Place:Lledrod Isaf, Cardiganshire, Wales

Watchers
NameLledrod Isaf
Alt namesLledrodsource: from redirect
Lower Lledrodsource: Family History Library Catalog
TypeTownship, Civil parish
Coordinates52.315°N 3.995°W
Located inCardiganshire, Wales     ( - 1974)
Also located inDyfed, Wales     (1974 - 1996)
Ceredigion, Wales     (1996 - )
See alsoTregaron Rural, Cardiganshire, Walesrural district 1894-1974
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Family History Library Catalog


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

"LLANFIHANGEL-LLEDROD, or LLANFIHANGELLLETHYR-TROED, a parish in Tregaron [registration] district, Cardigan[shire]; on the river Ystwith, near a railway which was in course of formation in 1866 from the Central Wales line to Aberystwyth, and 7 miles NNW of Tregaron. It contains a village of its own name, and is divided into the townships of "Lower Lledrod" and "Upper Lledrod"; and its Post town is Aberystwyth. Acres: 8,692. Real property: £3,486. Population: 1,125. Houses: 239. The property is subdivided. The manor belongs to the Crown. Ffos-yBleddeiad was a seat of the Lloyds, and is now a farmhouse. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of St. David's. Value: £112. Patron: the Bishop of St. David's. The church contains a monument to the poet Evan Evans, author of "Specimens of the Welsh Bards; and was recently in disrepair."

Gazetteers describe Lledrod Isaf and Lledrod Uchaf together. They are also known as Lower Lledrod and Upper Lledrod respectively. Lledrod Isaf is to the west or seaward of Lledrod Uchaf. The two townships were originally parts of the ancient parish of Lledrod which, for convenience, has been redirected here.

Llanfihangel is a common prefix to the names of many Welsh settlements. It indicates that the church in the parish is dedicated to St. Michael. In many cases, such as here, it has been dropped from the name used today.

Research Tips

  • A 1900 Ordnance Survey map of the historic county of Cardiganshire 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.
  • Ceredigion Archives has a website with a list of their holdings, as well as historical notes on places in Cardiganshire.
  • 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.