin, and the Red Book of Hergest - were preserved here and the many scores of surviving bardic poems from the area are testament to its nourishment of traditional culture. Llandrindod's Victorian festival may well ignore the reality of 19C Radnorshire but the issues that dominated the politics of the county - militant opposition to the imposition of fishery laws, the enclosure acts, the disestablishment of the Anglican church and, yes, Home Rule were particularist and Welsh.

Cadw's anglocentricity reflects a larger problem within the Assembly, where paid officials often seem more loyal to the London based civil service, of which they remain a part, rather than to the democratically elected institution which employs them. A good start in combating this colonial mentality would be to end the linkage between Welsh civil servants and London.

"A dice ... perhaps the greatest of all time."

Probably Innes Ireland's greatest victory was in the 1961 Solitude Grand Prix. Here is an extract from Jenkinson's report in Motor Sport.

"On lap 20 Brabham's engine coughed once or twice, and immediately Bonnier and Gurney were past, and then it spluttered again, as if getting low on fuel, or suffering from fuel feed trouble, and McLaren was by. This let the two Porsches attack Ireland and on lap 21 the order was Ireland, Gurney and Bonnier, all in a tight bunch and one felt that the Lotus could not cope with a concerted attack by the two silver cars, especially as Brabham and McLaren had dropped back out of the slip-stream, and could not help anymore.

It seemed impossible that a Lotus could beat the Porsche team on their own doorstep, and the crowd were obviously very partisan and urging on the two silver cars. Fortunately for Ireland the two Porsche drivers were too engrossed in their own personal battle to think of ganging-up on the Lotus, so Ireland still led on lap 22, and again on lap 23, but on the penultimate lap Bonnier got by, and one thought "that's it, Ireland's had it now" for the three cars disappeared up the hill with the green Lotus in the middle of a Porsche sandwich to start their last lap.

Down through the fast swerves Ireland could do nothing to get by and down the long straight he tried to pull out of the slipstream and get by but it was no good, and as they approached the hairpin at the end of the straight the forceful Ireland thought "now or never," but somehow Bonnier's Porsche was using all the road and there just wasn't room for the Lotus to try and get by. A lesser driver would have settled for an honourable second place, played the gentleman and satisfied the crowd by letting the Porsche win, but not Ireland, for his fighting spirit was really up, and gritting his teeth and hoping Chapman wouldn't mind if he crashed, he took to the grass, went by Bonnier on the braking, and then standing on everything scrabbled back round the corner in the lead. From this point back to the finish was all corners and curves, and it did not need much imagination to keep the two Porsches at bay, but there was still the short straight from the last left hand curve over the finishing line. There was a cry of dismay from the crowd as the Lotus appeared in the lead, but a shout of joy from the Lotus pit, and Ireland crossed the line a matter of three feet in front of Bonnier, with Gurney an equal amount behind. Had the chequered flag been at the other end of the of the pits Ireland would never have made it. It was a glorious victory for Team Lotus, and Ireland had surpassed himself. McLaren and Brabham finished fourth and fifth, and nobody had a lap of honour, they were all much too puffed. It had been one of the best motor races for many years."

Book Review

It's a long time since I bought a guidebook to a Welsh historic building, probably back in the time when they were published by the Ministry of Works with blue covers, impenetrable prose, and the occasional fuzzy monochrome snap.

Anyway the Welsh Assembly are to be congratulated on the quality of their present day guidebooks. The Raglan book for example contains 56 pages of excellent colour photography and striking diagrams, and at £3.50 it is a bargain.

Of course I have a quibble and not a minor one either. Nowhere in the guidebook would a visitor learn that Raglan was one of the major centres of bardic patronage, for poets like Guto'r Glyn, Llywelyn ab Y Moel, Lewis Glyn Cothi etc. - the equals of any English language poet. Would a guidebook about Tintern fail to mention that it was the subject of a poem by Wordsworth?

Even worse the guide is quite disparaging of the bards in a couple of asides. It mentions a reference to the Great Tower in the work of Guto'r Glyn but adds "one has to be wary of bardic panegyrics." Why? Now English poetry may well be a solitary onanistic business, but Welsh poetry was composed to be declaimed in the public arena. Guto'r Glyn knew and fought in France alongside William ap Thomas of Raglan, his praise poem would have been sung in the presence of the subject and other great men of the country. There was little place for mere empty flattery in such works and if you actually read Welsh praise poetry of the 15C you'll see how false this widely held belief is.

A couple of paragraphs further on the guide comments on Lewis Glyn Cothi's elergy for William ap Thomas's widow Gwladus vz Dafydd Gam. Glyn Cothi mentions that 3000 people attended her funeral but the guidebook adds "perhaps with some pardonable poetic exaggeration." Why? Gwladus was the mother of five sons, the Herberts of Raglan and Colbrook, and the Vaughans of Tretower, Bredwardine and Hergest. I would have thought that 3000 was a conservative number of mourners for the mother of sons and grandsons who ruled most of South East Wales.

Now all this betrays a wider mentality where only English records can be relied on, while Welsh records are dismissed as exaggerations. Wales needs to put such attitudes behind it and the Assembly's guidebooks to our historic monuments might be a good place to start.

Don't Upset the Sponsors!

"Innes Ireland was fairly hard to control and therefore the people who were sponsoring him would say that ‘this isn’t good for our product.'"

It's a quote from a recent interview with Stirling Moss and a reminder that even in the good old days commercial interests ruled the roost.

Maybe Moss is referring to the Italian Grand Prix of 1961. Of course that was the year of the sharknose Ferrari and by the time Monza came around only Stirling had any chance of upsetting the Maranello bandwagon. Moss's Rob Walker Lotus 18/21 had no chance of matching the red cars on the super-fast Italian track, so Innes Ireland came up with the bright idea of Moss taking over his slightly more competitive works Lotus 21. Chapman was asked and gave his agreement.

In the event Moss retired the works Lotus, suitably painted in Walker's Scottish colours, while Innes saw the older car's chassis fall apart on the bumpy Monza banking. Unfortunately that was not the end of the matter. Moss was a BP driver, while Lotus was sponsored by Esso. Let Innes take over the story:

"I hadn't heard the last of the affair. And really, this is, I think, a sad commentary on the state of motor racing. There was a protest from the Esso petrol company, criticising me for lending my car to a BP driver. It made me most angry. How unnecessary! If Stirling had won the race, they might have had a bit of a niggle, but in the circumstances, I strongly resented being rapped over the knuckles like that. They could easily have forgotten about it, but I presume it was one of the early indications that motor racing was becoming less and less a sport and more a business of high finance."

What Innes didn't mention was that Chapman, who had agreed the swap, now shifted all the blame on to Innes and a few weeks later the team sacked Ireland despite his victory in the United States Grand Prix. The decision according to Cedric Selzer, quoted in Mike Lawrence's Chapman biography, was a joint decision between Colin and Esso's Geoff Murdoch. Indeed Murdoch broke the news to Innes, Chapman lacking the necessary bottle to do so.

Of course the revisionists insist that Ireland was sacked because Jimmy Clark, the team number two, was the superior driver. Probably true, although it would be useful if they could explain the fact that Innes and Jimmy raced together 23 times for Team Lotus in Formula One with Innes winning 4 races with 3 seconds and a third, while Jimmy managed a second place and two thirds. Oh and far from improving with time, in their last seven races together, after Innes returned from his Monaco tunnel crash, Ireland took 3 wins against a best finish of fourth for Clark - this without any team orders.

Just in from the Windy City

Who won the contralto solo at the Chicago World's Fair Eisteddfod in 1893? Why none other than Bessie Evans of Radnor House, Builth Wells.

The daughter of local musical legend Llew Buallt, Miss Evans was a soloist with Madame Clara Novello Davies's all-conqueing Welsh Ladies Choir.

A lively lass Bessie, she was 19 at the time of the Fair, was showered with offers to stay in America. She did indeed return on a number of occasions, even singing for President McKinley at the WhiteHouse. She had already sung for Queen Victoria.

In 1903 Bessie married a Radnorian, Joseph Duggan and eventually moved to Edmonton, Alberta where she died, mourned by the local musical community in 1938.

Now the likes of Bessie didn't suddenly spring out of nowhere. Indeed there was something of a musical scene in the Builth/Llandrindod area in the late Victorian period, one that found success on a national scale. I'll return to it in a future post.

Meanwhile enjoy the cartoon of Dame Wales and this photo of the Ladies choir in 1897. Clichéd, certainly, but an important factor in maintaining a sense of national awareness during a period when the only state recognition of a separate Welsh identity came from the US Immigration Service.

A Correction

Misled by the Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales I've always believed that Builth born writer Thomas Prichard authored the very first Welsh novel, The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shon Catti, which was published in 1828.

Now it seems that Radnorian Edward Davies of Llanfaredd's epistolary novel Elisa Powell beat the Breconian by a generation, hitting the streets in 1795.

Wyesiders will realise how much I hate to do this, but the truth must be told.

The Bells of Rhymney

You'd be hard put to find a more comprehensive website than this, celebrating the life and times of Fochriw, a hill village between Merthyr and the Rhymney valley.

I'm interested in Fochriw because my grandmother, who was born at the old Clywedog Arms in Gwystre, spent her childhood and early adulthood in the village. Just one of the thousands of Radnorians who found a new life in the South Wales coalfield.

It's interesting to note that in 1901 over 90% of the population of Fochriw spoke Welsh, making it a more "Welsh" place than anywhere in present day Gwynedd. Yet within the space of a few years the language was to virtually disappear amongst the younger generation. Such is the impact of language shift.

There's an interesting little verse on the site, written in the style of Idris Davies, which says a lot about the process of language shift:

Betty Evans knew her Welsh
And so did I at four,
Until I played with friends outside
And children from next door.

Something similar must have happened in the villages of Radnorshire, with a certain amount of Welsh spoken here and there behind closed doors, while the public arena was given over to English. There's a little evidence for this when we examine the amount of Welsh spoken by those Radnorshire migrants to the coalfield.

Taking a sample of 272 Radnorshire born folk aged over 55 and living in Glamorgan at the time of the 1891 census, we find that 38% can speak Welsh, a much higher figure than that for the stay at homes. Of course the obvious conclusion would be that these folk had picked up their Welsh in the South, but if that was the case then we would expect to see similar percentages from parishes across the county. Infact this is not the case. For those born west of the Ithon the figure of Welsh speakers is 66%, while for those from the Wyeside parishes from Diserth down to Clyro the figure is 33%. For the rest of the county the figure drops to 12%.

What I think this shows is that a certain amount of Welsh continued to be used in families in parishes such as Nantmel, Llanyre and Diserth during the Nineteenth Century. When such folk moved to areas where Welsh was more widely used as a community language, their "hidden" Welsh came into the open. The figures also provide some evidence to show that F G Payne was correct when he dismissed the view that the Wye valley was a major conduit for the anglicization of Radnorshire, a view that is still the norm in academic circles.

Votes For Women

Although women could not vote in Parliamentary elections until 1918, they had been able to both vote and stand in local elections for nearly a quarter of a century before that date. Here's an example from 1900 where we find Elizabeth Maria Priscilla Duffield losing her seat on the Llandrindod UDC.

Miss Duffield was the Monmouthshire born manager of the Pump House, the largest hotel in Wales. Miss Duffield died in 1916, aged 64.

Attitudes to Radnorshire in the 19C, part two

The Welsh language is, of course, one of the markers of Welshness, but it is not the only one.

You only have to look at the position of Ireland to see that a sense of national identity does not depend on a vigorous national language alone. Indeed the very strength of Welsh, still spoken by perhaps a quarter of the population, to an extent weakens the national self-confidence of the 75% who do not.

Although Radnorshire was the first county in Wales to be anglicised in language terms, in other respects it was one of the most traditional of all the Welsh counties. Rebeccaism, tai un nos, the traditions of ceffyl pren are all examples of this. The following is an extract of an 1861 article translated from the newspaper Baner ac Amserau Cymru. Although to modern ears the description of the traditional parish wake in Aberedw seems laudable enough - an example of Hen Gymru Llawen (Merrie Old Wales) - to the author of the article and his readers it was something to be condemned.

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.

“What will happen next Sunday that is different from any other Sunday?”
“Oh the feast is not as big as it was years ago. Then it lasted a week, feasting and drinking, singing and dancing, fighting and so on. But now there’s just a little feasting, killing fowls, baking cakes, puddings, pasties and meeting to spend the day eating and socialising with each other."

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.

Damned Lies and Statistics

The statistician E G Ravenstein possibly underestimated the number of Radnorians speaking Welsh, but his map - compiled in the mid 1870s - probably provides an accurate record of the linguistic position on the ground.

Ravenstein compiled the map by sending out questionaires to local clergymen. Where they failed to reply he contacted local innkeepers - probably a better option in any case.

Taking the Waters

Someone really should republish this charming little book, which describes a journey to Llandrindod Wells in 1744.

Of particular interest to me are the descriptions of the linguistic position in Radnorshire at the time. In Knighton there was little Welsh spoken but by Bleddfa an old man could speak no English. Between there and Llanfihangel Rhydithon there was little Engish except for an innkeeper who spoke the language "indifferent good". A visit to Builth market heard only the occasional word of English on the bustling streets, and was followed by colourful descriptions of country dances held at the parish wakes of Diserth and Aberedw. Again everywhere was Welsh but with examples of the bilingualism which would be the forerunner of later language shift.

A witty book in which even the occasional anti-Welsh comment seems penned to reflect more on English prejudice rather than native vice.

Squatters Rights

This cutting dates from 1838, and celebrates Presteigne solicitor Cecil Parsons' victory on behalf of 201 families occupying tai un nos on Radnorshire commons. 201 families would probably have accounted for 5% of the county's population.

Although the article, from a London paper, attacks the Whig government, the local MP Wilkins who supported Parsons was a Whig himself. Infact this case seems to have set the traditional gentry class in Radnorshire against newcomers intent on enclosure and evictions.

Attitudes to Radnorshire in the 19C, part one

The government's 1847 report on education in Wales has long been notorious for blaming all the country's supposed social ills - deceitfulness, illiteracy, illegitimacy, drunkenness - on the Welsh language. Of course these criticisms proved intolerable to the Welsh speaking chapel based intelligentsia, who sought to counter the libels against the nation.

Now the county in Wales, indeed Britain, with the highest level of illegitimacy was Radnorshire, a county notorious for Rebeccaism and for the drunkenness associated with its fairs and, heaven forbid, parish wakes. With something like 90% of the households in the county speaking the English language around the hearth, Radnorshire was an easy target for the 19C Welsh language press in their efforts to prove that Welsh was not the cause of civic backwardness.

In language that matched the 1847 report at its most prejudiced, the supposed depravity said to be typical of Radnorshire was laid at the door of the county's recent anglicisation, here is a typical example:

"What for example has Radnorshire gained from that? ..... 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 19/5/1858

These attitudes towards Radnorshire persisted into the 20C and are well illustrated by the Montgomeryshire born Iorwerth Peate writing in 1933. For him Radnorians were "a deracine people, a people fallen between two stools a community of half-things." Even today such prejudices can be seen in the perfunctory and ill-informed treatment of Radnorshire topics by some historians coming from the Welsh-speaking, non-conformist tradition.

A Grim Discovery

In 1856 Mrs Smith, the wife of the new tenant of Llanbachowey, Llanbedr Painscastle lifted the stone lid of a recently discovered walled-up water closet. Perhaps she was hoping to find some treasure hidden by a previous occupant. Instead Mrs Smith found the remains of four dead infants.

A surgeon who examined the find speculated that the corpses had been deposited over a period of time, perhaps 20 or 30 years previously, and that they had been sprinkled with quick lime in an attempt to hide any smell. Enquiries of former servants at the farm led nowhere and the coroner had no choice but to record a verdict of wilful murder by a person or persons unknown.

An Annivesary

I've posted before about the great flood of 9th July 1853, which saw Howey Brook rise 15 feet in three hours, sweeping away cottages and drowning two people. Another died in Newbridge and across the Wye in Llandewi'r Cwm a country house called Dolfach was completely swept away by the Duhonw brook. The bodies of its six residents being recovered downstream near Hay, although their beds only travelled as far as Boughrood.

Contrary to the alarmist reports on the television news programmes, extreme weather was not invented in 2005.

The Sad Case of Miriam Jones

The court reporters described 17 year old Miriam Jones as a girl of medium height, tolerably good looking with a fresh complexion and fashionably pinned up hair. They also noted the Radnorshire patois when she spoke, admitting the attempted murder of her infant daughter Mary Jane.

Miriam, a servant girl in Llanbister, had fallen pregnant at the age of 15. The father of the child, who she had unsuccessfully sought to summons for maintenance on three occasions, being her employer, a 25 year old married farmer.

For the last seven months Miriam had paid a local child minder two shillings a week, from her paltry wage of £7 a year, to care for the infant. Now in May 1887 she collected Mary Jane, informing the elderly carer, Miss Elton, that she was taking the 17 month old child to her own mother in Merthyr Tydfil.

Instead, when Miriam arrived in Troedyrhiw she hurried with the infant to an old mine shaft, dropping her in. By pure chance Mary Jane was discovered crying later that night, lying, unharmed, at a depth of 54 feet on the body of a dead sheep. Miriam had already taken the train back to Penybont for the Mop Hiring Fair, where, failing to find a new place, she walked the 14 miles back to the farm where she was currently employed. However, Miriam was known in Troedyrhiw and a witness had seen her walking towards the shaft with the child. The Merthyr police soon arrived in Llanbister to take the girl back to a town that was seething for her blood.

Although Miriam admitted that she had wanted to kill the child, sympathy for her had grown as details of her plight became known. The judge at her trial refused to accept her plea and appointed a lawyer who argued that Miriam had merely left the child to be discovered; although this was hard to credit given the depth of the shaft and its distance from the path. The jury found her guilty but recommended mercy. Miriam was given 8 years in jail, yet so much had the public mood swung behind her that a protest meeting was held in Merthyr condemning the harshness of the sentence.

What happened to Miriam on her release? She seems to have found employment in the house of a Gloucestershire vicar. Little Mary Jane was cared for by a Merthyr couple, although the Merthyr Guardians were adamant that Radnorshire should foot the bill.

Punch Line

It seems that Yahoo are closing their free Geocities websites in the autumn so I'm busy saving my Innes Ireland site before it disappears into the ether like Michael Jackson's ghost. Anyway it does mean re-reading stuff I haven't seen for two or three years, like this extract from Ireland's obituary in The Independent:

"Ireland's ability behind the wheel was illustrated to perfection to a group of us in Budapest back in 1989, as he drove us to the Hungaroring circuit. Ron Dennis the McLaren team chief, pulled alongside at traffic lights in his brand new Honda, and the challenge was simply too much for Innes to resist. A high speed dice ensued, in which his right foot remained firmly pressed to the floor, even as he wove in and out of the early morning traffic. With artful precision he took on and beat Dennis, and then proceeded to do the same to the racing driver Martin Brundle in his Volvo 760. Brundle had seen the odd journalistic face peering at him from the car, and on arriving at the circuit his relief was all too evident at discovering Ireland had been the chauffeur. Being beaten by him was respectable, even if the vehicle he had been conducting with indecent haste was only a battered Lada."

Kippers By Post

In the first half of 2009 the Blog received 2641 visits from 70 different countries. This is a decline of 12% on the same period last year. Not sure who to blame, Gordon Brown or just the result of fewer old-time motor sport posts? I guess there can't be a huge audience for Radnorian trivia and it would be nice to get a bit of feedback from anyone who is interested.

My Duffy discography caused a number of hits from people searching for obscure pre-Rockferry tracks and, surprisingly, they spent a fair amount of time on the site, ok, maybe that's because they're slow readers. Kippers by Post wins the prize for the most interesting search term, er, there's no actual prize by the way.

Musical Interlude

According to Ray Connolly, Michael Jackson inspired "the following generation of rock stars to consider their music as part of a whole theatrical experience of dance, acting and costume. Without him, the captivating stage performances of singers such as Madonna and Beyonce wouldn't have been the same."

Now I figure Mr Connolly is saying that as if it were a good thing, er, thanks a million Michael. For those who prefer soul to mere razzle dazzle, here's Bettye Lavette.

Art Students ... eh.

Here's Radnorian Percy Jones playing bass guitar in the 1960's poetry band Liverpool Scene and no, they were never going to make the charts. It gets a lot better when Adrian Henri shuts up, around the 2.10 mark. I've got the Liverpool Scene book somewhere, wonder how much it would make on ebay?

Innes Ireland Bibliography

BOOKS BY INNES

Motor Racing Today, Arthur Baker Ltd., 1961
All Arms and Elbows, Pelham Books, 1967
Marathon in the Dust, William Kimber, 1970
Sideways to Sydney, Morrow and Company, 1971 - US version of Marathon in the Dust
Pied a la Planche, Marabout, 1970 - French Language version of All Arms and Elbows
All Arms and Elbows (with some minor updates), Transport Bookman Publications, 1994
All Arms and Elbows, Thilo Figaj's German Language translation
All Arms and Elbows, Third Edition, 2005, Mercian Manuals
Innes Ireland Remembers, 2008, Mercian Manuals (collection of Ireland's magazine articles)

BOOKS WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM INNES

Competitive Driving, Peter Roberts (editor), Stanley Paul, 1964
My Greatest Race, Adrian Ball (editor), Hart Davis, 1974

BOOKS CONTAINING INTERVIEWS WITH INNES

Vrooom!!, Peter Manso, Funk and Wagnells, 1969 and Pitman Publishing, 1970
The Day I Died, Mark Kahn, Gentry Books, 1974

MAGAZINE ARTICLES BY INNES

Sports Car and Lotus Owner, November 1958, Lotus Training
News from the Mews, 1958 Season Highspots ( very short article by Innes)
Motor Racing, July 1962, Ferrari Face to Face, driving the 156 at Silverstone
Weekend Telegraph Magazine, 15th July 1966, British Grand Prix preview
Car Life, September 1966, Snow-Trac Mk II
Aston Martin Magazine, 1979, Vol 11, No 37, V8 Long term assessment
Classic and Sports Car, December 1982, Halcyon Daze, recalling early Sixties GP racing
Classic Cars, February 1983, Colin Chapman
Classic Cars, July 1984, Innes at Le Mans
Autocar, 1st May 1985, Old-Time Playboys, Moss and Ireland in America for the Playboy series
Classic Cars, July 1985, Cold but Content, the 1958 Le Mans Lotus 11
Classic Cars, September 1986, Ireland in Italy, Coppa d'Italia
Classic Cars, October 1986, Days Gone By, Remembering the Goodwood TT of 1962
Classic Cars, November 1986, Little Black Bentley, Innes's 1926 3 litre Red Label
Classic Cars, March 1987, Sopwith's 1957 F2 Cooper-Climax
Classic Cars, June 1987, Four Wheel Drift, Aston Martin DB4GT
Classic Cars, September 1987, GTO birthday
Classic Cars, October 1987, Aston Memories
Modern Motor, May 1988, Recalls first visit to Australia
Classic Cars, September 1988, Riley Racer, Innes's Brooklands Riley Nine
Classic Cars, December 1988, Modenese Memories
Classic Cars, January 1989, Chequered History, Tojeiro-Jaguar
Performance Car, January 1990, Love 40 - GT replica
Classic Cars, February 1990, Driving a Vanwall
Classic Cars, May 1990, E Type Jaguar
Classic Cars, January 1991, Ferrari GTO, 3589GT
Ferrari World, March/April 1997,The Day at Goodwood

MAJOR MAGAZINE ARTICLES ABOUT INNES

Sports Car and Lotus Owner, July 1957, Innes Ireland Lotuseer
Today, June 11th 1960, The Lazy Man who lives for Speed by Peter Jackson
Autosport, October 21 1960, Profile by Christopher Nixon
Motor Revue, Spring 1961, Portrait von Innes Ireland by Richard von Frankenberg (in German)
Car and Driver, February 1962, Tough Guy in a Tender Torpedo, Innes Ireland profile
Sporting Motorist, May 1962, Men and Cars - Innes Ireland
Car Illustrated, December 1962, Motor racing Today serialisation
Autocar, 8/11/1963, Racing Scotsmen
Classic Car, May 1974, Profile by Eric Dymock
Motor Sport, January 1976, Looking Back with Innes Ireland by Alan Henry
Motor Sport, December 1993, A Very Fine Fellow - 4 page obituary
Classic Cars, January 1994, Innes Ireland, Celebrating his life
Classic cars, February 1997, photo spread covering Ireland's career
Motor Sport, April 1997, Legends by Nigel Roebuck
Motor Sport, July 2002, A Sense of Injustice by Andrew Frankel
Sunday Herald, March 19 2007, The Scot called Ireland who was born in England and lived in Wales

ROAD AND TRACK FEATURE ARTICLES, BY AND ABOUT INNES

01/62, Innes Ireland profile
05/62, Short profile, GP Drivers of 1962
11/77, Innes Ireland profile
11/77, Introduction as R&T's new GP reporter
04/79, The Race of Giants, running the Macao GP in a Ford Escort
10/81, Longest Day at Nelson, the 24 Hour race in a Saab
11/81, Sentimental Journies, experiences with Ferraris
09/82, Longest Day 1982, 24 Hour enduro race in a Ford Mustang Turbo
10/82, Baja 1000 Wilderness Ramblings, running the Mexican off-road race
06/82, F1 cars in the year 2000
01/83, Lincoln Continental Givenchy, driving impressions
05/83, Ferrari 250GTO anniversary party
10/83, Nelson Ledges Longest Day, 24 Hour enduro race in a Mitsubishi Turbo
11/83, Travels with Stirling, with Moss in Europe
04/84, Kenworth W900 Aerodyne, road testing a semi-tractor rig, recording lap times in GP racing
05/84, Driving Trans AM Firebird
06/84, 12 Hours of Daytona, racing a Porsche 924 Turbo in the 24 Hour event
09/84, The Cannonball One Lap of America, driving the event in a Lincoln
11/84, Nelson Ledges Longest Day, 24 Hour enduro race in a Bertone X1/9
04/85, Looking Back at Nassau, racing in the Bahamas in 1962
05/85, Truck Stop, childhood escapade driving a "stolen" American army truck
05/85, Driving Impressions, Junior Johnson Chevy Stocker and De Atley Corvette
07/85, 1961 US Grand Prix Revisted, the story of Innes's victory, Porsche 944 test for Playboy series
07/85, The Playboys Prepare for Playboy, Moss and Ireland prepare for SCCA event in a Porsche 944
09/85, Fastest Cars in America, Ireland and Phil Hill test for Thomas Bryant's article
09/85, Free Spiriting Across America, cross-country in a Porsche 944
10/85, Highland History, Highways and Hideouts, tour of Scotland in a Mercedes G-Wagen
01/86, The Dark Side of the Road, reflections on fate and friends lost
04/86, Classic Confrontation, Ireland, Phil Hill and Bob Holbert drive Testa Rossa, D-type and RSK, Pete Egan writes it up.
05/86, First Solo, learning to drive
06/86, Grand Prix Charity Shoot, clay pigeon shooting with JYS and others
07/86, Ford Sierra 4x4, Extended Use Report
01/87, Bentley Turbo R and Ford Siera XR 4x4 reports
02/87, California Gold Rush Country, travel article
02/87, Cooper-Climax F2, historical Salon article
03/87, Benetton-BMW B186 Formula One, track test
05/87, To Race for Love or Money, stock car racing at Daytona in 1967
03/89, Reims Remembered, story of races Innes ran there
02/90, Silver Ghost, story in the form of a letter to his father about an old family car
07/91, Innes and His Rosebud Lady, experiences with Ferrari GTO #3589
01/94, Innes Ireland 1930-1993, Tribute by Stirling Moss
03/94, Remembering Innes by Pete Egan
12/94, An Enthusiast's English Summer by Dennis Simanaitis, includes a visit to the Innes Ireland Memorial Rally
--/98, Ferrari Le Passion No 14 - profile
06/01, Innes Ireland and Watkins Glen

Innes also penned many Grand Prix reports for Road and Track from the late 70s through the 80s


AUTOCAR ARTICLES BY INNES - far from complete!


1/5/1964, Controlling a spinning car
29/4/1966, Road-going Ford GT40 test
27/4/1967, Driving in the Daytona 500
20/7/1967, A Breath of Fresh Air, Interview with Fangio
27/7/1967, Indy turbine cars
26/10/1967, London Motor Show
30/11/1967, Driving a Cooper- Maserati
25/4/1968, Dream Along, Innes drives the exotics - road testing high performance cars
2/5/1968, Indy Lotus Turbine
20/6/1968, Jack Sears Interview - London-Sydeney recce
15/8/1968, Aston Martin DB6, long term assessment
5/9/1968, Lancia Fulvia, Marathon de la Route
19/9/1968, W O Bentley's 80th Birthday
26/11/1968, Racing driving techniques
12/12/1968, Drives Le Mans winning GT40
21/11/1968, London-Sydney, introducing his Mercedes
2/1/1969, Sydney Bound (part 1), the London-Sydney Marathon
9/1/1969, Sydney Bound (part 2)
30/1/1969, Happiness is Blue and Brabham Shaped
17/4/1969, £7700 Carrot - Audi100 LS & M-B 300 SEL 6.3
8/5/1969, Florida Frolic
21/8/1969, Crashing a Mercedes
10/1/1969, Driving the Williams Brabham-Ford
5/6/1969, Driving a Lancia in the Sebring 12 Hour Race
3/7/1969, Lotus Concept of Four-Wheel Drive
17/7/1969, The Men Behind the Glamour, A week with BRM
11/9/1969, Driving a C111
2/10/1969, Aquatic Marathon - Marathon de la Route report
16/10/1969, Aston Martin DBS - Long Term Assessment
26/2/1970, The State of GP racing
23/4/1970, Driving a 1959 Aston-Martin F1 car
1/5/1985, Driving With Moss in the Playboy series
11/09/1991, Diary - bumpy times at Spa

Innes also penned a column "The Sport" and contributed race reports during his time as Sports Editor in the late 60s. I've also only recently found out that Innes contributed articles to "Formula 1 News" magazine in the early 90s.

Innes had a column in the UK monthly Cars Illustrated circa 1963

The Last Radnorshire Election, Part One

It's something of a coincidence that while Radnorian Clem Edwards was representing Denbigh Boroughs at Westminster, his fellow Liberal MP, the Denbighshire born Frank Edwards, sat for Radnorshire.

Although it was a marginal, Frank Edwards represented the county for twenty of the twenty six years before the seat was combined with that of Breconshire at the 1918 Election. The Tories having snatched Radnor between 1895 and 1900 and during the short lived Parliament between January and December 1910.

That December 1910 election, which Edwards won with 2224 votes against 2182 for Tory Venables-Llewelyn, was the last Radnorshire election. The seat being subsequently abolished in favour of a new Welsh Universities seat, this being a time when graduates, like businessmen, were granted the privilege of two votes.

As far as I know UKIP and their newly elected MEP are not calling for the reintroduction of double votes for businessmen, athough much of their programme does seem to involve turning back the clock. While Radnorian can sympathise with opposition to the centralising of power in Brussels, the call to abolish the Assembly smacks of the Little Englander attitudes which drove Ireland out of the Union and which, no doubt, will do the same for Scotland should UKIP ever come to power. Home Rule and the call for a federal Britain were burning issues in the Westminster of Frank Edwards' day, UKIP seem determined to reinstate English domination of the other nations of what remains of the United Kingdom.

A Forgotten Radnorian - Clement Edwards

The barrister, radical journalist and politician, Allen Clement Edwards (1869-1938) was born in Knighton, the son of local auctioneer George Benjamin Edwards and his Llangynllo born school teacher wife Sarah Tudge.

Edwards was the Liberal MP for Denbigh Boroughs between 1906 and 1910. Defeated in the first election of that year, Edwards fought and won the East Glamorganshire constituency for the Liberals in the December 1910 election. A founder of the National Democratic and Labour Party - a Lloyd George supporting socialist grouping - he fought and won East Ham South for the party in 1918, serving until 1922.

As a young man Clem Edwards was a close associate of Tom Mann and Ben Tillet in the Dockers' Union. As secretary of the Federation of Riverside and Carrying Trades he advocated a General Strike which would "dislocate the entire trade of the country and place the whole of the implements of production and industry in the hands of the workers." Edwards later turned his back on these syndicalist views and was an early opponent of the Leninists.

In 1891 Edwards organised a great march of 30000 laundresses to Hyde Park calling for them to be included within the terms of the Factories Act. As a barrister Edwards represented the Dockers Union at the Titanic Inquiry where he condemned the actions of another Radnorian, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon. Edwards also represented the rail workers union in the famous Taff Vale case.

Clement Edwards was eager to stand up for his native county at Westminster. When the Tories sought to exclude New Radnor from the benefits of church disestablishment because of the supposed English sympathies of its inhabitants, Edwards could call on his knowledge of the area to reply:

"The hon. Member laid down a general principle, however, to which from personal knowledge of New Radnor I will bring its case to the test. He said that it would be well for the Bill, and for future peace in Wales, that only those parishes should be Disestablished where there was a preponderance of Welsh feeling, sentiment, and sympathy. I have no hesitation whatever in saying that the parish of New Radnor which is in Radnorshire, possesses Welsh sympathy and sentiment which is quite preponderating. Applying the general test I should pick out New Radnor as one of the parishes of Radnorshire which has become least Anglicised, except perhaps certain parishes on the Cardiganshire and Breckonshire borders."

Welsh in Nantmel Parish

The more one looks at the rapidity of language shift in Radnorshire, the more one is reminded of Ireland. Research there shows that it took around 50 years for Irish districts to move from a situation where 100% of children grew up as Irish speakers to one where the figure had fallen to zero, and perhaps a 100 years for the language to disappear altogether.

Something similar certainly seems to have happened in the large Radnorshire parish of Nantmel. Writing around 1818 Jonathan Willaims remarked that the inhabitants spoke both Welsh and English but that "the use of the aboriginal tongue is rapidly declining." Similarly a letter writer spoke, no doubt exaggeratedly, of a place between Llandrindod and Rhayader where there was no English at the start of a particular cleric's ministry but no Welsh by 1845. According to Ffransis Payne, Dolau Baptist chapel ceased it's Welsh services around 1840 and the denomination's historian John Jones writing in 1895 reported that the majority of chapel goers in Nantmel and Newbridge-on-Wye spoke Welsh in his youth but that now it was "not understood in these places except by a few aged people."

There is some census evidence for this rapid abandonment of the Nantmelians' native tongue. If we look at the languages spoken by folk born and still living in Nantmel parish at the time of the 1891 Census, we find 100% of those aged over 80 speaking both Welsh and English - the sample is very low however. For those in their 70s the figure declines to 21%, while for those in their 60s just 7% and less than 3% for those in their 50s. There is only one person under the age of 50 and born in the parish who can speak Welsh, Gertrude Price, the 16 year old daughter of the Breconshire born Baptist minister at Dolau chapel.

These figures suggest that the anecdotal evidence is correct, parents began speaking English to their children in the first decade or so of the nineteenth century and by the middle of the century the language had all but disappeared from the hearths of the parish. Something similar must surely have happened in parishes further east a little earlier and which subsequently remain untraceable in the 1891 census.

Why did this rapid shift happen? Let us turn to Ireland and the opinion of one John Moylan of Rathkeale who lived through the language shift in West Limerick. He cited a growing public feeling that Irish was a dying language, a mark of a degraded people who were not "decent."

A farmer, Stephen Evans, who died in 1914, might be considered the last Nantmel native to speak the traditional Radnorian Welsh learnt in Nantmel at his mother's knee, although, no doubt, one or two others who had moved away from the parish may have lived on later than this.

Jumbo in Bwgey Wonderland

It's 1848 and a bored elephant goes on the rampage in downtown Rhaeadr Gwy.

Sarah Chandler

Sarah Chandler was the most celebrated of the 65 Radnorians, including 9 women, transported to Australia between 1788 and 1852. In 1814 Chandler was found guilty of altering three Kington Bank one pound notes and sentenced to death, Judge George Hardinge being unmoved by the fact that the 37 year old forger was pregnant and had seven children under the age of ten - Hardinge of course had also sentenced poor Mary Morgan to the gallows.

Chandler's plight excited a good deal of sympathy in Radnorshire. She was described as "a very jolly good looking woman" and her husband Thomas Chandler of Dolley, Presteigne was said to have kept her short of money and to have treated her cruelly. The hangman was cheated however when Chandler's brothers managed to effect her escape from Presteigne jail in August 1814, she was not recaptured until she was discovered in Birmingham more than two years later. Petitions on Sarah's behalf were subsequently received from many leading citizens, including the High Sheriff and the owners of the Kington Bank. Hardinge's recommendation that she should nonetheless hang was overturned and in 1817 she sailed for New South Wales to commence a life sentence.

All this is well known, but an article in the Northern Star of 1845 provides some further interesting information on Sarah Chandler's background. It seems that Sarah was a member of a notorious family from Bugeildy called Bowen. A family whom the Star claimed lived mainly by plunder and were a terror to the neighbourhood. The article was prompted by the fact that five members of the clan languished at that time in Presteigne jail for various offences. The exact relationships are a little confused but seem to include Sarah's brothers Francis and William and William's son William Bowen Jones held for theft, Francis' son Francis jnr and his wife Ann were also being held for transportation for sheep stealing. A few months before Sarah's son Richard Chandler and her 16 year old nephew Morgan Bowen had been transported for shearing a flock of sheep and selling the fleeces in Newtown. Another of Sarah's sons, Peter, had already been transported in 1824.

Who were these Bowens? A Morgan Bowen of Bugeildy had been prosecuted for attempting to ravish a certain Anne Evans in 1775. Bowen was of gentry status, as was Sarah Chandler's mean-spirited husband. Perhaps they belonged to that class of people called the manwyr by sixteenth century bards in Radnorshire, families of the old bonheddig or noble class who had fallen on hard times after the Acts of Union and who were often a source of dissatisfaction and rebellion.

I don't know what happened to Sarah in Australia. Her brother Francis died in Melbourne in 1853, his wife surviving until 1876. Young Morgan the shearer lived on until 1902.

Billy Griffiths

Billy Griffiths from Llwynypia never rose above the rank of private in the International Brigade's British Battalion, yet he was a private who commanders deferred to and whose work during the Spanish Civil War was singled out for praise by the Comintern. Griffiths' status was not gained through any stirring military exploit. Although his physical courage could never be doubted, he rarely carried a weapon. No, Griffiths was a political commissar, his standing derived from his secret position within the Communist party and the shadowy presence of Stalin's NKVD.

The present-day left in Wales glorifies the International Brigaders, indeed they seem to think far more of the 150 or so Welshmen who fought for Stalin in Spain than for the tens of thousands of their fellow countrymen and women who fought for democracy against fascism. I doubt if our Cardiff Bay leftists have even heard of the Yezhovshchina but if history had turned out differently then Billy Griffiths possessed all the attributes to be a Welsh Beria or Yagoda.

A zealous and fanatical Leninist, Griffiths was quite prepared to mark the cards of his fellow countrymen with the dreaded accusation of Trotskyism - a certain death sentence. Around 50% of his comrades were branded as weak or bad, at a time when countless thousands were being shot in Russia for far less. As it happened shooting Brigaders was not seen as being a good move at the time and at most only five Welshmen received a bullet in the back of the skull from their comrades. One was Griffiths' butty Alec Cummings, who was probably suffering from shell-shock. Cummings had previously survived a court-martial where his old pal had pressed for the death sentence.

Unlike those AMs who worship at the altar of Thirties Spain, Griffiths was a serious revolutionary. He is one of the more interesting characters to have come out of twentieth century Wales. As things are he is largely forgotten and even his memoirs remain unpublished. His story deserves to be better known, but that would involve facing up to some uncomfortable truths, so don't hold your breath.

A Builth Writer

Never mind the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, Thomas Prichard, the first Welsh novelist was born in the lively Wyeside town of Builth around 1790. As the correction to the DWB points out, Prichard left Builth in 1839, presumably to return to life as a travelling actor. His wife Naomi and her five small children stayed on in the town where she found employment as a milliner. In 1848 Naomi died, and by the time of the 1851 census, his eldest daughter Tydvil is found living in Broad Street, supporting her sisters and brother by selling books. Edward Poole, a graduate of Cambridge University and the publisher of Prichard's most well known work The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shôn Catti is living next door, in 1841 he had been living with Prichard's wife. One wonders if he was related to Edwin Poole, the founder of the Brecon and Radnor Express.

No doubt selling books proved unsuccessful and Tydvil and her siblings had moved to Cardiff by 1861, where she worked, like her mother, as a milliner. Meanwhile Prichard continued to write on Welsh topics, for example his Heroines of Welsh History, which you can read here. Interestly Prichard's daughters all had names found in the book: Tydvil Nest, Senena (the mother of Prince Llywelyn), Mevanwy (the earliest use of the name in Wales) and Ellen.

By 1861 Prichard had lost his nose in a duel and was living as a recluse in the Swansea slum of World's End. Tormented by gangs of youths, a public subscription by the town's Cambrian newspaper raised enough money to clean Prichard's house and provide him with food and coal. Within five weeks he had fallen into his new fire and burned to death. His daughter Tydvil died in 1869, while Senena Coles lived on in Clare Road, Cardiff, finally passing away at the age of 80 in 1917.

Tawny Reed, Part 2

What a You Tube treat! Cardiffian soul sister Tawny Reed pulls some energetic and frankly erotic moves infront of a roomful of libidinous teens, OK maybe not the guy in the Fair Island sweater. You could think that she was living dangerously but hey this was the Sixties those fellows were probably too shy to even ask her for a dance.

Listen to another track from the Adamsdown aretha here.