| Description | This is mostly in the hand of John Owen who died in November 1803; it follows that the record of payments for 1804 (pp. 55-56) are written in a different script.
This is a most interesting record of work and payments in a large Anglesey farm at the time when the Napoleonic war was reacting at full pressure upon the economic life of the countryside, a farm also that was not too far from Amlwch to escape from the industrial reactions of Mynydd Parys in the days of its great prosperity. Indeed, probably the most interesting entries in the document are those on pp.10 and 64 which record the loads of timber, bricks, sand and coal carted from Amlwch port to "Parish Mount" and the Hundreds of loads - burnt ore and copper - bought from Parys to the Port for shipment. This was done for Lord Uxbridge of Plas Newydd in 1785, father of the more famous Earl of Uxbridge who became Marquis of Anglesey in 1815 (J.E.Griffiths: Pedigrees, 57).
Many pages are devoted to the wages of servants, the various subsists, the somewhat complex transactions with labourers who lived on the farm, the special men hired for the two harvests, the 10/6 exemption from the Militia Acts in 1796 and 1797 (44, 47). What great reason had the cartman John Edwards to spend 10/6 in going to Chester fair? (44). Equally valuable is the information given about the corn produced at Gwredog (17, 21, 32, 50); the oats and barley sold in 1788 (30), 1789 (32), 1790 (33-34); the acreage pf Gwredog (59); the Bodwrdin fields (61). John Owen was also a buyer and seller of cattle, and is candid enough in one case to specify the profit he made by his transactions (1794, p.4). |