Ysbyty Ystwyth History
Ysbyty Ystwyth history, archaeology and antiquities. Is a historic village in Ceredigion, formerly Cardiganshire, West Wales. Situated between Ffair-Rhos and Pont-rhyd-y-groes.
Table of Contents
1. History
2. Ysbyty Ystwyth Field System
3. Map
4. Links
| Ysbyty Ystwyth History Pictures |
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 Site plan Camp on Cefn Blewog  Site plan Castell Grogwynion |
Since 1909 the Ceredigion Historical Society has published articles written about the archaeology, antiquities and history of Ceredigion, many of these articles printed within the Ceredigion Journal, are about the history of Ysbyty Ystwyth.
The society has also produced three county volumes, under the name of the Cardiganshire County History series, these knowledgeable, learned, comprehensive and scholary publications record the history of prehistoric, early and modern Cardiganshire.
1. History
Scheduled Monuments in Ysbyty Ystwyth, Ceredigion.
Scheduled monuments (also known as scheduled ancient monuments, or SAMs) are sites of archaeological importance with specific legal protection against damage or development.
- Cairn south of Banc y Geufron
- Standing Stone c.250m NNE of Llethr
The history of this area in the Medieval Period is uncertain. The dedication of the church to St John the Baptist has been taken as an indication that is was in the possession of the Knights Hospitaller, but it is perhaps more likely that it was a hospice belonging to Strata Florida Abbey, perhaps in one of the abbey’s granges (Ludlow 1998).
As this area lies on an important north – south route – from Machynlleth to Tregaron and beyond – the suggestion that a hospice was located here to tend the sick and cater for travellers and pilgrims is not unreasonable.
The present church is 19th century. The later history of this area is not clear. An 18th century estate map (NLW CrosswoodVol 1, 66) shows common land within the village of Ysbyty Ystwyth, much of which had been (recently?) encroached upon by squatters who had erected cottages.
It is suspected that the dense scatter of cottages across the craggy landscape to the east of the village was established by similar means and is of the same date, though there is no map evidence to support this. The later tithe map (Sputty Ystwyth Tithe Map and Apportionment, 1848) demonstrates that the settlements had been created by then.
The metal mining industry in the area clearly promoted an increase in population and hence the rapid spread of dwellings across the area in the 18th and 19th century, and the development of Pont-rhyd-y-groes as a settlement.
The largest and most ancient mine in the area is Logaulas, which functioned from at least the mid 18th century (Bick 1974, 22-25), but the scatter of mining remains across the landscape testifies to the extent of this once important industry. Pont-rhyd-y-groes continued to develop in the 20th century with the construction of a small housing estate.
Description and essential historic landscape components
A craggy hill-crest and craggy north-facing valley side of the Ystwyth, lying to the north and east of Ysbyty Ystwyth and ranging in height from 140m to 360m.
Included in this area is the small loosely nucleated village of Ysbyty Ystwyth, the straggling linear 19th century mining village of Pont-rhyd-y-groes, and numerous dispersed small cottages, houses and smallholdings.
Local stone is the traditional building material; this is left bare, cement rendered or painted (whitewashed in some instances). Slate is the universal roofing material.
Ysbyty Ystwyth village is centred on the listed former parish church (now the parish room) of St John the Baptist, and the more recent church and chapels, one of which has been recently demolished.
Several houses have strong vernacular traits and may date to the late 18th or early 19th century, but most are later 19th century, in the typical regional Georgian vernacular tradition and probably built for or by workers in the lead mining industry.
However, farmsteads with stone-built outbuildings within and on the outskirts of the village demonstrate the agricultural origins of the settlement. There is a small estate of late 20th century houses in the village.
Pont-rhyd-y-groes has a much more industrial character than Ysbyty Ystwyth. Listed buildings include a forming mining school, a mining count house and the former post office, all of mid 19th century date.
Houses are mid-to-late 19th century in the regional Georgian vernacular tradition – typical worker houses for the period – although some earlier strongly vernacular cottages are also present. There is some mid-to-late 20th century housing here also.
A fairly dense scatter of dispersed settlement lies on the higher, steep and rocky ground above the two villages. This is probably a squatter settlement, where people working in lead mines needed to find somewhere convenient to live.
Here the houses and cottages are typically small two storey structures dating to the mid-to-late 19th century. Most are in the regional Georgian vernacular tradition, often with strong vernacular traits, but some (probably built towards the end of the century) lean more towards the Georgian style. Many have been modernised and extended.
There are a few smallholdings in this area. Stone outbuildings of these are small and often attached in-line to the house. Modern agricultural buildings, where present on farms, are very small.
The area of the dispersed settlement lies on steep rocky slopes covered with small fields, unenclosed land and woodland, intermixed with which are the remains of lead mines. Garden trees of the houses and cottages provide a strong woodland, almost parkland, aspect to parts of the landscape.
Fields are small and irregular, and formed by earth banks, stone-faced banks or dry-stone walls. Hedges are not present and these boundaries are supplemented with wire fences. Many of the small enclosures contain improved grazing.
Surrounding the enclosures is rough grazing and moorland with peaty deposits in hollows. There are stands of deciduous woodland and conifer plantations on the lower slopes. Buildings and spoil heaps are the most obvious feature of the old lead mines dispersed amongst the rocky outcrops, though shafts and other features are present.
Apart from Ysbyty Church and chapel, the recorded archaeology of this area consists of abandoned dwellings and the remains of the metal mining industry.
The borders of this landscape are well defined with conifer plantations to the northwest, a landscape of large fields and rough grazing to the northeast, east and southeast, and small enclosures to the south and southwest.
By Dyfed Archaeological Trust – Historic Landscape Characterisation of Ysbyty Ystwyth
2. Ysbyty Ystwyth Field System
Nothing certain is known of this area until the late 18th century when an estate map (NLW Crosswood Vol 1) – ‘Map of Sputty Intermixed Lands’- shows the whole of the area as a sub-divided or strip field, with no obvious internal boundaries. This is the only unequivocal evidence for a sub-divided arable field system within the study area of upland Ceredigion.
It is assumed that it was the remaining field or part field of a much larger system that was no longer in use by the late 18th century, and had been then consolidated and enclosed. By the tithe survey (Sputty Ystwyth Tithe Map and Apportionment, 1848) the sub-divided fields shown on the estate map had been consolidated and enclosed into the form that exists today. There is no surviving surface evidence to indicate the former presence of a sub-divided field system, and the tithe map gives no indication of its former existence.
Description and essential historic landscape components
This is small block of undulating land between 210m and 250m, to the south of Ysbyty Ystwyth village, which has been characterised on the evidence of historic maps. The area is divided into small irregular fields separated by earth banks or stone and earth banks topped with hedges. Some hedges have been removed and others are derelict, and most have been augmented by wire fences. Conifer plantations now cover a large portion of the area. Elsewhere there is rough grazing and rush covered ground with a little improved pasture.
The only recorded archaeology in this area is a Bronze Age burnt mound.
The extent of this area not well defined on the ground, and it merges with enclosed land on all sides. However, historically, this area is very well defined.
By Dyfed Archaeological Trust – Historic Landscape Characterisation of Ysbyty Ystwyth Field System
3. Map
View Larger Map of Ysbyty Ystwyth
4. External links
- Coflein, discover the archaeology, historic buildings, monuments and history of Ysbyty Ystwyth, Ceredigion
- Historic Place Names, learn about the field names and house names in the community of Ysbyty Ystwyth
- A Pint of History, read about the history of Ceredigion pub’s, inn’s and local taverns of Ysbyty Ystwyth
- People’s Collection Wales, share your stories, memories and photographs of Ysbyty Ystwyth
Some ideas to share your Stories below!
Have a memory and your not sure what to write? We have made it easy with some prompts and ideas, just think about this place and the importance its had in your life and ask yourself:
- What are my personal memories of living here?
- How has it developed and shops changed over the years?
- Do you have a story about the beach, community, its people and history?
- Tell us how it feels, seeing photographs and images of this place again?
- Tell us your favourite memories about this place?
The aim of the Ceredigion Historical Society is to preserve, record and promote the study of the archaeology, antiquities and history of Ceredigion. That objective has remained the same since the foundation of the Society in 1909, though its name was changed from Ceredigion Antiquarian Society to the Ceredigion Historical Society in 2002.
THE FAIRIES (TYLWYTH TEG)
(p137/8)
“FAIRY KNOCKERS.
Knockers were supposed to be a species of Fairies which haunted the mines, and underground regions, and whose province it was to indicate by knocks and other sounds, the presence of rich veins of ore. That miners in former times did really believe in the existence of such beings is quite evident from the following two letters written by Lewis Morris (great grandfather of Sir Lewis Morris the poet) in October 14th, 1754, and December 4th, 1754. They appeared in Bingley’s North Wales, Vol. II., pages 269–272:
“People who know very little of arts or sciences, or the powers of nature (which, in other words are the powers of the author of nature), will laugh at us Cardiganshire miners, who maintain the existence of “Knockers” in mines, a kind of good-natured impalpable people not to be seen, but heard, and who seem to us to work in the mines; that is to say, they are the types or forerunners of working in mines, as dreams are of some accidents, which happen to us. The barometer falls before rain, or storms. If we do not know the construction of it, we should call it a kind of dream that foretells rain; but we know it is natural, and produced by natural means, comprehended by us. Now, how are we sure, or anybody sure, but that our dreams are produced by the same natural means? There is some faint resemblance of this in the sense of hearing; the bird is killed before we hear the report of the gun. However, this is, I must speak well of the “Knockers,” for they have actually stood my good-friends, whether they are aerial beings called spirits, or whether they are a people made of matter, not to be felt by our gross bodies, as air and fire and the like. “Before the discovery of the “Esgair y Mwyn” mine, these little people, as we call them here, worked hard there day and night; and there are honest, sober people, who have heard them, and some persons who have no notion of them or of mines either; but after the discovery of the great ore they were heard no more. When I began to work at Llwyn Llwyd, they worked so fresh there for a considerable time that they frightened some young workmen out of the work. This was when we were driving levels, and before we had got any ore; but when we came to the ore, they then gave over, and I heard no more talk of them. Our old miners are no more concerned at hearing them “blasting,” boring holes, landing “deads,” etc., than if they were some of their own people; and a single miner will stay in the work, in the dead of night, without any man near him, and never think of any fear of any harm they will do him. The miners have a notion that the “knockers” are of their own tribe and profession, and are a harmless people who mean well. Three or four miners together shall hear them sometimes, but if the miners stop to take notice of them, the “knockers” will also stop; but, let the miners go on at their work, suppose it is “boring,” the “knockers” will at the same time go on as brisk as can be in landing, “blasting.” or beating down the “loose,” and they are always heard a little distance from them before they come to the ore.
“These are odd assertions, but they are certainly facts, though we cannot, and do not pretend to account for them. We have now very good ore at “Llwyn Llwyd,” where the “knockers” were heard to work, but we have now yielded the place, and are no more heard. Let who will laugh, we have the greatest reason to rejoice, and thank the “knockers,” or rather God, who sends us these notices.”
The second letter is as follows:—
“I have no time to answer your objection against ‘knockers’; I have a large treatise collected on that head, and what Mr. Derham says is nothing to the purpose. If sounds of voices, whispers, blasts, working, or pumping, can be carried on a mile underground, they should always be heard in the same place, and under the same advantages, and not once in a month, a year, or two years. Just before the discovery of ore last week, three men together in our work at “Llwyn Llwyd” were ear-witnesses of “knockers,” pumping, driving a wheelbarrow, etc.; but there is no pump in the work, nor any mine within less than a mile of it, in which there are pumps constantly going. If they were these pumps that they heard, why were they never heard but that once in the space of a year? And why are they not now heard? But the pumps make so little noise that they cannot be heard in the other end of “Esgair y Mwyn” mine when they are at work. We have a dumb and deaf tailor in the neighbourhood who has a particular language of his own by signs, and by practice I can understand him and make him understand me pretty well, and I am sure I could make him learn to write, and be understood by letters very soon, for he can distinguish men already by the letters of their names. Now letters are marks to convey ideas, just after the same manner as the motion of fingers, hands, eyes, etc. If this man had really seen ore in the bottom of a sink of water in a mine and wanted to tell me how to come at it, he would take two sticks like a pump, and would make the motions of a pumper at the very sink where he knew the ore was, and would make the motions of driving a wheelbarrow. And what I should infer from thence would be that I ought to take out the water and sink or drive in the place, and wheel the stuff out. By parity of reasoning, the language of “knockers,” by imitating the sound of pumping, wheeling, etc., signifies that we should take out the water and drive there. This is the opinion of all old miners, who pretend to understand the language of the “knockers.” Our agent and manager, upon the strength of this notice, goes on and expect great things. You, and everybody that is not convinced of the being of “knockers,” will laugh at these things, for they sound like dreams; so does every dark science. Can you make any illiterate man believe that it is possible to know the distance of two places by looking at them? Human knowledge is but of small extent, its bounds are within our view, we see nothing beyond these; the great universal creation contains powers, etc., that we cannot so much as guess at. May there not exist beings, and vast powers infinitely smaller than the particles of air, to whom air is as hard a body as the diamond is to us? Why not? There is neither great nor small, but by comparison. Our “knockers” are some of these powers, the guardians of mines.
“You remember the story in Selden’s Table-Talk of Sir Robert Cotton and others disputing about Moses’s shoe. Lady Cotton came in and asked, ‘Gentlemen, are you sure it is a shoe?’ So the first thing is to convince mankind that there is a set of creatures, a degree or so finer than we are, to whom we have given the name of “knockers” from the sounds we hear in our mines. This is to be done by a collection of their actions well attested, and that is what I have begun to do, and then let everyone judge for himself.”
We do not hear of “Knockers” in Cardiganshire now; in Cornwall, however, it is said that they still haunt the mines, and sometimes, with a sound of knocking and singing, they guide a lucky miner to find good ore. The “Knockers” were, it was once thought, “the Souls of the Jews who crucified our Saviour.” At least it seems that that was the belief in Cornwall. Perhaps it would be of interest to add that there were Cornishmen among the miners of Cardiganshire when Mr. Lewis Morris wrote the two letters I have just given.”
From ‘Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales’ by J. Ceredig Davies (1911).
WITCHES, WIZARDS, PROPHECIES, DIVINATION, DREAMS.
The popular belief in witchcraft, is often alluded to by Shakespeare. In times gone by witches held dreaded sway over the affairs of men, perhaps more or less in almost every country; for they were suspected to have entered into a league with Satan, in order to obtain power to do evil, and it was thought that they possessed some uncanny knowledge which was used by them to injure people, especially those whom they hated. It was also believed that they could cause thunder and lightning, could travel on broomsticks through the air, and even transform themselves and others into animals, especially into hares. A good many other imaginary things were also placed to the credit of witches.
(p249)
“SIR DAFYDD LLWYD, YSPYTTY YSTWYTH.
About two hundred years ago there lived in the neighbourhood of Ysbytty Ystwyth, in Cardiganshire, a wizard and a medical man, known as Sir Dafydd Llwyd, who had been a clergyman before he was turned out by the Bishop for dealing in the Black Art. According to “A Relation of Apparitions,” by the Rev. Edmund Jones, it was thought that he had learnt the magic art privately at Oxford in the profane time of Charles II. Like other wizards Sir Dafydd also had a Magic Book, for the Rev. Edmund Jones tells us that on one occasion when he had “gone on a visit towards the Town of Rhaiadr Gwy, in Radnorshire, and being gone from one house to another, but having forgotten his Magic Book in the first house, sent his boy to fetch it, charging him not to open the book on the way; but the boy being very curious opened the book, and the evil Spirit immediately called for work; the boy, though surprised and in some perplexity, said, “Tafl gerrig o’r afon,—(throw stones out of the river) he did so; and after a while having thrown up many stones out of the river Wye, which ran that way, he again after the manner of confined Spirits, asking for something to do; the boy had his senses about him to bid it to throw the stones back into the river, and he did so. Sir David seeing the boy long in coming, doubted how it was; came back and chided him for opening the book, and commanded the familiar Spirit back into the book.””
From ‘Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales’ by J. Ceredig Davies (1911).
WITCHES, WIZARDS, PROPHECIES, DIVINATION, DREAMS.
(p250)
“SIR DAFYDD DEFEATING A RIVAL WIZARD.
Another story I heard at Ysbytty Ystwyth was that one Sunday morning when Sir Dafydd went to Church, he sent his boy to keep away the crows from the wheat field; but when he came home he found that the boy had collected all the crows into the barn. Sir Dafydd at once discovered that the boy had learnt the Black Art.”
From ‘Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales’ by J. Ceredig Davies (1911).
WITCHES, WIZARDS, PROPHECIES, DIVINATION, DREAMS.
(p250)
“SIR DAFYDD DEFEATING A RIVAL WIZARD.
There is a tradition in the neighbourhood that the body of Sir Dafydd lays buried under the wall of Yspytty Ystwyth Churchyard, and not inside in the Churchyard itself, and people still believe that this is a fact. The story goes that the wizard had sold himself to the devil. The agreement was that the arch-fiend was to have possession of Sir Dafydd if his corpse were taken over the side of the bed, or through a door, or if buried in a churchyard. In order to escape from becoming a prey to the Evil One, the wizard on his death-bed had begged his friends to take away his body by the foot, and not by the side of the bed, and through a hole in the wall of the house, and not through the door, and to bury him, not in the churchyard nor outside, but right under the churchyard wall. So that his Satanic majesty, who had been looking forward for the body of Sir Dafydd, was disappointed after all.”
From ‘Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales’ by J. Ceredig Davies (1911).
WITCHES, WIZARDS, PROPHECIES, DIVINATION, DREAMS.
(p251)
“WIZARDS RIDING DEMONS THROUGH THE AIR.
In the present day we hear a great deal about airships; but if we are to believe some of the old folk-stories, magicians travelled through the air in days long before anyone had ever dreamt of a balloon. In former times it was believed by the ignorant that a wizard with his magic book could, and did, summon a demon in the shape of a horse, and travelled on the back of the fiend through the air. It is said that Sir Dafydd Llwyd of Ysbytty Ystwyth, employed a demon for that purpose; and one night when he was riding home from Montgomeryshire on a demon in the shape of a horse, a boy who rode behind him on the same horse lost one of his garters on the journey. After this the boy went to search for his garter, and to his great surprise saw it on the very top of a tree near the church, which convinced him that the wizard and himself had been riding home through the air!”
From ‘Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales’ by J. Ceredig Davies (1911).