Some people may think me a bit of a bastard. Well that may be true.

Tracing back along the maternal grandfather line to the village punished by the English for harbouring the fugitive Owain Glyndŵr I have come to the end of the electronic trail.

My great-great-great grandmother Catherine got knocked up as a teenager and was sent away into service {there’s shame on her mind } to a house just North of Harlech. Ten years later she was back home with my great-great-great-great grandmother Dorothy down as pauper and then washerwoman at Pen-y-bont. Catherine had three more illegitimate children over the years. Catherine’s son my great-great grandfather was initially down as a Hughes. With my great-great-great-great grandmother down as mother at age 47…

No doubt the likes of:

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John Hughes 1813-1878 Hen Gapel Nant Gwynant a Oerddwr uchaf

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Might not have approved of Catherine. I don’t think he is a direct bloodline relative but he looks dour and fire and brimstone.

Imagine a Welsh preacher’s accent…

“You shall burn in the fire pits of hell for your lustful and dire sinful transgressions!!!”

My great-great grandfather stayed with Dorothy until he got married. Suddenly in 1871 she was living in a more posh house and he had converted to Jones.

Later Catherine was found living as a widow, though she never married, with a John P Jones {head of family} and her fourth child. She is down as sister to John which may have eased the gossip in Ffestiniog.

I suspect that he was the knocker-upper and hence my great-great-great grandfather…

In 1827 Dorothy may have married Hugh at Llanfihangel y Pennant. She was already a widow in 1841.

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Should I wish to research further I need to visit this isolated church north of Dolbenmaen. The roads here are poor and single track.

The trail ends here. There is an impasse.

In 2007 I looked into taking over the lease of an outdoor centre then owned by Hillingdon Council in order to run an outdoor training centre and place of retreat. The lease was encumbered by various Lottery grant rules and was a nightmare. I suspect the rules have lasped.

It has since been bought and refurbished as Brynkir Coach House

Click here

Back then I met the land owner also a Jones in Beddgelert. He was clearly a big cheese. Jones’s family had sold a part of Snowdon to the National Trust. He was maybe a distant relative

Brynkir, known as Cwm Pennant is just down the valley from Llanfihangel y Pennant.

Maybe one day I’ll swing by the church and ask to look at the register of births, marriages and deaths… I can look at the graves. They were probably too poor to trouble the monumental mason

The trail ends here.

I have a working narrative that is self-consistent now.