Introduction:
I recently saw a post in the Glyncorrwg History Facebook site about a burial record for St. John the Baptist posted by Mr. Ellis Thomas. Below I have copied and pasted the explanation from Mr. Thomas regarding the grave digging burials carried out by his relatives and which were subsequentely recorded in a note book.
Explanation:
The Thomas family carried out most of the grave digging at Glyncorrwg Churchyard for over 100 years until the 1970s. With the advent of Cremation and no room for new graves burials there became few and far between.
Great grandfather, Charles Thomas and grandfather David Thomas both served as Parish Clerk and Sexton and kept their own private records. My father,Harold Thomas and his brother Fred and then my brother Wynford and myself in the latter years continued with the grave digging.
A page from one of the books is illustrated in the photo (Ed note: on the Facebook page) and shows the ages and names of those buried in Feb. to April, 1892
The 1st column has names, the 2nd where from, the 3rd ages in years, months, weeks, days or hours. and the 4th officiating ministers.
Thanks to
Mr Ellis Thomas was good enough to transcribe all the burials shown in the book for Blaengwrach, Cwmgwrach, Glynneath and a few other places for us. They can be seen below:
Analysis of burial records:
I guess one of the first things we need to understand is why so many people were buried in St. John the Baptist church in Glyncorrwg between 1868 and 1893 when there was a perfectly good burial ground at St. Mary church in Blaengwrach. After all it was a very difficult journey over Craig y Llyn to get from Blaengwarch/ Cwmgwrach to Glyncorrwg, a journey of 6 miles. Definitely a point that needs further investigation.
In looking through the information there are a few things that jump out. For instance why in 1877 does it seem to be a particularly bad year for infant mortality. The date doesn’t correspond to any cholera outbreak so could there have been another reason, and why so many (5 in total out of 10) lived in the Wenallt. In fact if you look at the amount of people buried from the Wenallt between 1868 and 1881, there is definitely more death shown than the years shown on the second sheet, I wonder if they changed the way they named where the burial was from, perhaps just calling everything Blaengwrach, or was there another reason that linked to the location?
On 17 November 1869 a Patrick Boyle was buried in Glyncorrwg. Boyle is an Irish name, and it looks like Patrick Boyle was the same gentleman that was brought over from Ireland by the 2nd Duke of Dunraven to work on his estates in the area. Looking at the article written by Graham Hall on why Cwm Boyle was so named can found here. The area called Cwm Boyle is a small Arcadian valley which lies between the top end of Empire Avenue and the Rugby field.
In the article Patrick Boyle’s birth is shown as circa 1787 which roughly ties up with his age of 85 when he died and was buried on the 17th November 1870. So the assumption is it is the same person that Cwm Boyle was named after. The house he lived in is now called Garden House.
At the very bottom of the same page you can see a gentleman called James Boyle who was 70 years old when he was buried on the 8th December 1874. I wonder if this was the son of Patrick Boyle or maybe a brother.