England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Llangunnor St Ceinwr

The Parish

The parish of Llangunnor lies in central Carmarthenshire about one mile east of the county town of Carmarthen. Llangunnor is a fairly scattered community except for recent developments immediately across the River Tywi from Carmarthen. Llangunnor sits on the B4300 which follows the southern banks of the Tywi from Carmarthen to Llandeilo and is parallel to the busier A40 on the northern banks. Much of today's population is concentrated in Tre-gynwr and serves the town of Carmarthen as a suburb, the remainder of the parish spreads over a broad area of rural landscape. Llangunnor would have largely been a pastoral farming community at the time of this transcript with roughly 80% of land use as pasture to a smaller percentage of arable. Llangunnor is drained on the northern side by the Tywi and on its southern side by the Nant Pibwr which quickly joins the former and both make their way to the outer Bristol Channel via the nearby Tywi Estuary. The terrain is fairly undulating, Tre-gynwr lies between 20 and 60 metres above the sea whilst land rises to prominent hills, the church on its hillock at 70 metres whilst other summits of the ridge between the two streams top out at close to 110 metres. Carmarthenshire parishes are fairly large in extent and Llangunnor fitted that standard, it covered almost 5,800 acres and would have supported a population of just over 1,200 parishioners. Like most of Wales Llangunnor is not mentioned in Domesday Book which did not cover this area.

The Church

St Ceinwr's church sits in a romantic position on the summit of a knoll high above the Tywi and with an extensive view across the landscape, it is accessed from the B4300 by a short and quite steep lane running northward. The church has an interesting design with a double nave with lower chancels. The southern nave is the earliest part of the church with a 14th century date, the chancel and the northern pair of nave & chancel were all added during the 15th century. An arcade of the 16th century followed but the whole building was extensively altered during the 19th century. The arcade to the southern chancel was replaced with a "Tuscan colonnade" which Pevsner describes as "daring" in the 1810s, the windows refreshed in the 1840s and further alterations continued through to the addition of vestry in 1887. After winding up the lane one is surprised to arrive at a substantial car park but such is the attractiveness of the location that it has become a visitor attraction, the church is approached through a steeply-arched lychgate. Sadly the building is closely confined within dense trees making for a very tricky subject to adequately capture.