Tag: books
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How an Injury Changed Me
20 July 2025 will remain a date I never forget. It was a Sunday, and I bent to lift a box from beneath a shelf, incorrectly assuming that it was light. It was not. In that moment I sustained a back injury which was diagnosed as a slipped disc. The sensation has stayed with me…
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David Davies, 1st Baron Davies of Llandinam (1880–1944)
The Inheritance of Duty and the Pursuit of Peace Few figures in modern Welsh public life better illustrate the moral tension between inherited wealth and public obligation than David Davies, 1st Baron Davies of Llandinam. Born into one of the most powerful industrial families in Wales, he belonged to a generation that inherited the material…
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Arthur Charles Humphreys-Owen (1836–1905): A Liberal Landowner in a Changing Wales
In the political and civic history of Montgomeryshire during the nineteenth century, Arthur Charles Humphreys-Owen stands as a representative figure of a transitional generation. Born into the professional middle ranks of respectable society, but elevated through inheritance into the county gentry, Humphreys-Owen embodied the gradual adaptation of the landed class to the expanding civic and…
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Ann Griffiths (1776–1805): The Mystic Voice of Welsh Methodism
Within the religious and cultural history of Wales, few figures possess the quiet yet enduring authority of Ann Griffiths, the celebrated hymn writer of Montgomeryshire. Though her life was tragically short, ending at the age of only twenty-nine, her influence on Welsh Nonconformist spirituality has been profound and lasting. In an age when women seldom…
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Robert Owen (1771-1858) of Newtown, Montgomeryshire
Industry, Community, and the Moral Reconstruction of Society Few individuals produced by rural Wales exercised an influence so disproportionate to their origins as Robert Owen (1771–1858) of Newtown. Born in a modest Montgomeryshire market town on the edge of upland Wales, Owen became one of the most significant social thinkers of the Industrial Revolution, a…
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Owen Owen (1847-1910) of Machynlleth
Retail, Respectability, and the Democratization of the High Street There is a recognisable Montgomeryshire pattern in the nineteenth century. Men formed in small, chapel-centred communities along the Dyfi valley stepped into the expanding commercial world of Britain and quietly helped to reshape it. Coal and rail have long dominated our understanding of Welsh industrial influence,…
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David Davies (1818-1890) of Llandinam
Industry, Faith, Infrastructure, and the Making of Modern Wales There are certain nineteenth-century Welshmen whose lives do more than illustrate individual success. They reveal the structural transformation of a nation. David Davies of Llandinam belongs firmly within that category. Born in rural Montgomeryshire in 1818 and dying in 1890, Davies rose from sawyer and small…
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Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones (1834–1920)
The Welsh Entrepreneur Who Engineered Distance from Newtown In the standard story of modern retail, innovation is usually associated with cities. Manchester industrialised production, London refined display, and Liverpool mastered distribution. Yet one of the most significant changes in consumer life began not in a metropolis, but in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. From this small mid Wales…
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When an English City Drowned a Welsh Village: Llanwyddyn and the Making of Lake Vyrnwy
In the summer of 2018, after weeks of sustained heat, the waters of Lake Vyrnwy receded to levels rarely seen in recent decades (source 1). Along the exposed margins of the reservoir, fragments of masonry and faint outlines of foundations emerged from the silt, traces of lanes and walls briefly visible once more (source 1).…
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Voices from the Uplands, why I wrote it, and why it matters now
Voices from the Uplands: The Davies Family and the Soul of Rural Wales is, in the simplest sense, a book about my own ancestors, the Davies family of Caeadda, Llanwrin. But I did not write it to produce another neatly ordered pedigree, nor to add one more family tree to the growing pile of genealogical summaries…
Antony David Davies FRSA FRAS AFRHistS FIoL MCMI 