David Lloyd George's Early Life

David Lloyd George was born in Manchester, but the village of Llanystumdwy in Eifionydd was always his "home". He lived here from the age of one, until he was seventeen. It was at the local church school that he led his first struggle for "religious freedom and equality" when he organised a boycott of reciting the Creed and the Catechism. He attended the school until July 1878 when the log-book records that he left "to be articled an Attorney."

William George, David Lloyd George's father, was a Pembrokeshire man from Trefwrdan. When teaching at Pwllheli he met and married Elizabeth Lloyd of Llanystumdwy. They later moved to Manchester where David Lloyd George was born in January 1863. Before the end of the year they returned to Pembrokeshire where William began to keep a smallholding. A sick man physically and subject to bouts of depression, he died of pneumonia in June 1864. Elizabeth and the children, Ellen and David, moved to Llanystumdwy to live with her brother Richard. Within a few months another child was born who was named William after his late father.

His mother's brother, Richard Lloyd (or Uncle Lloyd), was a great influence on the young David Lloyd George. He remained a mentor and guide to him until his death in 1917 when in his eighties. He worked as a cobbler while also being a lay minister in the Disciples of Christ (Free Baptist) church at Cricieth. He was a convinced Liberal and Nonconformist.