Friday 14 December 2007

Some local history

I was walking Islay when I got talking to a local chap. He'd seen us over on the Offa's Dyke path, in the woods there that he called Oliver's Wood, and he'd seen us around town as well. He told me that there are more otters using that part of the river now.
He asked me how long I'd lived in Hay, and when I said 15 years, he told me his family had lived in this area for 300 years. His grandfather, Thomas James Price, was the local stone mason, and he was born in 1860. When his first wife died, he carved her headstone, which can still be seen in St Mary's graveyard. She died in 1895, or thereabouts.
Some years later, he was persuaded by his son Joe to go to a party at Llanthomas Farm in Llanigon, where he met an 18 year old seamstress from Kent, who worked at the farm. He married her, and they had ten children together, as well as the five he had from his first marriage. The youngest daughter was the mother of the chap who told me all this, and all his aunties and uncles seemed to have lived to ripe old ages. One auntie died in 2006, aged 100.
He said that his grandfather used to carve a little face on his work, to identify it as his, but examples are rare.
I think it's time to go round the churchyard, to see if I can find the gravestone of Mr Price's first wife.

2 comments:

compman said...

Hi
I hope you won't mind a comment on this but you may have a job finding this gravestone in Hay Churchyard. It was closed to burials in 1877 when the new cemetery was opened.If the lady died in about 1895 she would probably have been buried there.
Super blog. Congratulations, I know a lot of local people read it.
Eric Pugh

Eigon said...

Thanks for the information. He may have meant the Cemetery - he was a little drunk when I talked to him!
And thanks for the kind comments.