Recent posts

• Saving Anglesey’s Windmills (5/23/2022) - On the road again. I’m setting off for a week-long tour of the south of England, but first I’m taking the well-travelled road to Aberystwyth. I worked there for a few years and have visited regularly ever since. I’m on my way to the National Library of Wales. Perched on the hill overlooking the town,…
• Review – Parc Cybi: A Landscape Through Time (5/8/2021) - The following review was published in the Anglesey Antiquarian Society‘s 2020 Transactions. Oriel Môn will be reopening on 18 May 2021, and the exhibition can be viewed until 13 June 2021. Jane Kenney, Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, an exhibition at Oriel Môn, Llangefni, 12 December 2020 – 13 June 2021 Between 2006 and 2010 Gwynedd Archaeological…
• Who Were the Earls of Anglesey? (1/24/2021) - I recently bought a copy of John Speed’s 17th century map of Anglesey, to add to my collection of Anglesey Maps. An exquisite, highly decorated map, it was engraved from Speed’s drawings by Jodocus Hondius and first published in 1611 by Sudbury and Humble. They published several editions through the early 1600s, including one in…
• Revisiting the Windmills of Anglesey (1/17/2021) - My Anglesey History web site had its beginnings in 1995 as a single page on my main business site for Kovach Computing Services. Five years later I hived it off to a separate web site, Anglesey-History.co.uk, and started expanding it with various new major sections. In 2008 I added a completely new section on the…
• The Many Ages of Mary Owen (1/2/2021) - During the Christmas/New Year break my wife and I have been talking a lot about local Pentraeth history. A freshwater ecologist, she has been building up a thread on Twitter about the Afon Nodwydd, the river that runs through Pentraeth to the sea at Red Wharf Bay/Traeth Coch. The thread explores its ecology, history, and…
• Happiness and Tragedy – Exploring Anglesey Parish Records on Ancestry.co.uk (10/30/2020) - There was much joy among family history researchers recently as the genealogical database company Ancestry.co.uk announced the availability online of millions of parish records from across Wales. Their new collections include more than 765,000 baptism, marriage and burial records from Anglican/Church in Wales churches on Anglesey, dating from 1547 to 1994. I’ve been an enthusiastic…
• The Mystery of the Non-Existent Castle (3/23/2020) - I get regular notifications from eBay for new items listed related to Anglesey history, particularly old postcards showing scenes from the past century. As I live in Pentraeth I was particularly intrigued by one postcard, showing a large castellated building with two towers. It was labeled “Pentraeth Castle”. What??!! I know there is no place…
• Day School – Excavations at Parc Cybi, Holyhead (2/21/2020) - We arrived at the Ucheldre centre and filed through the new exhibition, with a quick glance at the displays. We would have plenty of time during the day to explore them in more detail. After signing in we entered the violet and sky-blue illuminated main hall, the former chapel of what was once the convent…
• Old Friends in New Places – Visiting St Fagans (10/20/2019) - The ever expanding St Fagans National Museum of History opened new galleries and a new reconstructed building last year, but I’ve only this weekend got a chance to go down there to check out all the Anglesey connections. Top of the list to see was Llys Llywelyn. This is a recreation of the 13th century…
• Indispensable – The Historic Wales Web Portal (7/23/2018) - Are you curious about the history of that old-looking house you drive past on the way to work? Did you ever wonder if there have been any finds of prehistoric artefacts near where you live? Would you like to explore what things of historical interest you might find along the way of the walk you…