Llanishen - Gazetteers

Extract from A Topographical Dictionary of Wales (1833) by Samuel Lewis.

"LLANISHEN (LLAN-ISAN), a parish in the hundred of KIBBOR, county of GLAMORGAN, SOUTH WALES, on the road from Cardiff to Caerphilly, 3 1/2 miles (N.) from Cardiff, containing 393 inhabitants.

Llanishen House, now fallen to decay, was, for more than the last two centuries, the seat of the family of Lewis : it formerly belonged to the Vaughans, the heiress of which family was married to a younger son of the Lewises of the Vann, ancestors of the Earl of Plymouth. New House, the property of John Lewis, Esq., of the same family, is a handsome modern seat, pleasantly situated at the southern foot of a lofty ridge of hills running in a direction from east to west in this part of the county.

The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Llandaf, endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £ 800 royal bounty, and in the patronage of the Earl of Plymouth and C. K. Kemeys Tynte Esq., alternately. The church, dedicated to St. Isan, is a neat structure, in the English style of architecture, There is a place of worship for Wesleyan Methodists.

In 1728, Mary Lewis gave by deed a rent-charge of £23, for teaching and apprenticing poor children of this parish and of the parish of Lisvane. Edward Morgan, by will in 1669, assigned a rent-charge of £2. 12., to be distributed in bread among the poor ; and Thomas Lewis, Esq., in 1785, gave one of £4 to the paupers in the workhouse of this parish.

According to Leland, Richard William, otherwise Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex, who was beheaded by order of Henry VIII., was born at the mansion of New House ; but this circumstance is doubtful.

The water of a spring, called St. Dene's Well, is considered efficacious in the cure of scorbutic complaints.

The poor are supported by an average annual expenditure amounting to £ 291. 11." 

Llanishen - Lewis 1833 [Last Updated : 11 Oct 2002 - Gareth Hicks]