Welsh Journals

HISTORY OF THE PARISH OF MAINSTONE. By E. S. MOSTYN PRYCE. GENERAL SURVEY. THE Parish of Mainstone lies in a sequestered nook of Montgomeryshire and Shropshire, and is still for the present century somewhat exceptionally remote from railways and towns. The quaint cabalistic name, for time was when stones were temples, it is remarked is a duplication, each syllable viz. Maen, Welsh, and Stone, English, being identical, perhaps to suit the comprehensions of the earlier Welsh and English pop- ulations resident in its two portions of Wales and England when Mainstone parish was first formed. Situated on that part of the Welsh frontier where the great plain of England breaks into dales, dingles and downlands against the spurs of the Welsh hills, this parish presents as rich and fair a prospect to the visitor if he surveys it from Edenhope Hill as the setting sun ever assisted to make more attractive still. It has also some considerable antiquarian interest. The extent of the parish is large, extending to some ten square miles. The tithe map makes the acreage 6,215 acres, but there is some waste land which would bring it up to nearly 6,400 acres. The census of 1901 gave the population as 295. It embraces a portion of the district known as Clun Forest, but upon which, like its neighbour Radnor Forest some twelve miles distant in the adjoining county, there scarcely now stands a tree to impress the observer with the accuracy of this in some remote generation no doubt appropriate appellation.