Place:Bodedern, Anglesey, Wales

Watchers
NameBodedern
Alt namesCaergeiliogsource: village in parish
Llanfihangel-yn-Nhywynsource: village in parish
Pen-llynsource: village in parish
Bodowyrsource: township in parish
Sybylldirsource: township in parish
Treiorwerthsource: township in parish
Trefangharadsource: township in parish
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish
Coordinates53.295°N 4.5°W
Located inAnglesey, Wales     ( - 1974)
Also located inGwynedd, Wales     (1974 - 1996)
Isle of Anglesey, Wales     (1996 - )
See alsoValley Rural, Anglesey, Walesrural district in which it was located 1894-1974
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog


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

Bodedern is a village and community in the west of Anglesey, Wales. At the 2001 UK census, it had a population of 1,074, decreasing slightly to 1,051 at the 2011 census.

Bodedern lies on the B5109 road, about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of its junction with the A4025 south of Llanfachreth. About 2 miles (3.2 km) to the south, beyond the A55 road lie the villages of Caergeiliog and Llanfihangel yn Nhowyn. Pen-llyn is located at the extreme north of the parish.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Bodedern.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Bodedern from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"BODEDERN, a village and a parish in the [registration] district and county of Anglesey. The village stands 3 miles ENE of Valley [railway] station, and 6 ½ E by S of Holyhead; and has a post office under Bangor. It takes its name from Edern or Edeyrn, a bard of the 7th century, who resided at it; and it is a seat of petty sessions, and has fairs on 13 March, 16 April, 5 May, 9 June, Whit-Tuesday, 16 Aug., 14 Sept., and 1 and 22 Oct.
"The parish comprises 4,235 acres. Real property: £4,183. Population: 1,084. Houses: 240. The property is divided among a few. Presaddfed is an old mansion, once the residence of Sir John Bulkeley. A well-preserved cromlech is near this mansion. The spinning of yarn is carried on in two mills. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Bangor. Value: £104. Patron: Jesus College, Oxford. The church is ancient, and very good; and contains tombs of the families of Presaddfed and Trejorweth. There are chapels for Independents, Baptists, Calvinistic Methodists, and Wesleyans. Charities, £19."

A Vision of Britain through Time also mentions its townships of Bodowyr, Sybylldir, Trefangharad and Treiorwerth and the chapelry of Llanllibio which became a parish.

Research Tips

  • A 1900 Ordnance Survey map of the historic county of Anglesey 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.
  • 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.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Bodedern. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.