Welsh Journals

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HISTORY OF THE HOUSES A very interesting question that we should like to answer is how long has there been a farmhouse, or any other kind of house, on each particular site ? and, again, how long have farms had individual names ? Professor Estyn Evans says that in Ireland the towniand-the average size of which is about half a square mile-is a man's address, "for individual farms preserve their anonymity; they still belong to the townland though they have become separate units since the 'town' or cluster has broken up. The farms rarely carry any names other than those of their owner" (op. cit., p. 28). Did anything like this survive in Powys into modem times ? 17th century records seem quite frequently to refer to a man as living in a certain township, when there were several families of the same name in the same township. Mr. W. A. Griffiths' contributions contain many instances of this. Where farmers were cultivating strips in the open fields, one can understand that an actual dwelling would be the house or X or Y; but Mr. G. R. Jones has pointed out that many of the open fields of Wales had been enclosed by c 1500, and that much of the land was by then held as enclosed farms. There may, too, have been more individuality about the farms of the free tribesmen scattered about the hillsides. The Rev. Parry Jones (Welsh Country Upbringing) tells us that old documents, such as those making small grants of land to the local monastery, etc., preserve the names of some farms from before A.D.1200, and that these can still be recognised. Dr. Hoskins (op. cit., p. 130) draws attention to the value of Probate Inventories, Glebe Terriers, Manorial Surveys, Hearth and Tax Assessments, as well of maps and plans for our studies. There are two papers on Place Names by Mr. D. Machreth Ellis in Mont. Coll., XLIV, 1936, pp. 87-100, and XLV, 1937, 1-18; and Vol. LIV, 1955, 79-91, contains some suggestions about farm names by the present writer. THE BUILDERS How much do we know about the actual building of houses of all kinds in the county ? At the building of the castles and most of the churches there must have been present a number of skilled masons, but this was almost certainly not the case at the construction of many, if not most, of the farmhouses, at least, not until com- paratively recent times. In early days, as at the present among non-industrialised peoples such as the Bantu, each family made its own dwelling; and the practice lasted in parts of Wales until modern times. The tai unnos (one-night houses) were built by the occupant-to-be and his friends. A good description of such co-operation, or 'boon work,' is given in the Transactions of the Cumberland and