Commemorating 1,000 unnamed ‘workers’

A plaque has been unveiled to commemorate up to 1,000 unnamed local people who are buried at Y Dolydd Llanfyllin Workhouse’s Pauper Burial Ground.

Few people know of the existence of the Pauper Burial Ground for the Llanfyllin Poor Law Union, which covered a wide area from the Tanat Valley in the north to the Banwy and Llanfair Caereinion in the south.

Its little cemetery lies across the A490 from Y Dolydd, the former Union Workhouse, marked only by a yew tree at each corner.

Records show that it was consecrated in 1842 and in 1898, the Montgomeryshire County Times reported that the Workhouse Master, Thomas Aubrey Jones, said: “The Workhouse Burial Ground was getting very full. They had buried over 300 since he had been at the Union and there were some hundreds buried before that.”

Burials continued until 1903. 

A moving ceremony was held to unveil the plaque, conducted by The Rev. Hermione Morris, Rector of Llanfyllin, and the Mayor, Cllr Simon Baynes.

It was well attended by people from Llanfyllin and the other 22 parishes in the north of Montgomeryshire which made up the area covered by the Workhouse.

Cllr Baynes said: “The burial ground was consecrated in 1842 and continued until 1903 during which time it is thought that up to 1,000 people were buried there. So far the Trustees of the Workhouse and the Dolydd History Group have found no record of the names of any, apart from one woman - Jane Mason of Llansantffraid.”

The Rev. Morris, added: “The plaque means that those buried there will no longer be forgotten but remembered and thought about in the years to come. Their lives, often troubled and short, can now be treated with the reverence and respect they deserve.”