From long ago

Very recently, I have gone from not knowing that I had any Welsh ancestry, to discovering a whole Welsh backdrop to my life. :blush:
I’ve managed to follow my Grandad’s line back to 1789, and found the farm that they lived and worked on, about 20 miles north of Lampeter. Last month we travelled to the area, and I found ‘my farm’! I spoke to the farmer and he gave me lots of information and leads to follow. The whole journey has been heartwarming, and exciting and sad too.
In any case, this is a photo from the Ceredigion Archives of ‘Haymaking at Glanrhos’ - ‘my farm’!
Whilst I think this is most likely the family that took over from my lot (who were moved to a smaller farm by 1895) I know that they would have got the hay in just like this.
The photo is not dated - anyone like to hazard a guess as to it’s age? I know little about farming fashion (apart from the fact that it probably moves slowly) or cart wheel history. And I know horses were used right up until WW1, so that doesn’t narrow it down much!
Any ideas or observations very welcome!
(and I just really wanted to show you all what I had discovered :slight_smile:)

Has anyone else discovered links to their past whilst they’ve been SSIWing?

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There’s a photograph in a museum in Ireland of people on a farm and it’s dated between 1880-1920…So I’m guessing it’s quite hard to date.

Great that you’ve found a photo from ‘your’ farm though :smile:

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Wow, that’s absolutely awesome! Maybe the “spirit” of your Welsh ancestors led you to SSiW…what a wonderful and mindblowing discovery! :fireworks: :dragon_face::relaxed::kissing_heart:

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Oh later than that! My grandad (on dad’s side) was old school, and wouldn’t buy a tractor (much to the annoyance of his more modern-minded son). He used horses on the farm and on a milk round, right up to the end of WW2 at least (although he got out of farming not long after the end of WW2 I believe). (This wasn’t in Wales, mind).

I’m guessing that photo is 19th century though.

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Ah yes - there’s no accounting for stubbornness mixed with a love of horses! I suffer from both! My only thought was that a lot of farmers had to give their horses up for the war effort and in crept the tractor. :tractor: :tractor: :tractor:

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What a superb discovery… :star2:

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to you and @mikeellwood A lot of horses were used during WW2 because fuel was rationed and preference went to the Services. Goods were delivered by horse and cart well into the 50s. I knew a lovely greengrocer who took his horse and cart round York in the mid50s. We left in 56, and I can’t remember if he had died/retired by then. Certainly horses were still used on farms. I had a friend in school who lived on a farm and was allergic to horses, cows and milk. Life was very hard for her, trapped in the house, i think!

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Fancy having to send your horses off in the first war, and then not being able to run your tractor in the second! I know that horsepower didn’t disappear completely for many years - I remember a film (from the 50’s) about Shires working near Newmarket, moving the train engines and carriages to-and-fro. A sight that was hard to believe. But I think the tide turned when people realised that you never have to muck out a vehicle.
Sometimes horses still have the odd farm job - we have used horses to herd cattle very successfully!

Heavy horses are still used in Forestry to drag tree trunks out through narrow gaps. They are much kinder on the ground than vehicle wheels ploughing into the soil!

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Not me but a friend (new Welsh speaker): She recently moved from NW England to Llangyfelach (North Swansea) and decided do the family tree thing. Strangely, it turned out that her ancestors were from the village that she has moved to.

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Has anyone else discovered links to their past whilst they’ve been SSIWing?

It was during but not linked to my SSiW studies that I discovered via family anecdotes, local archives (I know the Ceredigion archivist :slight_smile: ) and ancestry.co.uk my long Welsh lineage.

I turned up at one Tresaith bootcamp with incontrovertible (?) evidence that I am a 28th great grandson of Hywel Dda. I managed to persuade Angharad Lliar and Bueno to address me as “Tywysog Huw” although they did so with a healthy scepticism.

Actually I found that my ancestors from the mid 19th C onward were far more interesting because I knew and had spoken to people who knew and had spoken to them.

Beyond four or five generations the genetic contribution to my physical or behavioural makeup is so diluted as to be negligible, but it’s fun to think I might have a trace of Hywel Dda’s wisdom. :laughing:

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I’ve just learned about Hywel Dda in a BBC documentary on Wales yesterday…dio mio, had I discovered something epic like this, it would have swept me off my feet…I mean gasp…!!! He was the King who wrote this famous book of Welsh Law that was incredibly advanced and wise for his time, wasn’t he? I’m sure you have a trace of Hywel Dda’s wisdom and spirit :bulb::nerd::book::pencil2: :books:

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Then of course there were the Steptoes (rag-and-bone men) and their horse in the 1960s. I presume they were a bit of an anachronism, even at the time (at the time it started I mean - 1963?), although old man Steptoe would have been the typically stubborn sentimental horse-lover.

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When I was tiny the coal and the milk were delivered by horse-drawn vehicles. The milkman’s horse would move up to the next house while the milman was busy delivering and then wait there for him. Soon after I started school the milk came in an electric vehicle and then the coal came on a steam wagon, naturally.

Raymond

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Hi there, I’ve also been doing some research on my family history. I have managed to get back to 3 x great grandparents, about 1840 or even earlier in some cases. On my grandad’s side, my family were farmers in Brecon Beacons before many of them moved to the valleys to work on railways or in the mines. Its great to see a picture of what daily life might have looked like for them.

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Amazing! Did you know much about them before you began your research? The whole process led me all over the place. I’m really glad I started doing it! :grinning:

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Well we discovered SSiW while tracking down a link to our past, so the other way round!
https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/abernodwydd/
We went to St Fagins to see the house where my partners great-grandparents lived, I believe that they were the penultimate or final tenants of the place before it was dismantled and taken to the museum. We went to see Abernodwydd last year on probably the wettest day possible so pretty much had the whole day to ourselves, so one of the volunteers there let us dry ourselves by the fire and told us all about SSiW, the rest, as they say…!

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What a beautiful house! And very cool that it brought you to SSIW. :relaxed:
I’m going to have to go to St Fagans - I keep going to places where buildings used to be, but have been moved there. I will probably get deja vu on a massive scale :joy:

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I seem to recall rag and bone horses and also major breweries using drays in the 70s as they were more adaptable than motorised vehicles. There was talk of bringing them back for this reason.

A brewery in the Cotswolds seems to be still using them for local deliveries. It seems that pit ponies were used in Northumberland and S Wales almost into the 21st century. I’m fairly certain that my Wife’s grandfather looked after them in one colliery.

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I remember when the pit ponies were brought into the Horse of the Year Show - they always darkened the stadium and led them in with their little lamps glowing and I always worried about what it was like for them when the huge, invisible audience jumped up to cheer and clap them! I can’t date that later than 1960, but I dare say it still happened after I stopped going!
ps I just Googled - last two pit ponies retired in 1999! poor dabs! I early retired before that!

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