Stories in the Stone Film - This special film was created for the official opening of the Fron Haul houses, and it has been on display in the houses ever since. This is the first chance to enjoy the film digitally, 21 years later.
Our curator Cadi Iolen is responsible for the care and conservation of thousands of objects. Here she tells us more about her favourite object in the collection, the 1861 Tanygrisiau house.
Bury a time capsule – for children of all ages from very young up to 100+
A great way to leave something for future people to find is to make a time capsule. Fill it with everyday items from ‘now’ and bury it in your garden or you could put it in the corner of the attic where no-one goes!
After the ‘lockdown’ you could always make a time capsule with your classmates in school and bury it on the school grounds.
I’ve made quite a few time capsules over the years. I used to make them with my son when he was growing up and we buried them all over the place! We hoped that they would last a hundred years or more so that somebody would find them and see our things.
I have made two capsules with schools in Swansea too. One we buried at Waun Wen School, and one we buried in the grounds of Penlan Community Centre. Chris Coleman, who was the Wales football manager at the time came to help Waun Wen School bury their time capsule in the school garden. He grew up in Waun Wen.
Penlan children buried their capsule in the Community Centre garden.
We used big plastic boxes for the capsule because there were a lot of children who wanted to add something.
What you’ll need
When you make your capsule you can use any empty container that you might have in the house. I like to use empty coffee jars or any jar that has a screw lid (I tend to raid our re-cycling box).
I couldn’t find an empty coffee jar this time but luckily we had an empty marmalade jar.
Remember, the container you use will be very interesting to future people too!
What goes into your Time Capsule
I searched around my house for things to put in.
The items should not be expensive, just little things you don’t mind burying. I chose:
Write a little note to go in the jar. It can say things about you like your name and age and todays date. Also write a little explanation of why you are burying the capsule. If you can add a picture of you then good, but you can always draw a picture of yourself too.
You could write your thoughts of the Covid 19 lockdown, what you miss the most or who you miss most.
You could write a letter to your future self and dig the capsule up yourself in twenty year’s time!
Make sure your container is clean and dry before putting your things in. Screw the lid on tight.
Then if you have some tape (doesn’t matter if you don’t) put an extra seal around the lid to keep any water out.
Send us pictures of your time capsule!
We would love to see what you put in your time capsule
Share your pictures with us via the Amgueddfa Cymru Twitter account!
You are now ready to bury the capsule. Remember to make a ‘treasure’ map of where you buried it.
This is in case you want to do more than one and you’ll have a way of knowing where they all are.
Before the invention of the railway locomotive, the speed and pulling power of horses represented the maximum that land transport could achieve. Steam-hauled railways introduced entirely new concepts of speed; vastly more goods and people could be transported further, faster and more cheaply.
Steam-hauled railways revolutionised many aspects of peoples’ lives. Within less than a single lifetime, steam-hauled railways went from remarkable novelties to being mainstays of everyday life.
The railway revolution began in Merthyr Tydfil on 21 February 1804 with the first recorded steam-hauled journey on rails. The key personalities were the talented Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick and Samuel Homfray, owner of the Penydarren Iron Works.
The forges and rolling mills at Penydarren Iron Works, with the blast furnaces in the left background. In front of the buildings at the right is a horse pulling three loads of bar iron at the start of the journey to Abercynon where it would be transferred onto a boat on the Glamorganshire Canal for transport to Cardiff and loading onto a ship. It was just such a consignment of iron that Trevithick’s locomotive successfully transported. Etching by John George Wood for his book “The Principal Rivers of Wales”, 1812. 
The pioneering locomotive was designed and built at Penydarren Iron Works over the winter of 1803-04.
The locomotive successfully pulled five wagons loaded with ten tons of iron and 70 men who had hitched a ride on the wagons for the 9¾ mile journey. Over the following weeks the locomotive made a number of further journeys the length of the tramroad.
The locomotive was widely reported at home and abroad.
Frequent breakages of the brittle cast iron track by the unsprung locomotive resulted in it being converted into a stationary engine within a few months. Two further Trevithick-designed locomotives were built in England in 1805 and 1808 but he found no commercial backers.
“The Miners’ Express”, Saundersfoot Railway, 1900s. This primitive service harked back to early 19th century practices and may capture something of the atmosphere of the Penydarren locomotive’s trial run in 1804 when 70 men hitched a ride on the five wagons. This Saundersfoot Railway service was introduced in 1900 to enable coal miners from Kilgetty to travel to Bonville’s Court Colliery. The ironic name was created by the postcard publisher.
In 25 years steam-haulage had progressed from experimental to reliable. Within a few decades more, railways employing steam locomotives were in use on every continent.
The conjectural reconstruction of the Penydarren locomotive on display in the Networks gallery at the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea. 
You may also be interested in this short film about Richard Trevithicks Steam Locomotive:
https://museum.wales/articles/2008-12-15/Richard-Trevithicks-steam-locomotive
While Wales is working hard to drive forward a positive climate agenda, with a target of 100% renewable electricity by 2035, our industrial past casts a long environmental shadow. Here Jennifer Protheroe-Jones, Principal Curator – Industry looks at our industrial history and its impact.
Wales was an early and unwitting contributor to climate change.
The 1851 Census showed that Wales was the first nation to have more people employed in industry than in agriculture, the important switch having probably occurred in the mid to late 1840s.
Wales was a notable international centre of industry in the mid 19th century, being one of the most important iron producing nations, and the centre of both the world copper and tinplate industries. Plentiful easily worked coal underpinned all these industries – to fuel furnaces, to power steam engines that drove machinery and locomotives that hauled raw materials and finished products.
An ocean of railway wagons loaded with coal in sidings adjacent to Roath Dock, Cardiff, awaiting shipment in March 1927. The initials on the wagons identify a range of major colliery companies: Burnyeat, Brown & Co Ltd; D.Davis & Sons Ltd; Nixon’s Navigation Coal Co Ltd; United National Collieries Ltd.
A few decades later, exports of Welsh coal would outstrip the large amounts being used by industries within Wales. By the start of the twentieth century, south Wales was the most important coal exporting coalfield in the world, supplying diverse countries with steam coal. In energy terms, the Bristol Channel was at this time the equivalent of the Persian Gulf a hundred years later. If high quality fuel capable of powering the widest range of machinery was required, then the coal-exporting ports of south Wales were key places to obtain it.
Aerial view looking south east over Cardiff (East Moors) Steel Works around 1960.
The burning of coal, oil and natural gas releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change. Internationally, today the largest uses of coal are in electricity generation, cement manufacture and in steel making. Coal ceased to be used to generate electricity in Wales in March 2020; coal continues to be used in the steel and cement industries.
Tipping a railway wagon of coal at Cardiff Docks, early 20th century. Some coals tended to break up so, instead of tipping the wagons directly into ships’ holds from a considerable height, the coal was tipped into a Lewis Hunter patent ‘coaling box’ (just visible below the copious coal dust) which was picked up by the dockside crane on the left and lowered into the ship’s hold, minimising the height that the coal was dropped.
The complex web of communications that enabled Welsh coal to be traded internationally is explained in the Coal gallery at the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea.
The pre-dawn preparations at Penydarren Iron Works for the locomotive’s first trial run, a scene filmed for the BBC series “The birth of Europe” in 1991. The Museum’s conjectural reconstruction of the locomotive featured in the episode “Coal, Blood and Iron”.
The forges and rolling mills at Penydarren Iron Works, with the blast furnaces in the left background. In front of the buildings at the right is a horse pulling three loads of bar iron at the start of the journey to Abercynon where it would be transferred onto a boat on the Glamorganshire Canal for transport to Cardiff and loading onto a ship. It was just such a consignment of iron that Trevithick’s locomotive successfully transported. Etching by John George Wood for his book “The Principal Rivers of Wales”, 1812.
“The Miners’ Express”, Saundersfoot Railway, 1900s. This primitive service harked back to early 19th century practices and may capture something of the atmosphere of the Penydarren locomotive’s trial run in 1804 when 70 men hitched a ride on the five wagons. This Saundersfoot Railway service was introduced in 1900 to enable coal miners from Kilgetty to travel to Bonville’s Court Colliery. The ironic name was created by the postcard publisher.
The conjectural reconstruction of the Penydarren locomotive on display in the Networks gallery at the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea.
Blast furnaces at Dowlais Iron Works, Merthyr Tydfil, in 1840, when it was the largest iron works in the world.
An ocean of railway wagons loaded with coal in sidings adjacent to Roath Dock, Cardiff, awaiting shipment in March 1927. The initials on the wagons identify a range of major colliery companies: Burnyeat, Brown & Co Ltd; D.Davis & Sons Ltd; Nixon’s Navigation Coal Co Ltd; United National Collieries Ltd.
Aerial view looking south east over Cardiff (East Moors) Steel Works around 1960.
Tipping a railway wagon of coal at Cardiff Docks, early 20th century. Some coals tended to break up so, instead of tipping the wagons directly into ships’ holds from a considerable height, the coal was tipped into a Lewis Hunter patent ‘coaling box’ (just visible below the copious coal dust) which was picked up by the dockside crane on the left and lowered into the ship’s hold, minimising the height that the coal was dropped.
The pre-dawn preparations at Penydarren Iron Works for the locomotive’s first trial run, a scene filmed for the BBC series “The birth of Europe” in 1991. The Museum’s conjectural reconstruction of the locomotive featured in the episode “Coal, Blood and Iron”.
The forges and rolling mills at Penydarren Iron Works, with the blast furnaces in the left background. In front of the buildings at the right is a horse pulling three loads of bar iron at the start of the journey to Abercynon where it would be transferred onto a boat on the Glamorganshire Canal for transport to Cardiff and loading onto a ship. It was just such a consignment of iron that Trevithick’s locomotive successfully transported. Etching by John George Wood for his book “The Principal Rivers of Wales”, 1812.
“The Miners’ Express”, Saundersfoot Railway, 1900s. This primitive service harked back to early 19th century practices and may capture something of the atmosphere of the Penydarren locomotive’s trial run in 1804 when 70 men hitched a ride on the five wagons. This Saundersfoot Railway service was introduced in 1900 to enable coal miners from Kilgetty to travel to Bonville’s Court Colliery. The ironic name was created by the postcard publisher.
The conjectural reconstruction of the Penydarren locomotive on display in the Networks gallery at the National Waterfront Museum at Swansea.
Blast furnaces at Dowlais Iron Works, Merthyr Tydfil, in 1840, when it was the largest iron works in the world.
An ocean of railway wagons loaded with coal in sidings adjacent to Roath Dock, Cardiff, awaiting shipment in March 1927. The initials on the wagons identify a range of major colliery companies: Burnyeat, Brown & Co Ltd; D.Davis & Sons Ltd; Nixon’s Navigation Coal Co Ltd; United National Collieries Ltd.
Aerial view looking south east over Cardiff (East Moors) Steel Works around 1960.
Tipping a railway wagon of coal at Cardiff Docks, early 20th century. Some coals tended to break up so, instead of tipping the wagons directly into ships’ holds from a considerable height, the coal was tipped into a Lewis Hunter patent ‘coaling box’ (just visible below the copious coal dust) which was picked up by the dockside crane on the left and lowered into the ship’s hold, minimising the height that the coal was dropped.
