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.

I’m on my way to the National Library of Wales. Perched on the hill overlooking the town, the Library is the iconic centre of learning and culture in Wales. As a Legal Deposit library it is one of the repositories for all the books published in the UK as well as a wealth of papers, documents, art, sound files, and much more. Accompanied by my wife, who is going there to continue her research into the pioneering freshwater ecologist Kathleen Carpenter, I am planning to find out more about Anglesey mills.

Of particular interest is a file of information about Anglesey windmills from the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW). Founded in 1928 by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (of Portmeirion fame) under the title of The Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales, its purpose is to secure the protection and enhancement of the country’s landscapes and environment. This file contains information from 1929-1938, around the time when the last of the windmills on the island stopped working and most had started to deteriorate.

On receiving the relatively slim file from the very helpful library staff, I eagerly open it, not knowing exactly what it might contain. First is a list of the windmills on Anglesey, with brief notes of the condition of some. It is undated and unattributed, but given it says Stanley Mill at Trearddur was still working (it closed in 1938), and the condition of some of the other mills, it probably dates from the early to mid-1930s. Accompanying this is a typed manuscript entitled “Article on Anglesey Windmills”, along with the published version of it from the 4 August 1930 edition of the weekly journal The Miller. The author was Rex Wailes, an engineer and historian who developed a keen interest in windmills. As the technical adviser to the Windmill Section of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) he travelled England recording details of windmills, many of which were deteriorating and in danger of being demolished. He wrote two books about English windmills and was active in trying to save them. He had visited Anglesey in 1929, resulting in this manuscript describing the general form and function of the Anglesey style of windmills (which differed from those found in most of England).

Most interesting, however, is a series of letters from January 1930 to March 1931. These were between the antiquarian J.D.K. Lloyd, the then secretary of CPRW, and representatives of various other organizations. These letters outline the early attempts to preserve the increasingly disused and threatened windmills of Wales (the majority of which are on Anglesey).

The first letter, dated 16 Jan 1930, is from Lord Boston, a major landowner on Anglesey, keen archaeologist and President of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society, with a draft resolution on preserving windmills in Wales: “That the attention of the Ancient Monuments Board for Wales [AMBW] be called to the gradual disappearance of the Windmills which are so striking a feature of the landscape in various parts of Wales. That the C.P.R.W expressed the hope that the Board may see fit to take such action as may be in its power to preserve, where possible, these interesting relics of a past phase in the organization of the agricultural and rural life of Wales.”

The resolution was passed by the CPRW board and Lloyd then sent it to AMBW for their consideration. Ralegh Radford of AMBW responded on 16 April saying that more details of the windmills and evidence of their threatened nature was required. Lloyd then decided to marshal the help of other like-minded organizations, writing to A.R. Powys of SPAB and Wilfrid Hemp of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire (RCAMWM) with the resolution and AMBW’s response.

Hemp replied a couple of days later, saying that Rex Wailes would be the best person to provide information about the mills, as he had recently visited them. However, Hemp warns that he should contact Wailes soon, as he had just married and was about to embark on his honeymoon in Spain, where he would also be hunting windmills! Hemp also notes that he had just visited Melin y Bont, the unusual mill on Anglesey powered by both wind and water, with Cyril Fox, director of the National Museum of Wales.

Three days later Fox copied Lloyd into a letter he was sending to the Office of Works, with his notes about Melin y Bont, expressing his hope that this unique windmill could be scheduled as a protected building. Around this time Lloyd also wrote to Wailes asking for assistance in providing details of the mills.

On 6 May Radford from AMBW wrote to Lloyd of CPRW asking to meet in person to discuss the windmills. Despite both organisations being involved in Welsh matters, they were actually based in Central London at this time, as was RCAMWM and SPAB. They did meet two days later and, according to a report from Lloyd to Lord Boston, Radford thought that AMBW would be willing to schedule some of the windmills. However, they wouldn’t be able to provide any money to do repairs or compensate the occupiers of working mills if scheduling their mills forced them to rely on old-fashioned methods of milling rather than upgrading machinery and techniques. They agreed that a list of the most important windmills should be drawn up to focus on for scheduling.

Later that month Lloyd received a letter from the secretary of the Windmill section of SPAB, Miss M.I. Batten, who had just published the first volume of her two-volume work English Windmills. She said that she had so far only focused on English windmills, but only knew of two ‘Welsh’ windmills, “Pontrewynydd near Monmouth (a pumping mill) and Mortimers Cross, Kingsland, Herefordshire”. In a follow-up letter two days later she admitted “I am afraid I must have been possessed of the Devil when I wrote to you on May 26th. I know perfectly well that both Monmouth and Hereford are in England, and also that Anglesey is in Wales!” She then points out that they have information on the Anglesey mills from Rex Wailes. Lloyd responded “Monmouth, of course, should – and for some purposes I believe is – connected with Wales, but it is not always politic to suggest this to the inhabitants.”

Batten also informed Lloyd that the address he had used to write to Wailes was wrong, explaining the lack of response, so he wrote again to the correct address. Wailes responded in July, sending the copy of his manuscript for The Miller that was in the folder with these letters, as well as offering his full support for the campaign to list some of the mills. However, by this time Lloyd had learned that AMBW did not hold much hope of being able to schedule any of the windmills. Lloyd and Wailes did agree that they should still press on with trying the get at least Melin y Bont scheduled somehow.

Correspondence about the windmills went quiet for several months after this, until January 1931, when the new secretary of the Windmills section of SPAB, Miss A.M.B. Lloyd, wrote to J.D.K. Lloyd of CPRW, saying she had heard that CPRW might be able to fund repairing one of the Anglesey windmills. He had to advise her that in fact CPRW was unable, both by constitution and funding, of providing any money. Further correspondence between Lloyd, Hemp and Wailes cast doubt that anything can be done about preserving the mills.

However, Wailes throws a cat amongst the pigeons by saying that Hemp had told him there was a possibility that the machinery at Melin y Bont could be “dismantled, and parts taken to the Cardiff Museum”. This provoked a flurry of letters and phone calls to assess the situation and decide how to act. Lloyd forwarded Wailes’ letter to Fox at the National Museum of Wales, asking if he could provide any more information.

Fox seems to have been very particular about the name of his museum, as he responds back – “Who is Mr. Rex Wailes? Will you kindly inform him that the museum to which he refers is the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, and not the Cardiff Museum!!” He goes on to say that it was the first he had heard of the matter, that he would be pleased to receive parts of the mill into their collection but would rather that it wasn’t dismantled. Lloyd writes back to Wailes about Fox’s response (diplomatically leaving out Fox’s response about the name, but prominently giving the full, correct name of the museum). Wailes responds saying that SPAB have no funding to save Melin y Bont, but could help publicise the issue.

After this the correspondence ends. The machinery in Melin y Bont wasn’t dismantled and sent to Cardiff after all. It continued grinding grain, powered solely by the water wheel, until around 1941, and was sadly burnt out by a fire in 1973, leaving the machinery in a heap at the bottom of the tower.

Efforts to schedule and protect the Anglesey windmills gathered pace again in the early 1950s. A list of windmills and watermills on Anglesey produced by SPAB at this time has most of the windmills described as “almost in ruins”, “very poor state of repair”, “half demolished”, etc. Even Melin Llynon, which is now proudly restored and fully working again, was described as “in a poor state of repair its windows and doors being almost non-existent”. However, from 1952 and through the next two decades, most of the surviving windmills were listed. Ironically, Melin y Bont was overlooked during this period of listings, but it was finally protected in 1998. As can be seen in my gallery of Anglesey windmills, many of the windmills of Anglesey have now been converted to dwellings or the empty towers stabilised. It took a while, but the wonderful windmills of Anglesey were finally saved.

The post Saving Anglesey’s Windmills 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.

The post Revisiting the Windmills of Anglesey appeared first on Anglesey History.

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 know there is no place like this in or around my village, and as far as I know never was. The hill in the background doesn’t look like the landscape around here. It could conceivably be Mynydd Llwydiarth, but there are far too many houses on the slope. The National Library of Wales place names database, which lists not only towns, parishes and villages, but also individual farm and field names as shown on the mid-19th century tithe maps, doesn’t show any other Pentraeths in Wales. So where was this? I can’t resist a chance to follow up a historical mystery, so I bid for the postcard and won it for the princely sum of £1.

The first clues are on the back of the postcard. It was published by F. H. May, based on Ata Road in Pwllheli. It was postmarked somewhere in Caernarfonshire (part of the postmark is missing) in 1914 and was sent to a Mr Williams of 15 Hill Street, Gerlan, Bethesda. So it is probably somewhere in North Wales. The writer of the card, who signs off as “Nain”, says “This is my house O Alun how do you like it? Be good you shall come here for your holidays.”

I posted scans of the postcard on my Facebook and Twitter pages, hoping one of my followers might recognize it. Within a couple of hours the mystery of the location had been solved. On Twitter a couple of followers said “Nefyn”, and @dilgriff posted another postcard from F. H. May with a view across the bay at Nefyn, showing this building sitting on top of the cliff. This card seems to come from a page on the Nefyn.com website about the photographer, Fred May. One Facebook follower, Wendy Howard, jumped in with both feet and started researching the recipient family; see her comments on my original post.

So we now know where the mysterious Pentraeth Castle is, lets fill out some of the details about it and the people involved. First, when was it built? The old-maps.co.uk site allows you to explore old Ordnance Survey maps through the years, from the 1st edition in the late 1880s. The one from 1900 shows The Castle on top of the cliff overlooking the bay. In 1889 there was just a small building on this site, labelled “Cliff Cottage”. By 1918 the building was labelled “Castell Pentraeth”.

The census can also provide clues. In 1891 Cliff Cottage was still in existence. It was occupied by Griffith Griffiths, his wife Ellen and their 10 year old niece Jane Evans. Griffith was a settmaker, presumably working at the nearby Gwylwyr Quarry, which produced granite setts for paving roads. So that cottage must have been demolished and the castle built sometime between 1891 and 1900.

Cliff Castle appears in the 1901 census, occupied solely by Ellen Owens. She is listed as a servant and caretaker. In 1911 she is still there as its caretaker, the only occupant. Was this ostentatious castellated building a holiday home for some wealthy person, with Ellen looking after it when the owner was not in residence?

Most UK censuses only list the people who were actually living at a property on the day. But in 1911 they also produced summary books, which for each property gave just the name of the main occupier, along with the total number of males and females living there on census day. For The Castle the occupier is named as Corton Lord, with just a single female (Ellen) actually living there. He presumably is the owner and occasional resident.

So who was Corton Lord? An unusual name like that should be easy to track down, but searching the Ancestry and FamilySearch genealogy databases throws up very little. Beside the entry for the 1911 census, all Ancestry offers that seems to fit is a Frederick Corton Lord, born in 1860 in Salford, Lancashire, who is listed in one person’s family tree as the husband of Katherine Pollitt, with no further information. Searches of the newspaper databases at the National Library of Wales (available online free of charge to any resident of Wales who applies for a reader’s ticket) were also fruitless. The next step after these online resources would be to visit the Gwynedd Archives, but for the moment I’ll need to leave this question aside.

What about the postcard writer and recipient? My Facebook follower Wendy got to this before me and tracked down the 1911 census record for the family living at 15 Hill Street, Bethesda. They were William T Williams, a quarryman at Penrhyn Quarry, his wife Annie and their three children. One was six year old Owen Alun Williams, so this little boy was the “O Alun” to whom this postcard was sent from his Nain (grandmother). He would have been around nine years old when the postcard was sent and she is encouraging him to be good so that he can come visit. It sounds like his parents may have been ill, but are improving.

So was the caretaker of Pentraeth Castle, Ellen Owens, little Alun’s grandmother? Given that she is listed as single in both censuses, that doesn’t seem likely. She was 70 in 1911, so perhaps someone else had taken over as caretaker by 1914, when the card was posted. A concerted effort to track down the Williams family tree would probably help to identify her, but other tasks are calling me now, so I’ll need to set this aside for another time.

The post The Mystery of the Non-Existent Castle 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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The above image is a view of Beaumaris Castle unlike any that you’ve probably seen before. An Edwardian family pose in front of a castle gateway, with the walls draped with vegetation and bordered with colourful flowers. But, is this really Beaumaris Castle? Where’s the moat and bridge?

Compare it to a recent photo of mine from the same viewpoint and you can see that it is definitely the gateway to Beaumaris Castle. However, unlike the restored and highly popular visitor attraction that it is today, in the 19th and early 20th century it was a ruin that attracted the interest of the Victorians, who sought out romantic views of ancient buildings.

Beaumaris Castle was built by Edward I in the late 13th century, after he conquered Wales. It was never finished to its full height, and only occasionally saw military action, most notably during Owain Glyndŵr’s revolt and the English Civil War.

It was bought from the Crown by Thomas Bulkeley of Baron Hill in 1807 for £735. The Bulkeley family had been constables of the castle for generations. They treated it as a romantic Victorian ruin, but also used it for battles of another sort, with a tennis court built in the inner ward, as you can see in this picture.

The Bulkeley family gave the castle to the State in 1925. The Commissioners of Works, the predecessor of today’s Cadw, soon set about doing major reconstruction work, removing vegetation from the walls, repairing stonework, and restoring the moat. It is now one of the most popular visitor attractions on Anglesey and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986 (along with Conwy, Caernarfon & Harlech Castles).

This new postcard is from the Tuck company’s “Picturesque North Wales” series, appearing in their 1911-12 catalogue. It was painted by Henry B Wimbush, a London-born landscape artist who did many illustrations for the Tuck postcards, as well as for book publishers such as A & C Black.

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This map is mainly based on Edward Greenly’s pioneering work on the geology of Anglesey. His two volume 1919 work The Geology of Anglesey, followed by the geological map of 1920, are considered classics in the field. The geology of Anglesey is fiercely complex, and his 25 years of surveying the rocks of the island, with the latest geological theories in mind, unravelled its mysteries.

In looking into accounts of his life, most said that Greenly and his wife Annie were buried in Llangristiolus parish churchyard, under “a fine headstone of red ‘Balmoral’ granite.” I distinctly remember visiting a grave of a prominent geologist with an unusual headstone, a large boulder inscribed with the details, many years ago, but this was in Llansadwrn, not Llangristiolus. Which was correct? After another cup of coffee we hopped into the car and headed off on a circular route to both churches.

When we got to the church we spotted the unusual grave stone, a boulder of Carboniferous limestone, before we even got out of the car. We crossed the graveyard and turned to face the headstone, only to discover that this was the grave of another very well known geologist with Anglesey connections. Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay was a Scottish geologist who published The Geology of North Wales in 1881, as well as many other earlier important works. He rose to become the president of the Geological Society of London and director-general of the Geological Survey. He retired to Beaumaris, where he died in 1892.

The inscription on his gravestone explains his Anglesey connection. His wife, Mary Louisa Williams, was the daughter of Rev. James Williams of Llanfair-yng-Nghornwy and granddaughter of John Williams of Treffos, in Llansadwrn. Her brother Owen was the grandfather of the famous Anglesey artist Kyffin Williams, thus making her his great aunt. In his autobiography Across the Straits, Kyffin Williams talks about playing with the Ramsay children when he was young.

So, I guess Greenly was really at Llangristiolus. Back in the car to head towards Llangristiolus. We decided to take the narrow lanes from Llansadwrn through Rhoscefnhir and Ceint, which once formed the major post road from Beaumaris to Holyhead (more in this in another blog soon).

After a bit of a wander around Llangristiolus churchyard I spotted a grave of distinctive red stone that stood out against the grey slate and black marble of most of the surrounding ones. Here was Edward Greenly and his wife Annie, “reunited”, as the inscription said.

Edward was born in 1861 and died in 1951, having been widowed since 1927 when his beloved Annie died. They first met when he was just 14, when she and her parents visited his family home. She was 11 years his elder, but their similar intellectual and scientific interests soon blossomed into a close friendship, then love. But after four years their parents, worried about such a relationship between one so young and one so much older, forced them apart. Eleven years later they met up again, and this time married in 1891.

Their’s was a close scientific working relationship as well as a loving marriage. Annie also had a keen interest in science from a young age. During his years surveying the geology of Anglesey (and before that in the Highlands of Scotland) she was usually at his side. Although Edward’s name is solely on the publications, he always readily admitted she was instrumental in developing ideas and in organising the publications. She died just days after they jointly finished a short geological textbook called The Earth. To mark her contributions Edward set up an Annie Greenly Fund through the Geological Society of London to support detailed geological mapping.

On the way home we stopped at Oriel Ynys Môn for a bite to eat and a look around the galleries. Who should we run across there but our new-found friend Edward Greenly, in a display in the history gallery, with a copy of his map alongside his portrait and biography.

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