Era Archives - Anglesey History

7 May 2026

The South Stack Telegraph Station

Another nice eBay find has dropped through the letterbox. I’m always on the lookout for items related to Welsh lighthouses (some of which have appeared in my latest book Lighthouses of Wales). I recently spotted a nicely hand-coloured magic lantern glass slide of South Stack lighthouse. Once unpacked I got out my magnifying glass to have a closer look at...

19th century/20th century/lighthouses/Old Houses Comments: 0

29 November 2025

The Little Girl’s Lighthouse

Readers of this blog will know that I’m regularly trawling eBay for old postcards depicting Anglesey sights (or more recently, the Lighthouses of Wales, while writing my new book). Every day I get email notifications of new listings. Usually they are the same old scenes I’ve seen many times before, but occasionally a unique, unusual and very interesting item pops...

19th century/20th century/family history/lighthouses/postcards Comments: 0

23 May 2022

Saving Anglesey’s Windmills

On the road again. I’m setting off for a week-long tour of the south of England, but first I’m taking the well-travelled road to Aberystwyth. I worked there for a few years and have visited regularly ever since. I’m on my way to the National Library of Wales. Perched on the hill overlooking the town, the Library is the iconic...

20th century/Mills/Windmill Comment: 1

8 May 2021

Review – Parc Cybi: A Landscape Through Time

The following review was published in the Anglesey Antiquarian Society‘s 2020 Transactions. Oriel Môn will be reopening on 18 May 2021, and the exhibition can be viewed until 13 June 2021. Jane Kenney, Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, an exhibition at Oriel Môn, Llangefni, 12 December 2020 – 13 June 2021 Between 2006 and 2010 Gwynedd Archaeological Trust (GAT) carried out extensive...

18th century/Anglesey Antiquarian Society/archaeology/Bronze Age/Iron Age/museum/Roman Comments: 0

24 January 2021

Who Were the Earls of Anglesey?

I recently bought a copy of John Speed’s 17th century map of Anglesey, to add to my collection of Anglesey Maps. An exquisite, highly decorated map, it was engraved from Speed’s drawings by Jodocus Hondius and first published in 1611 by Sudbury and Humble. They published several editions through the early 1600s, including one in which the descriptive text and...

17th century/18th century/family history/maps/nobility Comments: 0

17 January 2021

Revisiting the Windmills of Anglesey

My Anglesey History web site had its beginnings in 1995 as a single page on my main business site for Kovach Computing Services. Five years later I hived it off to a separate web site, Anglesey-History.co.uk, and started expanding it with various new major sections. In 2008 I added a completely new section on the Windmills of Anglesey. The inspiration...

19th century/20th century/Mills/web site/Windmill Comments: 0

2 January 2021

The Many Ages of Mary Owen

During the Christmas/New Year break my wife and I have been talking a lot about local Pentraeth history. A freshwater ecologist, she has been building up a thread on Twitter about the Afon Nodwydd, the river that runs through Pentraeth to the sea at Red Wharf Bay/Traeth Coch. The thread explores its ecology, history, and local importance. Yesterday we were...

19th century/20th century/cemeteries/database/graveyards/Uncategorized Comments: 2

30 October 2020

Happiness and Tragedy – Exploring Anglesey Parish Records on Ancestry.co.uk

There was much joy among family history researchers recently as the genealogical database company Ancestry.co.uk announced the availability online of millions of parish records from across Wales. Their new collections include more than 765,000 baptism, marriage and burial records from Anglican/Church in Wales churches on Anglesey, dating from 1547 to 1994. I’ve been an enthusiastic genealogist for many years and...

19th century/cemeteries/churches/graveyards/web site Comments: 3

23 March 2020

The Mystery of the Non-Existent Castle

I get regular notifications from eBay for new items listed related to Anglesey history, particularly old postcards showing scenes from the past century. As I live in Pentraeth I was particularly intrigued by one postcard, showing a large castellated building with two towers. It was labeled “Pentraeth Castle”. What??!! I know there is no place like this in or around...

20th century/Old Houses/postcards/Uncategorized Comment: 1

20 October 2019

Old Friends in New Places – Visiting St Fagans

The ever expanding St Fagans National Museum of History opened new galleries and a new reconstructed building last year, but I’ve only this weekend got a chance to go down there to check out all the Anglesey connections. Top of the list to see was Llys Llywelyn. This is a recreation of the 13th century Royal Court of the Princes...

13th century/medieval/museum/Viking Comments: 2

Category: Era