A decision by a long-established Pembrokeshire estate agent to sponsor a concert this Sunday (February 11) has led to a history lesson for the firm with the discovery of long-hidden information about their founders.

Evans Roach in Haverfordwest was understood to have been founded in 1890 but the current owners were unclear about how the name came about.

Their appetite was whetted after the discovery on their premises of an auctioneer’s gavel, thought to date back to the 1890s, which may have been used by the original owners.

According to business development manager Martin Jones, the current owners and staff knew nothing about the founders.

“But when we found the gavel in a back room, we wanted to know who it belonged to and how they came to set up the company,” he said.

Separately, members of the Heritage Llangwm project in Llangwm were researching descendants of the de la Roche family (later Roche or Roach), themselves descendants of Godebert the Fleming, one of the original Flemish families who founded the village in the 1100s.

It had already been established through DNA testing that a local man, with the surname Roach, was a direct descendant.

So when Evans Roach agreed to sponsor a concert by the musician John Roach on February 11 as part of Llangwm’s Music at Lunchtime series at St. Jerome’s Church, the search was on to find out if either the company, or the performer, were part of the original Roach/Roche family.

And in the course of the research, long-forgotten information was uncovered about both of the company’s founders, Mr. Evans and Mr. Roach.

It turned out that both David Dundas Roach and William Edward Evans were the sons of farming families based near St. Davids, and both had progressed from farming to selling property and large items by auction.

Records appear to go back to 1890, but papers left by Dundas Roach, as he was known, show that by 1903 the company was auctioning livestock, farm buildings, whole farms, even at one stage a collection of bees in hives and a dog cart.

At various times he also had involvement in the building trade and in the fishing industry.

It’s thought the progression from farming to auctioning farm equipment and then selling property was a well-established career path around the turn of the century.

Less is known about William Edward Evans, who died in 1922, aged just 52, but after his partner’s death Dundas Roach decided to leave the firm and devote himself to community work.

He became a member of the county council, eventually being elected chairman and he later became an alderman.

He was also a magistrate, and was active in Liberal party politics and in the congregational church.

When he died in 1931, he was described as ‘one of the outstanding public figures in the county’.

In the concert being sponsored by Evans Roach, local musician John Roach, (who, it turns out is no relation to either the Flemish invaders or to the founder of Evans Roach) will be playing folk, blues and jazz on a variety of fretted instruments at 1 pm on Sunday, February 11.

Tickets for the Music at Lunchtime series at St. Jerome’s are £5 each (£3 for children) and are available online (www.heritagellangwm.org.uk/concerts), from Llangwm village shop, or from Pamela Hunt (01437 899966).