John Latham
ARCHAEOLOGIST
The Ysbyty estate and the purpose of survey
The material for this article springs from the result of survey work carried out on the National Trust’s Ysbyty Estate during 1984 and 1985. The original purpose of survey was to fill-in the apparent blank on the record for this remote part of North Wales.
This large estate, the single biggest block of land in Trust ownership amounting to 26,000 acres or 10,000 hectares is in three distinct parts: to the North an area of enclosed land divided into 54 tenant farms and to the south an area of unenclosed moorland known as the Migneint.
Somewhere between the two is an area of abandoned farmsteads and rough grazing and it is this intermediate zone that has seen most of the shifting and identifiable activity, namely expansion into and later withdrawal of settlement.
Methodology of survey
All the sites except for one discussed here were located in this area during the course of systematic fieldwork. The estate as a whole revealed a great deal of new material but by far the most rewarding area with evidence of deserted settlement was that defined by the valley of the Serw (a tributary of the Conwy) and the lesser stream the Marddwr just to its east.
This is almost certainly because there is good access via the valley bottoms (on foot or by packhorse) in the form of well established tracks and drove routes. All this land is within the parish of Tir Ifan, formerly in Denbighshire but now Conwy. Also the parish conveniently has a tithe map that was produced at the higher standard of production - this has enabled us to track to some extent agricultural changes since 1840.
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