Mallwyd

Contents

Dinas Mawddwy, Merionethshire, Wales in 1851
from the Census

 The population of this very small village in 1851 was 288 people in 65 households, 153 (53%) male and 135 (47%) female. The Census was taken on a Sunday night 30/31 March 1851.

There were only 4 visitors in the village, a Latter Day Saints Minister (perhaps he had been preaching that day?) a Farrier, and two local-born house servants both staying at 18 Broad Street, who were probably off duty visiting a friend. The Lodgers included the Minister and the Schoolmaster, a Painter & Glazier, a tin-man, a gardener, a weaver and two paupers boarded out aged 26 and 9. Otherwise everyone lived in family groups.

94% of the population were born in Merioneth or the neighbouring county of Montgomery. 175 of these (61% of the total population) were born in Mallwyd or Dinas Mawddwy. Only one person (a lead miner's wife from Derbyshire)) was born outside Wales. The four people whose place of birth was not given were the carrier and his family. The other people born further away were the schoolmaster (Caernarvonshire) the minister (Monmouthshire) a lead ore dresser and his family (Flintshire) and two more wives (Denbighshire and Anglesey) plus a visiting Latter Day Saints Minister (Carmarthenshire)

Weaving (hand looms) agriculture, lead mining and cloth manufacture were the only trades likely to bring money in to the village, and two merchants (earthenware and buttons) and a lead mine agent lived in Broad Street. A flannel manufacturer employed 7 workers, and a linsey weaver employed one other weaver (living in) One farmer (at Friddgilewn) with 310 acres employed 2 labourers who lived in (one his son) and three others. Two grocers ran farms of 11 acres with no regular labourers apart from their own families. An innkeeper (who farmed an unspecified number of acres) employed three workers. The smith employed his own teenage sons and one other boy. A joiner and one shoemaker both employed their own sons as apprentices, plus 1 other man each, and another shoemaker employed 1 man. One tailor employed a journeyman and an apprentice, the other just an apprentice (all of them their own sons) There were 3 inns. One Independent minister, the school master and the relieving officer and registrar made up the "professions."

The dependent sector (housewives, children, the elderly and infirm) amounted to 163 which was 57% of the population. House servants may have worked daily outside the village and brought wages home. With no workhouse, paupers received parish relief in their own homes, and two were boarded out with other villagers. The full list of occupations follows:

The school had 20 pupils (13 girls and 7 boys) aged between 4 and 15, with one, two or three children in each year group. The boys were aged 6,7 and 8 except for the oldest (a 14 year old tailor's son whose 16 year old brother was apprenticed to his father) who was presumably an academic lad. The oldest girls, two aged 15, two aged 13, probably helped to teach the younger children, and may have been aiming to become teachers. A further 77 children included 26 under-4s too young to be at school, 35 between 5 and 9 who almost certainly had families too poor to afford school, and 16 over-tens who may have worked within their own families, but were not classed as servants or apprentices.

Index

©Lady Judy Buckley 2002

[Page generated by Gareth Hicks 13 May 2004]

Find help, report problems, and contribute information.