WILLIAMS, STEPHEN WILLIAM (1837 - 1899), engineer, architect, and antiquary

Born 7 June 1837 at Mellington Hall, Churchstoke, Montgomeryshire. He was apprenticed to an engineer in Staffordshire; later, he worked with Benjamin Piercy on the Cambrian and other railways. In 1862 he became a surveyor and estate agent at Rhayader, where he also started to practise as an architect - this being the work which appealed most strongly to him; he continued his private practice even after he had been appointed county surveyor. The extent of his business was enormous; he was responsible for the repair of a large number of old mansions (as well as for building new ones) and public buildings, and of an even larger number of old churches. It is not without interest to remember that he valued the Nant-gwyllt estate when it was bought by the Birmingham corporation for the construction of the Elan Valley reservoir. He soon joined the Cambrian Archaeological Association, but the first of his long series of papers in Archæologia Cambrensis (this was on Castell Collen) did not appear until 1870; he was F.S.A. He became a considerable authority on the old Welsh monasteries - Talley, Strata Marcella, Cwm Hir, and above all, Strata Florida, the subject of his only book, The Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida, 1889. He died 11 December 1899, during his year of office as high sheriff of Radnorshire.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Sources

• Based entirely on the memoir (which includes a list of his papers) by D. R. Thomas in Archaeologia Cambrensis, 1900
• it should be added that Williams was responsible for some of the additions in the 1905 edition of Jonathan Williams's A General History of the County of Radnor (Brecknock 1905)

Further Reading

• Wikipedia Article: Stephen W. Williams

Additional Links

• VIAF: 68439106
• Wikidata: Q16200538

Published date: 1959

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