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Hey all, hoping a local can help me out here!

I'm trying to locate where Old Drynoch house/manor stood in in the 16/1700s. It was the home of the Macleods of Drynoch from Donald Glas Macleod through to Norman Macleod, 4th of Drynoch, who moved his family to the newly built Ellanraich - more on that place next.  I know the family moved back to a farm called Drynoch a couple of generations later, which is generally presumed to be the ruins of Gesto House in Bracadale. The diaries of one of the last Macleods of this line to live at the house recalls walking to look at the ruins of "Old Drynoch" in the 1840ish period, described as being located at "the cullin hills about ten miles south at the head of a long bay," but it was written some 50+ years later after a lifetime in another country. Can anyone help me locate it, or let me know if there is anything still visible on this spot?

Right, Ellanraich - it was in the Glenelg area and the family at the time were buried in the local church, but I dont' have any other leads in locating it. Macleod of Macleod sold off the Glenelg estates in the early 1800s I believe, but that's the only reference I can find. If anyone can point my in the right direction, it is MUCH appreciated!

Hi folks,

Does anyone in the Llanwnnog/Llanidloes area have any local knowledge about the location of early graveyards, particularly for St Gwynnogs and St Idloes? I can see from the parish records for these churches that a lot of my ancestors had their deaths registered here, but I've failed to find even one actual burial for them. I checked out some of the info for St Gwynnogs, and it seems there are no old, forgotten cemeteries in the empty areas around the church.

My ancestors were pretty wealthy folks and often specify in their will which parish that want to be buried in and leave money to cover the cost, so I'm sure they were interred locally. Can anyone local tell me if there are sources showing any of the following, please:

1) that the old graves were either cleared or buried beneath roads or structures in the local area
2) if the burials were cleared and reinterred elsewhere so the graveyards could be continued
3) there's an old cemetery somewhere away from the churches I should be looking at instead
4) there was another cemetery but no one's quite sure where it was
5) what on earth happened to the memorials if the graves have since gone
6) There were local burial customs in the 1600s to explain all of the above and I'm just ignorant of them.

I know in urban settings I've got several ancestors now under modern churches or lost to the Victorian pursuit of industrialisation, but I'm not sure what happened here.

Help?

Just had to share this!

For some reason, the whole page containing the entry for some of my ancestors in the 1939 register is blacked out. I know the address of the family thanks to electoral rolls, and so reached out to have the records opened as all the people in the household are a)dead and b) were born over 100 years ago.

Today I received an email requesting proof of death because of their ages.

I emailed back, asking whether the fact the two oldest members of the house would be 157 and 156 respectively if they were still alive counted as proof, as a death certificate seems overkill in the circumstances.

Even the youngest, who I knew when I was a child, would be 115 if she was still alive. Either I'm descended from a line of vampires, or the page got missed when they unsealed a pile of records 

The original thread I put up 8 years ago about Aberhafesp was here: https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=547453.0

It's been a long time coming, but I've made some progress on this area and wanted to see if anyone else would like to share research, etc, as many of the families are inter-connected.

I originally started searching for my tenant farmer ancestors, the Smiths, in the area around Llanwnog, and was particularly interesting in their time at Thimble Hall, and wanted to research the Aberhafesp Hall estates as a result. Typically, the SMiths are giving me the most trouble, but I've had luck with my ancestors leading back from Ann Rees, born in 1774.

Imagine my surprise when the will of one of their ancestors, a Richard Whittington (the father of the one mentioned in the other thread) lists himself as being of Aberhafesp Hall.  The family seem to have been based in the area all the way back to 1657, but I'm still waiting on some documents to confirm which parcels of land that included.

What I did find, however, was a direct link between the Whittington and Morgan families in the area.  Margaret Morgan has a son, David Rees, who marries Richard Whittington's daughter, Martha. I haven't done much on this line yet, but they are all from Llanwnog. In addition, it seems that the Whittingtons married into the Jarvis family back in the very late 1600s (Morrati Jarvis and his son, Roger), and I wondered if this was where the Jervis connection comes in?

I'm almost certain I've seen the name on other documents I have as well, so I need to look those up again.

There's also solid ties into the Swancotts, the Hughes family, the Pryce family, the Lloyds and the Thomas family, and the possibility of a link to someone called Llewellyn. I'm trying to backfill with wills, rent agreements and other things, and I would love to share with anyone who is looking at families in the area in the 1600s and 1700s.

Please reach out if that's you! With all the new records now available online, I'm like a kid in a candy store!