Telling a story is a complicated process - especially a Museum story! 

Objects, information panels and websites do a good job of giving information and films are invaluable at setting context - but what we all want to know more about are the stories of the people who were there at the time.  And there's no better way of doing that  than by bringing them back to life! (sort of!)   

Rhian Cadwaladr - a popular local actor, has been telling 'stories' and creating 'characters' at the museum for over 25 years, and her latest creation, Margaret the Matron, has recently taken up residence at the Quarry Hospital in Llanberis as the Museum is temporarily closed for redevelopment. 

Margaret (or Gladys as she was more popularly known) was quite a character! An excellent nurse but also an excellent singer. She worked at the Hospiatl for many years and Rhian has meticulously researched her history so that she's able to answer all visitor questions that might come her way! 

Rhian first worked with the Museum back in the autumn of 1997 when she was asked to become a character in the Museum’s then newly restored Chief Engineer’s house.  Over the years she has portrayed various characters from the original Elizabeth, the Chief Engineer’s maid,  to Hanna the Chief Engineer’s wife and Anti Marged, who brings to life the 'washday' for local schoolchildren. 

As Hanna, Rhian would tell people all about her life in the Chief Engineer's House and the many objects in it  – from the beautiful willow pattern crockery on the dresser to the handmade rag rugs on the floor. She would also draw attention to the ubiquitous SALEM painting on the wall – a common find in many Welsh homes circa 1919 due to the brilliant advertising mechanisms of sunlight soap! 

During Christmas events at the Museum 'Hanna' was often surrounded by families helping her to make Victorian oranges – leaving a gorgeous festive aroma through the house.

Whilst families enjoy these activities, they are learning that these  are places where people lived. Hanna spends a lot of her time making fires to warm the house and cook the food. She makes the rag rugs on the floor and polishes the brasses that have been passed down from generation to generation. Her favourite possession is the slate fan made by her father to show his skill as a quarryman. 

“Bringing our history to life, not only to generations of Welsh people but to people from all over the world has been an honour,” said Rhian, who is originally from the village of Llanberis and whose grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather worked at Dinorwig quarry. 

"People are so willing to imagine that they have stepped back in time and are meeting a ghost from the past - though I must admit some people, who have not expected to see me there, can be a bit spooked to start with!"

Another character Rhian brought to life with local schoolchildren is 'Anti Marged'.  These sessions focused on the traditional washday – from intense scrubbing with carbolic soap to pushing clothes through the mangle to drying and ironing – all centred around a warm coal fire of course and all a far cry from the convenience of our electric washing machines, tumble dryers and electric irons today. School children are always gob-smacked by the fact that the whole thing takes so long compared to the modern-day set-up!  

Another actor who has worked at the museum for a number of years is Leisa Mererid. Leisa would regularly take on the role of a 1901 housewife struggling to cope with the hardships brought about by the Great Strike at Penrhyn Quarry in Bethesda a difficult story!  Based in 1901 Leisa’s Quarryman husband is on strike – during the Great Lockout of Penrhyn Quarry. She has little bread on the table and life is generally a struggle. Most prominent in the house where she ‘lives’ is a large conch shell which she and others who are married to men who are on strike, hoot through at the men who have decided to break the strike and go back to work. They are ‘bradwrs’ (traitors) but as the sign in Leisa’s window states “Nid oes Bradwr yn y ty hwn” (There are no traitors in this house!) 

In May 2022, the National Slate Museum celebrated its 50^th birthday and introduced a new character – ‘Wil the Fitter’ – a former engineering fitter at the Gilfach Ddu workshops. The script for this was written by Rhian...and in 2024 Gwyneth was created - a character who was based in the 1969 House of the Fron Haul Quarrymen's Houses.

This Summer, as the Museum is temporarily closed for redevelopment, Rhian takes on the role of yet another character - Margaret the Matron at the Quarry Hospital, located in the shadow of the Quarry but overlooking the beautiful Padarn Lake. Here she tells people about the type of injuries and illnesses that are treated at the Hospital, the Doctors who treat them, the type of work the Matron and other staff carry out day to day and just how progressive this amazing community Hospital is. There are many sad stories to be heard but it's also a story of innovation and of a community working together to provide an essential service for the Quarrymen and their families. 

Said Elen Roberts, head of National Slate Museum:

“Being a museum actor is a hard role to take on! The depth of knowledge they have to accumulate is huge because the questions that can be asked are extremely wide ranging – from basics such as how to tell if the iron is hot enough to more complicated issues such as the political events of the day. We’re incredibly lucky to have such talented actors as part of our museum family; they’ve added so much value and enjoyment to thousands of visitors’ experiences over the years.”

Siân Iles behind the scenes in our medieval collections storeroom

Hi Siân, tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Amgueddfa Cymru.

I grew up in Cardiff and trips to the Museum to view the archaeology displays at Cathays Park are a happy childhood memory for me. I was so excited to begin working at the Museum in 2008 when I joined as curatorial assistant of the medieval archaeology collections. I am now the Senior Curator responsible for this collection, which covers the period c. AD 500–1500. Prior to that I worked in an archaeology museum in Southampton, which was a wonderful experience working with material from many time periods. At Amgueddfa Cymru I love being part of a team of passionate and knowledgeable colleagues who all work hard to care for the many different aspects of the archaeology collections at Amgueddfa Cymru.

What does the responsibility of looking after our medieval collections entail on a day-to-day basis?

The role is a really varied one, which is a big part of what I love about my job! Some of my day-to-day tasks include the accessioning of archaeological materials, writing treasure and other specialist reports, answering enquiries from the public and facilitating volunteering projects focussing on our medieval archaeological collections. I also enjoy working on large projects including exhibitions.

Tell us a little about the objects and stories you’ve come across. Is there a particular object with a story that has stuck with you?

The joined tile from Neath Abbey, made from three cut pieces forming a single design.

I recently came across an odd discovery whilst working on a volunteer project to repackage and check the documentation of our medieval floor tiles. Amongst a group of tile from Neath Abbey was one was made up of three separate tiles of the same design that had been deliberately cut and stuck together. This isn’t something we would consider doing today but it gave us an interesting perspective into the curatorial practices of the past!

You mentioned our Treasure findings take up some of your time. Can you tell us more about our involvement with Treasure in Wales, and any exciting findings we have recently received?

17th-century vervel, or hawking ring, acquired by us via the Treasure process.

I’m part of a team at Amgueddfa Cymru who help administer the Treasure process in Wales. We offer advice to finders, coroners, local museums, and other interested parties on items of potential Treasure found in Wales. A large part of my treasure role is to research and write specialist reports for the medieval and post-medieval treasure cases, making recommendations to coroners who decide on whether an object or collections qualifies as Treasure.

Looking at all aspects, what do you wish our visitors knew about the work you do behind the scenes?

That the care we provide to the collections is active and continual. A key responsibility of the role of curator is provide a balance between providing access to collections with providing continued care to preserve them for future generations.

And finally, what’s your favourite piece in the Amgueddfa Cymru collection and why?

I find picking a favourite object very hard! I really enjoy working with all materials, but I particularly enjoy working with medieval ceramics – basically fragments of broken pottery and tile! I enjoy the variety of information you can glean from studying it about both the makers and the users. You can see a creative choice or moment (sometimes a fingerprint!) recorded in clay. A single action by a single person representing a single moment in time.

Sherds from 14th-century jugs found at Drybridge Park, Monmouth

Slipmats are an essential component for DJing when using vinyl. Even more so for Hip Hop DJs who also scratch or do 'turntablist’ tricks. Many, including Jaffa, found out early on that using the home hi-fi system to learn how to scratch might soon ruin your parents record collection. Rather than rubbing the vinyl against the rubber or plastic of the turntable, a slipmat allows you to move the record back and force gracefully without damage. For this reason alone it would make sense for us to include a pair of slipmats in the exhibition, but the fact that we have the first pair purchased by DJ Jaffa is a huge bonus for us.

If you’re not already engaged with the Hip Hop scene in Wales then you might not be familiar with the name, so here’s a little extra context for this particular item. As I go through some of Jaffa's history, it will relate to a few other pieces we have included in the exhibition. I’ll also explore more about the actual slipmats themselves.

Like many people in Wales and the rest of the UK, Jason Farrell, more widely known as Jaffa, first got a taste for Hip Hop after seeing the music video to Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Buffalo Gals’ which showcased graffiti, breaking, scratching and rapping from New York artists. He also remembers seeing snatches of the culture on the BBC 2 show ‘Entertainment USA’ in 1983.

It wasn’t the World Famous Supreme Team DJs that he tried to emulate from the video first though, it was the Rock Steady Crew breakers. He started practicing as often as he could, both at home and school, using any pictures or clips from the television that he could find. When the ‘breakdance’ craze hit its peak after films such as ‘Beat Street’ and ‘Breakdance The Movie’ in 1984 he was already advanced for the time and entered his first proper battle against a crew from Port Talbot in Cardiff city centre.

I don’t have the space to give you Jaffa’s whole history here, but this is integral to the next stage of his development because it was after battling a crew from Bristol that he became friendly with them all and started to spend his weekends hanging out across the bridge. He would go to Wild Bunch parties and witnessed the rise of the Bristol scene, noting how the future Massive Attack members approached the art of DJing.

But it was while hanging out at St Paul’s Carnival, watching his friend Dennis Murray performing turntable tricks on the Galaxy Affair sound system, that he realised he wanted to become a DJ himself. Dennis Murray incidentally would go on to become an important pioneer of the rave movement as DJ Easygroove.

The DJ at his local Whitchurch Youth Centre would occasionally allow him to play records and as I mentioned above, he developed a way to learn scratching on the home hi-fi system, using crude homemade slipmats made of cardboard. He had to learn mostly by ear, dissecting live audio recordings of the DMC Championships, where the world’s top turntablists would compete. However, when he got his first set of professional record decks in 1986 he was able to take his DJ skills to the next level.

Of course this meant buying a proper set of slipmats. He had already been purchasing records from the Spin-Offs record shop on Fulham Palace Road in Hammersmith, West London, mostly via mail order at the time. Spin-Offs was a shop opened by New York DJ Greg James, who had moved to London to help open The Embassy night club in 1978. Greg is widely credited as being the first DJ to bring the disco style of DJing - seamlessly mixing the records together - to the UK.

Spin-Offs was also known for selling the latest DJ equipment, so it was the perfect place to find the right slipmats. Jaffa remembers that it was DJ Richie Rich who served him that day. He was a well-respected DJ at the time with his own show on Kiss FM, back when it was a pirate radio station. He also had some underground Hip Hop and Hip House hits in the 80s and 90s and started the Gee Street record label.

I’m personally intrigued that these slipmats say Mixmaster on them. There would have only been a few DJs known for the name ‘Mixmaster’ at the time. Mix Master Mike had not yet joined the Beastie Boys or started his career. Mixmaster Spade was still only making underground tapes in Compton, California. The three that come to mind around 1986 would be: Mixmaster Morris with his Mongolian Hip Hop Show on London’s Network 21 pirate radio station; Mixmaster Ice of the New York group U.T.F.O; and Mixmaster Gee And The Turntable Orchestra from Long Beach who had a couple of underground hits on MCA Records. But I’m getting slightly off tangent here.

Jaffa locked himself in his room and practiced. Eventually he was coaxed out with his decks to set them up outside Rudi’s Donut store at the Capitol Centre end of Queen Street in Cardiff. Although there were some club DJs playing Hip Hop locally at the time, such as Paul Lyons in Lloyds, this is widely viewed as the first proper Hip Hop jam in the city. Jaffa brought along a microphone which was picked up by just one rapper from Gabalfa called Dike (pron. Dee-Kay).

After that there were regular Saturday afternoon Hip Hop jams at Grassroots youth centre. Jaffa would DJ and rappers such as Dike, Mello Dee (later known as 4Dee) and MC Eric (later known as Me-One) would jump on the mic. A crew formed around them called Hardrock Concept, made up of rappers, graffiti artists and Jaffa. This was a period where collectives were more prominent than individuals, but towards the end of the 80s Jaffa and Eric would break off from the rest and move to London. A major label deal with Jive Records followed and their tracks featured on the compilations Def Reggae and Word Four under the name Just The Duce. These are both in the exhibition as well.

Jaffa eventually returned to Cardiff and Eric went on to global chart success with Technotronic. During the early 90s many people left Hip Hop behind when the rave scene exploded, but Jaffa helped to keep the culture going through his work alongside 4Dee and his sister Berta Williams (RIP) with The Underdogs – a youth organisation based in St Mellons that was focussed around developing skills such as Hip Hop dance, rapping and DJing. He has remained a cornerstone of the scene here ever since and has been involved in countless projects from Rounda Records to groups such as Tystion, Manchild, Erban Poets and Kidz With Toyz – right up to Xenith today.

He once deejayed for 70 hours, breaking the UK record for longest set, but just missing the World Record by 4 hours. He supported Snoop Dogg on his UK tour and he still DJs every weekend. He hosts the show This That & The Third on the Paris based station Radio Raptz, showcasing countless releases from Welsh artists. He has featured on various releases across the world as both a DJ and producer, including The Yellow Album from The Simpsons (his scratches are on the track ‘The Ten Commandments of Bart’ which Dike co-wrote the lyrics for).

Jaffa has also been integral in putting this exhibition together and is the main face on our posters, so it seems fitting that we should focus on his slipmats here. Hopefully, now you can see why we are so excited to include them. Do revisit this blog as we look into other items you will find in Hip Hop: A Welsh Story.

Challenge! You’ve got three days to tackle a clean of five massive rooms, open to the public seven days a week. How do you plan and undertake a conservation deep clean for reams of panelling, paintings and pots? Buff up the furniture, freshen up curtains and carpets in a mansion house built around 1580 with collections reflecting the grandeur and period of the space? Solution - with an army of skilled and specialist conservators, cleaners and volunteers, scaffolding, ladders (working at height regs noted!), brushes, vacuums, cloths, solvents, cotton wool swabs, a lot of elbow grease, stamina, enthusiasm, tea and chocolate!

At the end of June 2025, the conservation department, under the close supervision of the Senior Furniture Conservator, carried out a deep clean of the public spaces. This was carried out whilst the Castle was still open to the public.

For a successful outcome, we needed to remove the loose particulate soiling deposits retained in the hidden crevices of the furniture and fittings. This activity would have the impact of brightening the appearance of the castle display and improve the visitor experience. From a conservation perspective this annual task is a hugely important one as it removes the grime which can provide the fodder for hungry pests and mould. The presence of this grime raises a risk of biological attack on our unique collections. It also removes particulates, which in the right environmental conditions can speed up the rate of deterioration of objects in our care.

We started in the dining hall, to the right of the main entrance. We worked as a team to move objects off and from walls, decanting the smaller objects to the old servant’s hall. 

The larger objects, for example the Edwinsford Sofa, the tables and side boards, were carefully moved to the middle of the room to enable access, both the object in full and the spaces they occupy to do a thorough clean.

After three days of going up and down ladders, the fiddly brushing of fine and ornate details, lots of vacuuming and the careful application of emulsions in solution and drying oils to provide residual protection and protective layers. The clean was complete.

We hope you enjoy the finished result. The Castle is only one of more than 50 historic buildings which need a rolling programme of care and maintenance to ensure that they remain accessible to everyone.  Next time you visit the Museum, you may see our conservation and cleaning teams out in action on site. If you do, make sure you say hello. We’d be thrilled to answer any questions you have on cleaning the historic buildings and collections. 

Day 1 

What did we do today?

On our first day we went for a walk around the area expanding our understanding of the history of the quarries. In addition, we visited the Quarry Hospital learning more about illnesses and diseases that the quarries would face.

What skills did we learn from the experience?

School pupils had come to visit the Museum, so we learned how to work with visitors - especially younger children, and learned more about the area from listening to the presentation. While walking around the area, we certainly learned a lot more about the history of the quarries and the quarrymen.

Day 2

What did we do today?

Today we went to Penrhyn Castle. Here, we walked around the castle and watched a slate splitting demonstration. At the demonstration we learned more about the influence of slate, not only in Wales, but across the world. We also gathered feedback from viewers. While visiting the Castle, we discovered a bed made entirely from slate!

What skills did we learn from the experience?

When gathering feedback from the audience of the demo, we developed public engagement skills and received feedback and it was a means to gain confidence and communication skills.

Day 3

What did we do today?

A historic day today at the Quarry Hospital. We were able to expand our historical understanding of the hospital, the area, the quarries and the quarrymen. We then came back to the office to work on our blog and for a meeting.

What skills did we learn from the experience?

By working on the blog we have strengthened our design, proofreading and language skills. And of course, by spending time at the Quarry Hospital we were able to expand our historical understanding.

Day 4

What did we do today?

A historic day today at the Quarry Hospital. We were able to expand our historical understanding of the hospital, the area, the quarries and the quarrymen. We then came back to the office to work on our blog and for a meeting.

What skills did we learn from the experience?

By working on the blog we have strengthened our design, proofreading and language skills. And of course, by spending time at the Quarry Hospital we were able to expand our historical understanding.

Day 5

What did we do today?

Today we helped set up the Slate Museum stand for the Snowdonia Trail Marathon 2025. After that we came back to the office to finish our blog and the reels.

What skills did we learn from the experience?

By setting up the stall we strengthened our teamwork skills and our physical skills! By finishing the blog and the reels it allowed us to strengthen your editing and technology skills.

Head over to Facebook to see a Reel Cari and Mali made to document their time on work experience!