"The project is being carried out in conjunction with The National Archives and aims to examine and catalogue the vast collection of documents held at Kew relating to the Llanfyllin Poor Law Union.

The Union once had responsibility for the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the aged and the infirm over a wide area of Montgomeryshire and operated the Workhouse at Llanfyllin, known today as Y Dolydd.

For almost the whole of the Victorian period correspondence of all kinds was bound into heavy volumes and filed away: pathetic letters from paupers and their families; reports on the Workhouse School or on medical treatment for the poor; complaints about tramps and vagrants; statistics about inmates or people receiving care in the community.

Most of this has never been looked at, and it represents a rich, untapped source of evidence on the lives of ordinary people in Mid-Wales.

The Awards for All grant will be used to buy computer equipment, especially large screen monitors and suitable software, and to set up a digital link with The National Archives who have already begun making digitised copies of the first three volumes.

The job of cataloguing will be carried out by a team of volunteers, all members of the History Group of the Llanfyllin Dolydd Building Preservation Trust, who will soon be travelling down to Kew for training in the techniques involved.

The catalogue will be made available on line. This is the first scheme of its kind in Wales and there is only one other in England.

However, it could become a pilot for a national project: recognising the importance of its Poor Law collections the National Archives are seeking funding to involve volunteers much more widely in opening them up for study.

The Dolydd History Group's Archivist, Martin Davies, has already completed the digital copying of 31 volumes of the Minutes of Llanfyllin's Board of Guardians, held in Powys Archives, and these with the documents from Kew will form a unique archive for students and people interested in social or family history.

It will be possible to create displays and exhibitions, as well as learning materials for schools.

For the next few years the work will be carried out in premises kindly made available by two Trustees of the Building Preservation Trust, Roger and Shirley Bowles. But later the Trust plans to house the archive in the former Llanfyllin Workhouse, itself a major monument of the Victorian Age and now awaiting restoration."

Article written by John Hainsworth.