The Names¶
The holding at Llandough appears under several names. This chapter sets out each form, where it is found, and what it may mean.
Attestations, in date order¶
Date |
Form |
Where it is found |
Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
12th-century MS |
Cetguinn (Old Welsh form of the personal name Cedwyn) |
Book of Llandaf: “cum cetguinn” in a charter boundary (p. 202) and “lann cetguinn” in Ystrad Yw (p. 279), in Evans & Rhys, The Text of the Book of Llan Dav (1893). Neither place is Llandough. |
DOCUMENTED |
20 June 1547 |
Cydwin: “a farm called Cydwin (fields named) in the manor of Llandough” |
Recited in the 1739/40 assignment, NLW Lockwood estate records L 11. The spelling is the cataloguer’s; the deed is unread. |
DOCUMENTED |
1552–1824 |
Cydfin Farm or Ty Mawr Farm (107 a.) |
NLW Bute Estate Records D 219, leases D219/1, 4–5, 8 et seq., “all in p. llandough”. |
DOCUMENTED |
13 Feb. 1739/40 |
Cydwin |
NLW Lockwood estate records L 11 (catalogue title and description). |
DOCUMENTED |
14 Oct. 1806 |
Ty Mawr Farm otherwise Ked Fen Farm (126 a.) |
NLW Lockwood estate records D 1/104, articles of agreement for an exchange with the Marquess of Bute. |
DOCUMENTED |
1807 |
Ty Mawr Farm or Red Fen Farm (126 a.) |
NLW Bute Estate Records D205/6–7, the completed exchange. |
DOCUMENTED |
1824 |
Cedfin or Ty Mawr Farm, plan 19 |
David Stewart’s survey of the Bute Glamorgan estates, Glamorgan Archives DB/E/1, index entry “19. Cedfin or Ty Mawr Farm” (photographed by the family; Legal Wiki EV-0211). |
DOCUMENTED |
1898–1908 |
Cwm Cydfin, Nant Cydfin (Leckwith) |
Ordnance Survey 2nd edition, in the List of Historic Place Names of Wales (RCAHMW). |
DOCUMENTED |
1902 |
Cwm Cydfin Wood (Leckwith and Llandough) |
Bute coppice-wood auction, 29 Nov. 1902, Glamorgan Archives DSA/3/192 and DSA/12/1003 (Legal Wiki EV-0219). |
DOCUMENTED |
1908 |
Nant Cedwyn, Cwm Cedwyn |
Baring-Gould & Fisher, The Lives of the British Saints, vol. II, p. 98. |
DOCUMENTED |
1972, 1985 |
Cwm Cydfin, Leckwith (SSSI 0524) |
Natural Resources Wales citation and boundary record (Legal Wiki EV-0218). |
DOCUMENTED |
— |
Ken fin, Ked fin, Cedwin |
Earlier research notes only. “Ked Fen” (1806) is the nearest documented form. No source found for “Ken fin” or “Cedwin”. |
SOURCE PENDING |
One holding, several spellings¶
INFERENCE Ked Fen and Red Fen are the same name. The 1806 agreement (Lockwood D 1/104) and the 1807 exchange (Bute D205/6–7) describe the same transaction: Mark Wood of Llandaf Court gives the Marquess of Bute his fishery in the River Taff and a farm of 126 acres in Llandough, in return for Catch Croft on Pengam Moors and other land. One catalogue reads the farm’s second name as “Ked Fen”, the other as “Red Fen”. A capital K and R are easily confused in a cursive hand. “Ked Fen” sits close to Cedfin and Cydfin; “Red Fen” has no other attestation at Llandough. The originals need to be compared to settle it.
CORROBORATED Cedwyn and Cydfin name the same two features on the Ely. Baring-Gould and Fisher (1908) place “Nant Cedwyn … a brook which runs into the Ely in the parish of Leckwith” and “Cwm Cedwyn … the woody dell on the right bank of the Ely, between Leckwith and Llandough”. The Ordnance Survey of 1898–1908 marks Nant Cydfin (ST 16047 74230) and Cwm Cydfin (ST 16088 74023) at that spot, and the Bute sale of 1902 describes Cwm Cydfin Wood as lying in “Leckwith and Llandough”. Two independent sources thus use Cedwyn and Cydfin for the same brook and dell.
INFERENCE Cydwin (1547), Cydfin (1552–1824), Ked Fen (1806) and Cedfin (1824) are one farm. The run of forms, the parish (Llandough), and the pairing with “Ty Mawr Farm” in the Bute, Lockwood and Stewart records all point to one holding. The acreages differ (107 a. in the D 219 catalogue, 126 a. in 1806–07, 139a 3r 8p with woodland in 1824), so the boundaries changed or were counted differently. The field names in the 1547 lease have not been read.
What the names may mean¶
Two readings fit the forms. Neither is proven, and both may be true at different dates.
INFERENCE A personal or saint’s name, Cedwyn. Cetguinn is the Old Welsh spelling of Cedwyn (Book of Llandaf, pp. 202 and 279). The second element is the common Welsh name-ending -wyn (from gwyn, “white, fair, blessed”). Places such as Llangedwyn (Powys) and Ynyscedwyn (Ystradgynlais) carry the same name. On this reading Cwm Cedwyn is “Cedwyn’s valley” and the farm took its name from the dell.
INFERENCE A boundary word, *cydffin*. Welsh ffin means a boundary, and cyd- means “joint, common”. D. Silvan Evans’s English and Welsh Dictionary (1852) gives cydffin among the Welsh for “frontier” (adjective) and “coterminous”, beside cyffin and cyffiniol. Cwm Cydfin lies where Leckwith and Llandough meet; the 1902 sale puts the wood in both parishes. On this reading Cwm Cydfin is “the valley of the common boundary”. The spelling Cydffin is still used by Natural Resources Wales (Dinas Powys flood scheme report, 2020: “Cwm Cydffin SSSI”).
The two readings may have met: a Welsh name Cedwyn written down by English clerks as Cydwin and Cedfin, then understood by Welsh speakers as cydffin because it matched the parish boundary. That is a hypothesis for a place-name specialist to test, starting with the Melville Richards Archive at Bangor, where no entry for these forms was retrieved for this edition.
Tŷ Mawr¶
DOCUMENTED Tŷ Mawr is Welsh for “great house”; it is the name paired with Cydfin, Ked Fen and Cedfin in every record above, and it is the source of the English “Great House Farm”. On its own the name proves nothing: many farms in Wales are called Tŷ Mawr (Legal Wiki, GHF-E173 identity control).