An article entitled ‘Upland
Place-Names in North-East Radnorshire: along the Montgomeryshire Fence’
concerning the place-names found along the border between Montgomeryshire and
Radnorshire has been published by the Radnorshire Society, in their annual
journal ‘The Transactions of the Radnorshire Society’.
 |
| Extract from the ‘Upland Place-Names in North-East Radnorshire: along the Montgomeryshire Fence’ |
The article is written by Aled
Williams and is the culmination of local and historical research he has
conducted in the area dominated by Cilfaesty, a 528m high hill recognised by hill
walkers as being a Dewey, Uchaf, Dodd, Submarilyn and Hump.
 |
| Cilfaesty and Bryn Coch |
The Radnorshire Society was
established in 1930 with the intention to document the archaeology and history
of the historic county of Radnorshire, which now forms a part of Powys. The Society has an archive and library and
organises excursions and public lectures, and as well as the annual journal,
the ‘Transactions’, an illustrated newsletter through the Field Section of the
Society is also published.
The Transactions are published in
a bound volume and incorporate academic research and archive material in what
is considered to be the county’s pre-eminent scholarly publication. This journal is held in high regard by the
scholarly community, as evidenced by volumes 1 - 74 (1931 -2004) having been
made freely available via ‘Welsh Journals Online’, a site hosted by the
National Library of Wales.
As a native of Porthmadog,
Aled’s research originally concentrated on his local area of Eryri, but this
soon expanded to the whole of Wales. During this research a select few areas
received intense research, both on a local level with farmers, landowners,
shepherds, gamekeepers, local historians and academics being contacted and on
an historical level with Ordnance Survey maps, tithe maps, enclosure maps,
estate maps and other historical documents all being analysed and catalogued.
Radnorshire holds special
interest to a person researching place-names as it is one of the areas that
forms the border country with England, and because of this many names have
either been anglicised or cymricised. This provides a Welsh speaker like Aled a
fascinating task of recording current pronunciations and deducing meanings. In
fact, Aled’s extensive work on the nearby 547m high Radnorshire mountain of
Beacon Hill was previously published by the Radnorshire Society in two parts
and is also recommended for those with an interest in upland place-names:
‘Upland Place-Names in North-East Radnorshire: Beacon Hill’, with ‘Part 1’
appearing in the 2015 Transactions and ‘Part 2’ in the 2016 Transactions.
The research is presented with
the name, grid reference, number of informants, documented sources and detailed
exoplanetary text, with each name and its relevant detail appearing in the same
systematic way, and forms a current day comprehensive catalogue of the upland
place-names of the area taking in Cilfaesty.
http://radnorshiresociety.org/transactions/
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