Welsh Journals

FAMILIES OF LLANDDEWI HALL-PART II INTRODUCTION In Part One we discussed the families who appear to have been the actual occupiers of Llanddewi Hall during the 16th and 17th centuries. However, the Penybont Hall Collection deposited at N.L.W. by Lord Ormathwaite contains many deeds relating to the properties that made up the Ormathwaite estate and these show conclusively that the owners of Llanddewi Hall from at the latest the mid-17th century to nearly its end were the Davieses-the family from which Andrew Phillips of Llan- ddewi Hall took his second wife, Mary. We have already seen1 that he is supposed to have redeemed the mortgage of his Radnorshire property made in order to raise a portion for Mary, and it is not clear how it passed from his hands to those of her brother Evan Davies. The fact remains that on the title deeds of Llanddewi Hall, going back to the mid-17th century, the names that appear are not those of its occupiers, Phillips, Probert or Hanmer. The story these documents tell, like that of so many estates, is one of mortgage upon mortgage, of a bewildering succession of terms of 1000 years, 200 years, 99 years, in which assignee follows assignee, many of them no doubt having never even set eyes on the old Radnorshire house whose fate was at stake. THE DAVIES FAMILY Who were the Davieses, who numbered more than one High Sheriff of Radnorshire among them who gained and lost wealth, and the power that went with it, and are now so utterly forgotten ? There is good evidence pointing to the ancient family of Ap David (Davies) of Llangynllo and Whitton as the root-stock of the Davieses of Llanddewi other facts suggest a connection with an old family of the Llanddewi-Nantmel area. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, one of the leading North Radnor- shire families was that of five Ap David brothers,2 descendants of Prince Elystan Glodrydd. The wills of four of them3 show them to have been Griffith ap David, Gent., of Cryngoed, Llangynllo (will proved 1616) James ap David the elder: James ap David the younger, yeoman, of Whitton (will pr. 1612): Watkin ap David, Gent., of Whitton (will pr. 1616): and Rhys ap David, Gent., of Whitton (will pr. 1617). They were the sons of David ap David.4 It is the will of Griffith ap David of Cryngoed which provides the link with Llanddewi, for it shows him to have had by his second wife Eleanor a younger son (J)evan, who was left his father's messuage or tenement' (a farm) in Llanddewi Ystradenni, as well as his Llandegley farm and the land adjoining it. A propos of the Llanddewi bequest it is stipulated that there shall be no 'disannulling' of Eleanor's jointure rights in the Llanddewi lands. Part of the bequest to Eleanor comprises stock and household stuff on the Llanddewi farm. In a Parliamentary survey of the Radnorshire manor of Southrurallt in 16496 an Elianor Davies, widow, is shown in possession of 18 acres of meadow-land in the parish of Llanddewey which land she granted to Sir Robert Harley for a term of years. Griffith's Llanddewi farm is unfortunately not named, but at least we know that the Ap Davids had By RUTH BIDGOOD