Elizabeth Young

Sometimes you come across someone so unusual that you can hardly believe it’s true. For example, the American Clarence Birdseye, the man who invented the frozen Fish Finger (yes, it’s true!)

Here in Whitchurch, we have someone even more enigmatic, a lady called Elizabeth Young. So, who was she?

We know that she was a landowner in the early 19th century, because she’s listed on the Tithe Map in 1841. But there’s no record of her on any of the local census returns; so, who was she and where did she live? Does anyone know?

This lady owned nearly 70 acres of land in Whitchurch, which doesn’t sound a lot, but it is the land itself which makes her surprising

She owned and tenanted out a small cottage and garden in Birchgrove (then in Whitchurch Parish) to Edmund Harman, which in itself is not unusual. However, she is listed as owning St Mary’s Church and Churchyard (the old one in Old Church Road). How can that be? St Mary’s Church was still being used then, and would be for the next 60 years!

Even more surprising, she owned the land on which Ararat Chapel would be built just a few years later. And she also owned land at Penllan in Melingriffith, where the early Methodists in Whitchurch would gather to worship

If that wasn’t enough, it gets even stranger. She owned over 7 acres of ‘common’ land at Wauntreoda (what we now recognise as Whitchurch Common). Can a person ‘own’ common land?

To complete the mystery, she also owned 36 acres of parish road and 24 acres of the bed of the River Taff. These figures don’t sound much, but if you assume that a typical road in the 19th century would be about 5m (16 feet) wide, she owned 18 miles of public road! Even if you allow for the grass verges it would probably amount to over 12 miles. That must be just about every bit of road in the parish

And 24 acres of the River Taff, which, (if you measure it, is approximately 40m, 120 feet wide) equates to 1.5 miles of river. That is all of the River Taff from the bridge at Llandaff upstream to Forest Farm. If she had riparian rights (that is, only to the centre of the river) her ownership ran from Llandaff Bridge upstream, nearly all the way to Tongwynlais and Pentyrch

Attached is an extract from the Tithe Map apportionment (thanks again to the National Library) where you can see her landholdings. So, who was she, Elizabeth Young, where did she live and why did she own such unusual parcels of land? Does anyone know any more about her?
Or is there a simpler answer?
Elizabeth Young comes last in the alphabetical list of landowners in the parish, with her cottage in Birchgrove
Below that, are listed the church, chapels, common land, River Taff and public roads
At first glance you might think that she owned all of this, but perhaps all of these others have no ‘owners’ and are simply part of the public realm. What do you think?

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