Bettws-y-Crwyn is a small, remote village and civil parish in south-west Shropshire, England. It is close to the England–Wales border and is one of a number of English villages to have a Welsh language placename.
Name The first part of the name of the village is the Welsh bet(t)ws, a borrowing from the Old English bed-hus, meaning 'prayer house' or 'chapel'.University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language. In Welsh, crwyn (the plural of croen) usually means 'skins, hides, pelts'.University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language. Hence Betws-y-Crwyn appears at first to mean 'chapel of the hides'. However, Eilert Ekwall suggested that the form that now appears as crwyn 'may be Welsh crowyn 'pigsty' '.Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (third edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947), p.38. In this he has been followed by Margaret GellingMargaret Gelling in collaboration with H. D. G. Foxall, The place-names of Shropshire. Part 1, The major names of Shropshire, English Place-Name Society, vol. 62–3 (1990), p.47. and the University of Nottingham's 'Key to English Place-names' project .University of Nottingham, Key to English Place-names The Welsh noun crowyn has a range of meanings, including 'shed where animals are kept, sty, coop, kennel; creel, basket'.University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language.
The parish name was formerly written simply as Bettus or Bettws, and the suffix Crwyn only appears in written records in the nineteenth century.
Features The parish, including the hamlets of Anchor (which has a pub of the same name), Quabbs and Hall of the Forest had a total population of 212 at the 2001 census,Bettws-y-Crwyn CP, Office for National Statistics increasing to 239 at the 2011 census.
It lies at above sea level, making it one of the highest settlements in Shropshire and England too. The village is about west of the Shropshire town of Craven Arms, and only about south-east of Newtown in Powys, Wales.
Bettws had a school which closed in 1951; its building is now the village hall, containing a First World War memorial board.
The parish lies within the Clun electoral division of Shropshire Council.
Church
The church of St. Mary dates from the late 13th or early 14th century, and was "restored" in 1860. There is a fine 15th or 16th century screen and roof, a 17th-century pulpit, and 19th century pews, with the names of farms within the parish painted on them.St Mary, Bettwys-y-crwyn, British Listed Buildings The church contains a ceramic war memorial plaque to men who died serving in World War I. A pair of medals belonging to local man Pryce Lloyd, who returned from wartime service (during which he was a prisoner of war), used to be displayed under the plaque.
See also Listed buildings in Bettws-y-Crwyn
References
External links Bettws parish