An early Pryce Jones invoice suggests the owner of the Royal Welsh Warehouse may have been a little economical with the truth. Look closely at the above. The medal shown on the left was awarded at the Great Exhibition of 1851, nine years before Pryce Jones opened his first draper’s business!
Pryce Jones's mother hardly receives a mention in history. She seems to have been largely omitted from the story of her successful son. Here we try to piece her life together.
With our focus on Pryce Jones this year, John Evans has written a fascinating account of Pryce Jones' first attempt to win a seat in Parliament.
A wooden bridge across the Severn, close to the site of the Long Bridge was recorded as early as the fifteenth century.
This painting by Edward Salter of 1879 shows Newtown’s steam age well under way. Several factory chimneys are belching out thick black smoke from their boiler houses, and an express steam locomotive approaches the railway station.
A close look at how the flannel industry in Newtown changed in the early stage of its development as a manufacturing centre.
Amongst the time-worn gravestones in Newtown's long abandoned riverside church of St Mary’s lies one which provides the outline of a family’s tragic story. The memorial is inscribed with the name of Thomas Syars, one of the town’s many flannel manufacturers
The first floor windows of the Royal Welsh Warehouse offered a commanding view of the length of Broad Street, the Long Bridge and Crescent Street in Penygloddfa beyond
The key to an understanding of why Newtown became an important centre for the manufacture of flannel lies in its ancient water mills.
Pryce Jones is regarded as one of the early pioneers of mail order, paving the way for our modern on-line world. Just like today’s internet companies, he relied upon advertising to stimulate sales and he was one of the first retailers to send out catalogues to his customers. But when exactly did this happen?
For some forty years, a 1878 panorama painting of Newtown hung on a wall in
A glimpse into the life of the individuals who may have lived in the back-to -back cottages which were part of 'our museum'
At the end of the 18th Century, Newtown was still a very small town with a population no greater than a modern-day village. Yet, within the space of forty years, it had developed beyond its medieval boundaries and its population had grown to 7,000 people. In the process it had acquired the epithet of ‘The Leeds of Wales’.
In the 1960s a number of ‘weaving factories’ such as this one were being demolished in the town, but the heritage value of the building was recognised and the surrounding area of Penygloddfa was declared a conservation zone.
Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the production of woollen flannel had been a small-scale cottage industry carried out in the homes of the rural population. In the early 1800s that all changed.
