Welsh Journals

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE EMBRYONIC TOWN IN RURAL WALES: LLANFAIR CAEREINION IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY DR. W. T. R. PRYCE, B.SC., M.SC., PH.D., DIP.ED. AND JOHN ARWEL EDWARDS, B.A., M.A., DIP.ED. In recent years geographers, sociologists and historians have carried out a number of important and substantial studies concerning the social structure of nineteenth-century urban communities. All of these have been based on sophisticated analyses of the original enumerators' books from which the published tabulations of the population censuses were compiled. Hitherto, interests have been focussed on the larger urban centres including major ports such as Liverpool, cathedral cities such as York, suburban London, the larger industrial towns inland, new towns and holiday resorts. Rural communities have also received some measure of attention. However, as yet there has been no examination of the social structures of the smallest towns which occur at the lower end of the urban hierarchy. Although many of these had earned a modest success as local market centres by the mid-nineteenth century, the great majority failed to develop into what we today regard as urban communities in the fullest sense. In these respects they can be regarded as embryonic towns. This paper sets out to explore the nature of such towns as small but functional urban communities. We are concerned specifically with Llanfair Caereinion which has been selected because in it is reflected a very large number of similar communities throughout Wales and, in many respects, England as well. Our study is being published in two parts: first, in this issue of the Montgomeryshire Collections the town plan, patterns of property ownership and population structures are analysed for the mid-nineteenth century when the parish had reached