Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Chapter One School Days in Llandovery, Swansea and Gloucester Charles Prytherch Lewis was born on 20 August 1853 at Llwyn Celyn, just outside the small town of Llangadog in rural Carmarthenshire, about 20 miles north of Swansea and 40 miles north-west of Cardiff. The town lies in the Tywi Valley, in the lee of Brynamman Mountain, from the top of which, it used to be said that you could see five counties. The house where he was born is referred to in some sources as being at Llanwrda, a village about two miles north of Llangadog: in reality, it is part way between the two settlements. His uncle, the Rev David Price Lewis, J.P., was the first to live in the house. He died a bachelor in 1861, when it passed to C.P.’s father, Frederick, who was listed in the 1851 and 1861 censuses as a ‘landed proprietor’. The Lewises were a county family of sufficient significance for genealogists to have traced them back several centuries. In the 1881 census the name, though relatively rare in England, was common throughout Wales, but was 11 Llwyn Celyn, near Llangadog, C.P.’s early home.