1857 in Wales

Incumbents

• Prince of Wales — Albert Edward
• Princess of Wales — vacant

  Events

• 4 March — Thomas Gee launches the radical nonconformist newspaper Baner Cymru in Denbigh.
• 24 March — 1857 United Kingdom general election, concludes. Anglesey antiquarian William Owen Stanley becomes Whig MP for the Beaumaris District of Boroughs.
• 6 May — Samuel Roberts sails for Tennessee.
• 1 June — Opening of the Crumlin Viaduct, built to carry the Taff Vale Extension of the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway.
• 10 August — John Bowen is consecrated as Bishop of Sierra Leone.
• 13 August — Eugene Goddard crosses the Menai Strait in his gas balloon Aurora from Caernarfon Castle to Llanidan.
• 3 October — The Newport Gazette is founded by William Nicholas Johns.
• 14 October — Four people are killed in a railway accident near Pyle.
• 29 October — St Deiniol's Church, Hawarden, badly damaged by arson.
• Autumn — Aberdare Strike 1857-8 against reductions in coal miners' pay begins.
• Railway workers go on strike at Aberdare.

  Arts and literature

New books

English language

• Richard Williams Morgan — The British Kymry or Britons of Cambria

  Welsh language

• Owen Wynne Jones — Dafydd Llwyd
• Robert Parry — Teithiau a Barddoniaeth Robyn Ddu Eryri

  Music

• John Ashton — "Trefeglwys"

  Births

• 2 February - Sir James Cory, 1st Baronet, politician and ship-owner
• 7 February — Windham Henry Wyndham-Quin, 5th Earl Dunraven
• 28 February — Charlie Newman, Wales rugby union captain
• 27 April — Alfred Cattell, Wales international rugby player
• 12 May — Sarah Jacob, the "fasting girl"
• 20 June — Dan Griffiths, Wales international rugby player
• 28 June — Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet, orthopaedic surgeon
• 1 July — Martha Hughes Cannon, women's rights activist and politician in the United States
• 19 September — James Bridie, Scottish-born Wales international rugby union player
• 8 November — Frank Purdon, Wales rugby union international
• 14 November — John Thomas Rees, musician
• 2 December — Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, surgeon
• Llewellyn Cadwaladr, operatic tenor

  Deaths

• 3 January — Richard Philipps, 1st Baron Milford, 55
• 10 February — David Thompson, explorer of Welsh parentage, 86
• 29 March — Elijah Waring, writer, ±69
• 16 May — Sir William Lloyd, soldier and mountaineer, 74
• 13 June - Daniel Rees, hymn-writer, 64
• 12 August — William Daniel Conybeare, dean of Llandaff, 70
• 16 August — John Jones, Talysarn, leading non-conformist minister, 61