To: ColoriMii                                           From: John Welson 
The Museum of Instant Images                 78 Harbour.Village 
Netherlands                                              Goodwick 
                                                                Near Fishguard 
                                                                Pembrokeshire 
                                                                Wales/UK 
                                                                 SA64 ODZ 

                                                                Date: 23.03.1999 

Re: Researches Into The Origin Of Addresses 

Thank,you for the invitation to be a contributor to this very 
interesting project. I enclose my contribution which I hope will 
be satisfactory. 

May I also take this opportunity to thank you for the catalogue 
and C/D Rom for the "Emblems" exhibition; it was most impressive 
and I am referring to it often. 

If I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to 
contact me. Please could you forward any catalogue for the 
"address"exhibition. 

With thanks and very best wishes to you all, 

John Welson. 
 
 

Origin Of Addresses - Contribution By John Welson. 

My family come from a background of farming, clearly traced 
to one area of Herefordshire/Radnorshire, areas of England 
and Wales; Herefordshire being in England and Radnorshire in 
Wales. The family have farmed this area, amounting to many 
hundreds of acres for a period of time in excess of nine hundred 
years. The centre of the area being the villages of Upper and 
Lower Welson. 

To this day very few houses have numbers, most, as is normal 
in rural areas have reference to the occupation of an inhabitent 
of some time in history, ie."The Old Bakery", "Anvil Cottage" 
(an anvil being a tool used by a blacksmith). "Toll Cottage" 
from an age when there were toll gates aecross the whole of 
Britain.Other properties bare the name of the function played 
by the property itself, ie. "Hundred House" (a Hundred being 
a demarcation of an area of land and somewhere that farmers 
would go to pay their taxes. "Yewtree cottage", yewtrees marked 
bounderies for church purposes and in an earlier time yew was 
used to make bows and therefore an important place to meet for 
military purposes. 
There are very few houses and farms in this area of Britain 
and during the early part of the last century there was a very 
large movement of the population of farm workers and related 
crafts to the steel works of South Wales. At the same time 
workers moved to the coal mining arecuof South Wales where 
pay and work was for a short time better than working on the 
land. 

The area where the family comes from consists of 95% farming 
and farming related occupations. Farms in this area were Known 
in both English and Welsh language (English and Welsh are two 
completely different languages and additionally there is an 
extremly strong dialect in Herefordshire). Welsh was within 
living memory of this writer spoken by almost everyone in Radnors- 
hire and in Herefordshire both English and Welsh were spoken 
until quite recently. 

The geography and location of large parts of this area makes 
it a very secluded part of the country and there has been very 
little real change to its appearance since earlier times. It 
remains a farming community, producing hops and fatstock sheep 
anet cattle- The famous Hereford Cattle come from this area 
and in the latter part of, the last century my grandfather Evan 
Powell Welson was instrumental in introducing these cattle 
into North America. This was the time of "The Wild West", Cowboys 
and Indians, and The Chisholm Trail. He was in the Wild West 
at the time of The Gold Rush and upon his return was to name 
one of the Herefordshire fields on the farm "Gold Rush Field" 
the reason given was that it was a good yielding corn field 
and the ears of corn, golden in colour, reminded him of small 
pieces of gold. 

The family farmed four farms,"New House Farm" which was situated 
in England but had land attached to it that crossed the boarder 
into Wales, the dividing line being a small stream. The remaining 
three farms were in Wales, they were, "The Wern", "The Bank Farm" 
and finally "Llan-Y-Ffellyn". Each of these farms was farmed 
by a different brother, James, John, Hugh and my paternal grand- 
father Evan Powell Welson. There were additionally three farms 
which were rented; one of which was constructed from the timbers 
of a large ship which broke up in the Bristol Channel at the 
start of the last century. The timbers were dragged up to the 
Herefordshire countryside and the large black and white house 
constructed. The house has always been known as the"ship-house" 
though it has a name, "Lower Bank Farm". As a point of interest 
the timbers were pulled all the way by horses, this was pre 
railways and Herefordshire is the county in Britain which is 
furthest from the coast. 

The farms were at some distance from the nearest town of Kington 
and whilst  daily post  should by law delivered   unopened 
to the address written on the envelope what infact happened 
during certain periods of history did not always accord with 
prescribed legislation. Evan Powell Welson recounted a piece 
of information about one such deviation which was to have a 
lasting affect upon the way the Welson farms were addressed 
for a period of something in excess of ninty years. 

During the period 1914-1918 there was a shortage of postal 
workers, including delivary staff, Post was therefore sometimes 
passed to "named" people who would often live in different parts 
of the counties. The person given the responsibility for delivering 
the post often amended the the envelope or the address to fit 
their own knowledge of the terrain or the person or persons they 
were to deliver the post to. In the case of the four Welson 
farms the envelopes were amended to read "The last Welson farm 
in England", "The first Welson farm in Wales". "The second 
Welson farm in Wales" and finally "The third Welson farm in Wales". 
To this day there are people of a certain age and generation 
who still refer to it this way. lt is an interesting example 
of how certain "local" means of addressing people or properties 
can be established outside of the official bodies who have 
prescribed responsibility for dealing with such matters. 

With new postal systems and sorting centres being introduced 
after 1945 the post for the single farm in England went to 
a different centre to the 'farms in Wales. During the period of 
transition there were teething problems and the postal authorities 
wrote on the outside of the envelopes "Welson the English" and 
"Welson the Welsh". Therefore the salient feature here was not 
the address but the country. 

John Welson (March 1999)