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Llanegwad
Grid Ref: SN 5120 2600
The meaning of Meiros A little piece of history Additional Notes
Meiros Hill, 2001
The original farmhouse, seen on the right of the above photograph, dates from the early 1700s. The house on the left was a stone barn, the upper storey was added when the building was converted into living accommodation in 1993. The other barn (centre) is a Welsh longhouse dating to pre-1733. Parts of the roof and some A-frames are original (2008).
Meiros Hill and Cefn Meiros are situated on high land, three-quarters of a mile north of Alltyferin (Colby Map 1831). A monument in Llanegwad church contains the following information:
“Near this place in the family vault lie the bodies of Lewis Jones, Clerk, MA of Miros Hill, died 22 June 1803, 56; Mary Anne daughter of "Leoline Jones" Leoline Jones Esq., son of the above Lewis Jones and Anne his wife, also of Miros Hill, died 11 September 1819, 2 years 4 months; Lewis Jones son of the above died 10 July 1820, 26; also the said Leoline Jones, died 3 June 1822, 32; this tablet was placed here by Mr. Leoline Jones’s widow as memorial of her affection.”
In
1862 Richard Daniels lived at Miros Hill.
References
NLW
Llanegwad PRs
Colby Map
John Rees ( Sheriff of Carmarthen) of Pantyrewig owned and farmed Meiros Hill alias Gilvach Henry [Brunker, 1937], along with other farms. The Last Will and Testament of the Revd. Lewis Jones [1802, NLW] shows Miros Hill was also alias Gilfach henry (sic). No other references to Gilvach henry have turned up [2008].
References from 1745 refer to the farm as Miros Hill,
and from the mid 1800s as Meiros Hill.
The reference to Meiros Hall in the Francis Jones book Historic Carmarthenshire Homes and their Families, 1997 [final edition] is a printing error carried over from the original printing of 1937. Confirmation has been obtained from Brawdy Books of this error and the original notes in the Francis Jones Archives also confirm that he mentioned no references to a Meiros Hall. As far as is known there never was a Meiros Hall, at least in Llanegwad. However there IS a Meiros Hall at Drefach, Felindre, near Carmarthen, and it was owned by the Williams family until the late 1990s.
Evidence recently unearthed in the earliest Parish Register which has been translated from the original Latin shows that Meiros Hill has been in continuous occupation since at least 1733.
Meiros Hill, 1991
Once a farm of over 50 acres it was reduced in size in the
mid-1800s and again in 1979 when it covered 34 acres. It now exists as a
fully modernised residential property in landscaped grounds of about 3
acres.
The present owners have carried out extensive work on the property, one of the two remaining barns being converted into a second spacious house. What was originally pasture has been landscaped to form attractive informal gardens.
The sole remaining outbuilding is believed to have been the original house, a Welsh longhouse dated pre-1733. Occupants' names from 17 February 1733 day have been found. Research on the property is ongoing.
An entry in a farm accounts book of the 1840s from Cefn Meiros (an adjacent property) mentions a Richard Daniels of Mirosil (sic). He is believed to have been the first freehold owner of Meiros Hill and lived there with his family for many years. He appears in the 1841 UK Census.
The present house is believed to date from no earlier than the mid-1800s, a previous house may have occupied the same site. There is no firm evidence for this and it is possible that the house is much earlier, but few features remain to date the property. There are no 'beamed' ceilings, but it is understood that there was an inglenook fireplace which was removed from the kitchen in the 1970s. Nothing of this now remains.
During renovations an old cupboard frame was removed from an alcove adjacent to a chimneybreast in one of the ground floor rooms and the original floor level discovered. About 12 inches below this was found several clay pipes, mostly intact. From their position it was obvious that they had been placed there deliberately. The garden yielded part of a Wedgwood tile similar to those found around fireplaces during the early 1800's, along with pottery from a later period.
References
NLW
Will of Revd Lewis Jones
Will of Leoline Jones
Llanegwad PRs
1881 UK Census
1991- Current Owners
The
meaning of Meiros
Condensed version of an article by Gwynedd Pierce which appeared in the Western Mail on July 21 1998.
A house called Meiros Hill stands on high ground twixt Felingwm Uchaf and
Horeb in Carmarthenshire.
Meiros is not a name with the diminutive, plural ending -os, rather it has
the word rhos as the second element, mel + rhos “wild high ground,
mountain pasture, moorland”,
It’s not easy to determine the meaning of the first element “mei”. Professor Melville Richards cautiously suggests that it could be a variation on the -ma that means “place” and that appears as -fa as in names like Gwynfa, or -ma (and the variation -ba) as in the first element of the name Machynlleth, Machen, Bathafarn, Bachynbyd etc., where the meaning can be broadened to mean “plain, open land”
Apart from Meiros, we can note the names Meiarth, Meidrum, and then, with
the connecting -fai Cil-fai, Crynfai, Gwynfai, (Gwynfe), Myddfai and
Pen-y-fai.
However the opinion of
Sir Ifor Williams, was that it was a form that originated from the old
word meidd, (Latin medius, “half, middle”) that formed part of the
word per-fedd (bowel). Sir Ifor explained Meifod as a combination
of mei(dd) and bod “preswylfod” dwelling-place, a sort of
half dwelling-place, and Meidrum as half way point or middle of “drum”
(ridge, summit). But if this is mei, a varied form of ma,
then Meifod could mean “dwelling-place on the plain” and Meidrum
“a ridge of land on the plain”.
[Early Parish Records refer to the Llanegwad farm as Miros but after around the middle of the 19th century the name seems to have changed to Meiros, which it remains to this day.]
Another example of the same name can be found in
Glamorgan. This farm also bears the name Meiros and stands on the
lower slope of the high ground known as Mynydd Meiros [Meiros
Mountain] (Mynydd Myres on the George Yates map of 1799) a little to the
east of the village of Llanharan.
The word seemed to have appeared as Mayros
in 1610, then Miras 17th century, Meiros 1791-2, Maeres
1833,
Meyroes farm c1840, Mairos 1884.
So what about Meiros? Is it a moor in a central
place? Is it the middle of the moor? Is it open land which is moorland? It
is difficult to be certain.
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