Welsh-Speaking Radnorians in the 1911 Census

According to some of our leading historians the Welsh language died out in Radnorshire centuries ago. Take Glanmor Williams for example, who wrote of "border counties like Radnorshire which have been English in speech for some centuries" or Geraint H. Jenkins who, referring to the mid 18C, explained that "the language had receded westwards so rapidly in Radnorshire that it had vanished from the lips of all but the most aged inhabitants of the county."

Well there must be something about the Radnorshire air because some of those "aged inhabitants" were still alive and kicking  at the time of the 1911 Census, a handful were even teenagers.

Regular readers will know I'm going over old ground here.  It's quite correct that the Welsh language disappeared at an alarming rate in Radnorshire, as quickly as in Ireland where three generations could see a parish move from a 100% Irish speaking to virtually nil.  Where the experts - beguiled by the language of church services - go wrong, is in placing that process of language shift a hundred years or more too soon.

One wet afternoon I spent a couple of hours noting down Radnorshire-born Welsh speakers in the 1911 Census, I gave up at around 600.   Not all that 600 actually lived in Radnorshire, although there were still a fair number of locally born, let's call them indigenous, Welsh-speakers in the parishes of Cwmteuddwr, Rhaeadr and St Harmon - with the occasional Ned Maddrell and Dolly Pentreath in parishes further east.

Anyway let's get to the point of the post.  There's a theory which gets repeated now and then that language shift in Radnorshire was facilitated by incomers, sometimes said to be Cromwellian soldiery settled in the county after our neighbour's Civil War.  I don't think this theory stands up to much examination.  Firstly because some of the most common 'English surnames' pre-date the civil war, while others belong to the very real 16C plantation in West Montgomeryshire.  Look back at tax returns, wills etc and you'll find that the numbers of incomers settling in Radnorshire parishes were nowhere near enough to facilitate a language shift of their own accord.

And here my couple of hours spent noting down those 1911 Welsh-speaking, Radnorshire-born citizens might have had a purpose.  Amongst the 600 we find long-established local surnames of English origin like Bound, Bufton, Bywater, Hamer, Hope, Ingram, Mantle, Mason, Webb, Wilding, Worthing and Wozencraft.  Oh and Scott, descendants of a Renfrewshire family who turned up in the county in the early 19C and were perhaps the last incomers to be Cymricised in Radnorshire before the current revival.

What's in a Name

As the mail-shot industry is well aware forenames can tell a good deal about gender, age, ethnicity, religion and social class.  After all a Ken or a Margaret is far more likely to be a grumpy sixtysomething rather than a fresh-faced teen and you're unlikely to find many Liams on the Shankhill Road.

If this is true today then it must surely have been true in the past and the lay subsidy assessment of 1544 and the Hearth Tax of 1670, both published in the Radnorshire Society transactions, provide us with the great majority of names of heads of household in the county for those years.  What else can they tell us?

The Act of Union divided Radnorshire into six hundreds which more or less coincided with the traditional Welsh administrative divisions in this part of East Central Wales - Rhayader was basically Gwerthrynion, Colwyn was Elfael Uwch Mynydd, Painscastle was Elfael Is Mynydd, the hundreds of Knighton and Cefnllys covered the old cantref of Maelienydd and Radnor hundred a handful of minor lordships in the east of the county.  Luckily both the 1544 and the 1670 records are based on these hundreds and the parishes that they contained, they allow us to identify differences in naming practices in the various parts of the county..

Firstly it should be said that in 1544 the great majority of the newly designated Radnorians still used the traditional patronymical system, only in and around Presteigne were settled surnames after the English fashion at all common.  Already some of the older Welsh forenames had fallen out of fashion, there were only a handful of Cadwgans, Madocs, Meurigs and Cadwaladrs.  Still we find more than half of the county's men, some 55%, had forenames that were either Welsh in origin or, in the case of Dafydd and Ieuan, understood as Welsh by ancient usage.

Turning to the differences between the six hundreds. In the town of Presteigne just five names accounted for 61% of the male population.  These were John, Thomas, William, Richard and Hugh and their distribution was perhaps typical of the less traditional areas of the county.  In Radnor Hundred as a whole these five names accounted for 44% of the population, in Painscastle 33%, in Knighton 16%, in Colwyn 15%, in Cefnllys 10% and in Rhayader just 6%.  Meanwhile the five most common Welsh forenames, Dafydd, Ieuan, Rhys, Hywel and Gruffudd, made up 56% of the population in Rhayader, 58% in Cefnllys, 54% in Knighton, 48% in Colwyn, 38% in Painscastle and just 23% in Radnor.

Move on to 1670 and we find that the five Welsh names, by then Ieuan had been usually modified to Evan, were far less popular: Rhayader 33%, Colwyn 28%, Cefnllys 25%, Knighton 20%, Painscastle 18% and Radnor 13%.  The fashion for the five new names had seen them spread throughout the county: Rhayader 35%, Cefnllys 40%, Colwyn and Knighton both 43%, Radnor 55% and Painscastle 56%.

Now no doubt this is all fairly predictable and mirrors the decline of patronyms and the language shift that would occur in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Something of a puzzle though are female names - female heads of households do appear quite frequently in both the 1544 and 1670 recods - In the earlier list a majority of Radnorian women had traditional Welsh names like Gwenllian, Dyddgu, Gwenhwyfar, Lleucu and Tangwystl but by 1670 there were just a handful called Gwenllian or Goleu.  Why would male Welsh names survive in substantial numbers whereas their female equivalents largely disappeared?

Radnorshire Pioneers in Wisconsin

The migration of Radnorshire Quakers and Baptists, and indeed Anglicans, to Pennsylvania and Delaware in the 1680s is well-known.  Perhaps the biggest Welsh, and no doubt Radnorian, contribution to the American gene-pool is less remarked upon - the migration of individuals as indentured servants to the Carolinas and other southern states.  For example in the 1790s more than 10% of the free population of the Carolinas had typically Welsh surnames.  It's why a name like Wynette Pugh (AKA Tammy Wynette) raises no eyebrows in Mississippi.

An even less familiar migration is that of families from North Radnorshire (mainly the parishes of Llanbadarn Fynydd, Llananno, Bugeildy and Llanbister) to Green County in Wisconsin - an area better known today for its Swiss cheesemakers.  Together with neighbours from Kerry and Llandinam in Montgomeryshire and Betws-y-Crwyn in Shropshire, this migration, which commenced in 1844 and lasted until 1881, was centered around what is rather inaccurately called the English Settlement in the township of Albany.

A local historian from Wisconsin has done a great deal to rescue the history of these Welsh pioneers, publishing articles and booklets, organizing a reunion and seeing the settlement recognized as an official historic site.  Mrs Bagley estimates that the 77 Welsh families who moved to Green County would have comprised more than 700 individuals in the first generation.  These settlers, in addition to those with the usual Welsh surnames, had names familiar to Mid-Walians - Ingram, Bubb, Hamer, Layton, Bufton, Gravenor, Smout, Sheen, Kinsey, Jarman and a good many Swancutts*.  Having initially bought land - it had been taken by the US governemt from the Ho-Chunk tribe - at $1.25 an acre, by the 1870s the Welsh families owned over 6000 acres, around half the farmland in the township of Albany.  Large families were the order of the day, Margaret Davies had nine children, Kezia Hughes eleven, Mary Ann Hamer nine, Mary Swancutt nine and Mary Jarman fourteen.  You can find photographs of some of these early settlers and their offspring here.

Here are a selection Radnorshire weddings in Green County:  Willaim Hope and Mary Lloyd (1846); Edward Price and Elizabeth Swancutt (1848); James Trow and Caroline Price (1850); Aaron Jones and Eliza Edmonds (1852); Ellen Griffith and Moses Ingram (1854);  Jane Gravenor and George Jones (1856); William Francis and Jane Swancutt (1857); John Swancutt and Ann Lloyd (1858); Thomas Lewis and Margaret Jones (1860); Benjamin Swancutt and Emma Francis (1860); Evan Layton and Eliza Francis (1864);  James Francis and Sarah Griffith (1864); John Jones and Emma Pryce (1868); Thomas Bufton and Ellen Jones (1870); Richard Williams and Mary Kinsey (1878)

* According to Mr Howse cider was called swancut in the Radnorshire argot.

Better Late than Never

There's a cartoon in the current issue of Private Eye of a young lad writing a comment at the end of an article in his father's newspaper.  As Dad points out, the printed page isn't the internet, it doesn't do comments. Anyway a few days ago I purchased an old copy of Cronicl Powys, the Powys Family History Society's journal.  It contained an article called "The Mantles of the Ithon Valley" and since my grandmother was a Mantle from said valley - although she was soon removed to the mining village of Fochriw - it was something I wanted to read.

Having read the article I felt a bit like the boy in the Eye cartoon.  I wanted to leave a comment, one I'm sure would have been of interest to the author and to anyone else interested in the Mantles of Radnorshire.  The author, who notices that there are no Mantles in the 1670 Hearth Tax, believes that the family "probably arrived in the Ithon valley between 1670 and 1680."   I'm not so sure that there were no Mantles in the Hearth Tax, there were certainly Mansells and as a Bufton was wrongly transcribed as Buston, well who knows.  But in any case the Mantle family were certainly in Llanbister a good 80 years or more before the author's estimate of their arrival.

Proceedings in Chancery between 1596 and 1616 involved a Thomas Mantle of Llanbister, who was accused of defrauding Sir George Carew of various local rents and leases.  This Thomas Mantle made a will in 1617 which mentions his sons John, Richard and Griffith, daughters Mauld, Margaret and Johan and various properties belonging to the family in Llanbister and Llanddewi Ystradenni.  It also mentions a mill in Stottesdon in Salop, which may give a clue to where they came from before they entered Radnorshire.  Later on in the 17C we find wills or bonds for a William Mantle (1637), Griffith Mantle (1661), Gwenhwyfar Mantle (1661) - all of Llanbister - and William Mantle of Llanddewi (1695).

I wonder why local societies don't make more use of blogs and the opportunity they afford for timely comments and follow-ups.  Of course, as the editor of Cronicl points out, their magazine is archived at the NLW,  whereas a blog can easily disappear into the ether at the whim of its author or host.

Radnorshire Divided?

Is there any truth to the theory mentioned in a footnote to the article by A J Ellis entitled On the delimitation of the English and Welsh languages in the October 1882 issue of Y Cymmrodor? Could Radnorshire have been divided Ulster-style between the native Welsh and the descendants of a Cromwellian plantation?

Howel Lloyd, who mentions the idea (see above) was a Roman Catholic convert and a local historian with mainly Montgomeryshire interests. He was sufficiently well-regarded to make it into the pages of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, his entry is here.

Now some of the more popular local surnames of English origin turn up in the county before the Civil War: Addis, Bufton, Harding, Mantle, Russell, Shipman, Wilcocks, Wilde. To this we have to add names that drifted into Radnorshire from the 16C plantations in Montgomeryshire (Cleaton, Hamer, Ingram, Jarman, Kinsey etc.), names that originated in the ethnic mix in and around Presteigne, and gentry names, essentially Norman, from Breconshire and Herefordshire (Baskerville, Gunter, Havard, Whitney)

This leaves us with a number of surnames which do indeed first appear in parishes in North Radnorshire during the second half of the Sixteenth Century - the Pitchfords, Bywaters, Palfreys, Wildings, Weales etc. Is there any evidence that these new families stood aloof from their Welsh neighbours? A way of spotting any such social divide would be to look at marriage records. If such a divide existed you wouldn't expect the newcomers to inter-marry in any great number with the Joneses, Davieses, Evanses and the rest. Such an aversion should be easily spotted in the lists of marriage bonds and copies of wills available on-line from the National Library of Wales.

A quick look at the marriage bonds shows that folk with English surnames were three to four times more likely to marry partners with Welsh surnames than partners with names of English origin. I suppose you'd have to do a lot more research to be certain but it doesn't look very likely that a Cromwellian plantation had any lasting identity in Radnorshire.

Some More Radnorshire Surnames

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

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

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

More Radnorshire Names

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

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

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

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

Forgotten Radnorians

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

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

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

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

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

People From Off

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

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

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

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

"my name is ap Rhys ap Davy ap Flood"

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

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

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


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

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

Gwlithyn

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

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

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

Gummer or Gummey

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

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

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

Radnorshire Names - Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

Brampton Bryan

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

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

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

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

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

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