Antony David Davies FIoL FRSA FRAS AFRHistS MCMI

The Scholar Priest: The Life and Legacy of John Cartwright Jones (1831–1875)

In the long arc of the Jones Glandwr family story, few figures embody the union of intellect, faith, and social ambition as completely as John Cartwright Jones. Born into London privilege yet anchored in Welsh heritage, he lived at the crossroads of Victorian transformation – a clergyman shaped by Oxford scholarship, a family patriarch whose…

antonydaviesfrsa

01/02/2026

Articles

19th century Wales, Arthur Owen Jones, Bishopsgate London, Breaston Derbyshire, Christ Church Oxford, family history, Francis Jones OBE, Glandwr Estate, history, John Cartwright Jones, Jonah Jones cricketer, Jones family history, Jones Glandwr family, literature, Llanaber burial ground, Llyfnant Valley, Local history, Merchant Taylors School, Nottinghamshire history, Oxford Movement era, poetry, Royal Navy chaplaincy, Shelton Nottinghamshire, Texas pioneers, Thrumpton, Tynycoed, Victorian biography, Victorian Church of England, Victorian clergy, Welsh emigrants to Texas, Welsh genealogy, Welsh history, Welsh landed families
David Jenkins (1850–1891), A Quiet Life Broken by Misfortune

In the upland districts of Montgomeryshire and southern Meirionnydd, the late nineteenth century was an age that demanded toughness and restraint. Men worked long hours in all seasons, living by the hard arithmetic of livestock, rent, weather, and market prices, and measured as much by reputation as by income. Within that world, David Jenkins, eldest…

antonydaviesfrsa

25/01/2026

Uncategorized

19th-century-wales, agricultural-labourers, ancestry, camlan-farm, cwmrhaiadr, david-jenkins, dinas-mawddwy, family history, farming-accidents, Genealogy, history, jenkins-family, llyfnant-valley, Local history, Machynlleth, maescelyn, meirionnydd-history, methodist-wales, montgomeryshire-history, Rural communities, Rural Wales, rural-labour-history, Upland farming, victorian-farming, victorian-wales, Welsh family history, Welsh genealogy, welsh-hill-farming, welsh-rural-history
Hugh Wynn Wilding Jones (1896–1918)

Education, Inheritance, and the Long Road to Dojran The life of Hugh Wynn Wilding Jones sits at the intersection of Edwardian inheritance, elite education, and the totalising demands of the First World War. His story is not merely that of a young officer killed in action, but of a man whose life trajectory, intellectual formation,…

antonydaviesfrsa

22/01/2026

Articles

Battle of Dojran, books, British Army officers, Corpus Christi College Oxford, Edwardian Britain, family history, First World War, Genealogy, Glandwr Hall, Great War, Heirs and inheritance, history, Hugh Wynn Wilding-Jones, Junior officers, Lewis gun, military biography, Officer Training Corps, Oxford University, Postcards from the Great War, Private correspondence, Remembering the fallen, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, Salonika Campaign, Tonbridge School, War illness and convalescence, Welsh landed families, ww1
George Roberts Shorto (1836–1905)

Soldier, Civic Servant, and Architect of Municipal Exeter George Roberts Shorto occupies a distinctive place in the civic history of Exeter. Soldier, volunteer officer, solicitor, and long-serving Town Clerk, his life charts the emergence of the Victorian professional administrator, shaped by discipline, duty, and an unyielding belief in public service. Early Life and Formation Born…

antonydaviesfrsa

22/01/2026

Articles

american-revolution, bible, British municipal history, British social history, citizen soldier, civic administration, Crimean War veterans, Devon history, Devonshire Regiment Volunteers, Exeter Cathedral, Exeter history, Exeter Town Clerk, family history, family history research, Genealogy, George Roberts Shorto, history, legal history England, local government history, municipal reform, nineteenth century Britain, Rifle Brigade, Victorian biography, Victorian civic life, Victorian Exeter, Victorian military history, Victorian professionalism, Victorian public service, Volunteer Force
John Edric Blaxland (1847–1935)

A Victorian Naval Career on a Global Stage When family history is rooted in place, farming, chapel, and community, the life of a career naval officer can feel almost anomalous, outward-looking, mobile, and shaped by the machinery of empire rather than the rhythms of locality. John Edric Blaxland was precisely that figure, a professional Royal…

antonydaviesfrsa

22/01/2026

Articles

Anglo-Egyptian War 1882, Ascension Island, Blaxland family, British Empire, British naval officers, family history, Genealogy, history, HMS Hood, imperial history, John Edric Blaxland, military, military biography, military-history, naval history, navy, nineteenth-century Britain, Royal Navy, Victorian Navy, Victorian officers, Zanzibar blockade
Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell (1877–1918), Science, Service, and a Life of Exceptional Promise

Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell stands out within my family history as a figure whose life moved far beyond the rural landscapes of Mid Wales into the international worlds of science, medicine, and imperial service. Though his career was cut short by the First World War, the scale of his intellectual achievement, and the geographical breadth…

antonydaviesfrsa

21/01/2026

Articles

Antony David Davies, British biologists, Edwardian medicine, Edwardian scientists, First World War medical service, Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell, history, history of zoology, Llyfnant Valley families, medicine, Merton College Oxford, Old Llyfnant Valley Farming Families, Oxford scientists, philosophy, Royal Air Force medical board, science, science and empire, South American exploration, Spurrell family, University of New Orleans, Welsh family history, Welsh genealogy, West Africa exploration, writing, zoological discovery
The Welsh Blood Behind an England Captain, Arthur Owen Jones, and Why His Story Still Matters

There is something quietly extraordinary about the story of Arthur Owen Jones, one of the most gifted cricketers of the Edwardian era, a man who captained England, broke county records, and reshaped the game through sheer athletic intelligence, yet is now far less widely remembered than he deserves. What makes his story even more personal,…

antonydaviesfrsa

19/01/2026

Articles

Arthur Owen Jones, Ashes history, Barmouth, books, British identity, British sporting history, Cambridge University cricket, cricket, Cricket fielding, Cricket history, Dolgellau, Edwardian Britain, Edwardian cricket, England cricket captain, England v Australia, English cricket, family history, Genealogy, Glandwr, Great War era, Gully position, history, Jesus College Cambridge, Jones family, Merionethshire history, Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, Nottinghamshire cricket, Pneumonia, Social history, Sporting biography, Sporting heritage, sports, test-cricket, Tuberculosis history, Victorian Britain, Victorian sport, Welsh ancestry, Welsh diaspora, Welsh family history, Welsh roots, Wisden Cricketer of the Year
Off the Rails: Why This Book Matters

Off the Rails: The Story of Crewe Steam Train Driver Alfred Jenkins began not as a publishing project but as an act of recovery, an attempt to give structure and permanence to a life that had been lived with discipline, endurance, and quiet dignity, and then almost lost to time. Alfred Jenkins (1882–1956) was my…

antonydaviesfrsa

10/01/2026

Articles

Biography, books, British railways, British social history, Crewe history, Crewe railway history, Edwardian Britain, Everyday lives, family history, Footplate life, Genealogy, Great Western Railway, Hidden histories, history, Industrial Britain, Interwar Britain, Labour history, Microhistory, Occupational history, Railway history, Railway towns, Railway workers, Railwaymen, Social history, Steam locomotives, Steam railway, travel, Twentieth-century Britain, Victorian industry, working-class history, World War One home front, World War Two home front
Richard Emmett, and the Value of an Ordinary Life

In the 1880s, a retired soldier sat down to write a short book for his children. He did not imagine an audience beyond his family, nor did he attempt to shape his life into a story of heroism or distinction. He wrote, instead, to explain himself. To account for absence. To leave behind a record…

antonydaviesfrsa

06/01/2026

Articles

book-review, books, British Army history, British Empire, family history, history, memoir, military families, nineteenth century, primary sources, Richard Emmett, Social history, Victorian memoir, working-class history, writing
A Christmas in the Victorian Welsh Uplands

In the high country of mid and north Wales, where the hills folded into one another like great, weathered blankets and the lanes were little more than tracks worn by generations of hooves and boots, Christmas in the Victorian era arrived quietly. There was no sense of sudden abundance, no dramatic break from the rhythm…

antonydaviesfrsa

23/12/2025

Articles

19th century Wales, Agrarian Wales, books, Calennig, christmas, Christmas in Wales, Cultural memory, fiction, history, Mari Lwyd, Mid Wales, Nonconformist Wales, North Wales, Noson Gyflaith, Plygain, Rural communities, Rural winter life, Upland farming, Victorian Christmas, Victorian domestic life, Victorian Wales, Welsh Chapels, Welsh Christmas traditions, Welsh countryside, Welsh farmhouse life, Welsh folk traditions, Welsh rural life, Welsh Social History, Welsh uplands, writing