LYTHAN'S-ST (ST-LYTHIAN), a parish, in the union of CARDIFF, hundred of DINASPOWYS, county of GLAMORGAN, SOUTH WALES,
6 miles (W. s. W.) from Cardiff; containing 110 inhabitants. It is situated on elevated ground, overlooking both sides of
the Vale of Glamorgan, about a mile south of the turnpike-road leading from Cardiff to Cow-bridge; from the common is
obtained one of the most extensive, luxuriant, and diversified prospects in South Wales. The living is a discharged
vicarage, endowed with the great tithes, rated in the king's books at £6. 1. 3.; present net income, £199, with a glebe-
house; patron, Archdeacon of Llandaf: the tithes have been commuted for a rent-charge of £140, subject to rates,
averaging £14; and the glebe contains 41 acres, valued at £40 per annum. There is a day school of about 20 children, who
are instructed at the expense of Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Pryce, of Dyfryn House, an ancient mansion in the vicinity, who
succeeded to the estate on the death of the late Hon. Mrs. Grey. The sum of £10 was bequeathed by Mr. Thomas Williams, for
the benefit of the poor. There is a cromlech on a farm belonging to the Dyfryn estate; it is near the road side, about
half a mile west of the church, on the approach to Dyfryn village. flushed with repeated successes, assembled the estates
of the principality in the town, where he held a parliament, that solemnly acknowledged his title to the sovereignty of
Wales, of which kingdom he caused himself to be formally invested with the crown. At this parliament Davydd Gam, who had
married the sister of Owain Glyndwr, but was, notwithstanding, a zealous partisan and adherent of Henry IV., attended,
apparently for the purpose of promoting Owain's pretensions to the crown, but with the disguised intention of
assassinating;hat chieftain. In this attempt, however, he was happily frustrated by a timely discovery of his treachery,
and, being seized and imprisoned, would have been instantly executed but for the intercession of Owain's most zealous
friends and partizans. In resentment for his treachery, Owain burnt his house and laid waste his lands, and detained him
in confinement at Machynlleth till the year 1412, when he was finally ransomed by his father and other vassals of the
English crown. Charles I. when on his route to Chester, had a bed prepared for him in a house in the town, called " the
Garrison;" the bed and furniture, which have been carefully preserved, are now deposited at Esgair Llyveren, in the
county of Merioneth. The TOWN is situated near the western extremity of the county, about a quarter of a mile from the
southern bank of the river Dovey, and on the turnpike-road leading to Aberystwith from the principal parts of North Wales,
and also from Shrewsbury. It is romantically embosomed in mountains that encompass it on every side, and from which a
beautiful view is obtained of the Vale of the Dovey, abounding in highly picturesque and richly diversified scenery, with
the winding course of the river, from above the parish of Cemmes to its influx into the bay of Cardigan. The streets are
wide and spacious; the houses are in general neat and well built; and the whole town, which is amply supplied with water,
has a regular and prepossessing appearance. A book society has been established, and is much patronized; and a news-room
has been opened, which is well attended and respectably supported. The environs are pleasant, comprehending much beautiful
scenery and many interesting. objects. At Uwch-y-Garreg, a township, in the parish, is Pistyll Rhaiadr, one of the finest
waterfalls in the principality; though inferior to some in the beauty of the scenery immediately adjoining, it is not
surpassed in romantic grandeur by any. The manufacture of flannels,principally of the coarser kind, is carried on to a
considerable extent, and some webs are also made; in this manufacture more than forty carding-engines and seven fulling-
mills are employed in the town and its vicinity: the weaving is done by the workmen at their own dwellings, and about two
hundred pieces, averaging about a hundred and fifty yards each, are sent to the market at Newtown, which is held every
alternate Thursday. Lead-ore is found in the parish, and mines of that metal have been opened in the township of Is-y-
Garreg; but they are not at present in operation: there are quarries of good slate, of which some are worked upon a
moderate scale. The river Dovey is navigable to DerwenlAs, within two miles of the town, and affords a facility of
conveying the produce of the quarries and mines to their destination, and of supplying the neighbourhood with various
commodities. The average annual exports from this place are five hundred tons of bark, forty thousand feet of oak timber,
a hundred and fifty thousand yards of oak poles for collieries, a hundred tons of lead-ore, and a thousand five hundred
tons of slate: the average imports are, five thousand quarters of rye and wheat, a thousand tons of coal, five hundred
tons of culm, two thousand tons of limestone, eleven thousand English and foreign hides, and groceries and other shop
goods to the amount of £14,000 in value. The market is on Wednesday; and fairs are held annually on the first Wednesday
in March, May 16th, June 26th, July 9th, August 7th, September 18th, October 10th, and November 26th, for cattle, horses,
and wares: a statute fair also occurs on the Wednesday before Easter. This place was one of the contributory boroughs,
which, together with Llanidloes, Welshpool, and Llanvyllin, returned a member for Montgomery: the elective franchise was
originally granted in the 27th of Henry VIII., and was exercised without interruption till the year 1728, when, by a vote
of the House of Commons, it was disfranchised, and the right of voting was restricted to Montgomery alone. But this
resolution being at variance with a previous one in 1680, voich confirmed the right of election, the burgesses had, by a
statute of the 28th of George Ill.. the privilege of asserting their claim to join in choosing a member for Montgomery
before any future committee of the house, and of appealing against any subsequent decision within twelve calendar months.
By the act of 1832, for "Amending the Representation," the town has again been declared one of the contributory boroughs
within the county, which return one member to parliament: the right of election is vested in every male person of full age
occupying, either as owner or as tenant under the same landlord, a house or other premises of the annual value of at least
ten pounds, provided he be capable of registering as the act demands; and the number of tenements of this value within the
limits of the borough, which are minutely detailed in the Appendix, is between ninety and a hundred. It is also one of the
polling-places in the election of a knight for the shire. The town-hall, or market-house, a plain and commodious building,
was erected in 1783, by Sir W. W. Wynne, Bart., grandfather of the present owner of Wynnstay, who is lord of the manor,
and holds courts leet twice in the year. The county court takes place alternately here and at Montgomery; and the petty-
sessions for the hundred are held here occasionally. The parish comprises an extensive tract of mountainous country,
computed at five thousand acres, the greater portion of which is uninclosed and uncultivated, affording only pasturage to
numerous flocks of sheep, that feed on the declivities of the hills; the lower grounds are fertile and productive, and
peat is found in various parts of the parish, the rateable annual value of which has been returned at £8251; the amount
for the town being £5472, for the township of Is-y-Garreg, £1330, and for that of Uwchy-Garreg, £1449. The LiviNG consists
of a rectory and a vicarage, united under the provisions of an act of the 29th and 30th of Charles II.: the rectory, which
was a sinecure, is rated in the king's books at £11. 10. 74.; and the vicarage at £6. 6. 04., present net income, £230,
with a house, and three fields of glebe land; patron, Bishop of St. Asaph. The church, dedicated to se Peter, is a
handsome strut ture in style resembling that of the later English architecture, rebuilt, with the exception of the tower,
in 1827, and containing eight hundred and seventy-three sittings, of which three hundred are free, in consideration of a
grant of £300 from the Incorporated Society for the building and enlargement of churches and chapels: the interior is well
arranged and neatly fitted up, and the ancient tower has been raised a few feet higher, and crowned with battlements and
crocheted angular pinnacles. There are places of worship for Independents, and Calvinistic and Wesleyan Methodists. Day
and Sunday National schools were established here in 1829, by John Jones, Esq., of Upper Norton-street, London, but a
motive of this town, who gave in that year £1000 three per cent. consols. for their endowment, which sum is augmented by
the use of a prior bequest of £200 by John Owen F.sq., for teaching children, and a grant of £40 from Ann Jones for the
like purpose. Commodious buildings were erected at the same time by subscription, occupying three sides of a quadrangle,
with a projection in the centre; the expense amounting to £600: and in the schools, which are supported partly by the
above endowments, and partly by subscription, 125 children of both sexes receive gratuitous instruction; the master and
mistress have a joint salary of £60 per annum. There are three day schools in the parish, in which 80 children are
instructed at the cost of their parents; and several Sunday schools, of which four are in the town, appertain to
dissenters, and contain about 1150 males and females, many of whom are adults. There are seven houses in the town
inhabited from time immemorial by paupers, three of which were bequeathed by Isaac Pugh, and the others are supposed to
have been the gift of Humphrey Morris, who also assigned £60, the interest to be expended partly in keeping the build-
ings in repair and supplying the inmates with clothing, and partly in educating and apprenticinims poor children, but the
portion for the repair of the has been lost. Several persons, also, at different periods have left sums for the benefit of
the poor, including £60 by Thomas Pugh, £40 by Rowland Owen, £20 each by Humphrey Morris, Gwen Owen, and John Davis, and
other smaller benefao. tions; all of which were consolidated, and the amount, £190, lent on two bonds to the
Montgomeryshire turnpike trusts, now yielding an interest of £9. 10., of which £5 are annually distributed among the poor
of the town, XI each among those of the two townships of Uwch-y-Garreg and Is-y-Garreg, and the remaining £2. 10. in
apprenticing poor boys of the town. A few small charities bare been loot. On a hill immediately above Penymilt House are
the remains of an ancient fortification of great strength, within sight of Cevn Caer, and commending all the passes in
this part of the country. Part of the senate-house, in which Owain Glyndwr assembled his parliament, is still remaining:
it was built with the slate stone of the country, and, from the appearance of the spacious entrance, which is still in
good reservation, seems to have been an edifice of nomean extent. The *Id building called " the Garrison" is situated near
the Wynn-stay Arms, and it is supposed that, there was formerly a subterraneous passage leading from this place to the
fortification at Cevn Caer, in the adjoining parish of Pennal. Adjacent to the town is a field named the " Garshion," at
the extremity of which is a copious spring, from whit* the town is supplied with water. DOI Guog, near the town, was for
some time the retreat of the celebrated Llsnoarek Hen, an eminent bard, who flourished towards the close of the sixth and
at the commencement of the seventh centuries; he was chieftain of a part of Caw ban, or Cumberland, but having survived
twenty-four of his sons, who fell in fighting the batiks of their country against the Saxons, and falling into poverty in
his old age, he retire4 under the proteetion of Cyuddylan, prince of part of Powys, to this place, where he devoted
himself to the pursuits of poetry. He died at the advanced age of a hundred and five years, and was buried at Llanvaws,
near Bala. Many of his compositions while in retirement here have been published in the Welsh Archaeologia and in a
aeparate volume by Dr. Pugh& Howl Stordwal, a Welsh bard, was minister of the parish about the middle of the fifteenth
century; as was also, for many years, hum Llaiodda4 an eminent poet of the Vale of Loughor, who flourished from 1430 to
1470. Dr. Davies, heed master of the grammar-school at Macclesfield, was a native of the town. The poor late union, of
which this place,is the Lead, was formed January 16th, 1837, and comprises the following 11 parishes and townships;
nameley, Machyalleth, Is-y-Garregi Uwch-y-Giarreg, Cent. mss, Dirowen, LlanbInmair, Llanwrin, and Pen in the county of
Montgomery; Pennal, and 7:tevein, in that of Merioneth; and Scybor-y-Coed, in that of Cardigan: it is under the
superintendence of fifteen guardians, and contains a population of 12,306.