I am adding to this story as I find out more but this is how far I have gone to date.
If, as has been suggested, the wall around the church is indeed a henge then the land about Pennant has been occupied since the Late Neolithic Period some time between 3200 and 1600 B.C.
In 1988 Mr Dykes of Bronwydd found a perforated axe-hammer in his garden. The hammer has been tentatively dated to the Bronze Age (2200-800 BC).
This was when farming commenced in the area. It was mixed farming - cereals, cattle and sheep.
In Roman times Pennant lay in the lands of the Ordovices a ferocious tribe who were eventually subjugated, after much slaughter, by Julius Agricola between A.D, 78 and 84. Despite the defeat, there are no Roman remains in the area and the three forts some distance away at Pennal, Trawsgoed and Llanio seem to indicate that the Roman presence was never an easy one and were built to keep the native Celts in their own area.
It is after
the Romans left that Ceredigion first got its name. The story
goes that about 440 A.D. the Irish had invaded and settled in
North and West Wales. Cunedda and his sons, Ceredig among them,
came from Southern Scotland, which was then British, and drove
out the Irish. The land now called Ceredigion was given to Ceredig.
During the
10th century the coast line was often ravaged by marauding Vikings.
In 908 A.D. a battle was fought near Pennant when the Vikings
were soundly beaten but they returned to the coast again and again.
In 988 they plundered Llanbadarn, near Aberystwyth, as well as
St Dogmael's, Llancarfan and Llantwit Major and in 989 Maredudd
ab Owain raised a poll tax to bribe them to stay away.
Wales at this time was divided into Cantrefi.
These were administrative units of land made up of roughly a hundred
townships. By the 11th or 12th century these cantrefi were divided
into commotes and in Ceredigion these commotes were the only form
of local government.
At this time
Pennant lay in the commote of Anhuniog. This was the land bounded
by the four points of Llanrhystyd, Llyn Eiddwen, Llanllyr and
Henfynywr.
With the
death of Rhys ap Tewdwr in 1093 the Norman expansion into Cardigan
began. Three times the Normans took possession of Ceredigion first
between 1093 and 1102, then between 1110 and 1135 and next between
1158 and 1164. First it was the Montgomery's and later the Clares.
With them they brought Saxon and Flemish farmers and Norman knights
who divided the land into fees based on the commotes. This was
made easier according to the Brut y Tywysogion because the land
was empty and devastated; the people plundered and slaughtered.
During all this time the intruding Normans were being resisted
by members of the old Welsh royal family and their supporters
in Ceredigion - this was the background to the short history of
Dinierth Castle.
Sometime after 1164, when the Abbey at Strata Florida was founded,
an hospitium, or guest house, to the Abbey was built where Mynachdy now stands. The fishponds of
the hospitium can still be seen on the shore between Aberarth
and Aberaeron.
In 1216 the
commote of Anhuniog was granted to Rhys ap Gruffydd. During 1284
John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury, visited Wales to investigate
the religious institutions. From this visit came the division
of each diocese into parishes and this work was complete by 1300.
We can say, therefore, that the Parish of Llanbadarn Trefeglwys
came into being between theses two dates.
By March
1349 the Black Death had reached Carmarthen.
Not long after it must have come to Pennant. Carried by rats this
disease killed an estimated third of the population of Europe
before it ran its course.
In the middle
of August 1485 Henry Tudor, the future King Henry VII, landed
at Milford Haven and marched unopposed through west and mid Wales.
Local tradition has it that on his way to Bosworth Field he spent
a night at Wern Ddu. Sadly this is not true. He actually spent the night
at Wern Newydd, Llanarth and they have the bed to prove it.
Wales was
granted 26 Members of Parliament in 1536 but the were not summoned
to take their seats until 1542 thus missing the parliaments of
1536 and 1539.
The Abbey
of Strata Florida was dissolved in 1539 and it was then that Mynachdy passed into private hands. First
to Richard Devereux and then to the Steadmans
John Vaughan bought
the commote of Anhuniog from the trustees of the Earl of Essex
in 1630.
At this time a labourer
earned sixpence a day but many of them had a small holding of
2 to 5 acres.
It took 10 days to travel from West Wales to London in the 17th century.
By the 18th
century the Church of England had grown remote from the people.
The backlash came with the Methodist Revival which swept the country
in a religious fervour. To Pennant came, among others, Hywel Harris
who was evangelising in the Aeron valley in 1737. He preached
at Ty Llwyd and the Ship Inn. Later, in
1768 the Methodist chapel was built
across the road from the inn. At this time, of course, Methodism
was still a sect within the Church of England and it was not until
1811 that it broke away and became a denomination in its own right.
Barbara Cooper
has told me that her ancestors were Evan James and his wife Gwenllian
who were married in 1755. Gwenllian died in 1817 at Brysig Mawr
farm and was buried at Llanbadarn Trefeglwys. Of their numerous
children, their son William James married Elizabeth Jones at Llanbadarn
T. in 1798. William and Elizabeth James are both buried in the
churchyard at Pennant, together with their sons David and John.
Although the family was probably living at Brysig Mawr in 1823
(John James
died there in that year) the family of William James had moved
to the farm of Penralltwen in the Aeron valley by 1826. Penralltwen
was on the Llanerchaeron estate.
A labourer in 1831 earned a shilling a day.
We get a snapshot of the parish as it was in 1833 from Samuel Lewis's A Topographical Dictionary of Wales 1833 -
"LLANBADARN - TRÊVEGLWYS (LLAN - BADARN-TRÊV-EGLWYS), a parish in the lower division of the hundred of ILAR, county of CARDIGAN, SOUTH WALES, 12 miles (S. by W.) from Aberystwith, containing 982 inhabitants. This parish, which is situated on the river Arth, formerly constituted one of the prebends in the collegiate church of Llandewy-Brevi, and was rated in the king's books at £12. The living is a discharged vicarage, with that of Kilkennin annexed, in the archdeaconry of Cardigan, and diocese of St. David's, rated in the king's books at £6, endowed with one-third of the tithes, and with £1200 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Bishop of St. David's. The church is dedicated to St. Padarn, or Paternus. There is a place of worship for Calvinistic Methodists. The average annual expenditure for the maintenance of the poor is £ 170.2."
In 1834 there was a murder in the village. After drinking home brewed beer in Blaencwm. John Morris, aged 32 and another man quarrelled and Morris was killed on the Pennant - Llanon road near Brysig Mawr. He was buried in Llanbadarn Trefeglwys churchyard on the 30th September 1834. This story, however, is at varience with that printed in The Cambrian on the 11th October 1834 where he is reported to have been a victim of the old custom of the Ceffyl Pren.
In 1839 and again
between 1842 and 1843 there was a general reaction against tithes,
rates and toll gates, culminating in the Rebecca Riots. Many young
tenant farmers dressed as women and destroyed the toll gates.
(There was one outside Aberaeron and the house is still there.)
Eventually the rioters were put down by the military.
Their name was taken from Genesis xxiv, 60 " Let thy seed
possess the gate of those which hate them."
Isaac Jones, Frongoy told me that his grandfather, as a young
man, had been one of these rioters.
David J.W. Davies and his wife, of Cefngwrthafan Uchaf emigrated
to Pittsburg in the USA in 1841 and later moved to Gallia County
in Ohio.
From 1841 on, when the Census began, we can
get a clear picture of life in the village. For the most part
the inhabitants were engaged in the various occupations that provided
the necessities of life.
There was always at least one inn, The Ship, and at one time there
were three. In addition, there were the ale houses, which did
not need a license, where home brewed beer was sold. At the end
of the nineteenth century there were nine of these.
The inn and the village shop (and sometimes there was more than
one of each) are obvious but there were others that have now gone.
The chief of these were the dressmakers, tailors and their ancillary
trades such as weavers, lace makers, milliners and knitting women.
This was a time when, in country districts, ready made clothes
were seldom, if ever, bought from a shop. Clothes were made at
home or bought locally. It must also be remembered that the boats
plying from Aberarth and Llanon brought back patterns of the latest
fashions together with bolts of silk and satin. Then there was
the schoolmaster and, down by the Arth, the miller. There was
a baker and a blacksmith, a butcher and a carpenter, carriers,
coachmen, grocers, masons and others. This state of providing
services for the surrounding area lasted up to the 1940s.
Orphan children seemed to have been taken in by local families
either fostered or as servants. Whether these families were relations
it is not possible to say.
In June of 1845 there was a great cloudburst. The Arth rose and the torrent swept away the bridge near the Ship and swirling down destroyed the mill in Aberarth. A new bridge was completed in 1851 and still stands today.
The Welsh Gazettte brought the news to Pennant. This was taken over on the 10th October 1860 by the Merioneth Herald which first published in Bala. On the 9th of January 1869 it became the Cambrian News & Merioneth Standard. It is now the Aberystwyth & Cambrian News.
The school
was built in 1870 as a result of the Education Act of that year.
Prior to the Act of 1870 elementary education for the poorer classes
had been provided by the Anglican church or by the Nonconformists.
The Act provided basic skills for the children of the lower classes
and continued until the child was thirteen.
It was not primary education as we know it today. There was no
intention of the children going on to higher education.
In 1879 conditions
on the land were so bad that a group from Pennant joined forces
with others from Cross Inn ( a village about four miles further
inland ) and decided to try their luck in America. They went down
to the coastal town of Aberaeron and there built their own ship
and sailed it across the Atlantic.
Eventually they settled in Ohio. After the Second World War some
of their descendants returned on a visit and took back with them
the sign from the Ship Inn.
In 1918 the vote was given to women over the age of thirty and in 1928 this was reduced to twenty one.
In 1931 the Budget increased the price of petrol to 0ne Shilling and Four Pence Halfpenny ( 7p).
In 1937 water
was piped to seven points in the village. They were opposite Llain,
between Cartrefle and Mount Pleasant, opposite the entrance to
Tirdu, at Chapel House, across the road from Gwyfryn, across the
road from Tyheter and outside Penbronpren. When this had been
done the roads were tarred for the first time.
During the Second World War the village sheltered official evacuees from Liverpool and London besides others who were privately evacuated. These are listed here.
It was not until the nineteen fifties that water was piped into the houses.
Electricity came to the village in the early 1960s