Place:Llanfyrnach, Pembrokeshire, Wales

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Llanfyrnach is a village and former civil parish in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Since 1974 the parish is in the community of Crymych. The village of Crymych and the hamlets of Hermon, Glandwr and Pentre Galar, are in Llanfyrnach ecclesiastical parish. Llanfyrnach means the church of St Brynach.

Llanfyrnach village is in a remote upland area on the headwaters of the River Tâf, about 11 miles (18 km) from Cardigan. In 1872 the parish covered 6,328 acres (2,561 hectares).

The parish of Llanfyrnach was in the ancient Cantref of Cemais.

There is a small Norman motte close to the church. Much of the parish was unenclosed moorland until the start of the 19th century. Population doubled as numerous small farms were established following enclosure from the 16th century onwards.

Until the end of the 19th century there was an important lead mine on the north side of the village. Mining occurred on a small scale, perhaps from as early as the 16th century, for the sake of the low but significant concentration of silver in the ores. As a result of high demand for lead in the Victorian era, the mine was greatly extended in the 1840s, and had reached 520 metres below the surface by the time of its closure in 1890.

The Whitland & Taf Vale Railway reached the village in 1873, and the village became a transport depot for the surrounding hill country; lead and agricultural produce were shipped out, and heavy supplies, notably lime, were brought in. Although the railway closed in 1963, the village is still a transport hub with Mansel Davies, the road haulage company, based in the village.

The village remains small, with much of the workforce employed in transportation. The population of the parish was 542 (1801), 933 (1851), 954 (1901), 844 (1951) and 837 (1981).[2] The area remains largely Welsh-speaking; the proportion of Welsh speakers was 100% in 1891, 97% in 1931 and 82% in 1971.

Llanfyrnach was also the name of the local Rural District, an historic local government area abolished in 1934 which contained a number of other parishes besides the one after which it was named. (See the WeRelate page Llanfyrnach Rural District.)

Research Tips

• A 1900 Ordnance Survey map of the historic county of Pembrokeshire is available on the A Vision of Britain through Time website. This shows all the old parishes within their urban and rural districts. Large farms and estates are also marked. On the Haverfordwest Rural District page there is a sketchmap indicating the civil parishes of Haverfordwest Rural District as of 1935.
• Pembrokeshire Archives has a website with a list of their holdings, as well as historical notes on places in Pembrokeshire. Its address is Prendergast, Haverfordwest, SA61 2PE; Tel No: 01437 775456 or (+44)1437 775456 (out of UK), E-mail: record.office@pembrokeshire.gov.uk
• GENUKI has a page on each of the old counties of Wales and, under these counties, pages for each of the ecclesiastical parishes within the county. Information is gathered under a number of headings and the amount of information varies from parish to parish. Parish descriptions are based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and thus the emphasis is on ecclesiastical parishes. (Civil parishes were not yet established.) The submitter is very firm about his copyright. This should not stop anyone from reading the material.
• The GENUKI Pembrokeshire pages include, under Description and Travel close to the bottom of the page, a link "parish map" to a map website showing boundaries and settlements before 1850. On the linked page will be maps of several parishes located close to each other.
• GENUKI also provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area, but there is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date for every county.
• FreeBMD provides a link to a list of the civil registration districts for each Welsh county from 1837 to 1996. Civil registration districts changed with varying densities of population and improvements in communication. Most counties and unitary authorities now have only one district. The list helps with providing names for the registration districts listed in the FreeBMD index and also as a guide for where to look for census entries.
• The FamilySearch Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI and these have been prepared at a later date. The Wiki may look like Wikipedia but the information has been provided for family historians. There are tables of links between the parishes in the historic counties of Wales and their post-1996 counterparts. This is the only genealogical website found that provides this information universally; others are not as thorough.
• Some words in Welsh come up time and time again and you may want to know what they mean or how to pronounce them. For example,
  "Eglwys" is a church and the prefix "Llan" is a parish.
  "w" and "y" are used as vowels in Welsh.
  "Ll" is pronounced either "cl" or "hl" or somewhere in between. "dd" sounds like "th".
  The single letter "Y" is "the" and "Yn" means "in".
  "uwch" means "above"; "isod" is "below" or "under";
  "gwch" is "great", "ychydig" is "little";
  "cwm" is a "valley".

In both Welsh and English all these words are commonly used in place names in the UK. Place names are often hyphenated, or two words are combined into one. Entering your problem phrase into Google Search, including the term "meaning in Welsh", will lead you to Google's quick translation guide. I'm no authority; these are just things I have picked up while building up this gazetteer for WeRelate.