A new book from Builth

Perhaps like the black American soldiers from the Pencerrig camp this blog should stick to its own side of the Wye bridge,* but here we have a book (or maybe booklet - it only has 96 pages) full of interesting snippets about life in Builth during the Second World War.

Of course a locally produced book like this - it's published by the Builth Wells and District Heritage Society - isn't going to delve too deeply into the more controversial aspects of wartime life: profiteering, the black market, sexual shenanigans, the Epynt clearances etc.  What we do get are individual memories of varying quality and interest, the first chapter is particularly fine while one or two others would have benefited from a little discreet editing.

Some thoughts: the young Builth nurse who was badly wounded in the Coventry blitz and subsequently died.  More than 60000 civilians were killed during the war on the Home Front, shouldn't their names also be recorded on our war memorials?  The Bootle mothers who returned home after a few weeks because "they would prefer to face the bombs ,,,,, than stay in Builth."  One would like to know more.  The young Home Guarder much mocked for running off when confronted by a German parachutist, surely the sensible course of action?

All in all a volume that should fascinate younger readers and stir memories for the older  generation.

* It seems that the bridge was guarded to ensure that locally stationed white American troops stayed in Builth, while their black compatriots could go no further south than the Llanelwedd Arms. 

Forgotten Radnorians

While the Anglicans continue to agonize over female bishops, Quaker women like Mary Pennell were leading congregations and preaching on both sides of the Atlantic some 300 years ago.  Born Mary Morgan in the parish of Nantmel in 1678, she migrated to Pennsylvania at the age of sixteen, presumably with her brothers John and Hugh Morgan.  In 1703 Mary married and in 1722, by which time she had had six children, "became a Quaker Minister and traveled through the eastern states, England, Ireland and on the Continent."

Mary Pennell left a sister Amy (1689-1762) back home in Radnorshire who had married a farmer from a non-Quaker background called John Griffith.  In 1726 a visitor from Pennsylvania inspired Amy's fourteen year old son John to travel out to the colony accompanied, at his father's insistence, by an older brother Thomas and their eight year old sister Martha.  In time they would be joined by two other sisters Mary and Sarah.

 The Quaker congregation at Talcoed, Nantmel provided the following certificate to accompany the young adventurers:

"To the Monthly Meeting or Quarterly Meetings of Friends and Brethren in the Province of Pensilvania in America but more particularly to the Monthly Meeting of Friends at Abington in the Sd. Province --- whereas three children Thomas Griffith about 18 years of age and John Griffith his brother about 14 years of age and Martha Griffith their sister about 8 years of age, all born in the Parish of Nantmeal and County of Radnor in South Wales, Being the Sons and Daughter of John Griffith and Amy his wife, inhabitants and Land holders in the Parish and County aforesaid, are by the order and free consent of their sd parents intending in a few days to go aboard a Ship Belonging to the Port of Bristol, Whereof Edward Foy is Captain, In order to Sail in Sd Ship (if God permit) to the City of Philadelphia in the Sd. Province. There to be delivered to their uncles, John Morgan, Hugh Morgan or either of them or to Mary the wife of John Pennell who is their Mother's sister, who all of them if living are settled inhabitants in this Sd. Province to the intent that they the Sd. John Morgan, Hugh Morgan and Mary their sister may take care of them and dispose of them as they shall think best and in case their relations doe perform what is desired and hoped for by the Sd. parents. --We then the persons hereunder named who are members of the Meeting which the Sd. parents belong by order of our Monthly Meeting held at Talcoed the 10th instant doe desire that the Sd. three children or either of them may be disposed of according as Friends of the Sd. Meeting of Abington shall think most expedient, and as to their Sd. children's descent we give you to understand that their Parents are Honest Friends having each of them a Public Testimony for the Truth wherewith Friends have Unity; and we further Desire (as well on the behalf of the Sd. Children who are hopeful as also for their parents and their aged Grandmother's sake who is an Honest Woman, namely Sarah Rees) that you will as need shall require, advise or assist the Sd. children in Order that they may be settled to Honest Friends,further and we, according to our power shall be willing to answer what you or any of our Brethrenvshall in Love desire of us who are your Loving Friends. Signed at and by Order of our MonthlyMeeting at Talcoed the 10th of the 4th month 1726"

This younger John Griffith (1713-1776) also became a Quaker minister eventually settling in Chelmsford, Essex.  His journal published in both England and Philadelphia is available here.

It's clear from reading about these Radnorshire Quakers that they were at home with the English language and that marriage to fellow Friends was more important to them than any national or regional loyalty.  They were also better educated than others of their class, the small farmers, weavers etc.  Take a look at the signature of John Griffith's sister-in-law Alice Pugh, a farmer's wife from Llandegley.  At a time when many would have made a mark or signed with a scrawl it has the look of a hand well used to using a pen:

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?

Talk of the Town

The 2011 Census figures may well show an increase in the numbers of Welsh speakers, but this will only mask the continuing decline of Welsh as a community language or even - to use a useful term from the past - a hearth language.  Although Wales may have the appearance of being a bilingual country, in essence this is not the case - for example, while every public servant in Wales must be able to speak English, a knowledge of Welsh is not a necessity, even in those areas considered to be Welsh-speaking heartlands; while many local and central government policies, far from assisting the language, might just as well have been designed to hasten its demise.

It is with this surface appearance of bilingualism in mind that we should consider Llandrindod council's recent deliberations in respect of placenames in the town.   First up a request that Temple Drive should have a street sign, with the council agreeing that any sign also read  - Rhodfa'r Teml.  To me this is the worst kind of faux bilingualism.  It only serves to provide ammunition to the enemies of the language who could quite justly demand that Lon Cwm also read Valley Lane.  If councils really want fair play for the language then they should ensure that every new street have a name with some historical basis in the locality, which in most cases will mean a Welsh name.

Next the naming of the new court and police building in Llandrindod.  The town council preferring  Parc Neuadd Park but having to accept Powys Council's Parc Noyadd Park.  There are two issues here, firstly the demands of faux bilingualism which require both Parc and Park. Surely no-one would object to the use of Parc alone?  Secondly the use of Noyadd instead of Neuadd.  Now as it happens I'm all in favour of idiosyncratic spellings such as Noyadd, which reflect a traditional pronunciation and/or long historical usage.  It's why I'm quite happy to use Rhayader or Llandegley on this blog.  Mind you the town council did have a point, as this will from 1832 shows.

The original impulse to make Welsh visible as a public language was all well and good, but bilingualism will not be a reality until, for example, any police officer stopping a speeding motorist anywhere in Wales is able to converse  with the miscreant in either of the country's two languages.  Anything less is mere show.

The Story Of Knighton - New Book

Knighton. For the very occasional visitor such as myself it's as exotic as any distant holiday destination, with it's eccentric architecture, unexpected shops and the only multi-story car park in Mid Wales.  I actually drove across the county and back about twenty years to pick up a copy of the book in the town itself.  It was pleasing to see the precipitous main street decorated with the flags of St David and Owain Glyndwr.  Clearly the great patriot has been forgiven for laying the place to waste some six hundred years ago.

My major quibble with the new purchase was answered in the first sentence of the foreword, the book "is mainly concerned with the period from the 1770s to the 1970s."  The first 40 or so of its 200 pages do concern earlier times but medieval Kighton is done and dusted in the first 15 pages.  In any case I doubt if the author is as comfortable with the traditional Welsh society of the middle ages as with later periods.  Calling Glyndwr's lieutenant Rhys ap Gethin is revealing - a bit like saying Ethelred the son of Unready.  The book could certainly have done with better proof-reading, a few errors have made it through to the final version, especially in regard to dates, for example the Knighton jockey Garnet Evans is said to have been born in 1887 and killed at Epsom in 1805.   I was also surprised that Mr Parker could not find a few lines to mention a man who should surely be, if not the town's favourite son, at least better remembered, Clem Edwards.

Yet carping aside it's a fascinating book that should be on every Radnorian bookshelf.  A fact-filled volume which left me wanting to know more, to give just one example, about the company of 60 or more Knightonians who enlisted with the Duke of York's Inverness-shire Highlanders in 1795.  A body of men, who I learn elsewhere, were "more partial to the plaid" than some of their Highland comrades.  At a mere £10 with over 50 photographs this is another welcome addition to Logaston's growing list of books of Radnorshire interest.

Dorothy Levitt - Update

If the Radnorian blog has done nothing else, at least it has rescued the pioneer sporting motorist Dorothy Levitt from being characterised as some Downtonabbeyesque Edwardian toff.  Her real identity being far more interesting.

A recent blog comment rounds off the story by detailing Dorothy's death certificate:  Died 17th May 1922 at 50 Upper Baker Street, London aged 38 years  - She was nearer 40 - occupation spinster, independent means, daughter of Jacob Levi.  The cause of death as supplied by the London coroner after an inquest held on 20th May: found dead in bed, morphine poisoning while suffering from heart disease and an attack of measles. Misadventure.

So does this suggest that Dorothy was some 1920s Amy Winehouse?  She wouldn't be the only racer of that period to have problems with morphine, for example the aviator and Brooklands racer Gerald Le Champion was convicted in 1925 for possession of the drug.  Like others from that period Le Champion had become addicted as a result of medical intervention, in his case treatment for wounds sustained in the war.

Forgotten Radnorian

This North Korean stamp commemorates the destruction of the General Sherman, a heavily armed American merchant ship, in 1866.  Among those executed after escaping from the burning vessel was a Protestant missionary, Robert Jermain Thomas, who had been engaged as an interpreter.

Mr Thomas, he was born in Rhayader in 1839, is still remembered by Korea's nine million Protestants and many come to Wales to visit sites associated with his life.  This blog has more information.

Who was Rhys Gethin?

On not much evidence Rhys Gethin is said to have been Owain Glyndwr's leading general, and historians from Sir John Lloyd to Sir Rees Davies have identified him as being Rhys Gethin of Nantconwy.

Cledwyn Fychan makes an entirely convincing case that the Rhys Gethin of the contemporary historical record wasn't Rhys Gethin of Nantconwy at all, he comes up with a far more likely candidate.

The handful of reviews I've read agree that if you want to know who Rhys Gethin is, then you should read this little book.  The advice seems to defeat the object of the essay, which was to make the real Rhys Gethin better known.  It's not the easiest work to get hold of and you may end up, like me, getting a version with a perfect cover and binding but with contents consisting of a different essay altogether.  One of the drawbacks, I guess, of getting a Welsh language book printed in Italy.

Anyway the Rhys Gethin of the historical record was Rhys Gethin of Llwyngwychwyr, Llanwrtyd, of that there can be little doubt.  There are only two mentions of Rhys Gethin in connection with Owain Glyndwr in contemporary records - there was the Rhys Gethin who captured Carmarthen in the company of others, including kinsmen of Rhys of Llwyngwychwyr; and there was the Rhys Gethin who Prince Hal mentions, in a letter to his father King Henry IV, as having raised an army in Buallt with the intention of invading Herefordshire.  English nationalists should note that this letter was written in French.

As early as 1401 Rhys Gethin's father, unnamed sons and various kinsmen were "deprived" of their lands in Buallt because they had risen in insurrection with Owen Glyndourdy.  As for the family's military prowess, that leading military commander in the 15C French wars Sir Richard Gethin of Builth was the son of Rhys of Llwyngwychwyr.

Some points of Radnorshire interests: Was Rhys Gethin the Rees a Gytch who an English chronicler says was involved in the Battle of Pilleth?  It's impossible to say.  There were certainly kinship links between Rhys Gethin's family and Philip ap Rhys of St Harmon, Glyndwr's son-in-law.  As so often, the contribution of East Central Wales - in this case to Glyndwr's war - is underestimated.  This elegant little book goes some way to illuminating one aspect of that contribution.  If only it were better known.

A Radnorshire Mormon from Nantmel

The parishes east of Presteigne seem to provide fertile ground for the more radical religious movements of the day.  After all the Lollard John Oldcastle was from Almeley and Ffransis Payne has some interesting things to say about the Quakers of the area, who "in comparison to whom the driest and least joyful members of our most narrow puritan sects would appear like cheerful pagans."

It was to this district that a young fellow from the Ysfa, Llewellyn Mantle of Crugnant, made his way in the 1820s.  Here he found work as a waggoner and in 1835 married a local girl, Kitty Watkins, in Byton parish church.  In 1842 the couple were converted by the latest missionaries to invade the district and quickly determined to join their prophet Joseph Smith and his Latter-Day Saints in Nauvoo Illinois.  You can read about Llewellyn's subsequent adventures here.  The Mantles were in Nauvoo when Smith was murdered, they migrated west, crossing the frozen Mississippi into Iowa. Having lost his sight in 1848 Llewellyn walked the thousand miles to Salt Lake City, arriving there in the autumn of 1851.  He died in Utah in 1901, aged 83.

Its easy to forget just how radical a group the Mormons were, with their polygamy - Llewellyn took a second wife in 1870, a Swiss woman called Margaret Egg - and violent confrontations with their neighbours such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.  Indeed the Mantles' daughter Sarah married the son of the legendary gunfighter Porter Rockwell, Mormondom's "destroying angel."

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.

Keep Digging

You know this new Britishness agenda is in full-swing when the archaeologists solve the mystery of Stonehenge. Seemingly it's a unification monument, "a monument to unify the peoples of Britain, after a long period of conflict and regional difference." 

It only seems the other day that the BBC were telling us that Stonehenge was a healing centre, the Lourdes of prehistoric Europe.

Not a Book Review

It's a bit daunting when someone expresses the view that they miss my book reviews.  Do people actually make or avoid a purchase on my recommendation?  Good heavens, sometimes a book has been reviewed here even before it's been read.  It's often an excuse to upload something visual on to the blog.  Like this:

There are books that you want and procrastinate over buying and then there are books like this that are bought on a whim and leave one reflecting "why?"

Not that it isn't a fascinating book, even if it does include one of the daftest maps ever published by an academic press.  This map, purporting to be of post-1284 Wales, shows the future county of Monmouthshire in England and Tintern located somewhere west of Newport.  Thankfully the map is so small that you need a magnifying glass to spot its stupidity.

As the title suggests, the book deals with towns in medieval Wales and consists of a dozen chapters each written by a different author covering topics such as townswomen, fairs and feast days, entertainment, bardic poetry and the Welsh element in towns across the border such as Bristol and Hereford.  The multiple authorship does lead to repetition, for example Gruffudd ab Adda's poem to the maypole in Llanidloes turns up in three of the chapters.

Radnorshire towns get mentioned in passing but as is often the case my interest is piqued by the footnotes more than anything - the bard Bedo Brwynllys' presence in Knighton for example.  I didn't know that and I'd like to know more.  Perhaps my suggestion that he was from the township of Brwynllys in Maelienydd rather than Bronllys in Breconshire has some substance.  I do hope so.

Stop Thief!

We've done our best to combat Breconshire's depredations.  Of course they've won the big prizes - like convincing the world that the Royal Welsh Show is held in Builth, but we've had some small victories.  We've reclaimed Caesar Jenkyns for the county of his birth and shown that the first Welsh novelist wasn't a Breconian.  There are more, here for example, it's thankless work but someone has to do it.

Yet still the thefts continue, aided and abetted by the likes of the Welsh Books Council.  Here they describe the painter Thomas Jones as a Breconshire landowner.  Maybe he was, but do a couple of fields count for more than his Radnorshire birthplace or his Radnorshire home?   And while we're at it, why do none of these people use paypal?  Don't they want to sell books?  It's not as if I'm willing to hand over my card details to every Tom, Dick and Cardi!

Musical Interlude

Bettye Lavette, defining soul music.

Bad for Business?

Now I've always been told that mixing politics and business was a bad idea, you might alienate those customers who don't share one's point of view.  Clearly this wasn't the case with the Radnorshire non-conformists who eagerly refused to pay the education rate levied as a result of the 1902 Education Act.  The point at issue, why should chapel-goers subsidise Church schools.

More than a hundred Radnorians were subjected to the depredations of the bailiffs and in Llandrindod we find some of the leading hoteliers in the town being dragged through the courts for non-payment.  These included Jeffrey Jones - we've met him before - proprietor of the Brynawel (now the Glen Usk), Edward Thomas of the Gwalia, Thomas Owen at Baveno and William Lewis Harper at the Manor and his father Job Harper at Southend House.

Bad for business?  Well if you catered for a mainly non-conformist clientele, maybe not.

A Process not an Event

The election of December 1910 might have been the last time that the undiluted voice of  the Radnorian voter was heard on the parliamentary level, but the Sunday Closing votes of the 1960s also saw the old county treated as a single constituency.  At the time these votes were regarded as referendums on "welshness" or at least welshness as it was defined by the upholders of the non-conformist tradition.  In urban Wales that tradition took one hell of a beating, while the three thousand (42%) Radnorians who voted in 1961 to maintain the ban on Sunday drinking were not enough to hold back the brewers, whose Welsh campaign was headed by Mr Baird Murray of Llandrindod.  This and subsequent votes buried that particular version of Welshness and today sobriety is one of the last virtues one associates with Wales.  It went the way of patronyms and partible inheritance as a marker of Welsh identity.

The 1960s were also when the geographer E G Bowen came up with his two Wales model, the theory that the country could be divided into an Inner Wales - a Welsh speaking heartland if you like - and an Outer, less Welsh area encompassing the borderlands and the industrial districts.  These two cultural regions some believed had a distinct identity stretching back for centuries.  The gloriously cockney singer Adele put it more succinctly when she said she was Welsh but not "proper Welsh" like her Nefyn raised and welsh-speaking rival Duffy.

Now Bowen's theory, and modifications such as the Three Wales model, have had a real influence on opinion in Wales.  It is treated as if Inner Wales is a reality rather than the "product of day dreaming over a map."   Take that vote on booze.  Yes, there was a clear division between a dry Inner Wales and the boozy remainder back in the Sixties, but today Duffy can just as easily enjoy a Sunday snifter in the Nanhoran Arms as can Adele in Penarth's Railway Hotel.  The maps might show a coincidence between the Sunday closing vote of 1961, the Welsh speaking districts of that year's census and the medieval principality of Edward the First, but that is what they were - a coincidence.

A map records a moment in time, it's out of date even before it leaves the printers.  What the geographers identified as markers of an Inner Wales were processes, they were misled by their maps.

It's a reproach to Welsh historians that when Radnorians want to learn about their district in the medieval period, they might as well turn to the work of the UKIP parliamentary candidate for the Cheshire seat of Weaver Vale.

We may not accept Mr Remfry's promotion of the name Cynllibiwg to describe the Middle March - although Rhwng Gwy a Hafren sounds more like a geographical description than an actual placename - but he is right when he criticises the mainstream for ignoring Maelienydd and Elfael - the heart of the future county of Radnorshire.

Maelienydd and Elfael play havoc with the Inner/Outer Wales cultural model.  Right up to the death of Llywelyn and even afterwards these districts were an area of contention: between Gwynedd, Deheubarth, the Normans and the greatly underestimated (today) strength of the local rulers themselves.  This was far more Pura Wallia than Marchia Wallia, for although the Normans might, temporarily, occupy a castle or two, their real power like that of the British Army in Helmand Province was limited.  Yet neither of these two cantons proved to be lasting strongholds of the Welsh language as the Two Wales model should predict.

Move on a couple of centuries and the bards of the 15C did not seem to be aware of any great cultural divide between Inner and Outer Wales.  For example over 60 of the surviving poems of Lewis Glyn Cothi were composed for Radnorshire patrons, more than for patrons in any other of the future 13 counties of Wales.

Of course the Inner/Outer Wales model is correct when it says that the east of Wales is more open to new ideas spreading in from England than is the west. That is a geographical reality.  Where it goes astray is to look at moments in time and accord them some great significance, while failing to recognize that what is at work is a process which eventually overwhelms the west as much as the east - the adoption of surnames would be an example.  The Two Wales and the Three Wales models only serve to artificially divide a country with a common past and a common future, whatever that might be.

Radnorshire Welsh

A fascinating comment has been left on an old post from 2008.  Anyone interested in the story of the Welsh Language in Radnorshire should check it out, you can find it here.

The comment also draws my attention to Meic Stephens' recent autobiography Cofnodion, which I see discusses the author's Radnorshire roots -  his father was born in Walton.  What to make of this blurb on his publisher's site though: "an account of how the young boy from an English-speaking household grew up to be a Welshman."  As Stephens was born in Treforest I would have thought he was a Welshman from the moment he gulped in a lungful of Glamorgan air.

A Herefordshire Will

While wilfing around some Herefordshire sites, this one in particular, I saw a brief reference to the case of Lewis Powell of Craswall who in 1749 had left what property he had to his wife Mary.  The will was disputed by Lewis's brother William and this led to an enquiry into the circumstances under which the will was made.  It was written and witnessed by 42 year old Thomas Price and also witnessed by 49 year old Ann Griffiths.   Both witnesses told the same story. In Ann's statement we read: "... immediately after drawing the same, the said Thomas Price read over the said will to the said testor in English and immediately afterwards began to explain the contents and substance in Welsh to him .."

You can find the will and the various statements here, courtesy of the National Library and I think we can agree that Thomas Price was bilingual and that Lewis Powell, if he was not a monoglot Welsh speaker was at least far more familiar with that language than he was with English.  Ann Griffiths too must have had sufficient grasp of Welsh to know that Price was explaining the contents of the will to Powell. 

This ties in with other evidence for the survival of Herefordshire Welsh into the 18C.  According to those who have examined the relevant records, of nine defamation cases in and around Craswall/Clodock between 1712 and 1774, eight were in Welsh.  While in a 1757 court case a 19 year old  from Michaelchurch Escley, one Lewis Jenkins, was said to be "a strainger to the English tongue able to speak or understand but very few words."  The last Welsh-speaking native of Clodock is said to have died in 1883.

A Radnorian Family in Manitoba

In some ways the Patagonian migration reminds me of the Welsh contribution to the Spanish Civil War.  They were both minor chapters in a much bigger story and their importance has been exaggerated by interested parties for political and romantic reasons.  Just as the 150 or so, overwhelmingly Communist, Welsh volunteers to the International Brigade count for not very much when set beside the hundreds of thousands of Welsh folk who took part in the actual war against Nazism; so the 2000+ migrants to Patagonia were dwarfed in numbers by the tens of thousands who upped sticks for America, Canada, Australia etc.

These less celebrated migrants also have their stories and this one starts with my father, who told me that every Christmas his family would receive a box of apples from Canada.  That was all he knew, but an elderly aunt added that these relations lived in Selkirk, Manitoba and that once a girl called Ann Miller had visited Radnorshire from Canada.  Given the large families common in the late Victorian period, my grandfather was one of nine and his father one of eleven, there was plenty of choice as to who these migrants might have been.  Recently I tracked them down in the Canadian census, a Benjamin Davies who had married my great-great-aunt Anne in Diserth Church in 1836 and who had migrated to Canada in 1881.  And yes, they also had a grand-child - one of around thirty born in Manitoba and British Columbia - called Anne Miller.

Without boring the reader further I'll just comment on a couple of aspects of their lives:  Firstly the pioneering spirit.  We hear a lot about this, but in the case of Benjamin Davies and family, and others like them, I wonder if it was true.  It's not as if they sailed to Patagonia in a 447 ton clipper or crossed the prairie in a covered wagon.  Infact Anne and her children sailed on one of the most modern liners of the day, the Parisian.  The voyage from Liverpool to Quebec taking just eight days and from there to Manitoba, well I guess they would have taken the train. 

Secondly there is the question of ethnicity.  The Canadian census included a question on this topic and it was directed at second and subsequent generation Canadians as much as at recent immigrants.  In the 1891 census Benjamin and his entire family are recorded as ethnicity - English, religion - Baptist, unforgivable!  A weak excuse: at the time of their migration they had infact been farming in Shropshire.  Benjamin and Anne had one son and five daughters, they all married spouses of Scottish descent, except for one who married an Irish Anglican from County Cavan.  In subsequent censuses some of the daughters recorded their ethnicity as Welsh, others as Scotch, perhaps their husbands filled in the forms.  The one son died young and his children also took their mother's ethnicity when it came to completing a census - they too were Scotch.

Cwm Irfon to Cwm Hyfryd

While Llandrindod celebrates its annual Victorian fantasy its worth recalling that there were those in Wales who were eager to get as far away as possible from the great Queen and her Empire.   Given the linguistic situation at the time Radnorians were hardly likely to play a part in the establishment of the Welsh-speaking colony in Patagonia.  There is mention of a colonist named Jemima Jones of Llandrindod, but I've not been able to find out anything about her; while in the 1911 census there's a 20 year old draper's assistant called Hughes, living and working at Llandrindod's Central Wales Emporium. He lists his birthplace as Patagonia.

To find a more substanial figure in the history of the Welsh settlement we need to cross the Wye into Builth and to a farm called Tymawr in the parish of Llanafanfechan, the childhood home of Thomas Dalar Evans - his middle name celebrating the chapel at Troedrhiwdalar on the Newbridge-Beulah road.

Here's one of a number of youtube videos featuring Mervyn Evans, great grandson of Thomas Dalar, who has recreated the original watermill built by his family at Nant Fach in the beautiful Andean foothills of Cwm Hyfryd:

I'm afraid Mervyn's Spanish is a little too fluent for me, but we know that Thomas Dalar went to Patagonia in 1875.  There he married a girl, Esther Williams, who had come from the little remembered Welsh colony in Brazil.  The couple had ten children with significant names such as Irfonwy, Buallt, Brychan, Briallen, Eurgain etc.  I'm told that some of Dalar Evans' descendants came back to Builth a few years ago and discovered that while they still spoke Welsh, their stay-at-home connections did not.  In this one case at least the aim of the heroic migration had been a success.