History of the group
The beginnings
The group started in January 1991, with thirty people at the inaugural meeting. It was begun very much as a group for people living in Meifod itself, and the yearly subscription was £2. The idea for a history group came from a survey carried out in the village asking what people thought of the amenities that the village provided, and what was missing that they would like. One clear message was that people wanted to know more about the village itself and its history.
Early meetings
Tom Hughes was the first chairman of the history group, and immediately started putting together a programme of talks, and of active research about the village. He invited people from the Powysland Club, and from other local history groups, to come to talk to the new group, particularly to give the group advice and help with their village research.
The fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the new Meifod Primary School in 1941 fell in the spring of 1991. The old village school building, in the grounds of the church, had been condemned in 1939, and despite it being wartime, Powys County Council had agreed the building of a new school in the village. Tom used the school celebrations as a focus for research about the old school, and devised a questionnaire so that the information gathered fell under consistent headings.
Focus on the old school
In April the group held a meeting where many villagers who had attended the old school contributed memories and photographs. Attempts to record memories were frustrated by too much background noise, so a written account was made. Extracts follow!
Classes ‘Boys and girls had separate play yards, and in class girls sat at the front, and boys at the back. Standards were according to age, not ability, but if you did not do well you remained in that class for another year…' 'If a crayon was found in an inkwell, the whole row was caned – so pupils in the front would put the crayons in the inkwell behind…’
Were you brought to school by your parents? ‘No, everyone walked – there was only one family which didn’t, a large family, and they came in a wagonette…’ Maldwyn Andrew, Tŷ Cerrig, said it took him forty-five minutes by going across fields – he left home at ten past eight every morning.
What about lunch? ‘We brought our own grub.’
Further activities
As well as a programme of talks and visits, research continued, starting with producing a detailed map of the village between 1900 and the start of WW1 with the group involving people in the village as well as using historical sources. Various projects about the village got underway, including: a survey of the graves in the churchyard; a look at the names on the Meifod Roll of Honour from WW1 (rescued from the old school, which was then a builder’s store); a display of material collected so far in the village hall as part of the 1992 Meifod Show & Sports; and a study of changing occupants in the village 1891-1910, based on census returns.
In 1993 a display of material relating to the period 1890-1914 attracted a great deal of interest.
And a regular raffle at meetings was introduced to raise funds for the group.
Sharing research findings
The group decided to have an annual ‘open to all’ meeting, where people from the village were invited, and in April 1994 Tom Hughes gave a slide show and presentation: People & Places in Meifod, which was attended by more than fifty people.
The group resolved to have a regular display of Meifod history at the annual Show & Sports, and in 1994 a small group prepared a display covering Meifod during the two wars.
Bringing things together
By 1996 there were around twenty members of the group.
In July a slide show of Old Meifod was shown to the group. Tom Hughes and Chris Roberts had worked on it, Chris had dealt with the slides, and Tom had recorded a commentary on tape – saying it was one of the hardest things he had ever undertaken. He had split the slides into groups, the largest being of Meifod village – the subject of this slide show. Other subjects were: farms; churches and chapels; schools; and social life. Help financing this project came from a grant from the Prince of Wales Trust.
In 1997 ideas for village celebrations to mark the millennium were being put forward, and by 1998 the group had decided to prepare a book about the history of the village, using the material that had been gathered since 1991.
Meifod: A Century of Change
And so work on Meifod: A Century of Change began. Tom Hughes put out an appeal for more material covering the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and it was agreed that the book would focus on just the village itself and be in two parts. Part 1 would give a summary of Meifod’s history before 1900, and Part 2 would cover the changes in the village over the past hundred years.
The editorial board was Tom Hughes, Joan Shaw, Ray Smith and Bob Wildblood.
The book was published in December 1999 and was a great success. The book is now out of print, but occasionally second-hand copies can be found on AbeBooks or Amazon.
If you have more – or better! – photographs of the people involved in the early days of the Group, or of the Group’s early activities – please contact us:
Further projects
In 2000 the group prepared a very successful display about Meifod for the History Weekend held at Oswestry School.
A booklet of letters about Meifod which Tom Hughes had arranged to be translated from Welsh was printed for the group in 2001: Ieian Mai Remembers.
The end of an era
In 2001 Tom Hughes stepped down as chairman of the group, as he was moving away from the area. Joan Shaw, who had been vice-chairman, took over.
What happened next
Joan Shaw was chairman of the Group from 2001 until early 2004, and Carole Jones secretary. Joan was a retired journalist, and founded and edited The Meifodian, a quarterly newsletter/magazine which reported on village events and issues, and ran from 1991 until the end of 2000.
Norman Jones was elected chairman in March 2004, with Rose Forshaw as secretary from 2004 until 2006, and Carole Jones from 2006 until December 2008. In January 2008 Chris Roberts took over as chairman until the end of the year.
From when the Group started, in 1991, until 2017 the treasurer was Rhiannon Jones, the widow of the manager of the Meifod branch of the Midland bank. In 2018 Rhiannon was made Life President of the Group. She died in 2023 aged 93.
A friendly sociable group
Over this period there were around twenty-five members, mainly from Meifod and nearby, but with fewer attending meetings. The programme continued to be a mixture of talks, with visits to local places of interest in the summer. Many of the visits were rounded off with members of the group going for a meal together – for example, a visit in June 2004 to Pontysgawrhyd Mill (owned by Dave & Jane Wadley) was followed by a meal at The Stumble in Bwlch-y-Cibau, and a guided tour of the straining tower at Lake Vyrnwy in July 2008 with a meal at Lake Vyrnwy Hotel.
Meetings were held at the Village Hall, but the Group used not the main hall, but first of all the smaller Billiard Room, and later the small back room.
In January 2009 Ken & Katherine Gilmour took over the running of the Group. The same pattern of talks and visits continued, but Ken and Katherine introduced some more ‘hands-on’ talks, with, for example, a speaker in costume showing the group how mediaeval clothes were made, and another explaining the mechanism of (and firing) historical firearms.
Changes
In January 2018 Dave & Frances Ward took over running the Group, with the support of a small committee: Chris Roberts, Steve Tansley, and Maggie & Charles Baldock.
Dave & Frances had already in 2014 involved other members of the history group (and many people from the village) when they organised an exhibition about Meifod during WW1, with a weekend of talks and events, to mark the centenary of start of the war. For more details - Meifod during WWI A full programme for 2018 was immediately prepared, and the Group’s posters and programme given a new look.
A decision was made to increase the annual membership subscription to £10, but with membership running for a full year from the date of joining, and free entry to meetings for members.
The structure of meetings was changed, with a refreshment break halfway through the talk, and this has given members more chance to get to know each other, as well as to chat informally to the speaker – and has given speakers more flexibility in the length of their talk.
More emphasis has been put on publicity, with a regular item in the monthly Chronicle, for the Tanat, Cain & Vyrnwy valleys, colourful posters distributed locally, including in Oswestry and Welshpool, a poster on the Meifod village FaceBook page, and copies of the annual programme available in local libraries and shops.
We now have over 100 members, drawn from a wide area.
The Pandemic
We held no meetings between January 2020 and September 2021. In September 2021 we were able to use the village hall again, and our meetings were members-only. We asked members to book in advance so that we knew who was coming and how many there would be. People were keen to come back to meetings, wore masks, sat socially distanced from each other, and obeyed our distanced queuing rules for refreshments. We regularly had 40+ members at meetings. From April 2022 we opened meetings to non-members again and the number of members quickly increased.
Other projects
In 2019 we launched an oral history project, called ‘Meifod Voices’. A number of recordings have been made so far.
Frances Ward is also a member of the Llanfyllin Workhouse History Group, and Meifod History Group has worked with the Workhouse Group on a number of projects, including the book Masters & Matrons of the Llanfyllin Union Workhouse, published in 2021. Currently four members of Meifod History Group are working on research about the workhouse school, a project that is being co-ordinated by Frances.
