The role of the chapels, education and migration on the language of 19th century Coedpoeth.
During this period across the world many other minority languages spoken
in countries which were also under the control of the British monarchy were
eradicated, bowing to the strength of the English language. Yet Welsh continued
to be spoken in the developing industrial regions, and Welsh continued to be
spoken in Coedpoeth.
This says a lot about the language of the village well into the 20th century, and it also says a lot about the importance placed on the spoken language of a child’s home by the grammar school education system in the 1970s. A huge change in attitude to that expressed in Victorian Britain a hundred years earlier when The Times newspaper in 1866 described the Welsh language as :-
‘The curse of Wales ... their antiquated and semi-barbarous language ... shrouds them in darkness’.
In the 1830s the English Victorian perception of the Welsh language was seen as a problem, especially by the HM Inspectorate who saw the language as a barrier to progress and the education of its people. It was regarded as being responsible for social unrest brought about by ignorance amongst the Welsh people. During this period there were a series of rebellions and riots such as the Merthyr Risings in 1831, which saw a violent climax after many years of simmering unrest amongst the large working class population of the town of Merthyr Tydfil. They were demanding reform and protesting against lowering of their wages by mine owner William Crawshay, and general unemployment. The Rebecca Riots, which occurred between 1839 and 1843, saw farmers and agricultural workers protesting against unfair taxation in South and mid Wales.
An inquiry into the state of educational provision in Wales in 1846, in order to address these concerns, became an important influence in the resultant structural development of education in the second half of the 19th century. The HM Inspectors insistence that schooling should be conducted in English meant that the educational provision in the village of Coedpoeth was to have a major effect on the language as the community grew. It has of course been well documented, so we are now very aware of the means taken to ensure children were discouraged from speaking their native language whilst in school during this period.
A wooden block, which became known as the ‘Welsh Not’ was given to the child heard speaking Welsh. The poor child would then be humiliated by being made to stand in the corner of the class for the rest of the day, with no regard to any basic needs such as food, fresh air and a chance to play at break times, or the need to go to the toilet. The child who was left with the wooden block at the end of the week was usually severely punished. There are still people alive today who can recall relatives experiencing this treatment. Wrexham Museum has short film in which a Mrs Mavis Williams, formerly of Bwlchgwyn, and widow to the School Medical Doctor for Wrexham, is talking about her aunt experiencing this form of punishment in school at Brymbo.
But what of the findings of the Commissioners enquiry. Published in 1847 the Report is now commonly referred to as ‘The Blue Books’ and that is simply because they have blue covers. These Reports can be viewed at the A.N. Palmer Study Centre at the Wrexham Museum, if anyone is interested in reading further into this very damning view of the situation in the mid 19th century. What is clear however is that the Report became a byword for bias, with prejudice seen in virtually every sentence, and the judgements they made about the state of education in Wales at this time. A picture emerges of an ‘educationally backward country’ with the provision available being provided by chapels, voluntary societies, private venues and in some rare instances by employers. The Commissioners concluded that this backwardness lay firmly with the lack of understanding of the English language. And whilst they acknowledged that the working classes in Wales had a greater ability to read over their English equivalents, they failed to see the benefits a bilingual society could have for the country.
The results of the Commissioners findings concluded:
‘The language cultivated in the Sunday schools is Welsh. The subject of instruction is exclusively religious ... and the great mass of the poorer classes have been trained from their childhood to its use. On the other hand the Sunday schools have made the peasantry experts in handling that branch of the Welsh language, but its resources in every other branch remains obsolete and meagre, and even of these the people are left in ignorance’. In other words people, young and old were capable of reading their Bibles, praying and singing hymns. But it was felt to progress educationally they needed to be able to speak and read in English.
At the time the Report was published Coedpoeth did not have any proper educational provision for the children living in the area. It has to be remembered of course that the village in 1847 was very sparsely populated. Most of the residents lived in the Nant in cottages along the River Clywedog, with a small huddle of properties in the Adwy Clawdd area. The extent of the village at this time is shown clearly on the 1842 Tithe map. The only educational provision apart from Sunday schools in the village at this time was a small ‘Dame School’ established in 1833 by a Mrs Gittins. It was described as ‘having insufficient furniture and apparatus, and in bad repair’. Eight children were present on the day the Commissioners called, although the school did actually have sixteen names on the books. The education at this school was conducted in English, and on an individual basis. For this education parents had to make penny payments, resulting in an income of £4 for the school at the time of the inspection. Mrs Gittins had received no formal training to teach the children, her previous occupation was recorded as being a servant, and she did not receive a salary for her teaching role. In the early 19th century children as young as two were sent to Dame Schools and their primary purpose appears to be more of a ‘child minding’ service rather than for formal education.
Set against this very basic elementary educational provision, the area was seeing an increasing strength in Non-conformity with a small numbers of chapels appearing in the landscape. The Commissioners Report records five Sunday schools in the settlements of Coedpoeth and Minera in 1846.
The number of Sunday school scholars in Coedpoeth and Minera in 1847
Chapel Language Established Total no. on books No. present when inspected No. able to read the scriptures
Adwy`r Clawdd Welsh 1791 228 - 155
Minera C.M. Welsh/English 1818 24 29 12
Y Nant C.M. Welsh 1840 65 33 20
Coedpoeth Welsh 1841 88 100 90
Minera Church Welsh/English 1843 21 18 12
The settlement of Coedpoeth, specifically in the Adwy Clawdd area had the first Methodist Chapel to be built in Wales. This was as a direct result of a Mr. John Evans of Bala, a leading member of Welsh Non-conformity, having spent his childhood in this area. The chapel was built on a piece of land which belonged to him, and was given to the village for the specific purpose of providing a building for people to worship in. In 1846 when the Commissioners made their visit to the area the Sunday school in Adwy’r Clawdd chapel recorded 122 males and 106 females on the books, of which 68% were able to read the Bible. The Sunday school had a total of 30 teachers, with children and adults being taught through the medium of Welsh. In addition, a smaller Calvinistic Methodist chapel was established in the Nant in 1840, using a dwelling as their meeting place. Here on the day of inspection 33 of the 65 Sunday school pupils were in attendance, and 20 were recorded as being able to read the Bible. This equates to 61% of pupils.
Coedpoeth also had a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, which was established in 1841. Here the number of pupils in attendance on the day of inspection was 100, when in fact only 88 were recorded on the actual Sunday school books. Of these 100 pupils a very high 90% were able to read the Bible in Welsh. It can be concluded that the substantial growth of Non-conformity in the area was providing a means by which the Welsh language was being given what could be termed ‘institutional support’. Children alongside adults who were attending the Sunday schools were being taught to read in their mother tongue. Although a very small percentage of children may also have attended a day school, and were taught in English whilst there, the strength of the Welsh language, particularly through the Calvinistic Methodists chapels, was extremely strong.
County
Percentage of Sunday schools where the language of instruction is Welsh
Denbighshire
63%
Flintshire
39%
Montgomeryshire
52%
Caernarvonshire
87%
Anglesey
89%
Merionethshire
92%
The Report also recorded the percentage of Sunday schools across North Wales where the language of instruction was only Welsh. Denbighshire showed a percentage of 63%, which of course was the county Coedpoeth, was situated in at the time. The county of Merionethshire showed the highest percentage with 92%.
Significantly for Coedpoeth, the language of the Sunday schools was 100% Welsh, with no influence from the Anglican Church until 1875, when St. Tudfil’s ‘iron’ church was built.
The strength of the Welsh language and its role in education, albeit with a strong religious bias, was completely ignored by the inspectors, even though their findings showed that English was spoken by only 21% of the residents of North Wales.
As Coedpoeth as a settlement developed in the second half of the 19th century and the population continued to grow through migration and natural increase, chapel building to meet people’s religious needs was very prevalent. By the turn of the 20th century Coedpoeth had a total of 14 chapels, of which only two conducted their services through English – These were Capel Bethlehem on Smithy Road, which has recently closed and the Presbyterian chapel on Park Road, which closed and was converted to a private residence some time ago. With Coedpoeth being such a long-established stronghold of Non-conformity its first school was the Adwy and Coedpoeth British School, which opened its doors in 1868. Initially the school only had an intake of boys and it quickly grew, with 190 names on the registers at the end of its first month. The girls section opened the following year, with 156 names registered when it opened in April 1867.
Unfortunately the attitude of the Inspectorate towards the Welsh language hadn’t changed in the intervening years since the ‘Blue Books’ were published. The Rev. Scoltock, who was an Inspector for British Schools in North Wales, stated that the work of the school day was being counteracted by the language of the home. As a result of this continuing attitude to the Welsh language schools were subjected to even more rigorous HM Inspection and a proportion of a teacher’s salary was dependent on the pupils’ performance in annual tests, which naturally were conducted in English.
Prior to the building of the Adwy & Coedpoeth British school in the village in 1865, and before there was any legal requirement for children to attend school it was the norm for children as young as nine to be employed. In the main this was either at local mines, or in domestic service, both of which must have been a pretty gruelling existence for the children involved. Some were luckier managing to secure employment to help the family income in the local shops, or as errand boys and girls.
Between 1851 & 1871 the local census returns show a huge change in the fortunes of children in the village. The 1870 Education Act, in which Section 5 of this legislation required that each ‘school district’ should provide sufficient spaces to accommodate and educate each child in the area, meant that by 1871, 65% of Coedpoeth’s children aged between five and fourteen were in school.
Despite the initial problems with language, and the relatively late start in the provision of formal education for the village’s children, alongside the refusal to acknowledge the advantages a bilingual education could provide, the newly formed Pen-y-Gelli Board School soon gained a good reputation in the area. By 1873 a HM Inspectors Report compiled by Mr. J. Rhys stated the ‘Boys School is doing extremely well’ and the Girls section to ‘have greatly improved since last year’.
At this stage of the 19th century is it not possible to assess what the effect of the children receiving an English medium education was on the spoken language within the population of Coedpoeth. This is because there was no requirement prior to the 1891 census to record a person’s preferred spoken language.
Using the data presented in the 1891 census, as a means of analysing the percentage of Welsh spoken in a community, has proved somewhat controversial however. The inclusion of the language question was raised initially in the House of Commons on 21 July 1890, during the second reading of the Census Bill. Members of Parliament had discussed the fact that it was strange that the means of establishing how many people spoke Welsh was being omitted from the data collection, when Ireland had been collecting such information since 1851, and Scotland since 1881. As a result of these discussions the language question was introduced very quickly into the census, and this resulted in a barrage of complaints and accusations around Wales.
It resulted in Welsh nationalists urging the population to fill their census forms in Welsh, to affirm their ability to speak their native language. One leading nationalist sent an open letter to every Welsh and English newspaper urging editors to instruct Welsh speakers to ‘be honest, be patriotic, do not renounce your language, and do not falsely claim knowledge of English’. It was with such a push to ensure people upheld this sense of national pride in the use of their native language that the 1891 census was conducted. Such controversy may therefore be responsible for exaggerations of the monoglot Welsh speakers recorded in this year, and there is no way now of proving otherwise.
Whilst being aware of this controversy analysing the census records between 1891 and 1901 does show a very clear swing towards bilingualism across the generations in Coedpoeth over this ten year period.
So what was the effect of an English education on the children of the village? On examining the language spoken by the pre-school aged children 60% of them were still monoglot Welsh-speakers in 1891, compared with older school aged children where only 46% were recorded as only able to speak Welsh. The effect of attending school is far more noticeable ten years later, when pre-school aged children recorded nearly half could still only speak Welsh, but the older children who had been at school for a number of years showed just 12% as being a monoglot Welsh speaker. This shows clearly that the language of the home for many people in the village was Welsh, and there was no need to have any knowledge of English until a child reached school age. It should be noted however that some very young children were able to speak both languages, which suggests some Anglicisation was occurring owing possibly to the parent’s desire not to pass on the Welsh language. Some saw English as the language of progress for their children, and encouraged the children to use English instead of their native Welsh.
One such example was seen in the Johnson family who lived at 4, Popular Houses, Adwy. Robert Johnson, the father, was born in Bangor Isycoed and was English speaking. His wife Sarah was locally born and recorded as being bilingual. However in this family Welsh was not passed on to the children despite the mother tongue being Welsh. Their two children, Ellen aged four and Joseph aged three, were both recorded as English speaking.
The influence of families making return migrations into the village also affected the language mix within the community. One example is seen in the Phillips family, who lived in Tudor Street. In this family the father was born in Ruabon, and his wife born in the village. Their three children however were all born in Hanley in Staffordshire. Although both parents spoke both languages, they felt there had been little need to pass on the Welsh language to their children. The family perhaps had not anticipated that they might return to Wales in search of work at a later date.
So taking these additional facts into consideration the question was, did the English education have a detrimental effect on the language of the community which developed in Coedpoeth during the second half of the 19th century? We have already seen that there was a big swing to bilingualism across the generations at the end of the century. This swing was especially noticeable amongst the children over the ten year period. But remember being bilingual means that although the villagers were now able to speak English they were still using Welsh in their daily life. Especially the young men working in Welsh speaking gangs in the mines, quarries and at other industrial sites. An analysis of all the data showed there was no slippage of the Welsh language. In 1891 87% of the population of Coedpoeth were able to speak Welsh, and in 1901 the same percentage was recorded. This means just 13% of the villagers did not speak the native language.
And maybe you could say the Industrial Revolution in this area of Wales saved the language rather than destroying it. With an increase in job opportunities as coal mining, quarrying, iron making and brick & tile production changed the face of the landscape people were not forced to leave Wales in search of work. In fact the opposite happened, people left the rural hinterland and migrated often relatively short distances into the newly developing communities such as Coedpoeth. Some families who had previously left came back to the expanding village to the new work opportunities.
The comparative lateness of Coedpoeth’s development, in relation to other industrial communities in the region, may have helped to maintain its Welshness. The Welsh culture of the village may even have encouraged Welsh-speaking migrants to make positive decisions to settle in this community. The village was influenced very little by migration streams from England, which had anglicised other communities, such as Gresford and Marchwiel, by the end of the 18th century. Coupled with increasing industrialisation across Wales, the mid 1850s also saw a big decline in the number of jobs available in agriculture. This meant that many labourers left the countryside and migrated to the growing industrial regions in search of higher wages and steady employment. Coedpoeth and Minera with their collieries, lead mining and limeworks were able to provide this security. The development of an urbanised mining village in the second half of the 19th century was attracting a steady stream of a young male workforce to work in its developing industrial sites.
The village of Coedpoeth saw a steady increase in population during this period, rising from 1,345 in 1851 to 4,161 by 1901. Some of this increased population was naturally due to increasing birth rates, but much can be attributed to migration during this period.
Streams of young men moving into the community, marrying and raising large families ensured the growth of Coedpoeth, and the language spoken. In 1925, when Mr. John Harrison, a founder member of the Coedpoeth Welsh Society, Y Felin, reflected back to his Coedpoeth childhood in the late 19th century, he described the people as
‘More or less illiterate, prior to the 1870 Education Act coming into force. They knew their Bible well though, and enjoyed an argument and discussion on moral theories. They were deep thinkers, strong believers in prayer, very puritan in outlook, and respecters of the Sabbath’.
Although people often lived in hardship and poverty, which was still very prevalent until well into the 20th century, a close knit community based on coal mining and chapel life had been established.
By examining the census returns in some detail, looking at the recorded birthplace of the villagers it showed clearly that in many instance people were making short distance migrations. People were moving into the village from neighbouring settlements such as Brymbo, Bwlchgwyn, Rhosllannerchrugog, Ruabon and Bersham. Some came from other places in Denbighshire, and from the neighbouring counties of Flintshire and Merionethshire.
Unlike other places in north-east Wales Coedpoeth did not experience a huge influx of English speaking migrants. Throughout the second half of the century, when Coedpoeth grew so significantly, the percentages of English speakers migrating in was around 10% of the population. Also as has been previously mentioned it must be remembered that some of these ‘English migrants’ were the children of Welsh parents who had moved away and had now returned to the village to take advantage of the new job opportunities.
By the end of the century Coedpoeth was attracting approximately 7% English migrants into its total population. The fact that the village attracted so few English migrants had a significant impact on the continued use of the Welsh language, which was sustained well into the 20th century.
In conclusion then it can be stated that the strong influence of liberal Non-conformity created a strong religious culture in the village, which was conducted through the medium of Welsh. The growing number of chapels provided ample opportunity for both children and adults to gain a good grounding in the ability to both speak and read in Welsh. Chapel life and the Sunday schools had sustained the use of the mother tongue in many homes.
David Crystal, who has undertaken a lot of research into what enables a language to survive or otherwise concluded in his book ‘Language Death’ in 2000,
‘A significant demographic growth within an indigenous community can make more people available to use the language. There will be a more positive outcome if the community has a strong sense of culture or religious identity’
This was certainly true of the village of Coedpoeth.
Although nationally across Wales at the end of the 19th century, many parents believed Welsh had no place in a modern progressive world, and not many lamented their children’s loss of the language, in Coedpoeth the situation was different.
In the last ten years of the 19th century the village saw a huge swing towards bilingualism across the generations, and the effect of an English language education was especially noticeable amongst the children. However, the ability to speak Welsh was retained by 87% of the village’s population at the turn of the century, enabling the strong Welsh culture of the village to be sustained.
And this remains true to a certain extent right up to the present day. The Welsh Society ‘Y Felin’ is still in existence, and the village is able to provide an excellent Welsh medium school for its children, Ysgol Bryn Tabor was established in 1967, when there was a further wave of nationalism and concern for the language across Wales. Welsh conversations are still heard spoken on the streets of Coedpoeth, mainly amongst the older generations. But there is a cohort of young people who can use the language too thanks to their education being conducted entirely in Welsh. The strong religious heart of the village has now gone however with just two Welsh speaking chapels remaining, Disgwylfa in the Smelt, and possibly Capel Saron on Lower Road.
This says a lot about the language of the village well into the 20th century, and it also says a lot about the importance placed on the spoken language of a child’s home by the grammar school education system in the 1970s. A huge change in attitude to that expressed in Victorian Britain a hundred years earlier when The Times newspaper in 1866 described the Welsh language as :-
‘The curse of Wales ... their antiquated and semi-barbarous language ... shrouds them in darkness’.
In the 1830s the English Victorian perception of the Welsh language was seen as a problem, especially by the HM Inspectorate who saw the language as a barrier to progress and the education of its people. It was regarded as being responsible for social unrest brought about by ignorance amongst the Welsh people. During this period there were a series of rebellions and riots such as the Merthyr Risings in 1831, which saw a violent climax after many years of simmering unrest amongst the large working class population of the town of Merthyr Tydfil. They were demanding reform and protesting against lowering of their wages by mine owner William Crawshay, and general unemployment. The Rebecca Riots, which occurred between 1839 and 1843, saw farmers and agricultural workers protesting against unfair taxation in South and mid Wales.
An inquiry into the state of educational provision in Wales in 1846, in order to address these concerns, became an important influence in the resultant structural development of education in the second half of the 19th century. The HM Inspectors insistence that schooling should be conducted in English meant that the educational provision in the village of Coedpoeth was to have a major effect on the language as the community grew. It has of course been well documented, so we are now very aware of the means taken to ensure children were discouraged from speaking their native language whilst in school during this period.
A wooden block, which became known as the ‘Welsh Not’ was given to the child heard speaking Welsh. The poor child would then be humiliated by being made to stand in the corner of the class for the rest of the day, with no regard to any basic needs such as food, fresh air and a chance to play at break times, or the need to go to the toilet. The child who was left with the wooden block at the end of the week was usually severely punished. There are still people alive today who can recall relatives experiencing this treatment. Wrexham Museum has short film in which a Mrs Mavis Williams, formerly of Bwlchgwyn, and widow to the School Medical Doctor for Wrexham, is talking about her aunt experiencing this form of punishment in school at Brymbo.
But what of the findings of the Commissioners enquiry. Published in 1847 the Report is now commonly referred to as ‘The Blue Books’ and that is simply because they have blue covers. These Reports can be viewed at the A.N. Palmer Study Centre at the Wrexham Museum, if anyone is interested in reading further into this very damning view of the situation in the mid 19th century. What is clear however is that the Report became a byword for bias, with prejudice seen in virtually every sentence, and the judgements they made about the state of education in Wales at this time. A picture emerges of an ‘educationally backward country’ with the provision available being provided by chapels, voluntary societies, private venues and in some rare instances by employers. The Commissioners concluded that this backwardness lay firmly with the lack of understanding of the English language. And whilst they acknowledged that the working classes in Wales had a greater ability to read over their English equivalents, they failed to see the benefits a bilingual society could have for the country.
The results of the Commissioners findings concluded:
‘The language cultivated in the Sunday schools is Welsh. The subject of instruction is exclusively religious ... and the great mass of the poorer classes have been trained from their childhood to its use. On the other hand the Sunday schools have made the peasantry experts in handling that branch of the Welsh language, but its resources in every other branch remains obsolete and meagre, and even of these the people are left in ignorance’. In other words people, young and old were capable of reading their Bibles, praying and singing hymns. But it was felt to progress educationally they needed to be able to speak and read in English.
At the time the Report was published Coedpoeth did not have any proper educational provision for the children living in the area. It has to be remembered of course that the village in 1847 was very sparsely populated. Most of the residents lived in the Nant in cottages along the River Clywedog, with a small huddle of properties in the Adwy Clawdd area. The extent of the village at this time is shown clearly on the 1842 Tithe map. The only educational provision apart from Sunday schools in the village at this time was a small ‘Dame School’ established in 1833 by a Mrs Gittins. It was described as ‘having insufficient furniture and apparatus, and in bad repair’. Eight children were present on the day the Commissioners called, although the school did actually have sixteen names on the books. The education at this school was conducted in English, and on an individual basis. For this education parents had to make penny payments, resulting in an income of £4 for the school at the time of the inspection. Mrs Gittins had received no formal training to teach the children, her previous occupation was recorded as being a servant, and she did not receive a salary for her teaching role. In the early 19th century children as young as two were sent to Dame Schools and their primary purpose appears to be more of a ‘child minding’ service rather than for formal education.
Set against this very basic elementary educational provision, the area was seeing an increasing strength in Non-conformity with a small numbers of chapels appearing in the landscape. The Commissioners Report records five Sunday schools in the settlements of Coedpoeth and Minera in 1846.
The number of Sunday school scholars in Coedpoeth and Minera in 1847
Chapel Language Established Total no. on books No. present when inspected No. able to read the scriptures
Adwy`r Clawdd Welsh 1791 228 - 155
Minera C.M. Welsh/English 1818 24 29 12
Y Nant C.M. Welsh 1840 65 33 20
Coedpoeth Welsh 1841 88 100 90
Minera Church Welsh/English 1843 21 18 12
The settlement of Coedpoeth, specifically in the Adwy Clawdd area had the first Methodist Chapel to be built in Wales. This was as a direct result of a Mr. John Evans of Bala, a leading member of Welsh Non-conformity, having spent his childhood in this area. The chapel was built on a piece of land which belonged to him, and was given to the village for the specific purpose of providing a building for people to worship in. In 1846 when the Commissioners made their visit to the area the Sunday school in Adwy’r Clawdd chapel recorded 122 males and 106 females on the books, of which 68% were able to read the Bible. The Sunday school had a total of 30 teachers, with children and adults being taught through the medium of Welsh. In addition, a smaller Calvinistic Methodist chapel was established in the Nant in 1840, using a dwelling as their meeting place. Here on the day of inspection 33 of the 65 Sunday school pupils were in attendance, and 20 were recorded as being able to read the Bible. This equates to 61% of pupils.
Coedpoeth also had a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, which was established in 1841. Here the number of pupils in attendance on the day of inspection was 100, when in fact only 88 were recorded on the actual Sunday school books. Of these 100 pupils a very high 90% were able to read the Bible in Welsh. It can be concluded that the substantial growth of Non-conformity in the area was providing a means by which the Welsh language was being given what could be termed ‘institutional support’. Children alongside adults who were attending the Sunday schools were being taught to read in their mother tongue. Although a very small percentage of children may also have attended a day school, and were taught in English whilst there, the strength of the Welsh language, particularly through the Calvinistic Methodists chapels, was extremely strong.
County
Percentage of Sunday schools where the language of instruction is Welsh
Denbighshire
63%
Flintshire
39%
Montgomeryshire
52%
Caernarvonshire
87%
Anglesey
89%
Merionethshire
92%
The Report also recorded the percentage of Sunday schools across North Wales where the language of instruction was only Welsh. Denbighshire showed a percentage of 63%, which of course was the county Coedpoeth, was situated in at the time. The county of Merionethshire showed the highest percentage with 92%.
Significantly for Coedpoeth, the language of the Sunday schools was 100% Welsh, with no influence from the Anglican Church until 1875, when St. Tudfil’s ‘iron’ church was built.
The strength of the Welsh language and its role in education, albeit with a strong religious bias, was completely ignored by the inspectors, even though their findings showed that English was spoken by only 21% of the residents of North Wales.
As Coedpoeth as a settlement developed in the second half of the 19th century and the population continued to grow through migration and natural increase, chapel building to meet people’s religious needs was very prevalent. By the turn of the 20th century Coedpoeth had a total of 14 chapels, of which only two conducted their services through English – These were Capel Bethlehem on Smithy Road, which has recently closed and the Presbyterian chapel on Park Road, which closed and was converted to a private residence some time ago. With Coedpoeth being such a long-established stronghold of Non-conformity its first school was the Adwy and Coedpoeth British School, which opened its doors in 1868. Initially the school only had an intake of boys and it quickly grew, with 190 names on the registers at the end of its first month. The girls section opened the following year, with 156 names registered when it opened in April 1867.
Unfortunately the attitude of the Inspectorate towards the Welsh language hadn’t changed in the intervening years since the ‘Blue Books’ were published. The Rev. Scoltock, who was an Inspector for British Schools in North Wales, stated that the work of the school day was being counteracted by the language of the home. As a result of this continuing attitude to the Welsh language schools were subjected to even more rigorous HM Inspection and a proportion of a teacher’s salary was dependent on the pupils’ performance in annual tests, which naturally were conducted in English.
Prior to the building of the Adwy & Coedpoeth British school in the village in 1865, and before there was any legal requirement for children to attend school it was the norm for children as young as nine to be employed. In the main this was either at local mines, or in domestic service, both of which must have been a pretty gruelling existence for the children involved. Some were luckier managing to secure employment to help the family income in the local shops, or as errand boys and girls.
Between 1851 & 1871 the local census returns show a huge change in the fortunes of children in the village. The 1870 Education Act, in which Section 5 of this legislation required that each ‘school district’ should provide sufficient spaces to accommodate and educate each child in the area, meant that by 1871, 65% of Coedpoeth’s children aged between five and fourteen were in school.
Despite the initial problems with language, and the relatively late start in the provision of formal education for the village’s children, alongside the refusal to acknowledge the advantages a bilingual education could provide, the newly formed Pen-y-Gelli Board School soon gained a good reputation in the area. By 1873 a HM Inspectors Report compiled by Mr. J. Rhys stated the ‘Boys School is doing extremely well’ and the Girls section to ‘have greatly improved since last year’.
At this stage of the 19th century is it not possible to assess what the effect of the children receiving an English medium education was on the spoken language within the population of Coedpoeth. This is because there was no requirement prior to the 1891 census to record a person’s preferred spoken language.
Using the data presented in the 1891 census, as a means of analysing the percentage of Welsh spoken in a community, has proved somewhat controversial however. The inclusion of the language question was raised initially in the House of Commons on 21 July 1890, during the second reading of the Census Bill. Members of Parliament had discussed the fact that it was strange that the means of establishing how many people spoke Welsh was being omitted from the data collection, when Ireland had been collecting such information since 1851, and Scotland since 1881. As a result of these discussions the language question was introduced very quickly into the census, and this resulted in a barrage of complaints and accusations around Wales.
It resulted in Welsh nationalists urging the population to fill their census forms in Welsh, to affirm their ability to speak their native language. One leading nationalist sent an open letter to every Welsh and English newspaper urging editors to instruct Welsh speakers to ‘be honest, be patriotic, do not renounce your language, and do not falsely claim knowledge of English’. It was with such a push to ensure people upheld this sense of national pride in the use of their native language that the 1891 census was conducted. Such controversy may therefore be responsible for exaggerations of the monoglot Welsh speakers recorded in this year, and there is no way now of proving otherwise.
Whilst being aware of this controversy analysing the census records between 1891 and 1901 does show a very clear swing towards bilingualism across the generations in Coedpoeth over this ten year period.
So what was the effect of an English education on the children of the village? On examining the language spoken by the pre-school aged children 60% of them were still monoglot Welsh-speakers in 1891, compared with older school aged children where only 46% were recorded as only able to speak Welsh. The effect of attending school is far more noticeable ten years later, when pre-school aged children recorded nearly half could still only speak Welsh, but the older children who had been at school for a number of years showed just 12% as being a monoglot Welsh speaker. This shows clearly that the language of the home for many people in the village was Welsh, and there was no need to have any knowledge of English until a child reached school age. It should be noted however that some very young children were able to speak both languages, which suggests some Anglicisation was occurring owing possibly to the parent’s desire not to pass on the Welsh language. Some saw English as the language of progress for their children, and encouraged the children to use English instead of their native Welsh.
One such example was seen in the Johnson family who lived at 4, Popular Houses, Adwy. Robert Johnson, the father, was born in Bangor Isycoed and was English speaking. His wife Sarah was locally born and recorded as being bilingual. However in this family Welsh was not passed on to the children despite the mother tongue being Welsh. Their two children, Ellen aged four and Joseph aged three, were both recorded as English speaking.
The influence of families making return migrations into the village also affected the language mix within the community. One example is seen in the Phillips family, who lived in Tudor Street. In this family the father was born in Ruabon, and his wife born in the village. Their three children however were all born in Hanley in Staffordshire. Although both parents spoke both languages, they felt there had been little need to pass on the Welsh language to their children. The family perhaps had not anticipated that they might return to Wales in search of work at a later date.
So taking these additional facts into consideration the question was, did the English education have a detrimental effect on the language of the community which developed in Coedpoeth during the second half of the 19th century? We have already seen that there was a big swing to bilingualism across the generations at the end of the century. This swing was especially noticeable amongst the children over the ten year period. But remember being bilingual means that although the villagers were now able to speak English they were still using Welsh in their daily life. Especially the young men working in Welsh speaking gangs in the mines, quarries and at other industrial sites. An analysis of all the data showed there was no slippage of the Welsh language. In 1891 87% of the population of Coedpoeth were able to speak Welsh, and in 1901 the same percentage was recorded. This means just 13% of the villagers did not speak the native language.
And maybe you could say the Industrial Revolution in this area of Wales saved the language rather than destroying it. With an increase in job opportunities as coal mining, quarrying, iron making and brick & tile production changed the face of the landscape people were not forced to leave Wales in search of work. In fact the opposite happened, people left the rural hinterland and migrated often relatively short distances into the newly developing communities such as Coedpoeth. Some families who had previously left came back to the expanding village to the new work opportunities.
The comparative lateness of Coedpoeth’s development, in relation to other industrial communities in the region, may have helped to maintain its Welshness. The Welsh culture of the village may even have encouraged Welsh-speaking migrants to make positive decisions to settle in this community. The village was influenced very little by migration streams from England, which had anglicised other communities, such as Gresford and Marchwiel, by the end of the 18th century. Coupled with increasing industrialisation across Wales, the mid 1850s also saw a big decline in the number of jobs available in agriculture. This meant that many labourers left the countryside and migrated to the growing industrial regions in search of higher wages and steady employment. Coedpoeth and Minera with their collieries, lead mining and limeworks were able to provide this security. The development of an urbanised mining village in the second half of the 19th century was attracting a steady stream of a young male workforce to work in its developing industrial sites.
The village of Coedpoeth saw a steady increase in population during this period, rising from 1,345 in 1851 to 4,161 by 1901. Some of this increased population was naturally due to increasing birth rates, but much can be attributed to migration during this period.
Streams of young men moving into the community, marrying and raising large families ensured the growth of Coedpoeth, and the language spoken. In 1925, when Mr. John Harrison, a founder member of the Coedpoeth Welsh Society, Y Felin, reflected back to his Coedpoeth childhood in the late 19th century, he described the people as
‘More or less illiterate, prior to the 1870 Education Act coming into force. They knew their Bible well though, and enjoyed an argument and discussion on moral theories. They were deep thinkers, strong believers in prayer, very puritan in outlook, and respecters of the Sabbath’.
Although people often lived in hardship and poverty, which was still very prevalent until well into the 20th century, a close knit community based on coal mining and chapel life had been established.
By examining the census returns in some detail, looking at the recorded birthplace of the villagers it showed clearly that in many instance people were making short distance migrations. People were moving into the village from neighbouring settlements such as Brymbo, Bwlchgwyn, Rhosllannerchrugog, Ruabon and Bersham. Some came from other places in Denbighshire, and from the neighbouring counties of Flintshire and Merionethshire.
Unlike other places in north-east Wales Coedpoeth did not experience a huge influx of English speaking migrants. Throughout the second half of the century, when Coedpoeth grew so significantly, the percentages of English speakers migrating in was around 10% of the population. Also as has been previously mentioned it must be remembered that some of these ‘English migrants’ were the children of Welsh parents who had moved away and had now returned to the village to take advantage of the new job opportunities.
By the end of the century Coedpoeth was attracting approximately 7% English migrants into its total population. The fact that the village attracted so few English migrants had a significant impact on the continued use of the Welsh language, which was sustained well into the 20th century.
In conclusion then it can be stated that the strong influence of liberal Non-conformity created a strong religious culture in the village, which was conducted through the medium of Welsh. The growing number of chapels provided ample opportunity for both children and adults to gain a good grounding in the ability to both speak and read in Welsh. Chapel life and the Sunday schools had sustained the use of the mother tongue in many homes.
David Crystal, who has undertaken a lot of research into what enables a language to survive or otherwise concluded in his book ‘Language Death’ in 2000,
‘A significant demographic growth within an indigenous community can make more people available to use the language. There will be a more positive outcome if the community has a strong sense of culture or religious identity’
This was certainly true of the village of Coedpoeth.
Although nationally across Wales at the end of the 19th century, many parents believed Welsh had no place in a modern progressive world, and not many lamented their children’s loss of the language, in Coedpoeth the situation was different.
In the last ten years of the 19th century the village saw a huge swing towards bilingualism across the generations, and the effect of an English language education was especially noticeable amongst the children. However, the ability to speak Welsh was retained by 87% of the village’s population at the turn of the century, enabling the strong Welsh culture of the village to be sustained.
And this remains true to a certain extent right up to the present day. The Welsh Society ‘Y Felin’ is still in existence, and the village is able to provide an excellent Welsh medium school for its children, Ysgol Bryn Tabor was established in 1967, when there was a further wave of nationalism and concern for the language across Wales. Welsh conversations are still heard spoken on the streets of Coedpoeth, mainly amongst the older generations. But there is a cohort of young people who can use the language too thanks to their education being conducted entirely in Welsh. The strong religious heart of the village has now gone however with just two Welsh speaking chapels remaining, Disgwylfa in the Smelt, and possibly Capel Saron on Lower Road.