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Radyr - Gazetteers

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

"RADYR (RHAIADR), a parish in the hundred of KIBBOR, county of GLAMORGAN, SOUTH WALES, 3 1/2 miles (N. W. by W.) from Cardiff, containing 227 inhabitants.

This parish, of which the name, signifying a cataract, is probably derived from the rushing waters of the river Taf, on which it is situated, and by which it is bounded on the north-east, was formerly comprehended within the hundred of Miskin, from which it has been recently separated. It comprises about eleven hundred acres of arable and pasture land, which is enclosed and in a good state of cultivation ; the surface is in some parts elevated and in others flat, but no where subject to inundation ; the soil is a strong brown earth, favourable to the production of good crops of grain of all kinds, potatoes, and hay. The substratum is partly a hard brown stone, and partly limestone of very good quality.

Radyr Court, formerly the seat of the family of Matthew, ancestors of the late Lord Llandaf, has been partly taken down, and the remainder has been modernized, and converted into a farm-house. The turnpike road leading from Cardiff to Llantrissent passes a little to the south of the parish ; and the tram-road from the Pentyrch works to the tin-mills at Melin Grufydd passes through it.

The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Llandaf, endowed with £60 per annum, private benefaction, and £200 royal bounty, and in the patronage of the Earl of Plymouth, who is impropriator of the great tithes : there is no glebe land attached to the living. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, is a neat plain edifice, with a curious turret at the west end. There is a place of Worship for Calvinistic Methodists.

A Sunday school for the gratuitous instruction of poor children is supported by subscription.

In this parish is a spring of very cold water, called Y Pistyll Goleu, " the bright water-spout," which issues from the side of a hill, under a considerable depth of earth over a limestone rock : it has by some writers been called a mineral spring, but it is not known to possess any other properties than that of its extreme coldness, which renders it efficacious in curing sprains and weakness of the sinews.

The average annual expenditure for the support of the poor is £195. 7."

Radyr - Lewis 1833 [Last Updated : 17 Oct 2002 - Gareth Hicks]