Cwmifor

Cwmifor is a small village in Carmarthenshire.^[1] It is a part of the Manordeilo and Salem community and is located between Llandeilo and Llandovery, near the A40.

The village consists of a number of dispersed farmhouses, most of which were built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century, a number of small houses were built near to the A40, transforming the village into a 'small nucleated settlement'.^[2]

Southbound sign, entering Cwmifor village

History

It is likely that the name Cwmifor derived from a person's name ('Cwm Ifor' means "Ifor's Valley"). An extensive Neolithic (4000–2200 BC) occupation site comprising numerous pits and post-holes, with finds of burnt bone, flints and charcoal, was recorded at Cwmifor.^[3][4]

A Roman road known as the Via Julia ran east to west at the northern extremity of the settlement.^[5] A turnpike road was established in the eighteenth century and followed the line of the Roman road although the course through Cwmifor was straightened under Thomas Telford in the 1820s.^[6]

A meeting of a group of Rebecca Rioters took place in graveyard of village's Baptist Chapel in 1843 and was reported in The Times.^[7] This is one of the few meetings of the Rebecca Rioters infiltrated by the press.

The village remained a dispersed settlement into the 1880s, with an Ordnance Survey map from 1886 showing a public house, a parish church, and a Baptist chapel. Several prominent farms and houses are also named on the map, many of which remain today (Cae Mawr, Pen-y-Waen, and Penhill).^[8]

In 2002, Carmarthenshire Council earmarked the village primary school for closure. According to one report, the school had twenty three pupils at the time of the decision.^[9] In 2007, it was reported on social media that the school had a total of seven pupils.^[10]

Landmarks

St Paul's Church is a nineteenth-century church in Cwmifor. While it was originally designed as a Roman Catholic church, it became an Anglican chapel of ease once it was completed. The church is built of squared stone.^[11]

A Baptist chapel was built in 1789, enlarged in 1836 and renovated in 1864. It is built in the simple round-headed style with a long-wall entry plan.^[12][13]

Church of St Paul, Cwmifor

The village hall, or reading room, is next door to St Paul's Church. Manordeilo and Salem Community Council meet in the village hall each month.^[14]