VIC TYLER-JONES: Tai Un-Nos in NE Wales
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Vic Tyler-Jones, a native of Llay, retired in 2006 after careers in teaching and training NHS services, to pursue his interest in local history and specifically the lives of poor local people, as opposed to those of the landed gentry who have been much better represented in historical records. Since 2023 he has pursued a PhD project through Bangor University on 19C squatter plots in the Ruabon area and his full project title is ‘A Trajectory of Marginality: The life of the squatter colony on Newtown Mountain 1848-1909’. For us in our October 2025 meeting, the result was a fluent, fascinating and highly entertaining talk on a subject of which few of us were aware.​
The background to such communities was the steady erosion of common land in the early-mid 19C, particularly in north east Wales, by enclosure acts consolidating such land into large private estates. The poor people displaced from their homes by such changes built ‘tai un-nos’ wherever they could find vacant land. According to old Welsh custom (unjustified by legal precedent but largely supported by landowners) a house created on unused land, within one day and night, typically built of turf, with a roof, chimney and a fire burning by the following morning, became the rent-free property of the person who built it, together with a modicum of surrounding land. In the mid-19C, a settlement of such properties developed on steep rough moorland near Penycae on Ruabon Mountain, and became known as Newtown. The settlement extended to some 69 acres, with a total of 62 families and a population of 127 at its peak in 1861.
Newtown mountain hillside cleared of trees to reveal house ruins
So squatters were humble landless peasants, largely unrecorded by the historical record. Common perceptions of these people were that they were the most immoral and lawless of the rural population, of lesser value than labourers and the least civilised in north Wales. However, contemporary accounts and census records paint a rather different picture. The people were certainly poor, but the population was maintained and indeed thrived for some decades, many residents lived there for an extended period, children were born and were healthy and adequately fed.
In addition to the small houses, the community built two chapels, which records show were well attended. A number of residents were able to move from Newtown to Ruabon and Wrexham and indeed further afield - Vic examined several accounts of people emigrating successfully and profitably to the United States and New Zealand.
​The location of the Newtown community offered a number of advantages for poor settlers. Nearby there was fresh water in the Trefechan brook and an exposure of high quality freestone suitable for construction. The local coal measures being at their western extremity nearby, quite close to the surface, gave a readily available supply of fuel for local use, as well as allowing numerous bell pits and shafts to be sunk in the area to produce coal, fireclay and ironstone.
Ample supplies of heather could be employed for the making of besom brooms and a local industry of besom manufacture developed and persisted for many years, with international markets. The various industries of the Ruabon area itself, of course offered some of the best paid work in north Wales.
​In latter years the settlement has been concealed (and to some extent preserved) within coniferous forest plantation, so that its extent is only revealed when timber is cut down. The houses are fully dilapidated but their foundations and stone-built remains are still visible on the rough hillside.