Tempus Fugit

You're a journalist, you've got to come up with some copy, so you produce a list. You know, the 3 most intelligent drummers or the 101 greatest outside halves born in Cefneithin, that sort of thing. Television stations also get in on the act fairly regularly and now historian John Davies enters the fray with a new book, or I guess an English translation Wales: The 100 Places To See Before You Die.

Davies lists just three Radnorian places worthy of a visit before you snuff it, Llananno Church, The Pales and Presteigne. Um, that should take care of an afternoon, with plenty of time to plan a visit to such nearby attractions as Talgarth and Newtown. Indeed although Mr D's book will no doubt be fairly readable, his list does seem a tad non-specific: the outskirts of Newport, the Rhondda townscape, the Lower Swansea valley, Kenfig and the surrounding area.

Anyway it's not a volume I'll be over eager to find in my Christmas stocking, unlike this, but what about some of the Radnorshire attractions Mr Davies missed:

The Elan Valley and especially the pipeline. How many people realise that the water runs the 73 miles to Brum by the force of gravity alone. There's green for you. What about the Showground in Llanelwedd or the increasingly less genteel decay of Victorian Llandrindod Wells. I'd include the tomb of Tomas ap Rhosier and Elen Gethin in Kington parish church. OK I know that's Herefordshire, but why take any notice of a border drawn up by some ill-informed bureaucrat 470 odd years ago.

Any more suggestions for Radnorian places for inclusion on the list?

No-Man's Land

Back in the early 1970s the University of Wales Press came out with a sizeable volume called the Linguistic Geography of Wales, an attempt to map the various Welsh dialects. The methodology was to seek out elderly folk from long established local backgrounds and analyse their use or non-use of various words.

The map shows the location of the individuals providing the data and it is clear that a great deal of care has gone into finding subjects, even in areas where the traditional dialects had virtually disappeared, in Shropshire for example, or on the Usk below Brecon.

But what is this large white hole in Builth hundred, an area of great interest as a place where the Northern, Western and Southern dialects might have overlapped? Surely the researchers could have found subjects in Abergwesyn, Llanafan or Llangammarch. It's an omission that has puzzled me ever since.

A Radnorshire Ripper

Thomas Edwards' confession was plain enough, he wanted to kill prostitutes "I intended going to Newport and killing one or two there, I should have gone, only I had no money." As it was he managed to pick up a local girl, Mary Connolly, who took him into a garden off Abergavenny's Hatherleigh Road where he cut her throat with a razor. When her body was found she was still clutching Edwards' shilling in her hand.

Edwards, the press reports said he was 30, although the census returns suggest he was nearer 40, calmly walked into the police station a couple of days after the murder to confess. Both newspapers and census returns agreed that the killer was a Radnorian, he came originally from Llanbister said the Western Mail. Edwards was a former soldier in the Shropshire Regiment who had not taken to civilian life; he had been sent away from the Blaenavon works, a workmate claimed, because of his peculiarities and occasionally found himself in the local spike. Edwards was quick to point out that his Bleddfa born mother had spent many years in the Abergavenny asylum, clearly his defence would be based on insanity.

Mary Connolly was a 23 year old daughter of the Irish Diaspora, living with her Cork born father in Pant Street, "a little disreputable lane." Mary had herself only been released from prison on the morning of the killing. The census lists her as a charwoman, although this was clearly not her sole source of income. Indeed Edwards claimed that she had stolen £2 from his person some months before.

Justice was dealt out quickly in Victorian Wales. Three medical experts declared him sane and there being no doubt about his guilt Edwards was sentenced to death. On December 22nd 1892, just three months after the slaying, the hangman Billington carried out the court's sentence in Usk jail.

Language Apartheid?

I've always found John Redwood's former side-kick Hywel Williams an abrasive but welcome addition to the world of Welsh politics. We need such contrarian voices and his attacks on the public-purse dependency of so much of the Welsh middle class are well-aimed. At the same time his recent article on Welsh history in the Guardian is something of a damp squip. Yes, Welsh history could well do with some more revisionists, it's one of the reasons I find Robert Stradling such an interesting writer. But who exactly are these dull and introspective historians Williams castigates? He doesn't tell us and I think we should be told.

One reader who was impressed with Williams' article was Llandrindod blogger and former Liberal Democrat councillor David Peter. Indeed Mr Peter widens the debate somewhat. Devolution has led to Welsh people becoming "more introverted and self-absorbed, self-obsessed even" all at "the expense of a broader and more balanced international perspective." Now I would have thought that the Assembly concentrates on domestic matters because that is its remit. Although where it can, in education policy for example, it has looked beyond England to European models.

Turning to language issues Mr Peter identifies "a language apartheid that has been steadily constructed over the past thirty years." This is a puzzle? Is Mr Peter referring to the establishment of a Welsh TV channel perhaps, or Welsh medium education? Maybe it is the rights extended to Welsh speakers to use their language in the courts and to a limited extent in public life that provokes such an odious comparison? I had thought that the Lib Dems were in favour of devolution and language equality, or have they now been reduced to going after the Little Englander UKIP vote?

A Forgotten Radnorian - Selina Price

Anyone wanting to purchase some cheap artwork with a Radnorian connection for Christmas could do worse than picking up an engraving by the Bloomsbury based Sidney Hall.

Hall died in 1831 and his business was kept going, "quietly and anonymously" for the next 20 or so years by his Radnorshire born widow Selina Price (1777-1853).

Sidney's work is signed Sidy Hall but anything bearing the signature S Hall is actually the work of Selina, as in this splendid map of Ireland.

Language Shift in Builth Hundred

At the start of the 20th Century there were still a fair numbers of folk who spoke only Welsh in the old cantref of Buallt. In the Builth Rural District Council area these monoglots totalled around 500, over 10% of the population. Yet although Welsh speakers were still a majority in the council area, some 41% spoke only English.

It's as well to remember that language shift is a process. In the over 65 age group 82% of the population of Builth RDC were able to speak Welsh, compared with 43% aged between 3 and 14. Clearly Welsh was far from dead in the district, but in reality the war had already been lost and the future belonged to English. The map shows the percentage of monoglots in each parish for example in Tirabad (Llandulas) Welsh monglots totalled 69% whereas English monoglots totalled 2% - the bilingual population was therefore 29%. In parishes west of the blue line Welsh speakers were in the majority, in Llanwrthwl parish figures are distorted by the large numbers of migrant workers engaged on building the Elan Valley dams.

There's an interesting chapter on the dialect of the area starting at page 97 of this book.

Iron Mike

Owen Slot, Chief Sports Reporter of the Times newspaper, has come in for some well-deserved criticism, after describing Merthyr as "not the most obvious of destinations" for a Mike Tyson visit during his current tour of the UK. Or England as Slot has it . Of course there are few towns in the world with such a rich boxing heritage as Merthyr Tydfil, and certainly none with three public statues celebrating pugilistic heroes of the recent past. Mike Tyson, for all his faults, is a knowledgeable follower of ring history, so his visit to the town is not as surprising as Slot suggests.

So is Merthyr the nonpareil of Welsh boxing towns? With statues to Howard Winstone, Johnny Owen and Eddie Thomas it certainly makes such a claim plain to even the most casual visitor. As a youngster I can recall some of the old timers boasting of having sparred with the sparring partner of an earlier Merthyr fighter, Cuthbert Taylor, who had somehow made his way to our Radnorian village.

However, just 12 miles down the valley, Pontypridd can make an equal claim to boxing fame. The deeds of Freddie Welsh surely eclipse anything achieved by a Merthyr fighter, the likes of Nat Fleischer of Ring magazine would not rate you his fourth greatest lightweight of all time for nothing. Ponty was also the home of Frank Moody, another Welsh fighter who found fame in the US.

Even Pontypridd must bow to the nearby Rhondda Valley, home of tremendous battlers such as Tommy Farr, Percy Jones and above all the Tylorstown Terror Jimmy Wilde. Universally acclaimed as the best flyweight boxer of all time, Ring magazine voted Wilde its third greatest pound for pound puncher, behind Joe Louis and Sam Langford, as recently as 2003. Sadly no-one has yet seen fit to erect a statue to this legendary Welshman.

No, when it comes to fighters, the mining valleys of South Wales are a pretty obvious place to go. Throw in Cardiff boxers like the No 2 rated featherweight of all time Peerless Jim Driscoll and nowhere outside the big cities of the United States has anything like a comparable boxing heritage.

Musical Interlude Update

Well someone claimed copyright so you tube took down the Tom Jones Gallic caper. Never mind, it gives me a chance to highlight some 60s gals with a gimmick, The Cake. Why don't they bring back 2 minute tracks?

BTW if you liked Eleanor Barooshian in that, you might not like this.

Morgan Elfael

While Radnorshire could compare with any Welsh county in its readiness to provide patronage to the bardic order, it must be admitted that the county - or those cantons which went to make up the modern county - produced few literary figures itself. Indeed the correspondent of Y Gwyliedydd writing in 1827, at a time when the Welsh language had retreated 20 miles in a generation, blamed this process of anglicization on the lack of local poets and literary figures.

It would be pleasant if evidence came to light showing that bards such as Bedo Brwynllys for example, actually derived their names from Radnorshire placenames, in his case Brwynllys in Llanddewi Ystradenni parish, rather than the generally accepted Breconshire Bronllys; but as it is, even a poet as associated with the county as Hywel ap Syr Mathew actually came from Llanfair Waterdine in Shropshire.

One bard that Radnorshire can certainly claim is Morgan Elfael, who in all probability came from Diserth and whose death is recorded in the Presteigne parish register in 1563. Many years ago I actually looked up the entry in the register at the Hereford Record Office, a tangible link - like the tomb of Elen Gethin and Tomas ap Rhosier in Kington church - with a past that in many ways seems almost mythical. Anyway Morgan was a fairly prolific bard with some 60 surviving poems hidden away in manuscript.

Ffrancis Payne published a long extract from one poem in Crwydro Sir Faesyfed but I've seen nothing else in print. The poem relates the adventures of a group of friends travelling to Arwystl, on the way they encounter a troll like creature. Here's my attempt at translating a few lines:

Philip fell in a heap,
Arse over head beneath the table,
Once more he got up, like a stupid dog
To grab hold a second time.
Dear God and his candles!
What a racket this angry wrestling match made!
Four hours they were fighting there,
Clumsily, arse over tip.
I've seen many, but he was the ugliest,
The dirty creature beneath Bedo.
There in plain view they saw
Bedo castrate the thing;
And throw him, a fat package,
Into the blazing fire on his bare backside.

It's interesting that Morgan uses South Wales dialect in this extract, cwnnu instead of codi and tawlu instead of taflu.
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They Haven't Gone Away You Know.

This blog is supposed to be about Radnorian history, spiced up with a bit of old time motor sport. Trouble is I always have to guard against an urge to rant about some political issue or other. The other day I thought about posting something about Glanville Williams, one of the more influential Welshmen of the last century. Trouble is I could find no Radnorshire connection and he surely wasn't a Brooklands devotee. Of course as the President of the Abortion Law Reform Association and the legal brain behind the 1967 Act, I guess you could accuse him of the non-appearance of around 2000 potential Radnorians, but it's not much of a link I have to admit.

Glanville Williams was also a leading member of the Eugenics Society, a body that concerned itself with such issues as opposing racially mixed marriages, sterilising unemployed people and other "unhealthy seed". Although all that "good seed" baloney smacks of the 1930s, the Eugenics Society never went away, it merely changed its name. This popular broadcaster even ended up as President, I except you know him. Anyway I decided that this was not a suitable topic for a Radnorian blog and deleted the post. However ........

This morning the BBC News site is making much of the fact that the BNP are pals with American racist David Duke. Hardly surprising of course but maybe this is, the foreword to David Duke's book My Awakening by American geneticist Professor Glayde Whitney. That's the same Glayde Whitney who our present day eugenicists invited over to the UK to lecture, David Aaronovitch wrote about it in the Guardian.

So there you have it, the obviously racist BNP, the less-obvious haters of the SWP posing as "anti-fascists" outside the BBC and those highly respectable scientists seeking to rehabilitate eugenics. Wonder which are the greatest danger? Wonder also how long it will be before someone suggests sterilising the less talented "seed" in order to save the planet from global warming?

Treason

Has the world come to this, Stirling bigging up a red car!

Fascist Advance Turned Back in Radnor

The latest BNP membership list is a bit of a mess but from what I can make out they've picked up one new member in Llandrindod, while losing their two previous Radnorian sign ups.

The pleasant Wyeside town of Llanfair-ym-Muallt also gained, if that's the right word, a member, although my guess is that this one thought BNP stood for Builth National Party.

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.