Hanmer is a place of writers and poets.

Dafydd ab Edmund 1425-1500
The Welsh gentleman poet Dafydd ab Edmund lived at Hanmer Hall at Yr Owredd (The Arowry) Hanmer. He won the bardic chair at the Welsh National Eisteddfod at Carmarthen in 1451 and established the rules for writing Welsh poetry (cywddau) He lived through the Wars of the Roses, during which Hanmer Church was destroyed. He writes of it ruined and desolate. But the rest of his poetry shows little sign of the turmoil of the time. He wrote mainly love poetry along with some religious poetry and odes to great men and events. Born in 1425 he was buried at Hanmer in about 1500.

Sir Thomas Hanmer, Garden Writer 1612-1680
Sir Thomas Hanmer`s Garden Book of 1659 is one the earliest and most important garden books in the English language. He was exiled during the Civil War and took the opportunity to study gardens in France, Holland, and Italy. Allowed to return to a quiet life in Hanmer, he devoted his enforced leisure to his garden at Bettisfield Park, Hanmer.

Sir Thomas had shown sympathy with the Puritan cause in parliament but when Roundhead troops captured Hanmer and stabled horses in the church it was too much for him. He led a troop of Welsh Royalists who ambushed them. The Cavaliers won the day but lost the war and Sir Thomas the Cavalier went into exile.

Randolph Caldecott, Illustrator and Children`s Writer 1846-1886
Randolph Caldecott knew Hanmer well during his six years working at the Whitchurch branch of the Whitchurch & Ellesmere Bank from 1861. He was a welcome visitor at Brook House Farm, Hanmer, where he spent some very happy times.

When he published his first two illustrated books for children, he chose things he knew well. `The House that Jack Built` was about Brook House in Hanmer, and `John Gilpin` was about horse riding, which he had enjoyed so much around the area.

Randolph Caldecott went on to transform the world of children`s books in the Victorian era. Children eagerly awaited the two books illustrated by him, priced at a shilling each, which came out each Christmas for eight years.

R S Thomas, Poet 1913-2000
R S Thomas was a Welsh poet whose standing continues to grow since his death with a stream of publications about his life and poetry. He was ordained into the Church in Wales in 1936 and became curate at Chirk and then in 1942 at Hanmer where he lived in Tallarn Green vicarage with his new wife.

He was a prolific writer and priest all his long life. At Tallarn his poetry changed as he found his own more troubled and fierce voice. When he left Hanmer for Welsh parishes he began to learn Welsh and gradually became the forbidding figure of later life. The sentiments expressed in his stronger poems tended towards the extreme along with some of his political views.

A second connection with Hanmer is that whilst there he wrote poetry about the Rising of Owain Glyndwr who was married there to Margaret Hanmer in about 1383.

Lorna Sage, Literary Critic and Biographer 1943-2001
Lorna Sage wrote the award winning biography `Bad Blood`. Lorna Sage was born in Hanmer Vicarage whilst her father was away at the war. As the granddaughter of the then vicar of St Chad`s Hanmer, Canon Meredith Morris, she spent her early years in Hanmer Vicarage. Her imaginative story of her grandfather, the school, and the village tells of conflict at home, drinking and a series of affairs. She became a professor of English literature and published books of literary criticism.

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Updated 6th February 2009, 9th November 2011 by Bill Barlow