Cwmgelli House, Treboeth and its families
Cwmgelli House c.1950 (reproduced courtesy of Mrs Brianna Moore) Cwmgelli House (SS654969) occupied a prominent position in Treboeth between the present-day Pineway and Cwmgelli Drive and close to Heol Gerrig and Llangyfelach Road. The site represented one of the oldest inhabited in this part of Clase Lower, one of the eight administrative districts of the parish of Llangyfelach created during Tudor times.
Early History The property also fell within the fee or manor of Trewyddfa abutting, in part, its north-western boundary which ran along what became Llangyfelach Road. The fee comprised customary or copyhold lands which came under the ultimate ownership of the lord of Gower, all copyholders and tenants holding their lands at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor. In the 1650 survey of Gower, instigated by Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Williams was named as copyholder ‘in iure vxoris for a tenemt called Cwm y Gelly’ and paying an annual customary rent of 4s 6d. Williams also held in the right of his wife ‘Tir y doynau’, paying 9d. customary rent. In the 1764 survey, when the Duke of Beaufort was lord of Gower, members of the ‘prolific and important’ Franklen family were in possession of Cwmgelli with Mary Franklen, an infant, named as the copyholder and John Franklen as tenant, paying an annual rent of 5s. 3d. It should be noted however that, although representations of properties appear on Lewis Thomas’s 1761 map of the fee of Trewyddfa, not one is situated in the precise location of Cwmgelli House. 22
Annual Report of the County Archivist 2012-2013