St Illtyd's Church, Ilston. Photograph © John Ball, Brecon.

Ilston - From 'A Topographical Dictionary of Wales' (1849)
ILSTON, or, as it is called by the Welsh, LLAN-ILLTYD, a parish, in the union and hundred of Swansea, county of Glamorgan, South Wales, 7½ miles (W. S. W.) from Swansea; containing 365 inhabitants. It is situated in the peninsula of Gower, on or between two turnpike-roads running through that liberty. The hamlet of Park-Mill, forming the most populous part of the parish, is yet extremely rural; and the surrounding scenery, which is characterized by features of tranquillity and seclusion, is enlivened by the small rivulet called Pennarth Pill, winding along a beautiful dell, in which are the ruins of an ancient chapel. On this stream a cloth manufactory was established early in the present century, but it has been discontinued. The living is a rectory, rated in the king's books at £9. 6. 8., and in the patronage of the Lord Chancellor; present net income, £230, with a glebe-house: the church is dedicated to St. Illtyd, from whom the parish probably derived its name. There is a place of worship for Calvinistic Methodists. A Sunday school is held in connexion with the Church; and a few shillings, the produce of some trifling benefactions, are annually distributed among the poor. Amidst the rubbish of some limestone-quarries were found, in 1823 and 1824, about 200 small silver coins, of the Roman emperors, from Nero to Marcus Aurelius inclusive. The place where they were discovered is called Pengwern, and occupies a commanding situation, plentifully supplied with water, and well adapted for the purpose of a military station: but no vestiges of any encampment exist, though there are several encampments within the distance of a few miles. The coins were found irregularly dispersed; no trace of a vase or other vessel was visible, and it is supposed that they must have been thrown down many years before, unobserved, by the quarrymen, from some crevice of the rock in which they had been concealed. Part of them were discovered among the roots of an ash-tree apparently of sixty or seventy years' growth.