Cylchgronau Cymru

Sir Edward Pryce Lloyd Bart 14, 25, 28 Upper Green; 20 Pen-y-Graig Thos Marsh Esq. 1, 31, 35 Upper Green; 23 Pen-y-Graig Wm. Howell Marsh Esq. 2, 32 Upper Green; 22 Pen-y-Graig Thos Edmund Marsh Esq. 24 Town of Llanidloes; 26, 29 Upper Green Wm. Owen Esq. Glansevern 4 Upper Green Thos Price Esq. 16 Upper Green Mr. David Powell 17 Upper Green Mr. Wm. Swancott & Mary Swancott 12 Upper Green Evan Woosnam Esq. 9 Upper Green CAERSWS The village and township of Caersws was surrounded by six townships Esgob and Castle, Surnant, and Wig in the same parish of Llanwnog, and Carnedd, Llandinam and Maesmawr in Llandinam parish. This convergence of townships on Caersws was surely related to its nodal position in a basin at the confluence of the Severn, Trannon-Cerist and Carno rivers a strategic location which had led to the establishment of a Roman fort on the left bank of the Afon Garno14 and an associated civil settlement to the south. Both parish church and Penprys, the site of administration of the commote of Arwystli Iscoed, became located however some distance away; but as at Llanidloes a small medieval borough was later founded by the lords of Powys. This was laid out in a northeastern direction towards the Manthrig brook along a broad street where the market would have been held, with burgage plots on either side and possibly a back lane to the north, the nearby Roman ruins doubtless serving as a convenient quarry.15 The road from the Severn ford and bridge northwestwards to Pontdolgoch made a curious dog-leg to the west to follow the line of the Roman road through the middle of the fort by Pendre. The borough had already declined and lost its weekly market by Leland's time (1536-39) and in 1776 could be described as 'a hamlet with a few houses on the side of the Severn' by Pennant who went on to say that 'the adjacent fields are divided to this day, from each other by lanes, which intersect each other, as it were to point the very places which had formed the antient streets'.16 Several of these houses are likely to have been inns such as the Unicorn and the Buck and it was at one of these that the Arwystli Iscoed court leets were held alternately with the inn at Llandinam. The innkeepers themselves and other inhabitants were often presented at these courts for illegal enclosures or the erection of cottages on the commons, whilst other present- ments involved the failure to maintain roads, bridges, the pinfold in the northwest corner of the township and the watercourse which left the Carno Brook at that point to supply the fulling mill to the east this watercourse forming the northern boundary of the township. There were only some 23 acres of waste in Caersws township itself (Fig. 3), consisting of the southern part of Gwern Wyon, the ramparts of the Roman fort, roadside verges in the village, and the Upper and Lower Greens. The Upper Green was located on the floodplain of the Carno Brook and extended across the township boundary into Wig, Carnedd and Maesmawr towns- MKnown in Caersws as the Carno Brook. although there was nothing brook-like about it in times of flood when it inundated the Upper Green. '^Meini-Cochion. erroneously shown on the enclosure award map as Manthrig and so on Fig. 3. undoubtedly takes its name from the Old Red Sandstone blocks originally used by the Romans. The re-use of the stone for building is mentioned in Sir R. C. Hoare's The Description of Wales by Giraldus, 1806, Vol. 1, 52, and in Picturesque Views of the Severn with Historical and Topographical Illustrations, by Thomas Harral, Vol. 1. (1824) 21-22. "'Tours in Wales by Thomas Pennant Esq.. 1810. Vol. 3. 192.