Recently a new postcard of South Stack was listed. Most views of this lighthouse are taken from the same spot, showing the island and lighthouse buildings side-on from the south-east. But this one was taken from the sea off the west end of the island, looking up at the tower with the cliffs and the 400 step descent in the distance.

Looking at the reverse, it was postmarked 24 October 1904 in Forest Gate, London. What really caught my eye was that it was addressed to “Miss Gwennie Young, South Stack Lighthouse, Holyhead, Anglesey”! The very intriguing message began “This is how I saw you 12 months ago”. The sender apologised for taking so long to send it, but he had lost the negatives. It sounds like the sender was also the photographer and this was a custom-made postcard (a Real Photo Postcard, RPPC) rather than a mass produced printed one. And to add to the mystery, why was he taking the photo from a boat?

Who were these two people? The first thing I do in cases like this is look at the censuses. The 1901 census was just three years before this card was sent, so was Gwennie Young living at South Stack then? Sure enough, the Principal Keeper at the lighthouse was William Young, and one of his children was Eva Gwendoline Young, aged 9. So when the excited little girl received this personalised card she would have been 12 years old.

The senders of postcards are usually much more difficult to track down. Often they will be signed with just a first name or initials, if signed at all. Fortunately this sender not only gave the surname, but also the home address. The name was J. Sparling, living at 109 Osborne Rd, Forest Gate (which is part of West Ham, East London). Off I go to the 1901 census again, but there was no one by this name at 109 then. Searching for just J. Sparling without the full first name, age or birthplace brought up a lot of possibilities, but there was a James Sparling living in Forest Gate, just a couple of blocks away from 109 Osborne Rd. His occupation? “Lighthouse Engineer”! I think I’ve found the sender.

A scenario now began to form in my mind. Perhaps lighthouse engineer James was visiting South Stack to do some work, was on a boat around the island taking photos and noticed Gwennie waving to him from the lighthouse. When back on land he promised to send her a copy of the photograph. Looking very closely at the photograph, are there two figures standing behind the wall at the base of the lighthouse?

Gwennie Young

Both Gwennie and James had interesting lives that tell stories of life in the lighthouse service. Gwennie was born 28 May 1891 in Pembroke Dock, daughter of lighthouse keeper William Young and his wife Bessie Hoy (whose father was a gunner in the Royal Navy). At the time William was one of three keepers stationed at South Bishop lighthouse, which is perched on a small rocky islet 8 km off of St David’s Head in Pembrokeshire. For offshore lighthouses like this the keepers would spend several weeks on duty, then make the long boat trip back to spend a month or so with their families.

William was born nearby in Solva, Pembrokeshire, son of a blacksmith, but entered the lighthouse service at the age of 20. His brother Thomas, who was 17 years his senior, also became a lighthouse keeper in his mid-20s after a period learning the blacksmithing trade from his father.

William was initially stationed at Plymouth Dock lighthouse, where he met and married Bessie. As was common for lighthouse keepers working for Trinity House (the lighthouse authority for England and Wales), he moved station every few years, working at Start Point, Devon, then South Foreland in Kent. In 1884 he was sent to Basses lighthouse, off the coast of Ceylon (Sri Lanka today), for three years. On return to Britain he then was stationed at Souter Point  in Tyne and Wear, before going to South Bishop just before Gwennie was born. After nine years there he was promoted from Assistant Keeper to Principal Keeper, when he was then placed in charge of South Stack lighthouse for eight years. He finished his career at Strumble Head in Pembrokeshire before retiring, first to a cottage near St Ann’s Head lighthouse overlooking the entrance to Milford Haven, then back to Pembroke Dock.

During William’s tenure at South Stack the lamp in the lighthouse was greatly improved. In 1906 the previous wick-based paraffin lamp was replaced by an incandescent burner, where vapourised paraffin was fed to a glowing mantle, which sat in the middle of a rotating lens that produced the flashes of the lighthouse. Newspaper articles from the time note that little Gwennie had the honour of flicking the switch that set the lens into motion.

By 1911 the family had moved back to Pembrokeshire and it was there in 1916 that Gwennie married Thomas Howard Woodruff. He was the son of a lighthouse keeper and was born at Trwyn Du lighthouse on Anglesey. He had joined the Royal Navy in 1909 and spent most of his career as a railway clerk in various dockyards, mainly Pembroke. They had two children born there, and Gwennie’s parents also lived with them.

Thomas retired from the Royal Navy in 1930, but continued working as a dockyards clerk. In 1939 he was based at Gillingham, Kent, while Gwennie was living in Holyhead, Anglesey. Her eldest brother William Hoy Lile Young was also living in Holyhead, working as a clerk for the Trinity House lighthouse depot at the port, after having been a lighthouse keeper for a few years. Her sister Eleanor had married a man who also worked at the Holyhead lighthouse depot, but they had retired to Bognor Regis by this time. The family had lots of connections to lighthouses.

It’s not known where they lived in the years after the 1939 records, but Thomas died in 1954 in Newton, Lancashire and Gwennie in 1976 in Bath.

James Sparling

So, who was the postcard sender? James Sparling was born in Stirling, Scotland in 1850, the son of soldier Joseph Sparling and Helen McGregor. His father, who was in the 33rd (The Duke of Wellington’s) Regiment of Foot, fought in the Crimean war a few years later. He was then deployed to India, where two more sons were born. Joseph died there in 1860 and his wife remarried. They had moved back to England by 1864.

In his early 20s James was working as an engine fitter in the Limehouse area of the bustling London docklands. In 1875 he married Emily Creamer, daughter of a gardener from Charlwood, Surrey. They soon moved to Penzance, Cornwall, where their first son James was born. He had started working for Trinity House and was an engineer on one of their steamship tenders, which serviced their lighthouses.

By 1881 the family had moved to South Foreland, near Dover, Kent, where there are two lighthouses. Working alongside the seven lighthouse keepers, his occupation was listed in the census as “Engineer in charge of electric lighthouse”. South Foreland was the site of the first electric lamp in a lighthouse when it was installed by the electrical pioneer Michael Faraday in 1858. It was the location of experiments by Trinity House in improving electrical lamps for many years, and Sparling was taking up the mantle in developing these improvements. This may have followed on from his previous job in Cornwall. Lizard Point lighthouse near Penzance had its first electrical light installed in 1878, when Sparling was living there. Was he involved?

During Sparling’s time at South Forelands a remarkable addition was made to the landscape. Joining the two existing lighthouses were three more lighthouse lanterns mounted on wooden platforms. Marked A, B and C in large letters, these towers were used in experiments comparing different types of lamps. Each tower would have a different lamp, and their brightness could be compared from a set distance.

He also became an expert promoting the work of Trinity House. In 1904 he was invited to speak to the Institute of Marine Engineers about the corporation and the construction and operation of their lighthouses, including his work on electrification. It was illustrated with images of the various lighthouses, projected by a magic lantern and probably created using the same camera he used for the photograph sent to Gwennie.

After nine years at South Forelands, Sparling moved on. He left with the esteem of the local community, being presented with a marble and gold clock. Moving back to London, he settled in Forest Gate and became a foreman and superintendent of Trinity House’s engineering works. He worked there over the next two decades before retiring to Bournemouth, where he died in 1927.

During his time in charge of engineering works for Trinity House Sparling probably travelled around many lighthouses to plan equipment upgrades and inspect the systems. He is said to have gone back to South Foreland in 1898 where he was present when the inventor Guglielmo Marconi made the first ever ship-to-shore radio transmission, sending Christmas greetings from the lighthouse to the crew of the East Goodwin lightship, 12 miles distant. And he clearly was at South Stack in 1903, when he took the postcard photograph.

On these tours he would have met up with old friends. The principal keeper of South Stack, Gwennie’s father William Young, had been at South Foreland for four years at the same time that Sparling was there, so they knew each other well. And he clearly made a friend with his daughter. Did she treasure this photograph? How did it make its way to a postcard collector/seller in Manchester, from whom I bought it? That is still unknown, but the mystery of the sender and receiver and how their paths crossed has been solved, shedding new light on life in the lighthouse service.

The post The Little Girl’s Lighthouse appeared first on Anglesey History.

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 for the section was the excellent book Windmills of Anglesey by Barry Guise and George Lees. It was published in 1992 and the first print run sold out quickly. It was highly sought after, not least by me (I made the mistake of not buying it as soon as I saw it!), and prices of second-hand copies on eBay were reaching £100. In 2010 a revised edition was published, which is still in print and available on Amazon and other outlets, such as the Oriel Môn shop.

Over the Christmas 2020 holiday I began revising the windmill section of the web site. This was mainly because many of the links to other websites that I had added in 2008 were no longer functional. The sites had either disappeared or had moved the pages to new addresses. I also started revisiting the actual descriptions of each windmill.

In developing the windmills section of the website I relied heavily on the research that Guise and Lees had published, as well as information from my own research and other sites, such as the millsarchive.org. But in the years since, many new sources of historical information have become more easily accessible over the internet. These include the Wales censuses from 1841-1911 (on Ancestry.co.uk or FamilySearch.org), the Anglesey parish records (again on Ancestry.co.uk or FamilySearch.org), the 1840 Tithe Maps and many archives of scanned and indexed newspapers from around the country (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and the National Library of Wales). The scrollable version of the early Ordnance Survey maps at the National Library of Scotland is also very useful. I started delving deeper into the history of a couple of the mills and discovered there was much more that I could add, to expand on what Guise and Lees had published, to clarify some points that were uncertain, and to correct some mistakes.

The censuses are particularly useful. These give the names, ages, birthplaces and occupations of every person living on the island. In a land where just a few surnames and given names predominate, these are vital for determining which William Jones, for instance, is being mentioned in other records. The birthplaces of children can also be useful for tracking the career of a miller who may have moved around to work at different places. Milling often ran in families, with sons and brothers found working at various mills around the island. I’ve started building family trees of the millers and their families I’ve encountered in the censuses so far, using genealogical software, to help in making connections between the people found working around the island.

As an example of how these approaches can work, lets look at Mona Mill. Also known as Melin y Borth, it overlooks Amlwch harbour and is the tallest on Anglesey, as well as the only brick-built one. Guise and Lees point out that it was built and owned by the Paynter family, and was run by various members of the Jones family through the decade, first Owen Jones, then Robert Jones, and then William Jones, who they say was probably Robert’s son. However, investigating the censuses for Amlwch has shown that, not only was William not Robert’s son, but there were actually three different unrelated William Jones that ran the mill through the years. The second William, who was running it in 1871, had previously been working at mills in Llechylched and Llandrygarn, and later went to run Melin Adda on the other side of Amlwch.

As this blog is published I have only revised the histories of just a few of the mills (the three mills near Amlwch, Melin Adda, Melin y Borth and Melin y Pant, two in Llandrygarn, Melin Manaw and Melin Newydd and Melin Orsedd in Rhoscefnhir) . But the process is ongoing and I hope to have all the pages updated in the near future.

Warren Kovach is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

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Yesterday we were talking about The Royal Charter disaster of 1859. Most of the victims were buried in the churchyards near the wreck site at Moelfre (as described in my blog about the local parish records), but we knew a few had been buried in Pentraeth. After lunch we took a stroll up to the church to explore.

We soon found the graves; six simple anonymous stones, plus a larger one added later to commemorate the victims. A later search of the Pentraeth parish records shows they were buried in mid-November, about two weeks after the wreck.

Close to these graves was another one I’d wanted to find. When asked about famous women of Pentraeth the first to pop into my mind was Mary Owen. Newspaper reports in 1911 trumpeted her as being “King George’s oldest subject” at the age of 108. She lived at Fron-oleu, a small cottage on the slopes of Mynydd Llwydiarth overlooking Traeth Coch. The story goes that two strangers tracked her down and arrived at the cottage with a camera. She was asleep when they first arrived, but they photographed her both asleep and awake. The photos were made into postcards, celebrating her longevity. She died just a few months later, in December 1911, an event that was reported in newspapers ranging from the Dundee Evening Telegraph and the Cheshire Observer to Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper of London.

As usual, I wanted to find out more about her, so I first turned to the censuses. The 1911 census page for Fron-oleu shows it occupied by Mary and her nephew Owen, with two visitors on the day, Mary Owens and John Glyn Owen (a shoemaker). Oddly, Mary is listed in 1911 as being 105, rather than 108. She is also listed as single. I had assumed the John Owen, who is also listed on her gravestone, was her husband, but apparently not. He died in 1898, aged 80, so I checked the 1891 census for Fron-oleu, where they are listed as brother and sister. Nephew Owen was there again, as well as another nephew John.

John and Mary were the inhabitants of Fron-oleu all the way back to 1861, with their occupations variously listed as “farmer”, “labourer”, “housekeeper” or “living on own means”. Owen also lived there as far back as 1871, when the 15-year-old was listed as a “scholar”, presumably going to school at one of the two recently founded schools in Pentraeth. John had lost his wife early, as he was widowed in all these census years. His 10-year-old son John was a schoolboy in the house in 1861.

Step back another 10 years to 1851 and Mary is still living in Fron-oleu, but this time with her parents Richard (a labourer) and Ellen. Going further back to 1841 finds Fron-oleu a very full house, with Richard and Ellen there with sons John, Richard and David, and a daughter Elizabeth. John was the one who later occupied the house with his sister, and Richard is listed as a shoemaker. But where was Mary? She was an adult, the oldest of the family, so must have been living somewhere else. In fact, a Mary Owen of the right age was one of two young women working as servants in Marian, a large and old house between Pentraeth and Talwrn. I suspect this is her. Most other Mary Owens in the area were living with either parents or spouses.

Looking through all these censuses raised some questions about her story of being the oldest subject in 1911. First, the postcard and news reports all state she was born in Trefriw, which is best known as a village in the Conwy valley near Llanrwst, but is also the name of a place in the south of the island in Llangadwaladr. But all the censuses say that she and her brother were born in Pentraeth. Maybe there was a nearby house by that name, but nothing like it shows up in the Pentraeth censuses.

Of more concern is the age. Although she was supposed to be 108 in 1911, the census that year actually shows her as 105 years old, which would make her birth year 1806 rather than the 1803 usually cited. Ten years before, she gave her age as 89, making her birth year 1812. Going back another 10 years to 1891 she reports an age of 65, which would make her birth year 1826!

In the earlier censuses her reported ages stabilize to the usual interval of ten years. So, it looks like Mary was actually born around 1816-1818. Turning my eye to the baptism and marriage records, I found that her parents Richard Owen and Ellen Thomas were married in Pentraeth church on 25 May 1815. Scanning through the baptism records for Pentraeth (which only cover the baptisms at the established church, St. Mary) I can find no children of Richard and Ellen until youngest child in the 1841 census, David, was baptised in 1825. But searching another online database, the Wales Births and Baptisms, 1541-1907 at Familysearch.org, turns up a Mary Owen, daughter of Richard and Ellen, christened on 11 January 1818 in the nearby village of Llanbedrgoch. Some of her siblings also appear in that database, baptised in Pentraeth. Perhaps they were nonconformists and were baptised in chapels rather than the established church.

Mary had her five minutes of fame for being the oldest British subject, but the truth is she died at the respectable, but unremarkable, age of 94. How she became known as the oldest is not recorded, but this goes to show that we can’t always rely on stories like this without looking into the actual records.

The post The Many Ages of Mary Owen appeared first on Anglesey History.

I’ve been an enthusiastic genealogist for many years and use Ancestry regularly. However, as an American transplanted to Anglesey, I don’t actually have any Anglesey ancestors who would appear in these records (although I can claim descent from the Princes of Gwynedd and a connection to the Tudors of Penmynydd). But these can also be a great resource for general historical research. So I decided to have a dig around in the records to see what I could find of interest. What I found were stories of the happiness of birth and marriage, but also of tragedy.

If you are interested in searching these records, but do not have an Ancestry.co.uk subscription, you can access it for free at most libraries.

Who’s Who?

I started by searching for some famous names. First up was the artist Kyffin Williams, who was the subject of the ‘K’ chapter in my new book A-Z of the Isle of Anglesey. He was in the Llangefni register, with his parents the unusually named Henry Inglis Wynne Williams and Essyllt Mary Williams.

His parents were married in Pentraeth in 1915…

… and his grandfather Owen was born in 1829.

Owen’s father James was the rector of Llanfairynghornwy (where Kyffin was buried), and he and his wife Francis were instrumental in establishing the Anglesey Association for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (a forerunner of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution) after witnessing a fatal shipwreck off the northwest coast of Anglesey.

Kyffin’s great-great uncle Thomas Williams, who was involved in the development of the Parys Mountain copper mine and was one of the richest men in Wales in the late 18th century, can be found in the Llanidan burial records

I branched out to other prominent Anglesey names , starting with the Bulkeleys (the subjects of the ‘B’ chapter of A-Z of the Isle of Anglesey). I found the burials of a trio of Richard Williams-Bulkeleys, the 10th, 11th and 12th Baronets of Baron Hill, Beaumaris.

A distant relative of theirs, William Bulkeley of Brynddu, was baptised in Llanfechell in 1691:

He went on the inherit the Brynddu estate, but more famously kept meticulous diaries that documented life on Anglesey in the 18th century. They can be read online at bulkeleydiaries.bangor.ac.uk.

Of course far more people in these records weren’t the rich or famous. But there are still stories behind their entries. In 1850 a William Jewett married Hannah Hughes. He was a boilermaker working on the construction of the Britannia Bridge (and probably living in the workers’ accommodation on site). His name sounds English rather than local, so I guessed he came here for work and married a local lass.

A quick search through the census records on Ancestry shows that in 1871 a William Jewett and his wife Hannah (she was born in North Wales, he in Manchester) were living in Portsea, Hampshire with their seven children, where he was building ships. The birthplaces of the children show they moved around a lot: Plymouth, Newton Abbott, Southampton. In 1881 they were living in Southcoates, Yorkshire, where he was still building ships.

Other bridge-connected records were of the sons of Henry Fisher, who was the first keeper of the Menai Suspension Bridge after its completion in 1826. They would have been born in the Bridge House at the Gwynedd end of the bridge. Here is Henry Jr’s baptism record:

The Royal Charter

Alongside the happiness of baptisms and marriages, there is also the sadness of the burials. But some of these reflect a much wider tragedy than the individual losses. I specifically went looking for what the records could tell us about the Royal Charter sinking.

On 26 October 1859 the steam clipper Royal Charter, returning from Australia, sank in a storm on the rocks near Moelfre, with the loss of over 400 lives. You can read more about this on my web site.

The closest church, at Llanallgo, bore the brunt of dealing with the dead, so I found the pages from their parish records. I was stunned to see just a single entry for many of the dead, with the actual number repeatedly scratched out and revised:

I was also surprised to see a familiar name further down the page. Isaac Lewis was a Moelfre-born lad who went to sea and was a crewmember on the Royal Charter. He died in the sinking, within sight of his boyhood home. He reportedly cried out ‘Oh, my father, I’ve come home to die.’ A song was written about him; you can hear it through the YouTube link at the bottom of my web page about the wreck.

Although the initial burials were unnamed, over the next couple of months more victims of the wreck were buried after having been identified. The ones in the record below were from Liverpool and Melbourne.

The task of dealing with the dead fell to the rector of Llanallgo, Stephen Roose Hughes. The burden of attempting to identify the victims, organizing the burials, and writing hundreds of letters to the grieving relatives took a terrible toll on him. The next page in the records show that he died two years later at the early age of 47.

Although most of the victims were buried in Llanallgo, bodies were washed up on the shores of neighbouring parishes, as far away as Pentraeth, and they were buried in those local churchyards. Many were interred in the parish of Penthos Lligwy, whose rector was Hugh Robert Hughes, the brother of Stephen Roose Hughes. Many of the burials in his parish were unidentified. But he attempted to add possibly identifying features, such as initials on crucifixes around their necks. One victim was noted to be “apparently an African”.

Overall, this is a fantastic collection that gives lots of insight to the people of Anglesey. I think I’ll be using this resource a lot in my future historical research.

The post Happiness and Tragedy – Exploring Anglesey Parish Records on Ancestry.co.uk appeared first on Anglesey History.

Yesterday’s ‘Spheres of Influence’ day-conference at Plas Cadnant had a wide ranging cast of characters: the prominent medieval founder of many of Anglesey’s landowning families, the incomer who took on the indigenous families, the bards and musicians who praised and entertained the gentry, the Spanish Armada, and even a very fluffy cat. Also included were tales of feuds and murders, but also of good deeds by social reformers.

Organised by the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates (ISWE) at Bangor University, the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, and the Anglesey Antiquarian Society, the conference aimed to explore the impacts of the estates of Anglesey on the history, culture and landscapes of the island, from the medieval period to the present day. Very well attended, with a packed house of well over 100 history enthusiasts, it was an enjoyable and interesting day.

The day kicked off with a brief welcome from Shaun Evans of the ISWE, who introduced the first speaker, Prof. A.D. Carr. The esteemed author of the book Medieval Anglesey, the definitive study of the society and communities of Anglesey in the Middle Ages, Prof. Carr spoke on “The emergence of the gentry and estates of Anglesey in the later middle ages”. He began by pointing out that the early emergence of the estates on Anglesey was well documented through the Extents of Anglesey in 1284 and 1352. These documents recorded all the landowners on the island and how much was owed to them by their tenants, either in money or in goods such as grain, fish and hens, or time working for the lord. The 1284 extent was produced immediately after Edward I’s conquest of Wales and shows the land ownership patterns that existed during the Welsh Princes’ time. The more extensive and detailed Extent of 1352 can then be compared to the earlier one to see how land ownership patterns had changed through the decades.

During this time Welsh law decreed that inherited lands couldn’t be sold; they had to remain in the family. However, post-Conquest, clever ways were found around these rules, so the more ambitious landowners began accumulating larger estates, either through the land market or through marriage. Prof. Carr described the development of two estates, Penrhyn and Bulkeley. Although we now know the Penrhyn estate as the one outside Bangor, the family estate was first developed by Gwilym ap Gruffudd, a descendent of the founder of one of the first hereditary estates on Anglesey, Ednyfed Fychan (seneschal to the Prince of Wales, Llewelyn ap Iorwerth), through acquisition of lands in the northeast of Anglesey. His descendants, now known as the Griffith family, crossed the strait to develop the current Penrhyn estate. The development of the estate is well documented through extensive estate papers now held by Bangor University Archives.

The second example Prof. Carr gave was the development of the Bulkeley estate. The family were incomers, originating from near Cheadle in Cheshire. William Bulkeley arrived in Anglesey in the 15th century and married another descendent of Ednyfed Fychan. They first settled in the town house of Henblas in Beaumaris (which has now disappeared, but once stood near the church), but soon set about acquiring land in the area. Archives hold at least 45 deeds showing land purchases by Bulkeley between 1450 and 1490.

The next speaker was Prof. Robin Grove-White, speaking on “Politics and precedence: Power struggles and estate owners in late-Tudor Anglesey”. He began his talk with the shadow of the Spanish Armada hovering over Anglesey. In 1588 no one knew where the Spanish were planning on invading, so an edict went out to all coastal communities to prepare defences and imprison any possible collaborators. Richard Bulkeley, who had good connections with the Royal Court, was appointed deputy lieutenant of the island in charge of these defences. However, he was accused of using his position to favour his friends and punish his enemies. Feuds broke out with other Anglesey landowners, particularly Sir William Owen of Bodeon, near Bodorgan. The feud led to both men being imprisoned at different times, and with Bulkeley even being accused of murder. The feud was more or less over by 1590, with Bulkeley emerging as one of the most powerful men on the island. Of course struggles for power are part of the human condition, not just restricted to 16th century Anglesey, and Prof. Grove-White gave other examples of political wrangles through the ages.

After a few questions to the first two speakers, the doors opened for the first coffee break. In walked the next character, the very fluffy Plas Cadnant cat, who wandered around the room making sure everyone was welcome.

After the break Andrew Davidson from the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust spoke about church architecture and patronage of the local land owners. He noted that there was a hiatus in the building or extension of churches in northwest Wales during the late 13th and 14th centuries. This can be attributed to the turmoils of the Edwardian conquest of North Wales, the plague years, and the Glyndŵr revolt. After these were over, the political stability allowed the estate owners to look towards using their patronage to build and enhance the churches on their lands. Davidson gave many examples of churches in the area, particularly focusing on the development of Gothic style windows with tracery and trefoils, allowing much more light into the church. He also described some low relief slabs with images of saints, and the rare alabaster tombs such as the Gronw Fychan tomb at St. Gredifael church, Penmynydd, with stylistic elements that indicate the patronage of the local lords.

Next up was Richard Suggett of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Entitled “From Hafoty to Plas Coch: Anglesey’s Plastai”, he took us on a tour of his favourite country manor homes on Anglesey among the many he has visited through his career. He started off noting that, while Ireland is well known among country house enthusiasts for its fine manor houses, Anglesey is its equal for the quality and variety. “Why go to Ireland when you can go to Anglesey?” he quoted as the feeling among many of his colleagues. His tour started with Plas Llanidan,  which he visited in the 1980s when it was encased in scaffolding and being repaired, through Trefadog, Hafoty, the Tudor Rose shop and Henblas town house (now demolished) in Beaumaris, Gronant, Plas Coch, Henblas in Llangristiolus and Baron Hill.

Our kind host at Plas Cadnant, Anthony Tavernor, gave us a talk about the history of his house and estate. Originally a dairy farmer in the English midlands, his interests in history, gardens and landscapes led him to use the proceeds of a land sale to purchase the Plas Cadnant estate. The estate was founded in the 18th century by John Price, originally of Wern Farm, who was a land agent for the Marquess of Anglesey. His marriage to a local heiress and subsequent land purchases allowed him to develop the estate. His admiration of the work of the landscape designer Humphry Repton led him to begin laying out the grand landscape and gardens of the estate, which was continued by his descendants. The last Price died in 1928 and the estate was bought by the Fanning-Evans family. They modernised the house with electricity and central heating, but the family was often not there, and it was rented out. The estate declined and eventually was sold in 1993, with the new owner planning on developing an equestrian centre. However, these plans (which included demolishing many of the outbuildings) never came to fruition, and in 1996 it was sold to Tavernor. He took us on a photographic tour of his journey of clearing the overgrown walled garden and rescuing the outbuildings buried deep in the surrounding vegetation, creating the beautiful gardens and woodland walks that we can now enjoy.

After lunch Ann Parry Owen, of the Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth, talked to us about “Guto’r Glyn (c.1412-93) and bardic patronage in Anglesey”. The tradition of bardic poetry praising the patrons of the bards thrived in the 12th through 15th centuries. Owen pointed out that in England estate owners would display maps of their estates on the wall to impress their visitors, but in Wales the lords would have their bards recite their verses describing the estate. By the 15th century the bards would also be praising the quality of the food on their patrons’ tables and describing their impressive furniture and decorations in detail. She then went on to talk about the great bard Guto’r Glyn, who travelled all over Wales, but particularly wrote warmly about Anglesey, and spent much time here. She also gave us a tour of the gutorglyn.net web site that she and her colleagues have put together, which brings together all his poems, their translations, and other details about his work and life.

A musical interlude followed as Stephen Rees, of the ISWE in Bangor, was joined by Huw Roberts, both with fiddles, to play a song that was found in the journals of Richard Morris, one of the famous 18th century Morris brothers of Anglesey. In between performing some other 18th century songs, Rees described how many old Welsh folk tunes were preserved in manuscripts of the time.

Richard Morris recorded the words of many songs, but the famous diarist William Bulkeley of Brynddu, a great music enthusiast, also recorded the tunes, as shown in the page shown here from Bangor University’s website of his diaries. However, the greatest source of 18th century folk tunes is the manuscript by Morris Edwards, which contained a large number of variations on old tunes, oral tradition and dance tunes of the time, and some songs that are very likely to be his own compositions. Little is known of him, but his manuscript preserves a great tradition of Welsh folks tunes.

Dinah Evans, of the Bangor University history department, next took the stage to tell us about “Cecilia Constance Irby, Lady Boston”. Evans has been interested in looking at the experiences of women in Wales from various social classes during World War I. One aristocratic woman with an interesting story and an Anglesey connection was Cecilia Constance Irby. She married George Florance Irby, 6th Baron Boston, who had an Anglesey seat at Plas Lligwy, near Moelfre. Evans discovered that during the war Cecilia was working as a nurse for the Canadian Red Cross military hospital on the Astor family’s Clivedon estate in Buckinghamshire. Digging into her life further, she discovered an upper class woman who showed great concern for the plight of the working classes, and was involved in many philanthropic organizations, such as the Welsh Industries Committee, which aimed to develop industries in Wales to provide work for Welsh workers who otherwise might head to the big cities in England. She also wrote a prize-winning essay for the Anglesey Eisteddfod titled “Anglesey Industries”, an extensive and well researched academic work describing all aspects of the island, including agriculture, geology and natural resources.

To round off the day, George Meyrick, owner of the Bodorgan estate and new chancellor of Bangor University, gave us a unique insight on “Inheriting Bodorgan: the influences of the past on the present”. He spoke of the long history of the family and estate, and of the many tasks the current owner/custodian of the land had, such as managing the estate and agricultural holdings, attending to property ownership and access rights issues, and pursuing new ventures to ensure the survival of the estate. He noted that many of the Welsh gentry are “now nearly extinct”, so as one of the remaining estate owning families he is pursuing a strategy of diversifying the estate and looking after its natural environment.

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Yesterday I went from Anglesey to Bodelwyddan Castle in Denbighshire. Nothing unusual there; I often drive by it, promising myself that I will one day stop to have a closer look, but never managing it. So, I made a special trip out there. As I toured around and looked at the story of its various owners I discovered that the connections between Anglesey and Bodelwyddan run through its history.

The original manor house at Bodelwyddan came about because of an eviction. A man with the long genealogical name of Thomas ap Wmffre ap Thomas ap Rhys ap Benet ap Ieuan ap Deikws ap Ieuan Ddu ap Trahaiarn was the owner of Henllys, near Beaumaris. But, Edward IV decided that it was ideal for his Deputy Governor of Beaumaris Castle, so poor Thomas was dispossessed of it. He was given the land at Bodelwyddan instead, where he built a manor house around 1460. He also decided at the time to take the family surname of Humphreys (from his father’s name, Wmffre).

The house and lands remained with the Humphreys family for 230 years until it was purchased by Sir William Williams, who was Speaker in the House of Commons from 1680–1681. Sir William was also an Anglesey boy, son of Hugh Williams, rector of Llantrisant and Llanrhuddlad parish. A fine memorial to Hugh can be found in his old parish church of Llantrisant.

William became a lawyer, after attending Jesus College, Oxford, and Gray’s Inn. He later entered politics, become MP, first for Chester, then Beaumaris. He purchased Bodelwyddan for the use of his son, but it was never the family’s main residence until Sir William’s great-great grandson John was made a baronet in 1798.

He decided that the simple 15th century manor house wasn’t fitting for a man of his stature, and commenced extending and altering the building in the Greek Revival style. His son continued the work, adding Gothic Style towers to give it its current castle-like appearance. Throughout the house the family’s crest of the cross foxes appears in tiles, ceiling bosses and stained glass windows. The same crest can be seen in their ancestor Rev. Hugh’s memorial at Llantrisant Church (see picture above).

Sir John, the 1st Baronet of Bodelwyddan, also has two other Anglesey connections. He married Margaret Williams, the heiress of the Ty Fry estate near Pentraeth. His parents had given him land near Beaumaris, which was passed on to his son, Sir John Hay Williams. As a gift to his wife, Lady Sarah, he began building a fairy-tale style castle overlooking the Menai Strait. This building is now the luxury hotel, Chateau Rhianfa, situated on the Menai Bridge to Beaumaris road.

During the First World War the house was taken over to be a recuperation hospital for wounded soldiers, associated with the nearby Kinmel training camp. After that it was leased to Lowther College girl’s school, until 1982. It was then bought by Clwyd County Council to develop as a visitor attraction, with part of the site converted to a luxury hotel. Until recently it served as home to a large number of paintings from the National Portrait Gallery, but now the walls are full of the Bodelwyddan Castle Trust’s own collections of Welsh art, including an excellent Snowdonia landscape by another Anglesey boy, Kyffin Williams.

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This single standing stone is just beside the road between Pentraeth and Talwrn, close to the Llanddyfnan parish church and its neighbouring Ty’n Llan farmhouse. The Stone Science museum is across the road. I got some nice photos of a well-lit monument, plus some of a herd of curious cattle who ran over to the fence, either to see what I was up to, or to see if I was bringing their feed. I then went over to the church, which I had photographed before, but several years ago.

After a few shots of the church I began wandering around the graveyard, mindful that some of the people I mentioned in my recent blog about the abandoned house, Ynys, at Cors Bodeilio might be here. Sure enough, two prominent slabs near the church door were for the Thomas family of the Bodeilio estate, including Evan Rice Thomas, who died 20 August 1875. Back by the wall was the grave of William Williams, the last recorded resident of Ynys, who died in 1906, and his wife Ann, who died the next year.

A few other interesting stones were spotted, including a Commonwealth War Grave stone for Corporal H. Jones of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who died in November 1940, aged 28. I stood by his grave for a moment in advance of the minute silence later in the morning for Armistice Day.

But the real surprises were to be found in the newer section of the cemetery. I spotted a grave with a number of plants and flowers around it, and a familiar name. Ann Benwell was a prominent local historian, a retired university lecturer, devoted member of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society and trustee of Menai Heritage, of which I am also a trustee. She died suddenly in 2013. I was surprised to find her here in Llanddyfnan, as she had lived in Menai Bridge, and I didn’t know of any connection to the parish. I’ve since learned she grew up near Talwrn.

I was further surprised when I looked at the grave next to Ann’s. This was for Eirian Llwyd, a well known local artist and wife of former Anglesey MP, AM and Plaid Cymru party leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones. She died after a short battle with cancer in 2014. I met her a couple of times a few years ago when I bought two of her prints, which hang proudly in my house. One of these prints is of a raven, so I was touched to see her gravestone also features a raven, a bird that appears in a number of her artworks. It must have had special significance to her, perhaps because of the association with the figure from the Mabinogion, the giant Welsh king Brân the Blessed, brother of Branwen.

As I mentioned in my last blog, The Irishman in Church Island Cemetery, every graveyard has several interesting stories to tell, if you just look closely.

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A more puzzling grave can be found hidden behind St. Tysilio’s church on Church Island in Menai Bridge. I spend a lot of time in Ireland, so I stopped in my tracks when I spotted the grave of Thomas Fane Uniacke “of Lynnbury, Co. Westmeath, Ireland”. How did someone who lived in Ireland wind up buried in Menai Bridge?

He was also blessed with a rather unusual name, which made tracking down information about him relatively easy. I first turned to Ancestry.co.uk, where I found several family trees that have him listed. Most of them gave the same death date as on this grave, March 2 1857, but there seems to be uncertainty about the circumstances of his death, as two different death places are given. Some say he died in Co. Cork, Ireland, whereas others say he died in Rifle Township in North Dakota, USA. Many give no death place at all. None say anything about Menai Bridge or Anglesey.

I contacted some of the people who had posted these family trees, but none was able to tell me much about him, other than the basic facts in the trees. He was a side branch of all their families, rather than a direct ancestor.

The basic facts are these: Thomas Fane Uniacke was born in 1792, son of Redmond Uniacke Esq. and Elizabeth Fleming, of Carrig, Co. Cork. He and his family are listed in Burke’s Landed Gentry Of Ireland, and were prominent landowners with their seat at Mount Uniacke, near Youghal, Co. Cork. His grandfather, James FitzGerald Uniacke, was a commander in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, who apparently gave up his horse to King William when the king’s horse was shot in the battle.

The family is full of military men, and Thomas was an officer in the Rifle Brigade. His two brothers were also military men, with Capt. John Uniacke being killed in the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain, in 1812, and his four sisters all married officers.  His two sons were officers in the Highland Light Infantry and his daughter married an officer.

Thomas somehow made the move from Cork to Co. Westmeath, perhaps through an arranged marriage to Elizabeth Rochfort, daughter of Gustavus H. Rochfort, Esq, M.P. for Westmeath and grandson of the first Earl of Belvedere. Thomas owned land in the county and was a land agent and a magistrate. His name crops up regularly in newspapers related to court cases and other legal matters, and even as a steward at the races in Mullingar.

The most interesting newspaper article I found about Thomas was one from the Dublin Evening Mail in 1840, headlined “Conspiracy to Murder a Magistrate”. Police in Westmeath got wind that four brothers named Kelly had stockpiled arms and ammunition, apparently intending to assassinate Thomas Uniacke, who was the agent for their landlord. The Kellys were insolvent and not paying their rent, but also refusing to vacate the properties. The article praises Thomas, saying “As an agent, we believe there is no man in the country, filling the same office, more kind-hearted and indulgent – indulgent, perhaps, to a fault – to the tenantry under his charge.”

The last record I find of Thomas Uniacke himself before his death is related to a court case in 1853. What happened to him after that, and why did he wind up dying in Menai Bridge? One clue is the death notice of his wife Elizabeth, just a year before his own death. Curiously, she died at Glenavon, Haverfordwest, in South Wales. Did they have some connection to Wales?

Their daughter Frances, who married Capt. Seton Lionel Smith, settled in Laugharne, about 25 miles from Haverfordwest, after he retired from active military service, probably sometime in the 1850s-1860s. Perhaps Elizabeth had been travelling to visit her when she took ill? Perhaps her husband had also been travelling there a year later when he died? It’s still a mystery, but I’m still looking for clues.

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One of my favourite nearby places for a short walk is Cors Bodeilio. This National Nature Reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest lies between Pentraeth and Talwrn. It is a nationally important nature site as it is an uncommon lime-rich fenland supporting rare plant life, including a variety of sedges, rushes and reeds, as well as a number of orchid species. The pools contain medicinal leeches, and many species of rare flies, aquatic beetles and moths make their home throughout the area. It is also the home of some Welsh Mountain ponies, whose grazing helps maintain the fenland.

The boardwalk through the marsh eventually takes you to a slightly raised and dry spot. Disappearing into the trees at the edge of a meadow is a long abandoned house. It is named on the maps as Ynys. Welsh for “island”, Ynys might seem an odd name for a house, but closer inspection of the maps and surrounding topography shows that it is indeed an island of dry land in the middle of marshes.

The house and surrounding nature reserve are now owned by Natural Resources Wales, but the mid 19th century tithe maps that have been digitised by the Cynefin project show that this, and much of the land around it, was ultimately owned by the Right Honourable Lord Vivian of the Plas Gwyn estate in Pentraeth. It was leased to Evan Rice Thomas as part of the nearby Bodeilio estate. The parcel of land called Ynys is listed in the 1841 tithe apportionments books as just 9 acres of pasture land, with no hint of there being a house, and indeed no house is shown on the map itself.

Also, Ynys does not appear in 1841 or 1851 censuses, but it is listed in 1861, suggesting it was built sometime in the 1850s. The first record of it is in August 1853, when labourer Hugh Williams, who was living at Ynys, married Margaret Griffith. They had a daughter there, Elizabeth, a few months later. By 1861 they had moved to another property in Talwrn

The tenants of Ynys in 1861 are Thomas Hughes and his family, wife Jane and sons William and Owen. As might be expected in a small cottage in the middle of pastures and marshlands, Thomas was an agricultural labourer, as was his 14 year old son William. Eight year old Owen was not yet old enough to be working and was listed as a scholar, so was attending school.

In the 1871 census the house name Ynys isn’t found in this part of the Llanddyfnan parish. But, among the houses nearby to Ynys is one called “California”, occupied by one Thomas Hughes. The name California doesn’t appear in any other censuses in this area. For some reason, Thomas decided to start calling the house California instead.

This time Thomas is listed as widowed, a farmer of 8 acres and a labourer, and living with his 13 year old son John and a servant named Elizabeth Owen. In 1874 he married Elizabeth, who was a young 23 to his 56 years. By the 1881 census they had produced five children aged 1-9. He had also gone back to calling the house Ynys.

By 1891 the tenancy of Ynys had changed hands to William Williams, and he was living there with his wife Ann and daughter Margaret, who was a domestic servant. William was listed as a labourer in this census, but in the previous census in 1881, when he was living at nearby Heulog, he was a shoemaker. He again gave his occupation as shoemaker in 1901, when he is listed as living with his wife Ann and son William.

Curiously, his son William is listed as a copper miner. Copper mining on Anglesey usually means Parys Mountain, but that is a long way from Ynys, probably about a four hour walk. Also, by this time the copper there was almost worked out, and there were just 141 copper miners, down from thousands at its height. As he was still single at the age of 33, perhaps he usually lived near the mine, but happened to be at home visiting his parents on census day.

The elder William died in August 1906 and his wife Ann a few months later, in May 1907. She died at Cerrigceinwen, perhaps at the house of one of their children. The two of them lie together in the churchyard in Llanddyfnan. Their son William had married Catherine shortly after the 1901 census and was living in nearby Marian Bach, working as a miner, when their eldest son William David Williams was born. The family moved to Merthyr Vale, Glamorgan for a couple of years, but returned to Ynys around the time of his father’s death, where their daughter Blodwen was born. They moved into Talwrn village sometime before 1911.

The house Ynys is not listed in the 1911 census. Perhaps it was unoccupied then, although usually even unoccupied houses will be listed in the census. Maybe the census-taker missed this remote house on his route through the parish. But, in 1921 it does appear to be in use again; a house called ‘Rynys was occupied by Owen Williams, a farm labourer working for the Bodeilio estate and his wife Lizzie. Their daughter Kitty was there with her husband George Smith, a Liverpudlian watchmaker who was working in Llangefni. Owen is the same age as William and Ann WIlliams’ son Owen, who was living with them are Heulog in 1871 and 1881, but in the absence of a marriage record for Owen and Lizzie it’s hard to be sure.

As the house disappears into the vegetation, its abandonment becomes poignant. What was it like in the late 19th century when occupied by the Hughes and Williams families? Did Thomas’ five children play games in the meadow and go searching for frogs in the surrounding bogs? My favourite time to visit is in the autumn, when the plum trees behind the house are bearing delicious fruit. Perhaps these were planted by Thomas Hughes. Did they also have a garden patch somewhere around the house? In the absence of a time machine I can only guess.

This blog was first published in 2016 and modified in June 2023 and November 2024 to add some more information uncovered in subsequent research.

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We visited Bodior House near Rhoscolyn on a blustery, soft rain type of day. We were glad to get in out of the rain, into the main sitting room, where our guides Robin Grove-White and Andrew Davidson introduced us to the house.

This is a gentry house, first built in the 16th century. A tablet over one of the windows bears the date 1529, and another below that window has the initials J.O.O., for the estate owner John Owen. The Owen family were descendants of a Welsh clan leader, Llywelyn Aurdorchog, who was from Denbighshire but also owned land around Rhoscolyn. The house and estate passed down through the family, often through the female line, who married other local landowners, with the result that land holdings were combined. The estate eventually passed to the Lewis family of Plas Llanfigael, and a later marriage to the Hampton family of Henllys, near Beaumaris, resulted in the owners being known as the Hampton-Lewis family. It is now owned by the Bulmer family, of cider-making fame, who use it as a summer retreat.

Although built in the 16th century, the house has been modified and extended many times through the centuries. It would have originally consisted of the main sitting room, just inside the main entrance, with a room on either side, and additional rooms on the story above. It has been extended a couple of times at one end with a service wing with kitchen and utilities rooms, plus numerous bedrooms and baths.The last remodelling took place in 1848 (commemorated by another dated plaque above the main entrance), so the house retains its 19th century character, including the carved main staircase in the sitting room, and the early Victorian fire surrounds in many of the bedrooms, some decorated with enamelled slate.

After the brief introduction by Robin and Andrew the group were given free rein to explore the house, with no areas off limits, before regrouping in the sitting room to discuss the features of interest that were spotted. We looked for evidence of the differing periods of extension and remodelling, as shown by variations in the timber & stone flooring and styles of doorways and windows. There were some interesting and intricately carved furnishings and some period pieces, like the wind-up gramophone.

A particularly fun aspect of the exploration was looking for evidence of the vocation of the current owners. Books about the Bulmer family and cider-making were in many rooms, apple-shaped cutting boards were in the kitchen alongside bottles of Bulmer’s cider, ready for the next cider casserole, and crates marked “Bulmer’s Hereford” were in some of the unused rooms. The many objects on shelves and walls throughout the house included an inordinate number of green woodpecker items: paintings, carved wooden figures and taxidermy specimens. It seemed curious until I remembered that the green woodpecker was the symbol of Bulmer’s Woodpecker Cider!

After the debriefing sessions some of us went on to explore a nearby tidal mill, the subject of my next blog.

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