Welsh Journals

CHURCHES AND GENTRY IN THE ABERGWESYN AREA ABERGWESYN, almost equidistant from the villages of Llanwrtyd Wells and Beulah, is one of the remotest communities of North Breconshire. The old Hundred of Builth has always been something of a land apart, owing more allegiance to the mountain areas to its west and north than to the rest of Brecon- shire. Abergwesyn consisted formerly of two old parishes, Llanfihangel and Llanddewi, whose mother churches were respectively Llanafan Fawr and Llangamarch. In 1864, by Order of Council, the Abergwesyn parishes were separated from these mother churches, and in 1865 united, the parish church being henceforward Llanfihangel Abergwesyn. Nowadays, traffic from the world beyond Abergwesyn's hills is mainly tourist traffic-cars travelling to and from the coast over Tregaron mountain road, or ex- ploring Llyn Brianne. For centuries, however, until the end of the droving days, Abergwesyn had a key position on one of the most important drovers' routes in Wales. Professor William Rees found evidence for its having been in mediaeval times a little trading post on the eastern edge of the great mountain wilderness. Still, it must always have been an isolated little community in a hard, wild and beautiful countryside, and in earlier centuries, when its tracks-hardly roads-were notoriously rough, life was rugged in the extreme. In the context of such a countryside, some definitions must be sharply scrutinised, some preconceptions abandoned-certainly any idea of lowland or English-style grandeur in the churches or the homes and lives of the local gentry. The medieval churches of Llanddewi and Llanfihangel 'Abergwesyn were tiny and primitive — 'barn-like' was a favourite word of the Victorians, who did not admire such simple hill-churches, and, like the Rev. John Jones of Abergwesyn, had them pulled down if they could.2 Early gentry-houses, too were very modest, but pride in lineage was strong. The old farmhouses of Nant-y-Walch (Cwm Irfon) and Dinas, in the Irfon valley over the Llanwrtyd border, were 'mansions' of the ancient and proud Lloyd family. John Lloyd of Tywi, 'squire to the body' of Queen Elizabeth I (his effigy is to be seen at Builth church) had in the 16th century a mansion, probably at least equally simple, somewhere in the Tywi valley, on the western boundary of Llanddewi Abergwesyn. Theophilus Jones, the county historian, thought that he was wise to leave it for gentler lands at Porth-y-Crwys in Llanynis,3 though in his will" he still called himself 'of Towy'. He left 12d for the reparation of the Cathedral Church of St. David, and ordered that his body should be buried in the church of Llanynis. Ancestors of the Price family of Rhosforlo, Llanafan Fechan, who were to give Breconshire a High Sheriff in the person of Thomas Price, Esq., of Builth in 1820, lived in Llanddewi Abergwesyn during the 17th century. In 1655 Richard Prees ap Jenkin left fourpence to St. David's Cathedral, and his body to be buried in the parish church of Llanddewi Abergwesyn, but apart from such conventional links with the church we have no evidence of the religious life of the