The British School was opened in 1846 having moved from its temporary accommodation in the Rehoboth Chapel. One of the first students at the school was Mary Thomas, who was born in 1842 at Ty Issa Farm, Llangollen. She came here, to the school along with 200 other pupils. With her she brought her pet lamb Billy who apparently caused mayhem in class and had to be put out into the playground. Mary’s schoolmates used to pat the lamb through the railings of the playground.
In 1861 Mary married Thomas Hughes, a mining engineer from Cefn Mawr and they went on to have 11 children before Thomas died at 47. Mary lived to be 89 years old and died in Worthing.
She is buried here in Fron Bache cemetary, Llangollen, along with her father John Thomas, and on the tombstone is the inscription “Also in affectionate remembrance of his daughter Mrs Mary Hughes who died in Worthing in 1931, aged 89 years old. Heroine of the nursery rhyme Mary had a little lamb”.
This is a lovely folklore story, but sadly Mary Thomas of Llangollen was not the heroine of the nursery rhyme. Why she died believing she was is not clear. She was given a copy of the poem by visitors from London – did this copy lead Mary to believe that she was its heroine?
The Mary of the rhyme was Mary Sawyer and the school was the Redstone Schoolhouse in Sterling Massachusetts, U.S.A. The original nursery rhyme was written in America in 1815 by John Roulstone, and was first published in a magazine called Juvenile Miscellany in 1830, 12 years before Mary Thomas of Llangollen was born!
