Extract from "Journal of the Ceredigion Antiquarian Society" by Ieuan Gwynedd Jones 1973
For most denominations in most places throughout Wales in modern times capital investment in religion has invariably involved deficit financing. Loans and borrowings, mortgages and an anxious pre-occupation with the flow of money have been the inevitable con-comitants of religious adherence. Debt, when kept within reasonable bounds, has been regarded generally not with distaste but accepted as eminently respectable, at once the indicator of relative success, the cement in the community, and the strongest argument for community survival. Whatever might be the motive to invest, and whatever forms that investment might take, as, for example the decision to build a church or chapel, to rebuild and enlarge an existing one, to add a schoolroom or vestry, install an organ, or beautify the fabric, the commitment once undertaken would be a continuing one, and thereafter come to constitute a primary element in the life of the community concerned. This is true whether the community were church or chapel, for the difference in organization between the two was not, as polemicists on both sides tended to argue, as between voluntarism on the one side and of national endowments supple-mented by legally enforceable systems of local taxation on the other, but of the relative degrees of voluntarism in both. This was increasingly so from the mid-century onwards. By then, the £1,500,000 voted by parliament for the building of new churches in populous places had been used up-Old St Michael's, Aberystwyth, had benefited from this to the tune of £1,289 in 1832 - and contempor-aneously, the traditional forms of local taxation for ecclesiastical.
A paper read before the Annual General Meeting, 27 April 1974 Mr. J.E.R. Carson, LL.B., in the chair I wish to express my sincerest thanks to Mr. W.A. Carter, Secretary to the Incorporated Church Building Society for making their records available to me, and for permission to reproduce the seating plan and the illustrations of the old and new church.
purposes the-Church Rate-was increasingly coming under attack.1 The established church, as a direct result, was becoming more 'voluntaryist' in its outlook, mare dependent than it had ever been before on the philanthropy of its members. Well might Bishop, Ollivant of Llandaff declare in 1854 that 'There is no Church on earth more dependent on the voluntary principle than the Church of England was'.2 The bishop, of course, was thinking of the situation primarily in his own diocese, where 'spiritual destitution' was at its sharpest and the need for church reconstruction greatest. There the situation was of recent growth, for in Llandaff, as in other populous dioceses, the appalling inadequacy of church provision was the product of migration into the mining and manufacturing districts, the over-whelming of old provision by the new potential demands. But there was also another side to the way in which churchmen regarded spiritual destitution and church extension, namely, a still dimly apprehended suspicion that the roots of the trouble lay deeper back in time and in regions untouched by industrial development and urban growth, that is to say, in the deep rural parishes, in the countryside. If the problem in the rapidly expanding towns was a lack of churches, in the countryside it was dilapidation that caused concern, ruined and ruinous churches, cynically-regarded advowsons, over-large parishes endowments diverted from religion, and weary and disillusioned pastors. How to deal with this complex situation posed enormous difficulties: how in fact it was done in one small rural parish is the purpose of this paper.
Llanrhystud's problem was relatively simple. It was not 'Spiritual destitution' in the sense of a lack of provision for religious worship. The four Calvinistic Methodist chapels, the one Baptist, and the parish church between them offered accommodation for nearly 1,400 people-this in a parish of only 1,516.3 To this total the church con-tributed 120, but there is no evidence that this was not considered to be sufficient, and long before the middle of the century the over-whelmingly Methodist character of the parish had been well established and come to be accepted. Nor was the fact that all the church room was appropriated, that is allocated to the exclusive use of named individuals or families leaving only a little free space under the tower for the use of children regarded as a grievance, Llanrhystud's problem was simply that the church building was in a ruinous condition, dilapidated and depressed. From time to time attempts at repairs has been made, the latest in 1839 when £12 has been spent in an attempt to repair the roof. It may be that the contemporary print of the old church (Plate I) exaggerates the air of romantic decay, but it certainly does suggest that the roof threatened to collapse at any moment, and that large-scale restoration might be necessary. In this Llanrhystud was typical of many parish churches in rural Wales, all crying out for the same remedy.4
The fact that there was no spiritual destitution as such in the parish made the problem not easier to solve but more difficult, for it meant that the parish could not make any claim on ecclesiastical resources centrally administered, such as those of the Church Building Commissioners. The parish was thrown back on its own resources, and the story of what then transpired must be read against a background of a parish strained to the uttermost to provide itself with what the Fifteenth Homily called 'a convenient place to resort to, and to come together, to praise and magnify God's holy name', like unto a house 'having all things in order, and all corners sweet and clean...well adorned, with places convenient to sit in... kept clean, comely, and sweet'. For Llanrhystud was a relatively poor parish, embarking on the largest, financially the most exacting, undertaking ever contemplated in its long history, at a time when there can have been scarcely any surplus available for common use. Consider for a moment the people or the parish, their numbers, occupations, and probable incomes. In 1851 when the decision to build was taken, they numbered 1,516, of whom 712 were men and 804 women. If we exclude children under twelve years as being too young to contribute substantially to the labour force-though this is a very conservative estimate of the working age, for the census enumerator described the ten year old son of Pentre after as a shepherd-the working population is immediately reduced by 480. Exclude again the aged, say, over 6o years (there were only 13 aged 8o years and over), and you exclude another 125. Deduct the 14 paupers aged 12 years and over, and the so-called 'poor women' and we are left with an effective working population of not more than 900 people- that is, men, women and children over twelve and under sixty years of age. The new church would have to be paid for from the surplus production of these.
What were they? What occupations did they follow? How did they support themselves and their children, the widows, orphans end the hopelessly poor? All, with the exception of the 12 mariners and some of the craftsmen employed in building and repairing ships, were either directly or indirectly farmers, rearing live-stock and tilling the land. The largest single occupation group were the farmers: 127 heads of families were thus described. In addition, there were 67 labourers (including agricultural labourers), a groom, a woodsman, a stone-setter, and a shepherd (the ten-year-old boy), all of these living in their own houses and most of them, though not all cultivating small plots of land. The labour force was made up of the families of the farmers themselves, supplemented by a total of 151 resident servants (74 male and 77 female). Scattered about the parish. Though mainly concentrated in the village, were the craftsmen-the black--smiths (9) the saddlers (2), the carpenters (9), masons (8), the glazier, and the painter. There were the trades using the products of the land, like the spinners (7) the wool-carders (3), the tucker, and the stock-inger, There were the makers of clothes, such as the tailors (5), the dressmakers (5), the shoemakers (13). The villages contained three shopkeepers, a butcher a hatter, and a tea-dealer, and in addition there were three inns. Finally, there were ministers of religion, the sexton, and the policeman.5
How well off were they? We can only surmise that they were on the whole pretty poor. Consider the facts from which we can infer an answer. The vast majority of the farmers were tenant farmers. There was only one estate, organized as such, in the parish, and that-Mabws-was only 2,021 acres. S. D. Davies of Moelifor owned about 870 acres, and the Hughes family of Alltlwyd 536 acres. To all intents and purposes there was only one large proprietor, and, judged by county standards, he was of a minor magnitude. What is important to consider is the way in which the 8,491 acres of cultivated and cultivable land was divided out among the farmers. The Tithe Survey of 1841 depicts a parish morcellated into a patchwork of every small farms and holdings. If we take the total area held by farmers of more than ten acres, we find that there were no less than 139 of them, giving an average farm size of about 54 acres. But the bulk of these-84 of them-were well below the average size, in fact, averaging about 29 acres. There were 35 farms of an average size of 68 acres, 14 of 120 acres, 5 of 180 acres, and there was only one farm of more than 250 acres. In addition, there were the smallholdings, more than 40 of them of an average size of 6 acres. These, as we have already observed, belonged to craftsmen, or were held by labourers, agricultural or otherwise, or attached as grazing to the inns. Many or them, no doubt, had originated as 'tai un-nos', particularly in the north west of the parish. The pattern of land-owning and of land-holding and usage was, in fact, very similar to that described by Dafydd Jenkins, and I suspect that it would not be difficult to distinguish the various categories of holdings according to his classification.6
Inevitably, for the bulk of the community, this was a subsistence economy. Money would play a relatively minor role in the complicated nexus of economic and social relationships in it. Yet money was a necessary part of the working of the parish. Rents had to be paid in cash, and so did the local taxes. The Poor Rate - the heaviest financial obligation of the parishioners - for the year 1850-51 amounted to £545.9s, raised by four rates or 6d in the pound.7 It is interesting to note that Llanrhystud Mefenydd-the coastal area, including the village and the best agricultural land-was assessed at 9d for one of these rates. The Poor Rate, of course, was administered centrally by the elected Guardians of the Aberystwyth Union, and a proportion of it would have been spent within the parish, for example, main-taining the 31 paupers. Money for other, purely parochial purposes, was raised annually as it had been from time immemorial. Highways not under the control of Turnpike Trusts required to be maintained, bridges kept in repair, the overseers' expenses covered, and above all, the church and church-yard kept in a state of repair. Repair or the church required its own special rate and it was customary for a special rate of 1d to be raised as and when required. Finally, there was the burden of tithes, which had been commuted for a rent-charge of £620 payable annually, the vicar's share of this being £170. Thus, local government of one kind and another made considerable financial demands on the parishioners, and one suspects that the extraordinary complicated system of land-holding -the morcellation of farms, the complex renting out of fields to neighbours by even minor farmers- was determined not only by farming needs, but also by the necessity actually to raise cash for these parochial purpose.
No comments:
Post a Comment