Welsh place names: Radnor

06 September 2008

Radnor

Radnor Township was founded 1682 as a land grant from William Penn. The township was part of the Welsh Tract and was named for Radnorshire in Wales. In 1717, the Welsh Friends erected a Quaker meetinghouse near what is now the intersection of Conestoga Road and Sproul Road at the geographic center of the township. The new town, "Radnorville", later known as the community of "Ithan" after nearby Ithan Creek, grew around the meetinghouse. The Welsh influence waned in the late 1700s as many left the area due to high taxation. Stone monuments were erected in various locations throughout the township in the late twentieth century to commemorate the township's Welsh heritage.

Like many of the elite communities of Philadelphia's Main Line, Radnor is a picturesque enclave in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania in Delaware County. Part of Radnor is also in Tredyffrin Township, Pennsylvania in Chester County. The unincorporated community is adjacent to Villanova and St. Davids, and is served by the SEPTA R5 and 100 regional train lines.
Once a country retreat for Philadelphia's most prominent families, the community is rich with unique and striking architectural assets, including the estates of Woodcrest (now Cabrini College), Eltonwood (now part of Eastern University), Bolingbroke, Rock Rose, and The Woods.
Villanova University, Cabrini College, the Valley Forge Military Academy and College, and Eastern University are all located within Radnor Township.
Some or all of the communities of Bryn Mawr, Garrett Hill, Rosemont, St. Davids, Villanova, Radnor and Wayne are located in Radnor Township.

Lancaster Pike, the first toll road in the United States, connected the cities of Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, passing through Radnor Township, opened in 1794. That road is now part of the Lincoln Highway (U.S. Route 30 in Pennsylvania). The Columbia Railroad, later part of the Pennsylvania Railroad also passed through in 1832. Thus, Radnor is one of the towns associated with the local moniker "Main Line." A separate railroad passing through Radnor Township, the Philadelphia and Western Railroad, was opened in the early twentieth century. The "Main Line" railroad facilities and a portion of the P&W facilities are still used by SEPTA (the Philadelphia area's transit authority), and the "Main Line" railroad tracks are also used by Amtrak.
In the 1880s, George W. Childs bought property in the community of Louella in the western part of Radnor Township, renamed the area Wayne, Pennsylvania (after American Revolutionary War hero Anthony Wayne) and organized one of the United States's first suburban developments.

The township has a website, touting itself as The Best Place to Live and Work.

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The Welsh were added later

The Welsh Tract, also called the Welsh Barony, was a portion of Pennsylvania settled largely by Welsh-speaking Quakers. It covers 40,000 acres to the west of Philadelphia. The original settlers, led by John Roberts, negotiated with William Penn in 1684 to constitute the Tract as a separate county whose local government would use the Welsh language, since many of the settlers spoke no English. Notwithstanding this agreement, by the 1690s the land had already been partitioned into different counties, despite appeals from the Welsh settlers, and the Tract never gained self-government.
The Roberts and other Welsh families became influential in the area, through the building of mills and the eventual introduction of the railroad. It is the railroad that gives the best-known part of the area its current name — the Main Line, referring to the main track of the now-defunct Pennsylvania Railroad.
The area is now part of Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware counties. Many towns in the area still bear Welsh names. Some, such as Bala Cynwyd, Radnor and Haverford Township, are named after places in Wales. Others, such as Tredyffrin or Uwchlan, have independent Welsh names. Some communities in the area that formerly comprised the Welsh Tract were subsequently given Welsh names. Among these were Gladwyne, formerly "Merion Square" (which was given its new name in 1891 in order to imitate the stylish Welsh names of adjoining towns, although the name is meaningless in Welsh), and Bryn Mawr, formerly "Humphreysville" (which was renamed in 1869). An additional Welsh settlement included Bala Cynwyd which originated as two separate towns that have grown together.
A more successful attempt at setting up a Welsh-speaking colony occurred two centuries later, in the Chubut Valley of Patagonia.

Unfortunately, the Cymry-fication of the Main Line was, for the most part, a public relations ploy by the railroad to make the area more 'quaint' and 'historic', rather than an actual naming process. True, there were many Welsh settlers in the area in the 1700s, but the entire 'Welsh Nation' gambit didn't work out like they'd hoped. Only a few of the towns had Welsh names from the beginning, like Malvern and Radnor; the rest were changed, like Athensville to Ardmore, later...

Welsh place names

06 September 2008

Radnor

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The Welsh were added later

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