Cylchgronau Cymru

STEPHEN WILLIAM WILLIAMS: THE ARCHAEOLOGIST AND SOLDIER THE MAN AND HIS FAMILY. David H Williams (An expanded version of the Lecture given on Friday October 1st 1999 in Llandrindod Wells during the Cambrian Archaeological Association Memorial Conference. Much of this appreciation is based upon papers of Stephen Williams which are widely dispersed particularly the National Library holdings of Birmingham Corporation Waterworks papers, and the Penralley Papers on deposit from Rhaeadr Museum) Fellow-Cambrians and Guests: We have gathered this weekend to honour one who for most of the second half of the nineteenth century was a very active member of our Association. We are especially pleased to have with us this evening members of the Radnorshire Society, and particularly their President, Lady Delia Venables Llewelyn. When the then Cambrians met for their Sixty-Fourth Annual Meeting here in Llandrindod Wells in August 1910, the incoming President of our Association was Mr. Charles Venables-Llewelyn, Member of Parliament.' As we shall see, Stephen Williams, in his day, had a close association and friendship with the Venables family. To-night, after this lecture, the Radnorshire Society are very kindly honouring us with a formal Reception. For one who was to distinguish himself as an antiquarian and archaeologist, it was fitting that Stephen Williams was born under the shadow of Offa's Dyke at Lower Mellington in the Shropshire parish of Churchstoke, where his father and grandfather both also called Stephen, farmed the land. A map survives shewing Lower Mellington nine years before Stephen William Williams was bom.2 That was in 1837, and so, dying as he did in 1899, his life was almost coterminous with the reign of Queen Victoria. Some uncertainty surrounds the precise date of his birthday. The brass plate on his coffin gave 7 June 1837, but the Churchstoke parish registers3 suggests that he was baptised on 6 June (the day before!). This discrepancy is not easily solved, as the civil registration of births did not commence until three weeks after he was born. Most likely, '6 June' is a clerical error for 16'. The James Family. It was his early employment as a railway surveyor that brought Stephen Williams to Radnorshire perhaps by about 1859, and certainly by 1861 he