Welsh Journals

A Grosmont Diary by Isabel McGraghan The diary of the Rev. William Twyning is written in a single notebook bound to imitate red leather and covers the period from 1858 to 1865. There is no indication that it was one of a series because it begins in the year he arrived in Grosmont, with some enthusiasm and excitement, taking three pages to describe a visit to London to buy clothing and weapons to equip his son William for a career in the army in Ireland and India and ends with some half hearted notes encompassing a year in the same number of pages. One feels that ill health or family trouble had taken their toll of him. There is information in the diary to interest all sorts of historians, from the names of the villagers to national events such as the Indian Mutiny, 1857-58 and cosmic phenomena in the form of two comets. The one named Donati's Comet is mentioned in the encyclopaedia but the one discovered by Burder of Clifton is not and must have been of lesser import. News of the Indian Mutiny from his daughter in Madras provided Mr. Twyning with a theme for his address to the Church Missionary Society meeting with which he was so pleased that he copied it into the diary in its entirety. The high minded effect was rather spoiled when the British arrived "-in state, mounted on elephants, a mode calculated to inspire the native population with respect. They were, however, received with the greatest disrespect by the Mohammedans, who resorted to every kind of petty insult and intimidation-such as making faces at the officers, spitting on the ground accompanied with violent gestures and one person rushed out of a house as they passed, brandishing a dagger, dripping with blood, before one of the party." The Twynings were frequent travellers by train, using Pontrilas station to which they were driven by a manservant. "W. Thomas enters the sit- ting room in a most excited state and angry tone-gives me a month's notice because I presumed to put in my own little carriage out of the rain which was coming on, because he had been to the Public House, I think, and had neglected to do so, leaving it out in the dark with the jack lifting one of the wheels. This is the state of servants at the present day. I had never spoken but kindly to him." Sometimes they arrived back, rather inconveniently, at Ross and then hired a carriage from Barrett's Royal Hotel to finish the journey which took "only" two hours. When he took his family to stay in Clifton he returned alone each week- end to conduct the services in Grosmont Church and went back to Bristol on Monday by the Steam Packet from Newport. He was very conscien- tous about this and when he was incapacitated by gout he tried to obtain a substitute to take the services and always expressed regret on the rare occasions when the church was closed. He took his daughter to school by train via Crumlin Viaduct and the whole family had a holiday in Beaumaris from whence they popped over