Welsh Journals

social history of Amlwch parish. Besides dealing with wages, miners' combinations, the incidence of unemployment and poor relief, he has sections on population growth, vital statistics and education. Early Industry in Flintshire is the second of a series which aims at presenting the history of the county largely through the visual medium. There are forty reproductions, all of very good quality, of early prints and plans, modern photographs and scale drawings. The booklet covers the entire period of Flintshire's industrial history from Roman lead mining to the present day, when most of the sites survive only as field laboratories for the industrial archaeologist. If any criticism is to be made of the publication, it is that concentration on lead mining and smelting has resulted in comparatively less attention being given to Flintshire's other industries, such as coal mining, copper and brass manufacture and cotton production, though all these, and more, are covered. A map of the county indicating the sites mentioned would also have been of use to 'foreigners'. One wishes that in time the Flintshire Record Office would follow up this publication with a larger one on the same topic. T. H. LLOYD Swansea THE CRAWSHAYS OF CYFARTHFA CASTLE. By M. S. Taylor. Robert Hale, 1967. Pp. 190. 25s. Margaret Stewart Taylor is chief librarian and museum curator for Merthyr Tydfil, and as such is ideally situated to write a book on the founders of that town's greatness, the Crawshay family. Between 1825 and 1889 Cyfarthfa Castle was occupied by three Craws hays-William II, Robert Thompson and William Thompson. Yet understandably, Miss Taylor devotes almost a quarter of the book to an interesting des- cription of the earlier Crawshays-Richard, of Yorkshire yeoman stock, and his prodigal son, William I. We learn, for example, that Richard lent money to William Pitt, but refused a title from him. Unfortunately Miss Taylor often spoils the narrative by special pleading: 'When a man has sixteen large portraits painted of himself', she writes with reference to Richard, 'it should not be assumed that he was conceited and over- whelmed with his own importance.' If the first of the Crawshay ironmasters was not an egotistical bore, his successors certainly were. 'King' William I treated even his wife's last illness as though it were a problem at the ironworks. 'If she still lives', ran one of his letters which he sent to Merthyr in the autumn of 1825, 'give her the assurance of my love and affection'. His son, William II, who built Cyfarthfa Castle in that year at a cost of £ 30,000, was a more