Welsh Legends and Trehilyn
Last updated: 30 October 2006
Trehilyn is a typical West Wales farm in the parish of Llanwnda near Strumble Head in North Pembrokeshire.
Its owner, the tv presenter, Griff Rhys Jones has been working with experts to restore the house. Here the makers of a series of programmes about the project tell us more about the area's landscape, farming, history and ecology.
Click here to see In Pictures: Welsh Legends & Trehilyn
Trehilyn: History
The house itself was built in around 1840 but the farmstead is much older. It comprises two farmsteads, Trehilyn and Trehilyn Fach. There may have been older dwellings on the site, but all traces of these have now disappeared.
Trehilyn's name has changed over the centuries. The oldest reference to it is in the Black Book of St Davids, which was written in 1326, where it is called Trefheylin (the township of Heilyn/ Heilyn's farm) This book exists in a sixteenth century transcript. (The Black Book of St Davids; J.W. Willis-Bund (ed) 1902; Cymmodorion Record Series 5; London: Hon Soc. Cymmodorion). By the sixteenth century the name had been shortened to Trefhelyn or Trehilyn.
For more information on the names of old houses and settlements in West Wales, go to
Pembrokeshire Records Office and Pembrokeshire County Library.
A land map of the parish of Llanwnda, dated 1843, is held in the National Library, together with the rent logs for the area. This shows us that in 1843 the total landholding at Trehilyn was 70 acres and that it was rented by Stephen Crunn. Mr Crunn's descendants farmed Trehilyn until the 1920s, and still live in the area today. Trehilyn continued to operate as a small farm until it was eventually sold in 2003.
Legend and Literature
HEILYN is the name of a character in the Mabinogion and historians think it is very likely that Treheilyn is associated with this character in some way. Perhaps he was the original owner of the land? Heilyn, Son of Gwyn, appears in the Second Branch of the Mabinogion; Branwen Daughter of Llyr, in a part of the story which is set in the historic cantref of Penfro (modern South Pembrokeshire).
The collection of stories known as the Mabinogion was recorded in a series of medieval manuscripts (The White Book of Rhydderch and The Red Book of Hergest contain complete versions). The very oldest fragments of the Mabinogion are two pages (National Library of Wales; Peniarth MS 6) dating from the second half of the thirteenth century; about fifty years earlier than the earliest recorded reference to Trehilyn. It is thought that the stories themselves may date from the eleventh century.
You can view the manuscripts of the The White Book of Rhydderch (Peniarth MSS 4 and 5) at the
National Library of Wales website.
The Red Book of Hergest is held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
The Mabinogion in print - in Welsh:
Pedeir Keinc Y Mabinogi (Ifor Williams, Caerdydd, 1961) and in English translation: The Mabinogi; Legend and Landscape of Wales ( trans. John K. Bollard; Gomer Press 2006): a new translation illustrated with photographs of the landscapes of the stories.
The Mabinogion (trans. Jeffrey Ganz; Penguin, 1976)
The Mabinogion (trans. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones; Everyman, revised edition 2000).
