Y Filog

The southernmost part of the village (nearest to the parish boundary), was incredibly rural 200 years ago. A few isolated cottages and fields, and a rambling roadway.

British History Online tells us that Philog (or Ffilog) in 1811 was:
‘a brook and a hamlet in the chapelry of Whitchurch near Gwaun-tre-Oda. The name applied particularly to an old thatched house on the north side of the highroad to Whitchurch, where a lane branches off eastwards to the Heath’

This was 30 years before the tithe map and 70 years before the first OS map. However, from the BHO description and looking at the early maps, we can locate Y Filog with some degree of accuracy
Nowadays, the main road south bends at Philog House to the traffic lights on the A470. Traffic driving north merges near the nail bar shop and the triangular grassy verge.

Back in 1811 (and for probably 150 years before then!), Y Filog was a row of tiny thatched cottages sitting plumb in the middle of the road. Many years later, the building which was to become Eddy’s the baker would replace Y Filog when the road was widened.

The roadway (or highroad as BHO describe it) back in 1811, would have been an unmade track, not quite wide enough for 2 wagons or carriages to pass one another, almost impassable in the worst of the winter weather, and bounded on each side with grassy verges and hedgerows. I’m sure that it wasn’t anything like as pretty as imagined though.

There were one or two other cottages close to Y Filog which would have formed the rest of the hamlet, and the fields behind would have grown arable crops and some pasture.

But which one in the hamlet was Y Filog? There is a well-known early photograph simply entitled ‘Philog’. I assume this is it.

The sketch below, based on this photograph shows Y Filog in the 1850s with a typical deliveryman and his cart outside the cottages (or perhaps not!)

If it’s tricky to locate Y Filog and what it looked like, then identifying the early residents is almost impossible. The early censuses seem to hop around quite strangely. We know that Thomas Howells and his wife Blanch were living in the hamlet in 1851 (he was then 65), so he could have been living there in 1811! They were both there 10 years later.

Lewis John (more of him later) was 48 years old in the first census, and he was still there in 1871
Jane Ray was 85 in 1841, but there was another Jane Ray (who was 42) 10 years later. Clearly not the same lady, but perhaps a daughter or even grand-daughter. That second Jane was still there in 1871. Were they in a family house? Was it part of Y Filog?

George Hancox was 37 in 1851, and he was around the lower village for years after.

As Whitchurch expanded later in the 19th century, the fields gave way to a surprising number of market gardens supplying vegetables (and even flowers) to the local community.

Y Filog was still there in 1881 at the time of the first OS map, still there in 1900 (but with Philog Terrace creeping up on it), but gone by the 1920 OS map. So, probably demolished before WW1
In an early blog I wrote about a cottage called Cwm-y-Fwyalchen (the dale of the blackbird), and an image held in Cardiff Library. In the early census of 1841, there was a cottage called Blackbird Inn, and on the earliest OS map there another cottage was called Mwylach-Bwlch (Blackbird’s Gap). Where were they all? Did they form part of the hamlet? Does anyone know?

In response to my blog, 2 families provided feedback, and a wonderful wedding photograph from 1909 in front of a cottage the family called Mwylach Bwlch. The family were the ‘Johns’. Lewis John (I mentioned him earlier) was in the hamlet in 1841, so were they the same family? The cottage looks almost identical to what I surmise to be Y Filog. Did the name change over the years? Does anyone else find this all amazing?

 

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