Welsh Journals

ABERAERON BEFORE THE HARBOUR ACT OF 1807 The most prominent buildings in the neighbourhood of Aberaeron, up until the mid-eighteenth century, were the two churches of Hen- fynyw and Llanddewi Aberarth. The two parishes served by these churches were separated by the river Aeron. Henfynyw is celebrated as the place where St. David spent his early years and from where he moved south to the land now occupied by St. David's Cathedral. Although recent research into the text of the Life of St. David has cast doubt on this tradition, the settlement at Henfynyw is certainly to be dated to the Age of the Saints. Victorian antiquaries claimed to have discovered earthern vessels containing the ashes of human remains near the church, but a more reliable indication of its age is the stone inscribed TIGEI(?)R(N) and now inserted into the outer east wall of the church. This inscription has been interpreted as (the stone of) Tigernacus and dated to the period 600-800 A.D. By the twelfth century, the church of Henfynyw was dedicated to St. David. Gwyn- fardd Brycheiniog's ode to St. David catalogues the churches dedi- cated to the saint and includes the lines: "A Henfynyw deg o du glennydd-Aeron, Hyfaes ei meillion, hyfes goedydd." ("And fair Henfynyw, by the side of the glen of Aeron, Fields prolific in clover, and woods full of wealth.") After the conquest of Wales in 1282, Edward I granted the right of patronage in Henfynyw, as in several other churches, to the Bishop of St. David's "by reason of the forfeiture of the patrons". A taxation list of English and Welsh churches, drawn up for the royal government in 1291, assigned to Henfynyw an annual value of £ 2 which was quite low in comparison with Llandysul's £ 20 and Lampeter's £ 5. Llanddewi Aberarth is first mentioned in the taxation list of 1291 where it is allotted an annual value of £ 4. The lands in the parish were part of the Bishop of St. David's estates and this probably explains why the revenues of the church went to support the prebendary of Llanddewi Aberarth in St. David's Cathedral. Each canon in the cathedral needed a prebend or 'provender' as salary and this was commonly obtained by granting to the canons the revenues of a church or occasionally a manor. The stall of the canon who received the revenue of Llanddewi Aberarth became known as the Prebendary of Llanddewi Aberarth. The first three canons whose names survive are Richard de la Barre 1366, John de Lincoln 1397, William Wilcock 1502; these, like most of the other canons, had English names.1 Curates were nominated to serve in the parish; e.g. on 7 August 1741, Vavasour