Working Class Hero

In the good old days when Llanelli was spelt Llanelly, the authorities were always ready to send for the troops when things threatened to get out of hand in South Wales.

The long hot summer of 1911 was one such occasion, when a national rail strike led to militants in Llanelli blocking the main line to Ireland. Four hundred troops ensured that the Fishguard trains got through, but renewed trouble led to two rioters being shot dead by the military. At around the same time a goods train carrying detonators was set on fire and four more townsfolk were killed in the subsequent explosion. The Llanelli rioters took their revenge on the property of local magistrates, finally being dispersed after repeated bayonet charges by the stout fellows of the Sussex regiment.

What has this fracas involving the hot-blooded southerners to do with Radnorshire? Well a Private Spiers of the Worcestershire Regiment was ordered to shoot a man whom his officer had identified as a leader of the rioters. Private Spiers refused, was placed under arrest but managed to escape. A week later he was apprehended in New Radnor, gaining that sleepy Radnorshire village a brief mention in the papers of the day. Surprisingly Spiers was treated leniently at his subsequent court martial, being sentenced to a mere fourteen days imprisonment. No doubt the authorities wished to draw a line under the whole bloody business.

Dash for Cash

Back in the mid-Sixties a brilliant young driver, new to Grand Prix racing, invited Innes Ireland out to dinner, he wanted some advice. Innes's pleasure at the apparent compliment soon turned to disappointment, when he found that the newbie wanted to discuss money matters rather than race tactics. Innes had to point out that when it came to sponsorship deals, advertising contracts and the like, he really was the last person to give out advice. After all, hadn't he been sacked from Lotus for lending his Esso backed car to the BP sponsored Stirling Moss, in an effort to win the 1961 World Championship away from Ferrari.

Fellow Scot Jackie Stewart typified the new, business-like world of Formula One. Now Sir Jackie, we find that his old talent hasn't deserted him, indeed he's named in today's Sunday Times as one of the Royal Bank of Scotland's "global ambassadors", on the public payroll - in total - to the tune of £200 million. Just a suggestion but why doesn't JYS set an example to his young Royal pals, like Zara Phillips, by walking away from that RBS contract and saving the taxpayer a couple of million quid?

UPDATE: Seems like Sir JYS took my advice on this one.

Before the Computers Crashed

Don't suppose anyone's going to print a broadside singing the praises of ShropDoc.

Welsh in Abbeycwmhir, 1901

Before the recent publication of the 1891 and 1901 census figures, opinions as to the fate of the Welsh language in Radnorshire were often based on prejudice rather than fact. Today we have a surer basis for understanding the process of language shift, at least for the west of the county, although even now eminent professors can still publish statements that are clearly at odds with the evidence.

Looking at the 1901 Census figures, we find a handful of locally born Welsh speakers, mostly in their 70s and 80s, living in Abbeycwmhir parish. On closer examination of earlier census data, a couple of these individuals are seen to have actually been born in the neighbouring parish of St Harmon and another in Llangurig. This still leaves three folk who were born in the parish, to locally born parents, and who never seem to have lived anywhere else. At the onset of the Twentieth Century they were the last traditional speakers of Radnorshire Welsh in the Clywedog valley, a tributary of the upper Ithon, and the last, as well, in the ancient cantref of Maelienydd.

A Forgotten Radnorian

With Wales opening its 2009 Six Nations campaign at Murrayfield today, let's spare a thought for one of the few Radnorians to make an impact on the rugby field. Arthur ( A. F. ) Harding may have had the misfortune to be born in Shropshire, the son of a Welsh doctor, but by the age of two he was living at "The Laurels" New Radnor, where his father continued to practice medicine for the next forty years or more.

Winning 20 caps and captaining the British tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1908, Harding achieved something that none of the current Grand Slammers have done, playing a key role in the famous Welsh victory over the All Blacks in 1905.

What's in a Name?

Still no sign of any Welsh counties being available from the 1911 Census, no doubt they will be the last to be done.

Never mind, there's a super new search facility on ancestry.com which lets you track down births 1837-2005 without any of the previous hastle. Hours of innocent enjoyment to be had searching out trivia, for example there were plenty of folk with the forename Elvis, even before the Tupelo hipster made it big. Worst name choice? Adolf Russell, born in the summer of 1939.

Musical Interlude

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, your blogger has been under the weather. Let's end the month with one of the best things on youtube.

Tŷ Unnos

Folk history is not something you come across very often today, education and the mass media have seen to that. An example you still sometimes hear in Radnorshire is a memory of the tai unnos - the houses built by landless families on commons. Build a house in a single night, throw an axe from the doorway and the building and the land as far as the axe fell was yours.

Radnorians believed that this right was enshrined in the Laws Of Hywel Dda, and by the early Nineteenth Century many hundreds of such homes existed on common land across the county. Of course incoming purchasers of these old manor lands, such as James Watt, had more faith in the laws of England, especially since at a local level they were in the hands of chaps just like himself. In 1827 Watt started destroying the homes of the squatters. Surprisingly their cause was taken up by a Presteigne solicitor, Cecil Parsons, and the Whig MP Walter Wilkins, and in 1835 they managed to have the squatters rights recognized and the evictions overturned.

The tai unnos were initially built of clods, later being replaced with more permanent rubble walls and thatch roofs. as at Great Maens, Llanbadarn Fynydd (see picture). Heaven help anyone who tried to build such a house today, alien planning authorities, far more draconian than Mr Watt, would soon put a stop to that. A planning system to meet local needs is as far away as ever.

The Duchess of Offa's Dyke

She may have been the Duchess of Offa's Dyke but the famous transsexual April Ashley was never a Grand Prix driver, despite what you occasionally read in the press. Here's an example from the Sunday Telegraph:

"ON APRIL Fool's Day, 1977, in a gesture intended as a snub at central authority, Richard Booth, bookseller of Hay-on-Wye, declared the town independent and had himself crowned King.

After a coronation at the foot of the castle steps, the King and his consort, the transsexual Grand Prix driver April Ashley (or "the Duchess of Offa's Dyke", as she likes to be called), went walkabout. After watching a fly-past by a biplane of the Hay air force and the launch of Hay-Ho, the first rowing-boat of the Hay navy, the coronation party adjourned to the pub where the King handed out Cabinet posts"

Heaven knows how this piece of misinformation started, possibly a confusion with another transsexual, Roberta Cowell, who certainly was a racing driver, if not a Grand Prix driver. By the way you can download Cowell's autobiography here.

Edward Rice

The bare outline of Edward Rice's life can be sketched from the public records. He was born in Llanwrthwl around 1808 and by the late 1830's he was farming at Dolyfallen in that parish. Rice must have been successful, in 1840 he married Ann Lloyd of Nantmel parish and in the 1841 census they had four servants living in at Dolyfallen.

By the time of the 1851 census Edward and Ann had two sons, Edward and John Lloyd and the family were farming 150 acres at Dolelfa in St Harmon parish. Later that year Ann Rice died and Edward eventually remarried. He died in 1882, aged 74, his two sons continuing to farm Dolelfa into the twentieth century.

Why should Radnorians remember Edward Rice? Well, according to a letter written to Boulogne in France and addressed to local squire Thomas Lewis Lloyd of Nantgwyllt, Edward Rice was the leader of the Rebecca movement in the Rhayader area during the anti-toll gate uprising of the 1840s.

Radnorshire and the 2001 Census

In one of those all too frequent displays of Metropolitan arrogance, the Office of National Statistics went out of its way to make sure that there was no tick box on the 2001 census to indicate Welsh identity. In the event, if Welsh people wanted to identify themselves as such, they had to write-in using the Other box, usually reserved for Azerbaijanis, Zambians and the like.

Of course most people were unaware that they could ignore the British tick box provided and use the write-in section, but the figures for those who did, give an interesting insight into comparative Welsh national feeling in the various Radnorshire communities. Here are the figures:

Abbeycwmhir 6.9%, Aberedw 12.8%, Bugeildy 3.3%, Clyro 7.1%, Diserth 9.6%, Gladestry 9.1%, Glasbury 7.9%, Glascwm 16.3%, Knighton 4.2%, Llanbadarn Fawr 13.5%, Llanbadarn Fynydd 3.8%, Llanbister 10.9%, Llanddewi Ystradenni 7%, Llandrindod 10%, Llanelwedd 10.8%, Llanfihangel Rhydieithon 8.6%, Llangynllo 4%, Llanyre 13.5%, Nantmel 13.7%, New Radnor 4.9%, Old Radnor 3.6%, Painscastle 8.3%, Penybont 10.7%, Presteigne 2.6%, Rhayader 14.7%, St Harmon 9.1%, Whitton 4.2%.

Given that only 19% took the trouble to self identify in a community as "Welsh" as Machynlleth, I think that these Radnorshire figures are quite encouraging for those of us of a patriotic outlook. After all we Radnorians have been in the frontline of the struggle against anglicisation for much more than a thousand years. So well done to Glascwm for topping the league.

Wye Valley Resort

I remember trying to buy a ticket to Llandrindod at Euston in the 1970s. They were adamant the station had closed! Back in the 1950s things were a little different, even if British Railways weren't too sure about the town's exact location.

We're All Going on a Summer Holiday

Time was when Llandrindod had a summer season, although I guess an artist would be fairly depressed when their agent booked them into the town's Grand Pavilion rather than Blackpool or Scarborough. Mind you the occasional big name could look back on a Radnorshire booking. In 1920 the Spa-rklers concert party, including Tommy Handley, Bobby Howes and Leslie Henson, played the Rock Park. Seemingly they were not to the town's genteel taste.

The summer bookings staggered on into the 1950s, the final season seeing organist Arthur Raymond engaged in 1958. It was hardly Rock and Roll. Pictured is "England's greatest female trumpeter", Evelyn Hardy, who appeared in the town during the War years.

Downhill All the Way

Any Radnorian prospects for the 2012 Olympic Games or even the 2010 Winter Games, which I assume isn't being held on some artificially constructed Alp in Essex?

Come to think of it has a Radnorian ever won a medal? Clifton Hugh Lancelot de Verdon Wrottesley's grandmother was a Gibson-Watt, and he came fourth in the skeleton in the 2002 Winter Games, sensibly representing the Irish Republic, anything better than that?

Wrottesley's father, the somewhat disappointingly monikered, Richard Francis Gerard Wrottesley, was an amateur racing driver who almost ended-up sharing an Elva with Innes Ireland in the 1965 Monza 1000km race. In the end Innes took up the better offer of one of Colonel Hoare's Ferraris and finished sixth. Wrottesley Snr was also a great sledger and it was maybe this connection which saw Innes taking his chances on the Cresta Run. Pictured is Ireland's St Moritz Tobogganing Club car badge, which turned up on ebay a few moons ago.

The Evan Meredith

Here's a jolly Radnorian tale from 1919 which may even be true. There was an Evan Meredith, but living at Penglaneinion rather than Penhoeleinion, and certainly near Nantgwyllt church.

The Man Who Cannot be Killed

The mention of Harcourt-Wood brings to mind a much more famous Bentley Boy with Builth connections. Winner of the 1930 Le Mans 24 hour race with Woolf Barnato, Glen Kidston was called, by the popular press of the day The Man Who Couldn't Be Killed. The Kidstons had made their fortune in Clyde shipbuilding industry, but young Glen's childhood home was at Glanwye just outside Builth. In the end the grim reaper got his man, and here is Time magazine's report, detailing just a few of Kidston's narrow squeaks - although it doesn't mention his affair with Barbara Cartland!

"Glen Kidston, rich, young and debonair, was sometimes called "the man who cannot be killed." A naval cadet at 15, he was aboard the training ship Hogue when it was torpedoed, was rescued hours later and transferred to the Aboukir which likewise was torpedoed. A grown man and sportsman, he flew with the late Belgian Banker Alfred Loewenstein and crashed. He was piloting a speed boat at 60 m.p.h. when it broke in two. In 1929 he was one of two survivors of the crash of a Lufthansa plane in England which killed six. Lately he bought a specially built Lockheed monoplane, flew it from London to Cape Town in 6 1/2 days for a record, despite a crackup in Africa. Last week Commander Kidston and his friend Capt. T. A. Gladstone were flying from Johannesburg to Natal in a Puss Moth biplane. They encountered a duststorm in the Drakensberg Mountains. A wing was wrenched off. Commander Kidston and friend crashed. Both died."

Beris Harcourt-Wood (1902-1968)

Harcourt-Wood was one of the lesser lights in that speed mad bunch of pre-war toffs known as the Bentley Boys.

Wood's best individual result was a fourth place driving a works Bentley in the 1929 Eireann Cup race in Phoenix Park. That year he also finised sixth in the 1929 Brooklands 12 Hour race, co-driving Brian Lewis's Riley. In 1930 Wood was all set to compete in the Le Mans 24hrs with Jack Dunfee in Dorothy Paget's Blower Bentley. Unfortunately the fuel over-heated and the car was unable to start.

So where did Harcourt-Wood pick up that unusual given name? Well, his father Captain Charles Harcourt-Wood owned the Caerberis estate in Builth Wells and the Bentley Boy must have been fond of the area as, although Caerberis had been sold long before, Harcourt-Wood returned to the district, where he died in 1968. Co-incidently the family of a much more successful racer, Tim Rose-Richards lived at Caerberis for a while after the First World War.

Musical Interlude

No Radnorian, Cymreig or Motor Sport connections as far as I know, I just really like this girl's Sixties voice. Louise Cordet was the daughter of French/Greek nightclub singer Hélène Cordet and Prince Philip was her godfather, or even her father if some of the gossip sheets are to be believed. Anyway after her music career faded away young Louise took a job with Marianne Faithfull, which doesn't sound like a particularly wise career move.

UPDATE: A sign of the close connection between Louise Cordet and the royals is the fact that she and her brother were invited to watch the Coronation with Prince Charles. I wonder where she is today?

Fine Old Radnorshire Names

Bump into someone called Lleucu or Tangwystl and chances are that your average Radnorian is going to categorise them as someone outlandish, probably North Walian and possibly involved in burning down holiday cottages. The truth is, of course, that names like these are just as much a part of Radnorshire's cultural history as anywhere else in Wales.

Such names were once popular, even in that supposedly anglicised part of East Radnorshire that falls within the diocese of Hereford; and since Welsh marriage law caused apoplexy amongst the English churchmen, they are recorded in the Fifteenth Century Consistory Court records. Here we find Lleucu the wife of Gruffudd ap Richard shacking up with Deio Impton of Norton, while in Cascob a certain Gwerful's husband had moved in with his mistress. In Ednol Hywel ap Ieuan Du had kicked out his wife Gwenhwyfar, while Tanglwst verch Hywel of Presteigne had married a distant cousin and Ieuan ap Gwilym of New Radnor had illegally married his mistress Dyddgu. Scandalous.

It has to be admitted that by the 1580's such traditional names were falling out of favour, not just in Radnorshire but all over Wales. I once did a study of women's names in Radnorshire wills of the period and found just three Angharads, two Dyddgus and one Tangwystl. Gwenllian was still a very popular name though, as was Goley from Goleubryd. It also has to be said that Radnorians favoured the Welsh spellings of the popular French names - Elin, Catrin, Mallt and Anest rather than Elinor, Catherine, Maud or Agnes.

Traditional names continued here and there into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while Gwenllian never disappeared completely from Radnorshire.

A Forgotten Radnorian

Born in Presteigne in 1865, the son of a stone mason, Thomas Griffiths emigrated to Australia, enlisted as a gunner in 1886 in the Victorian Artillery and rose through the ranks to become a Brigadier General in the Australian Imperial Force. His Australian Dictionary of Biography entry has him being educated in Wrexham, which may be true, although the 1881 census still shows him living at home in Presteigne and working as a carpenter.

Described as one of the great figures in the Australian Army, how far would Griffiths have progressed if he had enlisted in the British Army? I think we all know the answer to that!