Greetings,
I heard from Carys tonight and she had some interesting information
regarding Garn and the area. I shall persue this more as Garn is mentioned
in our families records as is Tyddyn in relationship to Fron Goch.
Carys says her husband id Dawi and is pronounced as I suspected: Da-We
(short A as in apple and long E as in see) It is David in Englist as is
Dafydd, also. (Nice to know I am correct for a change....take note of this
Roland! <G>)
To explain the following, Carys (Care - is) has build a new house nearly
across the street from Fron Goch. It is on the property where the Northern
half of the old Whiskey distillery was at one time. For those of you into
Irish history, around the Easter Rebeillion of 1916, several thousand
Irishmen (including Michael Collins who was the leader of this uprising for
Irish independence...he did win the territory now called the Republic of
Ireland) were in prison at the North and South distillery buildings. This
was a whiskey distrillery built by the ancestors of Mr. Price who current
owns Rhiwlas which was abandoned by the time it became a prison. It was
torn down shortly after the time it was a prison. AND...before the Irish,
the German prisoners were housed there..I would assume as a result of WWI.
When the six of us visited Mr. Price we saw a bottle of the whiskey and one
of the large labels from a keg or box...that was never explained.
Our new house is called Cysgod y Garn, which takes me to your first
e-mail.
Garn is a derelict farmhouse which we used some of the old stones to build
the new house from, so we wanted a name for our new house to relate to the
old Garn farmhouse, which we decided to name the house as Cysgod y Garn,
which translate to Shadow of the Garn. ( it sounds much better in welsh).
Dewi's father took over the tenancy of the Garn farm in 1952. Prior to
then, would you believe my father's family lived there, so I will
investigate more.
When Dewi some years ago was erecting the shed directly in front of the
house he found traces of some tannery boxes, which would have been used in
a fulling
mill. A fulling mill is a Pandy in welsh. So we take it that the
Pandy was here at Frongoch Farm, where we found evidence of the
tannery.
I recall seeing mention of a fulling mill in some fo the records I found
this reference in the Rhiwlas Estate papers at the NWL:
"...and lands in t. [twp] Garn, p. [parish] Llanfor, called Tyddyn y
Frongoch......a water corn mill called Melin y Frongoch and a fulling mill
called Pandy Vrongock, all in t's {sic: twp] Ucheldref and Llaethgwm or
elsewhere in p's [parish] Llanfor and Llandderfel..."
I had asked about the reference in old records to a place called Tyddyn y
Frongoch....whether it was the same as our Fron Goch.
Tyddyn means a small cottage in Welsh. They only small cottage near
to
Frongoch is the one known today as Tair'felin cottage, (Tair'felin
translates as The Three Mills), which is very near to the old grinding mill
which is about 300yds from the farm.