Welsh Journals

BRYCHEINIOG RURAL INDUSTRY IN BRECKNOCK By J. GERAINT JENKINS, M.A., F.S.A. The Welsh Folk Museum, St. Fagans, Cardiff UNTIL fairly recent times every rural community in Brecknockshire, as elsewhere, was self-sufficient, and only very rarely was the countryman forced to go outside his own locality to search for the means of life. The rural neighbourhood was an economic as well as a social entity, and most of the daily requirements of the community could be supplied from within the community. In most districts, the countryman was able to grow all the food that he, his family and neighbours required; his fields, gardens and orchards supplied him with ample quantities of corn, vegetables and fruit; his animals gave him milk and meat. Until recent times such tasks as baking bread, making butter, cheese, cider and beer were very much a part of the household routine of Brecknockshire farms. Pigs were killed and salted in all districts, while many of the products of the farm, corn, wool and animal skins could be taken to a nearby mill for processing. The products of those mills-flour, oatmeal and blankets could be used in the home, while other products--cloth, tweeds and leather could be used by one of the many local craftsmen to make some essential. Brecknockshire was particularly well blessed with corn mills, and almost every parish in the county had at least one water-driven corn mill within its boundaries. As recently as 1923, thirty-one corn mills were in constant operation in the county, but they only represented a small proportion of those that were operating in earlier centuries. In many cases, the craftsmen who processed farm produce were not paid in cash, but were allowed to keep a proportion of the produce as payment. Millers were allowed to keep a few bushels of corn for their own use, while woollen manufacturers were allowed to keep a proportion of the fleeces that a farmer brought in for making into yarn or blankets. For example, Isaac Williams of the Esgair-moel Mill, Llanwrtyd, in processing wool for local farmers and supplying them with knitting yarn, cloth and blankets, kept a small proportion of fleeces as payment, which he made up into cloth and sold it on his market stall at Builth. Other craftsmen engaged in processing farm produce, and well represented in Brecknockshire, were tanners and curriers concerned with leather production, and maltsters, cider makers