"The village of Bow Street has grown out of three original settlements namely Nantafallen, Penrhiw and Penygarn. Rhydypennau can also be added, as a smaller scattered settlement on the northern end of the village.
There is no recorded evidence that gives a firm answer as to why these settlements were later called Bow Street. Local folklore has it that a local court was held at the Black Lion (called the Welsh Black today) public house, and was nicknamed by the local people as 'Bow Street' after the law court in London. It is interesting to note that a few miles south of Aberystwyth there is a hamlet called Chancery, and on the Lampeter to Aberaeron road is Temple Bar.
A group of houses at the bottom end of the village was locally known as Cock 'n Hen Street, and an alleyway to another group (now demolished) was called Thread and Needle. When the railway was opened alongside the settlements, the developers must have jumped to the conclusion that the whole area was known as 'Bow Street' and therefore named the station thus. From then on the name grew as did the village.
The land on which these settlements were situated was granted by charter in 1284 by Edward the first too Roger Mortimer after the conquest of Prince Llewelyn in 1282.
The road we know today as the A487 that runs through the village, was even then an important merchant track and was marked by fords and mills whose names have survived over the centuries.
The charter of 1284 refers to Redhyr, which is known as Rhydhir today, Redecastel-Rhydycastell-is near the Bryncastell housing estate. Redepenne, is of course, Rhydypennau. And the Gogerthan brook was to name the later Plas Gogerddan.
By 1542 the lands named in the charter were in the hands of Richard Pryse of the Gogerddan hence the beginning of the Pryse dynasty that was to influence the area for several centuries.
But by the early nineteenth century the land that straggles Bow Street was in the hands of the Vaughans of Trawscoed. How it happened is a mystery, although tradition has it that the Pryses lost in a heavy gamble to the Vaughans at a London club.
Most of the households payed ground rent to Trawscoed, which by now had named the area as Caergywydd Estate. Around 1880, it was sold to David James - my great grandfather. Between 1940 and 1960 the houses all became freeholds.
There are traces of history in place names that take us back well before the conquest of Llywelyn. Prince Maelgwyn, according to tradition was killed in a skirmish with the Irish invaders on land near to where the railway runs today between Maes Ceiro and Maesafallen housing estates.
A cairn of stones used to mark the place where he fell on land near where a group of houses known today as Cae Rhos stand today. The cairn was demolished early in the nineteenth century when the stones were removed for building purposes near the road, hence the vicinity if named Penygarn, meaning headland of the cairn.
Around the same time a number of 'unburnt bones' were removed when the turnpike road was relined at Penygarn and taken to Llanbadarn Church to be buried.
In time, a nonconformist chapel was built in the vicinity and named Capel y Garn. Maelgwyn's name is commemorated in the area in house names and there is a field Cae Maelgwyn. Two farms situated on the western side of the valley are known as Ruel Isaf and Ruel Uchaf. Research by historians suggests that the names have derived from Rhiw Fael (gwn) - Maelgwyn's hill,
And even before Maelgwyn's time according to an old manuscript, we are told of a Christian leader called Agam being slain by heathen warriors near the old manor house Brysgaga and that a cross was erected in his memory.
Today, the road leading towards the spot is called Cross Street, although there is no knowledge of what happened to the cross. Possibly the syllables 'aga' in Brysaga was originally 'agam' meaning the woodland of Agam. There is also a nearby well that used to supply water to the local cottages
During the nineteenth and early twentieth century the original settlements consisted of mud walled cottages intersected by the odd workshop. Carpenters, especially wheelwrights were in demand, there was one blacksmith in the area, a cobbler, a saddlers shop, tailor and later when the station opned, a srone cutter set up business in the yard.
And there was plenty of work for carriers, such as local coal merchants and timber hauliers. Small shops cropped up selling essentials for the growing community.
The cottages were occupied by lead miners who walked two miles daily to the mines in the vicinity of Bontgoch/Elerch and even further to Cwmsymlog. Many people, both men and women, were employed at the Gogerddan estate, a major employer at the time.
The Pryses were pioneers on the land from the days of the agriculture revolution. After their time the estate became part of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station and is now managed by IGER (Institute of Grassland and Enviornmental Research).
With the coming of the railway to west Wales there came more demand for larger houses especially at places on the seafront as in Borth and Aberystwyth.
It was then that a local man from the nearby hamlet of Dole established a building firm, T. Jones and Sons and many young people form the area were apprenticed to building trades for the next hundred years or so with the family business.
These were the builders who built most of the larger houses at Borth and Bow Street that we see today. They closed down in the early sixties, and it was then that a former apprentice of Dole opened his own business and in 1966 began building large housing estates in the village. H. Davies and Son developed Maesceiro and part of Maesafallen and a few smaller settlements in the area.
Althought there were a few council houses in the village the first phase of a council estate at Tregerddan was not opened until the early fifties. Today, in 2007, it is a matter of infilling gaps on tracts of land in the village with houses."
Article by Vernon Jones
Read about Vernon's memories of Bow Street...
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Sarah Jane Hughes, Bloomington, IN USA
Thanks for including my short piece on my father's mother and her nieces, Gwen Jones and Elinor Pepper Jones. On his father's side, the Hughes lived in the area, inclduing Bontgoch, Talybont, etc. and my grandfather Hughes' niece, Angharad Hughes Davies and her husband Walter Davies, helped Grandpa Tom's sister Ann-Jane Hughes Griffths (d. 1991 in Machynlleth at 101 years) compile an extensive family history. I have Walter and Angharad's address for persons interested in area geneology. Grandpa Tom was apprenticed to the T. Jones and Sons building firm before he left for Oregon bef! ore WWI. There he met his future father in law, Morgan Jones, and his daughters Margaret who stayed in Wales and Ellen, who came to the US to marry him in 1919.Thanks. It is wonderful to connect.
Mon Oct 12 09:15:32 2009
Sarah Jane Hughes
Our paternal grandmother, Ellen Jones Hughes (b. circa 1888) in Bow Street, emigrated to the US after WWI to marry our grandfather Thomas James Hughes, from a neighboring town who knew her brother in law, who was the father of three, one son and two distinguished daughters. The son died in a motor cycle accident early. Gwen Jones went on to be the head of a girls' college in Cardiff. Elinor Jones Pepper taught at Manchester Univ. until her retirement and then came home to a Jones' family homestead in Bow Street. Elinor may have died in 2008 because we last heard from her in December 2007.Much loved in the area was our grandmother Ellen Jones Hughes (called Nellie). A graduate of the Univ. of Wales, we believe she also had a M. Phil. from Oxford in Music or Music Education in the pre-WWI period. A woman of many talents, like our beloved Elinor and Gwen, Grandmother Ellen died in 1947 in California. Her devoted husband Thomas Jame Hughes never really got over her death.Our father, Raymond Thomas Hughes, b. 1920 in Wenatchee, WA., lived until May 6, 2002, and gave enormous pleasure to his family and friends over his long life. Raymond and Sarah Jane visited Wales in 1977. Ann Elizabeth visited in 1976. Sarah Jane has visited on other occasions since then.If any relatives of Elinor JOnes Pepper or Wm. Martyn Pepper, read this, please post your contact information on this site.
Mon Aug 24 09:23:26 2009
Sally from Bournemouth
My mother and her siblings were born in Pengarn, and my grandparents and uncle are buried there, I have visited the cemetary once and would love to look through the chapel records, the family moved to Brynethin from Pengarn
Fri Jul 17 09:38:55 2009
Martin Robson Riley, Pen-y-garn
As someone who is researching the history of Bow Street and Pen-y-garn I thought you might be interested to know that the earliest attestation of the name Bow Street yet found comes from the parish registers of Llanbadarn Fawr, and is a baptism entry dated 9 February 1777 for a ‘Wm son of Jenkin & Ann Thomas, Bow Street’. In addition, ‘Bowstreet’ appears on Cary’s 1794 map of Cardiganshire, as well as on a number of other early nineteenth-century maps. All of these references seem to pre-date the earliest mention of a tavern in Bow Street, and are certainly earlier than the present building that is now the Welsh Black, part of which appears to have been built between 1823 and 1836. This means that not only are the stories about a magistrate’s court held in the pub and its giving rise to the name unlikely to be accurate, but also show that the name was firmly established long before the coming of the railway in 1864. During the first half of the nineteenth-century more and more houses appear to have been built along the main road, now the A487, north of the original settlement of Bow Street, which was undoubtedly centred on the junction with the old road to Llangorwen and Clarach.
Thu Apr 24 11:20:07 2008
Martin Robson Riley, Pen-y-garn
The series of cottages that came to be known as Nantyfallen and Penrhiw were largely built in the 1830s on land that was actually in the neighbouring parish of Llanfihangel Genau’r-Glyn, as is witnessed by an estate map of 1834. But even then these appear to have been seen as very much an extension to Bow Street; given the way they are recorded as being part of ‘Bowstreet Village’ in the 1841 census. Pen-y-garn, however, did develop as a separate village, centred on the Methodist chapel of Capel y Garn, with much of it noted under ‘Pengarn Village’ in the census of 1841.
Thu Apr 24 11:19:59 2008
Martin Robson Riley, Pen y garn
...Indeed Pen-y-garn remained distinct from Bow Street well into the twentieth-century; as may be testified in the writings of Tom Macdonald when he talks of his childhood growing up in the area during the years before the Great War, and who speaks of the ‘village called Penygarn’ and ‘the next village of Bow Street’. Only with the building of a number of large houses along the road between Cross Street and Pen-y-garn did the distinction between the two villages begin to diminish, although even when Eddie Jones wrote his articles on the local history of the area for the Tincer during the early 1990s, he was careful to talk of Edwin Jones of Garn House producing electricity for the residents of both ‘penygarn’ and ‘pentref Bow Street’ back in the 1920s.
Thu Apr 24 11:19:50 2008
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