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Concise History of Llandeilo - Part 5
from Llandeilo
by Eirwen Jones, 1984
Travellers' Tales
Many distinguished people visited the town in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some recorded their impressions of Llandeilo and their observations are of value as historical sources.
17th Century
In 1684 Thomas Dineley accompanied the Duke of Beaufort through the Towy Valley. He wrote of the town but in some measure he confuses it with Llandovery.
From Brecknock to Golden Grove is 28 miles or thereabouts, whereof from Penypont to the market town of LLANDIVOUREY or LLANDILOAWRE in Carmarthenshire makes 14 miles more, where his Grace was treated at dinner. In which town and the avenue to it (from the top of the hill wee came down) for about an English mile, the roads and streets were strewn with rushes. Hence it is about eleven miles to Golden Grove, within a mile and a half of which in your approach to the left hand top of an hill are seen the RUINES of a CASTELL and seat of a Prince of Wales. In the church at LLANDEILOAWRE is seen a gravestone carrying the rimes following:
VNDER this thing
LYES John for the King
Who in TRVETH and Verement
Did Hate the Parliament
But for the KING
He is as TREW as a SUN DYALL
In the next century, Sir Thomas Gray Cullum visited Llandeilo. In 1775 he wrote:
The mud houses of the people of these parts are of the most wretched construction. The walls do not consist of mud and plaster but are entirely of earth, and that not of straw wrought up with it, but with sometimes a layer of stones.
Wesley's Diary
John Wesley noted in his diary, July 12, 1777:
We dined at Llandeilo. After dinner, we walked in Mr. Rees' park, one of the pleasantest I ever saw; it was as finely watered by the winding river, running through it and round the gently rising hills. Near one side of it, on the top of a high eminence is the old castle, a venerable pile, at least as old as William the Conqueror and majestic though in ruins
18th Century
Mrs. Morgan of Ely wrote of Llandeilo in 1791 in her Tour of Milford Haven.
The inn at Llandoverey is a bad one but the people are very civil. The road from hence hither (to Llandeilo) is good and very beautiful. I begin now to be somewhat familiarized with mountains.
I thought the town of Llandovery a miserable one but this of Llandeilo much worse. I never saw a place which had a more deplorable appearance. The streets, if so they may be called, are narrow and dirty and half-paved with stones, the sharp ends upwards.
The houses are built from a kind of stone; but it is of so crumbling nature that they appear to be falling into a decay.
The inhabitants are very decent in their manners and in their outward semblance; they do not seem fit tenants for such wretched dwellings.
19th Century
Twenty-eight years later Captain Jenkin Jones of the Royal Navy passed through the neighbourhood and recorded his impressions.
Sunday May 16 1819
Went into Lord Dynevor's grounds at Llandeilo with which I think I was better pleased than even with Sir J. Hamlyn's at Clovelly.
Nature has most lavishly spread about it her most diversified beauties and the owner has displayed great taste in the arrangement of the walks. The old castle is a most beautiful object on top of a hill decorated with the finest trees from oaks as old as the river itself to young birch, beech etc. of perhaps thirteen years' growth.
Thomas Jenkins' Diary
Thomas Jenkins, Llandeilo Fawr, Carmarthenshire died there on the 1st October 1871 aged 58 years. He kept a diary from the year 1826 to the close of his life. He was a great walker and his observations on life in Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire are of considerable historical value. Of particular interest are his annotations on people and events in Llandeilo.
[Eirwen Jones includes several entries from the diary of Thomas Jenkins. A larger selection can be found elsewhere in this website, so we have omitted her choice of entries.]
Coaching Days
Coaches and routes
Llandeilo, on the coach road from Brecon to West Wales and also to South Wales, drew many travellers in the 18th and early 19th century.
Before 1815 the two mainline coaches were:
- from London via Gloucester, Brecon and Llandeilo to Carmarthen.
- from London to Bristol, Swansea and Pontardulais to Carmarthen.
There were of course lesser routes. The main coaches were The Royal Mail and The Picton.
First-class travellers journeyed in some form of comfort within the coach; second-class travellers rode on top of the coach and were obliged to descend and walk up the hills. Third class travellers were poised in a basket contrivance at the back of the coach. They had to push the conveyance up the hills. Fares averaged six pence per mile.
The town of Llandeilo had many inns, providing accommodation for travellers and stabling for horses. At the Six Bells in Bridge Street, the renowned interlude writer, Twm o'r Nant resided. Dialogue plays were very popular in the 18th century.
Other inns in the town were the Boot and Shoe, the White Lion and the Red. The George Inn, later to become a Vicarage, had a wide straw-thatched roof. The Petty Sessions were held there and dances were held there on all fair nights.
The Bear Inn
The present day Cawdor Arms stands on the site of the old Bear Inn. The long room over the stables was a social centre. Election banquets were held there. "Strolling vagabonds" enacted plays. Famous actors performed. They included Mathews and Kean and the renowned Sarah Siddons from the Leg 0' Mutton, Brecon. "Mine host", Bostock of the Bear, was himself an outstanding character, likened to John Bull in speech and appearance.
It was in the Bear Inn that the Wesleyan cause was first started in Llandeilo. Between the years 1763 and 1765 John Wesley paid several visits to Carmarthenshire. He and his brother Charles made frequent preaching tours in Wales. Romance hastened Charles' footsteps. Later he married Miss Mary Gwynne of Garth, a member of the Glanbran family. In 1806 the efforts of the Wesleyans were blessed. On a plot of ground near the Bear Inn, they set up a chapel. As membership grew, they built a chapel in Latimer Road, near the site of a stone quarry. Stones from this quarry were then used to build fine houses in the immediate neighbourhood.
The Baptist cause in the town was, by tradition, started in an inn in Bridge Street, the Half Moon. The leaders of organised religion in those days saw nothing incongruous in preaching the gospel under the roof-tree of an inn.
Early methodism
The coach roads served as an artery of communication for leaders of Methodism. An Association of Calvinistic Methodism was held in Llandeilo in 1811. This led to the establishment of a new denomination. Eleven preachers were ordained in the presence of leading personalities, including Thomas Charles and David Charles and also William Williams, Pantycelyn.
The Inns
The inns contributed much to the commercial and civic life of the town. "Mine host" was very concerned about the comfort of the travellers. He took pride in providing good meals and comfortable beds. Good stabling was also a perquisite.
When the coach clattered into the inn yard, there was a stir and a clatter inside the inn as well as outside it. The dangers of the journey were forgotten. The weary traveller was welcomed into a comfortable room and - if it was winter - to a blazing fire.
The food in the dining room was good. Here was condensed the fat of the land, the best that the Towy Valley could yield. None of your dieting here - but steaming joints of meat, poultry, a brace of pheasants and a whole ham. Plum pudding followed and through out the meal, the traveller was expected to take second and even third helpings as expressions of goodwill to the host. Fruit from the inn garden came next - and the total bill? According to an old account book of 1891 it was one shilling and ninepence. A florin was handed to the charming dark-eyed maid and she was told to keep the change. The food left over in the dining room was taken to the vast kitchens at the back of the inn and kept warm in great ovens. To the back door of the inn would come later many of the inhabitants of the town to buy the surplus food cheaply. Peddlers and tramps would also come and also, perhaps, a gang of "navvies". These were employed in building a railway embankment. This was ironic for the coming of the railway was to seal the doom of the roadside inn.
The Rebecca riots
During the stirring days of the 1840s, when the Rebecca Riots enlivened West Wales, a troop of Queen Victoria's Light Dragoons was stationed at Llandeilo. They were billeted, in the main, in the Bear Inn, the George Inn and at The White Hart. For almost two years they brought glamour and colour to the district as they rode around on their white horses, dressed in scarlet uniforms and with plumed helmets. They brought excitement to the rural scene even if they failed to give efficient military protection.
The Drovers
The drovers made the inns their headquarters. Avoiding the coach roads, they travelled cross-country. Driving their great herds, they marked their routes, not by maps, but by conspicuous clumps of trees growing on heights such as that at the summit of Penlan Park , Grongar Hill and other landmarks in the Towy Valley.
Some kind of banking system, such as we know it today, became established in Wales in the 18th century. The bank notes displaying the Black Ox of David Jones' Bank of Llandeilo and of Llandovery circulated afar; Inns bearing the name of the Black Ox existed in each town.
The sign of the Black Ox was symbolic of the drovers. In the 18th century, the drovers were "the financial ships of the economic sea." They were foremost personalities in the annual fairs. They served as essential links between trading towns. Cattle were driven from West Wales to London, to the south-eastern counties and also to the English Midlands. There were appointed forges on the routes where the cattle were shod. These forges and the fields where the cattle rested were endowed with grandiose names, such as Glan Thames Thameside] and Llundain Fach [Little London] - names which have clung tenaciously to homesteads to the present day.
Early banking systems
Cattle-droving was responsible work. The cattle represented a considerable part of a farmer's investments. He entrusted them to the drover with but little apparent security. The cattle were allowed to graze and fatten for a few days after their long journey and before they were delivered. The drover had thus concomitant expenses and responsibilities. Trustworthiness was an essential characteristic of a good drover. A dishonest man could fabricate an account of a robbery or an accident on the highway and the farmer would be obliged to accept his tale.
Each drover was licensed annually by the state, according to an Act of Queen Elizabeth. The licence had to be applied for at the Great Sessions of the county in which the drover had resided for three years. To qualify for such a licence, he had to be a married man, above the age of thirty, and he had to be a householder.
The social value of the drovers was considerable. They had news to relate, new ideas to express, new fashions to describe. They had new songs to sing; many of the popular folk songs made their way into Wales by way of the drover's whistle and the song of the road.
Merchants saw in the drovers a convenient way of handing over their money to creditors in different places. A rough and ready system was evolved whereby the drover left at home the cash he received and paid the creditors out of the money he received for the cattle when he delivered them. In this way losses due to accidents and robberies were reduced. Drovers handling large sums of money did not bury their talents of gold but used them to bring forth increase. They established private banks; they invested in land in Llandeilo and in its neighbourhood; they built fine residences and contributed towards the growing civic life of the town.
The history of the banks in Carmarthenshire shows them to have been remarkably prosperous. Those of David Jones of Llandovery and of Morris of Carmarthen started as family enterprises. Descendants of the families established banks also at Lampeter and at Llandeilo. In 1909 Lloyds Bank bought the goodwill of these private banks and the privately-owned banks of West Wales terminated.
19th century - the gentry
The existence of good roads contributed in the late 19th century to make Llandeilo a social as well as an agricultural and social centre. Many a squire in the district kept a town house. Among them were Hill House, Prospect House, Bryn Amlwg and residential houses of substance in King Street, Upper Church Street and Dirleton Terrace. Like Bath and Cheltenham and Tunbridge Wells, Llandeilo had in the winter months its "little season". The squirearchy found a happy escape in the town, away from the drab isolation of life in the country. It would require the pen of Jane Austen and the pencil of a Hogarth to describe the social scene adequately in all its many nuances.
A high proportion of the squires were Englishmen who had married Welsh wives of good estate. The squirearchy formed a class apart from the Welsh nation. They lived in manor houses which were isolated. These had been developed from substantial farmhouses and improved, according to the taste of the time, with Victorian encrustations. Though alien in culture and in speech, the squires lived at peace with their neighbours and with their tenants. Many had had a formal training in the law and they devoted much time to the management of their estates. There existed between master and man a close, family bond which served the age in which it was forged and which compares favourably with subsequent systems which have been evolved.
