Old Llyfnant Valley Farming Families
Including the Jones Glandwr and Davies Caeadda Families
A foundational genealogical and local-history reconstruction of the families of the Llyfnant Valley.
This large study brings together the Jones family of Glandwr, the Davies family of Caeadda and many connected farming families. Its purpose is documentary preservation: to reconstruct relationships, farms, movements and family networks across a rural Welsh landscape whose history is often scattered through records rather than preserved in narrative histories.
Why I wrote this book
This book belongs to the earlier, genealogical phase of my research. I was concerned first with preservation: identifying the people who had lived and farmed in the Llyfnant Valley, establishing how families were connected, and bringing together evidence that was otherwise dispersed across census returns, certificates, parish records, newspapers and family material.
The book was dedicated to the memory of my nain, Sarah “Sally” Gwendolen Jane Davies, and it grew from a personal concern that the histories of rural families could disappear very quickly once the generations who remembered them were gone. The scale of the resulting volume reflects that original purpose. It is intended as a repository as much as a narrative.
Where the research began
The research developed from family-history work begun in the late 1990s and expanded through the 2000s and 2010s. The Llyfnant Valley became a way of moving beyond a single surname or household and reconstructing a network of farms, marriages, occupations and relationships across generations.
Sources and method
The book relies heavily on census returns, civil registration, parish and chapel records, wills, newspapers, directories, family photographs and genealogical comparison. Its method is accumulative: each individual record is modest, but when the records are connected they reveal the structure of a community and the persistence of family relationships across the landscape.
How it fits into my wider work
I now regard this volume as a foundational research work rather than one of my mature social histories. That distinction is important. The detailed reconstruction preserved here later made possible books such as William Jones of Glandwr Hall and Voices from the Uplands, in which I returned to the same documentary world with broader questions about authority, class, faith, community and social change.
Its value therefore lies partly in the information it contains and partly in showing the development of my own historical method: from asking who these people were to asking what their lives reveal about the society in which they lived.
Publication details
- Author: Antony David Davies
- Research period: developed from family-history work begun in the late 1990s
- Amazon edition: 2016
- Formats: Kindle and paperback
See also William Jones of Glandwr Hall, Voices from the Uplands and Family History & Genealogy.