02/06/2026
Did you know Nant Mill farmhouse once held a family of 12? 📣
Samuel Evans grew up at Nant Mill, and in 1903 he married his sweetheart Sarah Roberts from Little Berse. His widowed mother moved into a cottage in Tudor Street, Coedpoeth, and the young couple took over Nant Mill and the farmhouse.
In those days of long evenings and large families, they went on to fill the house with ten children; five girls and five boys. And Sarah was in charge of feeding all of them, including their farm labourers, and supplying cream, butter, and vegetables for Samuel's milk round.
Poet Gillian Clarke, daughter of one of the five girls, Ceinwen, wrote:
"Dark rooms where once ten children slept in feather beds,
three little ones together, Ceinwen, Elen, Vi,
cool curls, warm limbs across each other's bodies."
And "rooms of daughters, a croglofft of five sons,
ovens of baking bread, cauldrons of cawl,
in the now-vanished farmhouse beside the river."
Help us keep this history alive by donating to the Nant Mill crowdfunder: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/nant-mill
Photo credit: Our thanks to the Evans family relatives who shared these photographs.
