![St Edeyrn's church, Llanedeyrn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/St_Edeyrn%27s_church%2C_Llanedeyrn.jpg)
Llanedeyrn ( cy, Llanedern) is a former village, now a district and
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
, in the east of the
city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
of
Cardiff
Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...
,
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
, located around 3.5 miles from the city centre. The parish of Llanedeyrn rests on the banks of the
river Rhymney and is visible nesting on a hill side above the
A48(M), westbound on the approach into Cardiff.
The name
The name used in English "Llanedeyrn" is in fact the perpetuation of an erroneous Welsh form.
In Welsh, the name as it stands is pronounced
anˡe·dəɪrn In English, it is pronounced
anˡɛdɪnas if the name were Lanedin,
with Welsh
becoming
and the difficult, for non-Welsh-speakers, “Edeyrn” becoming an easier “Edin”, perhaps from familiarity with the name of the Scottish city of Edinburgh.
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (The Lives of the British Saints, 1908) states that there has been confusion between the names Edern and Edeyrn, and that Edern is "the Latin Aeternus, but it is commonly written in later Welsh Edeyrn, which is really a different name".
The name “Aeternus”, or “Eternus” means “eternal, everlasting”.
One reason for Edeyrn instead of Edern might have been a belief that it was based on Welsh “teyrn” (“king, prince, lord” in earlier Welsh, though nowadays “tyrant, despot, oppressor”)
Most earlier forms of the name show it be Llanedern
anˡe·dɛrn although a couple do show “Edeyrn”. The meaning is "church (of) Edern".
The local pronunciation when Gwentian Welsh was spoken here (until the early 1900s) was based on Llanedern. It was Llanetarn
anˡe·tarn showing the typical south-eastern change of final-syllable /e/ to /a/ (also a feature of north-western Welsh, in Gwynedd and Ynys Môn) and the provection of /d/ to /t/ at the beginning of a penultimate syllable.
A more standard form of this is Llanedarn (south-eastern provection being a somewhat stigmatised feature in Welsh), and this is the form used by Samuel Lewis in 1834 in his Topographical Dictionary Of Wales. He adds “Llan-edeyrn” in brackets after “Llanedarn”.
John Hobson Mathews (Mab Cernyw), editor of the “Cardiff Records, Being Materials For A History Of The County Borough From The Earliest Times” mentions Llanedern in Volume 5 (1905), in the “Schedule of Place Names”.
“LLANEDERN (the church of Saint Eternus.) A village and parish in the Hundred of Cibwr, three miles north-east from Cardiff, on the main Roman road….”
He remarks further that “Llanedeyrn” is incorrect as it is not the historical form, as too is Llanedarn (which he spells with a final “e” – “Llanedarne”) because it is a colloquial form. “The spellings "Llanedeyrn" and "Llanedarne" are alike erroneous; the first is founded on mistaken etymology, the second a barbarism.”
There are other places in Wales named after the Celtic saint Edern (such as the village of
Edern, in Gwynedd, formerly spelt Edeyrn), and
Bodedern
Bodedern is a village and community in the west of Anglesey, Wales.
At the 2001 census, it had a population of 1,074, decreasing slightly to 1,051 at the 2011 census. The community includes the settlements of Llanllibio and Pen-llyn.
Location ...
(“dwelling / church (of) Edern”) in Anglesey.
There are villages too in western Brittany with his name - one named
Edern in both
Breton
Breton most often refers to:
*anything associated with Brittany, and generally
** Breton people
** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany
** Breton (horse), a breed
**Ga ...
and French, and another called in Breton Lannedern (
Lannédern in French), an exact equivalent of Cardiff's Llanedern / Llanedeyrn. There is also a village Plouedern (Breton) /
Plouédern
Plouédern (; br, Plouedern) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in north-western France.Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
saint named
St Edeyrn or Edern.
During the 6th century, St Edeyrn and a fellow monk,
St Isan, were given the task of spreading the faith and establishing places of worship. The first location chosen by the two monks was
Llanishen
Llanishen (Welsh Llanisien ''llan'' church + ''Isien'' Saint Isan) is a district and community in the north of Cardiff, Wales. Its population as of the 2011 census was 17,417. Llanishen is the home of the former HMRC tax offices, the talles ...
. This name commemorates St Isan (Llan + Isan) and the other St Edeyrn (''Llan'' means church or parish in the Welsh language). St Edeyrn was reputed to have travelled widely, and as a result there are churches in North and South Wales dedicated to his memory. St Edeyrn gathered together a community of about 300 that lived and worshipped in the Llanedeyrn area.
The original
Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
-style church dating back to 1123 exists only as stonework remnants beneath restoration work completed in 1888; the church today is a simple structure with a tower and six bells. Adjacent to this church is a public house called the Unicorn. The building dates to the 14th century and was converted in the late 18th century.
Nearby in Pen-y-Groes (Welsh: Pen-y-groes) a Calvinistic
Methodist
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...
school room and chapel was built in 1840.
Comprising only a few buildings, Llanedeyrn became part of Cardiff in 1889.
In the late 1960s,
Cardiff Council
Cardiff Council, formally the County Council of the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Cyngor Sir Dinas a Sir Caerdydd) is the governing body for Cardiff, one of the Principal Areas of Wales. The principal area and its council were established ...
decided to build low cost social housing in Llanedeyrn, with an estimated 3,500 homes to be erected for 12,000 poor people (2,000 homes owned by the city council and 1,500 private homes). The first of the estates in the area was opened in 1968. The council provided prefabricated and terraced houses, and many two-, three- and multi-storey blocks of flats were constructed.
In 1974 the Maelfa shopping centre was built
and a part-time police station was opened, followed in 1975 by the Retreat public house next door. The public house "The Pennsylvania", dating from 1972, closed down and reopened in 2004 as the "New Penn".
The area also had the first comprehensive school built in Wales,
Llanedeyrn High School, which
Colin Jackson
Colin Ray Jackson, (born 18 February 1967) is a Welsh former sprint and hurdling athlete who specialised in the 110 metres hurdles. During a career in which he represented Great Britain and Wales, he won an Olympic silver medal, became wor ...
attended in his youth.
Maelfa
Whoever chose the name “Maelfa”
məɪlva for the shopping centre is unknown, but Llanedeyrn has probably the only instance in Wales of “Maelfa” as a place name. It is a word used in nineteenth-century literary Welsh meaning "shop, market-place", first seen in 1803 in the Welsh-English Dictionary of lexicographer William Owen-Pughe and apparently coined by him. It is literally “profit-place” (mael = profit, advantage, benefit) and (-fa = suffix meaning “place”). “Mael” is in fact from Middle English “vail” (= profit, return, proceeds), from Old French “vail”, from Latin, and related to the English word “value”.
[ ]
Housing Estates
The housing estates in Llanedeyrn are:
Coed-Y-Gores, St Phillip Evans Court, Bryn Fedw, Maelfa, Eastside Quarter, Roundwood, Chapelwood, Bryn Fedw, Pennsylvania, Jefferson Court, Lincoln Court, Ael-Y-Bryn, Coed Ederyn, Wellwood.
Government
![Cardiff Wales communities - Llanedeyrn post-2016 locator](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Cardiff_Wales_communities_-_Llanedeyrn_post-2016_locator.png)
In 2016 Llanedeyrn became one of four new
communities
A community is a Level of analysis, social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place (geography), place, Norm (social), norms, religion, values, Convention (norm), customs, or Identity (social science), identity. Communiti ...
in Cardiff, having previously been part of the
Pentwyn community.
However, like many communities in Cardiff, it does not have a
community council
A community council is a public representative body in Great Britain.
In England they may be statutory parish councils by another name, under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, or they may be non-statutory bodies. In ...
.
For elections to
Cardiff Council
Cardiff Council, formally the County Council of the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Cyngor Sir Dinas a Sir Caerdydd) is the governing body for Cardiff, one of the Principal Areas of Wales. The principal area and its council were established ...
Llanedeyrn is part of the Pentwyn
electoral ward
A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected to t ...
.
See also
*
Llanedeyrn Library
References
External links
Population Statistics (1841 - 1891)* http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/GLA/Llanedeyrn/
{{Politics and Government in Cardiff
Communities in Cardiff