Ysbyty Ifan Church

Ysbyty Ifan has been described as one of the most historical places in North Wales. The present church stands on the siteof an earlier churchand very near to the place where the ancient Hospis of the Knights of St John was built.

The Hospice is believed to have been founded about the year1190 as a result of an endowment  to the Knights of St John of the Manor of Dolgynwal, and gifts of land by Ifan ap Rhys of Tre Brys. It also became a place of Sanctuary.

Rhys ap Meredydd
Landowner
Among the most influential figures of Ysbyty Ifan was Rhys ap Meredydd, also known as Rhys Fawr – ‘Rhys the Great’. It is said that Y Foelas was him home. Rhys ap Maredudd was a rich and powerful man, as well as being a strong military leader. He was Henry Tudor’s standard bearer at the Battle of Bosworth, 1485, meaning that he carried the Red Dragon banner in front of the army. Tradition dictates that Rhys ap Maredudd killed Richard III at Bosworth, leading to Henry Tudor’ victory. Rhys ap Meredydd, his wife (Lowri) and son (Robert) have been commemorated by alabaster effegies in St John’s Church, Ysbyty Ifan. Eleven children were born to Rhys ap Meredydd and Lowri – the most well known of whom is Robert ap Rhys.

Lowri Meredydd
Proprietor of a herb garden
C15
Lowri was wife of Rhys ap Meredydd. Their family was prominent in the Ysbyty Ifan area and they were the forefathers of several influential families in north Wales, including the Price family of Rhiwlas. Lowri was herself an important figure, since she owned a herb garden which provided the hospice of the Knights of St John at Ysbyty Ifan with remedies. Lowri is immortalized in an alabaster effigy of her in St. John’s Church, Ysbyty Ifan.

Robert ap Rhys
Chaplain and landowner
d. c.1534
Robert ap Rhys was the son of Rhys ap Maredudd, and was also an influential figure in the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII, as an administrator and chaplain. He became crossbearer under Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and served has his chaplain too. During the period leading to the Protestant Reformation during the early 1530s, Robert ap Rhys became increasingly secular as a clergyman, which made his own transition into the new Protestant order far smoother. Indeed, Robert ap Rhys was lease holder of several north east Wales monasteries, and that antagonised his opponents. Following the Act of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, Robert ap Rhys received vast lands in Dôl Gynwal (the area known today as Ysbyty Ifan) and also in Llanfor, native parish of Robert’s wife, Mared. 16 children were born to Mared and Robert ap Rhys, with each one of them proving to be successful in his or her own way.

Elis Prys
Administrator
?1512-?1595
Elis Prys was the son of Robert ap Rhys and grandson of Rhys ap Maredudd. He graduated with a doctorate in law from Cambridge University in 1534, wearing a red robe, leading to the coining of the alias ‘Y Dr Coch’ (‘The Red Doctor’). Elis Prys was a highly influential person, who held several important posts, including Member of Parliament for Meirionnydd and sheriff of Anglesey, Caernarfonshire and Denbighshire. He was an administrator on behalf of the crown and is remembered as one who oppressed the poor and who was exceptionally zestful during the dissolution of the monasteries. Elis Prys was, however, admired as a horseman – according to tradition, he would ride his horse on top of the wall that surrounded his home, Plas Iolyn. Prys’ name was also one of the first on the list of the commissioners of Caerwys Eisteddfod in 1567. He was also a member of the Council of the Marshes and was Chancellor of Bangor in 1561. Elis Prys died in c.1595.

Thomas Prys
Poet and Pirate
?1564-1634
Thomas Prys is remembered as a poet and a pirate. He was twice married: his first wife was Margaret, who was mother to three of his children and his second marriage was to Jane, daughter of Hugh Gwynn, Bodysgallen, who was mother to ten of his children. Thomas composed several poems, about his voyages and nature and he also contended with the poet, Edmwnd Prys. He fought in the English army on the continent, including the Earl of Leicester’s army in the Netherlands and he was a member of Elisabeth I’s army in Tilbury, awaiting the Spanish Armada. Thomas spent much of his time in London, but his poem, ‘Cywydd i Ddangos mai Uffern yw Llundain’( ‘A poem to demonstrate that London is Hell’) suggests that it wasn’t his favourite of places. As Elizabeth’s reign reached a close, Thomas Prys spent more of his time on Bardsey Island, returning to Plas Iolyn, Pentrefoelas upon his father, Elis Prys’s death and in 1599, he became sheriff of Denbighshire. Thomas Prys’ written language was highly flawed and Lewis Morris attributed this to his wild life at sea and as a soldier. Thomas Prys was buried in Ysbyty Ifan on August 23^rd, 1634.  

Siôn Dafydd
Poet, clog maker and lay reader
c.1615-1709
Siôn Dafydd of Pentrefoelas was buried in Ysbyty Ifan cemetery in 1799. He was a clog maker by trade and was also a lay reader and poet. Siôn Dafydd is mainly remembered as the person who taught Twm o’r Nant to read and write and Twm thanked him for this tuition in his autobiography. Two commemorative stanzas by Twm o’r Nant are inscribed on Siôn Dafydd’s headstone:
   
   Galar – i’r ddaear ddu, Aeth athraw
   Fu’n meithrin beirdd Cymru;
   Llafurus bu’n llefaru
   Diddan fodd, y dydd a fu.

   Terfynodd, hunodd rhyw hyd – Sion Dafydd
   'Madawai o hir fywyd
   Ond cofiwn eto cyfyd
   O’r ddaear bwys ddiwedd byd

TRANSLATION:
   [Grief- into the dark earth went a teacher
   Who nurtured the bards of Wales,
   With great labour he held forth
   In an interesting fashion in days gone by.

   He came to the end, he rested awhile – Sion Dafydd
   Was departing from a long life,
   But let us remember he will rise again
   From the earth at the end of the world.]

Twm o’r Nant was around ten years old when he took the journey over the mountain from Nantglyn, Denbighshire to Pentrefoelas to receive lessons from Siôn Dafydd, against his father’s will. Of course, we can now appreciate the importance of these lessons as Twm o’r Nant became one of the most renowned composers of interludes in Wales.

T.Osborne Roberts
Composer
1879-1948
T.Osborne Roberts was born in Oswestry in 1879 and moved to Ysbyty Ifan when he was eleven years old, when his parents came to run the village shop. Roberts spent his apprenticeship at the office of Colonel Barnes’ estate in Chirk and it was there that his musical career began, as he learnt to play the piano and to compose, under the tuition of D.Knight Bernard. By 1902, Roberts had decided that music would be his chosen career and he became organist and conductor of various chapel choirs in Llandudno and Caernarfon. He composed several well known songs, such as ‘Y Mab Afradlon’, ‘Good Shepherd’, ‘Brwydr y Baltic’, ‘Y Nefoedd’, ‘Pistyll y Llan’ and ‘Cymru Lân’. T.Osborne Roberts passed away in June, 1948, and is buried in Ysbyty Ifan cemetery. 

Sarah Jones
Heroine of a Welsh novel
C20
Sarah Jones,of Gwernhywel Uchaf farm and  the inspiration behind Saunders Lewis’ acclaimed novel, ‘Merch Gwernhywel’ (‘Daughter of Gwernhywel’) published in 1964, is buried in Ysbyty Ifan cemetery. The novel tells the real life tragedy of Sarah Jones, when she married the Reverend William Roberts, a clergyman from Anglesey, against her mother’s wishes. It seems that Sarah’s mother’s objection derived from the fact that she felt that Sarah was marrying below her social status and since the Reverend Roberts had suggested that her son establish a medical practice in Holywell, leading to his untimely death.

Richard Vaughan
Founder of the Ysbyty Ifan almshouses
C17-18
Another of Rhys Fawr’s descendants was Richard Vaughan of the Pant Glas family, who was buried at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor in 1700. Vaughan was a soldier in the English Civil War, 1663, and became a member of the ‘Poor Men of Windsor’. This was a fund set up by King Edward III in order to ensure a good standard of living for brave soldiers who experienced misfortune when fighting in the name of the crown. Richard Vaughan bequeathed money for the keeping of six poor and elderly men in Ysbyty Ifan parish, leading to the building of six almshouses in the village.

Cynwrig ap Llywarch
A tombstone lies on the southerly wall of St John’s church, in commemoration of Cynwrig ap Llywarch. Cynwrig alleged that he was a descendent of Marchweithian, and the white lion of Marchweithian’s coat of arms, as well as fleur de lis and roses appear on Cynwrig’s tombstone. Whatever his kin, Cynwrig ap Llywarch himself was the predecessor of five influential families in north Wales.

Ysbyty Ifan

"A parish, composed of the townships of Tir-Evan and Trebrys, in the hundred of Isaled, county of Denbigh, and the township of Eidda, which is partly in the above-named hundred and county, and partly in the hundred of Nant Conway, county of Carnarvon; 3 miles (SW) from Pentrevoelas, and containing 847 inhabitants. This parish, which is intersected by the river Conway, a few miles below its source, derives its name from a preceptory belonging to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, founded by Ivan ab Rhys, about the year 1189, which continued to flourish with the suppression of that order, affording a sanctuary to travellers and others during the period of the conflicts between the English and the Welsh: this privilege continuing with the lords of the manor, after the abolition, and the place being exempted from all civil jurisdiction, rendered it an asylum for robbers and other malefactors, who became the pest of the surrounding country until the reign of Henry VII, when they were extirpated by the courage and firmness of Meredydd ab Ievan: the site of the hospital, or preceptory, is now occupied by the parish church, and there is not a single vestige of the buildings."
[ A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, 1833 & 1849, Samuel Lewis]

The parish consists of the township of Tir Eidda (in Caernarfonshire); Tir Ifan, Trebrys and Prys Ucha (in Denbighshire); and Gwernihowell (in Merionethshire) which was transferred from the parish of Corwen (in Merionethshire) during the late nineteenth century.

PRICE family, of Rhiwlas , in the parish of Llanfor, Mer. The older pedigrees trace the ancestry of this family to Marchweithian .