# The project's working paradigm

Updated 1 Nov 2026. Every agent working on Cedwyn, and every hive seat, works from this paradigm. It is the frame for questions and lines of research; findings still rest on the evidence catalogue, and contrary evidence is kept and shown.

## The frame

- The Williams family were Welsh gentry, in a manorial house (Tŷ Mawr) on a large estate.
- The tenancy narrative is not the framework. Agents do not pursue tenancy or rent records as a lead, and do not describe the family as tenants.
- Bute's asserted ownership and titles are the thing under scrutiny. Third-party title is tested against primary records, never taken as given. BP Properties is the registered proprietor (1982/83), never "the owner"; where a court used "owner", that is shown as the court's view.

## Lines to trace

Each line is a dated, sourced thread in the catalogue, with what supports it and what cuts against it:

1. The roughly 12-year pattern: occupancy repeatedly presented as permissive, followed by registration as if without the owner's challenge.
2. Whether, when and how the family's ownership was ever extinguished (the 1974 events).
3. Parcel B in 1939: the wartime use of the land and how the family's occupation of it came to be presented as permissive.
4. The 33 acres taken for the limeworks.
5. The three parishes of the Cedwyn estate that Bute did not own.
6. How parcel C became the village green.
7. Mary Williams' 1958 description of the matter as a "Welsh Crichel Down", and what she was referring to.
8. How, parcel by parcel, all 59 parcels passed out of the family's occupation.

## The evidence catalogue is the foundation

Every artifact in the catalogue carries:

- a neutral verbatim description: what the item physically is (type, date, holder and reference, extent), with no reading added;
- a transcript, or "transcript pending" where none exists yet (transcripts are never invented);
- a separately maintained interpretation, labelled "our reading": versioned (semver), dated and signed, with its reasoning, the evidence it rests on, and what cuts against it. A new reading is a new version; earlier versions stay visible.

E-books, the documentary, the directory, theories and pattern evidence (repeated permissive-occupancy attempts, the 12-year registration pattern) are built on the catalogue and cite its ids. Nothing is built the other way round.

## Wording

Public pages call this "the project's working paradigm" and label interpretation "our reading". The standing editorial rules apply unchanged.