Tag: Local history

• 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

• Teenage Years on the Doldowlod Hall Estate

  The mid-1990s were years of transition in rural Wales. Farming incomes were under strain, country houses were redefining their purpose, and politics in Britain seemed poised between the certainties of Thatcherism and the coming landslide of New Labour. For me, those years were marked most vividly by the Doldowlod Hall estate on the upper reaches…

  antonydaviesfrsa

  21/09/2025

  Articles

  1990s-wales, books, british-politics, conservative-party-history, country-estate-life, country-house-history, doldowlod-hall, family history, fiction, forestry-and-woodland-management, garden, gardening, gibson-watt-family, historical-memoir, lady-diana-gibson-watt, Local history, lord-david-gibson-watt, Mid Wales, personal-history, Powys, rhayader, river-wye, rural-heritage, sir-philip-magnus-allcroft, Social history, teenage-memories, Welsh history, welsh-country-houses, writing

• Saving the soul of Wales: why we must act now to preserve our family and chapel records

  By Antony David Davies FRSA It is hard to overstate just how close we are to losing the living memory of rural Wales. Across our hills and valleys — from the sheep farms of Montgomeryshire to the slate towns of Gwynedd and the quiet chapels of Ceredigion — traces of family and community life are…

  antonydaviesfrsa

  25/07/2025

  Articles

  Archive crisis, Call to action, Ceredigion, Chapel registers, Community history, Community memory, Cultural policy, Digitisation, Family archives, Family photographs, Farming families, Genealogy, Gwynedd, Heritage preservation, Historical advocacy, Historical memory, Historical records, Industrial heritage, Local history, Montgomeryshire, National memory, Nonconformist chapels, Oral history, Oral traditions, People’s Collection Wales, Public history, Rural Wales, Senedd, Slate industry history, Social history, Upland voices, Welsh archives, Welsh culture, Welsh Government, Welsh heritage, Welsh history, Welsh identity, Welsh Nonconformity, Welsh storytelling