: St Teilo’s Church

A quick post just to show you this map I've been working on, which is an attempt to explore the 1500s landscape of Llangynhafal and beyond.

You'll find pinpoints to buildings nearby which could have been standing at the same time as our Hendre'r Ywydd. It is an incomplete map, but it will evolve, I hope. To make it, I combined public domain data from Coflein, Ordnance Survey, the St Fagans Archive, google and the North Wales Dendrochronology Project*.

I hope to add more information about the buildings themselves, including photos and dating, as I find it. I should also note that the captions in Welsh will be translated as the map progresses.

You can use the zoom tool to travel outwards from Hendre'r Ywydd's original site:

* Dendrochronology=a fancy term for tree-ring dating.

I have grown very fond of Hendre'r Ywydd Uchaf. I can smell wood-smoke in the office and it's got me looking forward to Spring, when I'll hopefully be spending more time there, getting to know the building from the inside out. Even if you have visited St Fagans many times, you may not have stayed a long while in there. It is quite a bare building, partly due to the fact that furniture from its period of construction – the early 1500s – need more TLC than can be provided in an outdoor display, and so are tended to in the galleries. Also, there's no chimney, so it can be quite a troublesome building to work with, and even visit, if the smoke is not behaving as it ought to.

The fire behaving nicely at a recent living history demo, with Sally Pointer

It's a timber-framed building, moved here from Denbighshire in the 1960s but lived in, quite comfortably it seems, until 1954. I hope to find out more about the place, and how it was used, by using a variety of skills and sources. After cooking and interpreting in there over the summer, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands dirty and seeing how it works as an Early Tudor household.

Moving headlong into a Tudor way of life at this time of year may be ill-advised (especially since I have no saltfish and this year's attempt at storing apples has been fuzzier than anticipated), so I'm taking the time to pore over sources relating to the building and its original context.

Dismantling Hendre'r Ywydd Uchaf, c. 1964. The 1500s frame had been left almost unaltered - a corrugated roof, chimney, glass windows and that chap with a cigarette being the most noticable modern additions.

There's so much material to explore. Scholars and local historians have written widely on a range of families, buildings, industries and events from Denbighshire in the Early Modern period. I have on my desk a great big pile of articles, ready to be marked with pink and yellow stripes. But you've got to start somewhere. I decided first to find the building's original location.

It's somewhere around here...

Hendre'r Ywydd was originally built in the parish of Llangynhafal, near Rhuthun. I am quite familiar with the area, but had never been able to put my finger on the house's original site; remembering instead the high hedges and spaghetti-thin roads of Dyffryn Clwyd. Thankfully, for every building we move, we create an archive of its context and original location. These archives are usually second-to-none:

Numbering a doorway, St Teilo's Church (1985)

Unfortunately, on this occasion, our forebears did not think to leave enough clues in there to allow for easy pinpointing. Rifling through photos of cruck frames, cow stalls and hazel matting, I came across two shadows of evidence. A copy of a copy of a copy of an 1830s tithe map with no scale, and a transparency with no key. Both featured a strip of land which tapered at one end. This was where, in 1508, Hendre'r Ywydd Uchaf was built.

Map drawn by member of Ffoulkes family. Hendre'r Ywydd is at the bottom left of the strip of land.

It takes a while to get your eye in, so I google-mapped the parish to see if there were any surviving field systems like the one featured on both maps. Going in cold was a bad idea.

I remember when all this were just fields...

I resolved to have another go once I'd chipped away a little more. It was tempting to rely on google maps for place names and postcodes, but our landscape has changed so much, and in fits and starts, since 1500, that the information was of no use for this particular task. Or at least, if the information looked useful, there would be no simple way of checking its veracity. I stared at the shapes on the tracing, trying to memorise the placement of streams, trackways and field systems.

Tracing of undated map, showing original location of Hendre'r Ywydd Uchaf

In the midst of all these abstract shapes, I called to mind another thread of research I'd been doing, using the Royal Commission's Coflein Database. In trying to build up a bit of context, I've been looking at other surviving houses from the area, reading up on their construction and dating. Coflein supplies you with an OS grid reference for every recorded historic building and monument in Wales. You can look at the Coflein archive for Hendre'r Ywydd here.

I still had in my possession a grab-bag of data. Some abstract shapes, some numbers and some very powerful satellite data courtesy of google and NASA. Thankfully, I didn't have to go far in order to make sense of it. Our library at St Fagans has a cache of Ordnance Survey maps, and the grid reference narrowed it down substantially, as you'd expect. The detail of their maps is mesmerising, and after some careful examination and help from our Curator of Historic Buildings, we pinpointed the location, in amongst a few other houses, confusingly also called Hendre'r Ywydd.

Detail, showing Llangynhafal Parish and Hendre'r Ywydd (1956). Here' "Hendre'r Ywydd" is also used as a name for the hamlet itself. Mapping courtesy of Ordnance Survey.

On closer inspection, someone possessing a disregard for conventional, proper, archive-based behaviour had been there before us and marked the map with a tiny blob of red ink.

When I had been brought round with some smelling-salts, I applied the information I'd gathered to the satellite map, and was finally able to find that little strip of land. It's still intact, to a degree, and still maintains a tapered side, as we see on the map. The road twists slightly just as it does in the drawings:

Hendre'r Ywydd, Llangynhafal (1508-1964)

The last thing I wanted to do, after this, was pay it a visit. I find the house replaced with a field of corn. Uninspiring as it may appear, this is where I happily find my feet, as I venture into 1500s Denbighshire.

You can visit, too, by clicking here:
View Llangynhafal 1510 in a larger map

What a season it's been. Thanks to the presence of the 'Making History 1500-1700' exhibition, we've been able to push the boat out a little bit for our Tudor and Stuart events, aided by a small army (and an actual Regiment) of re-enactors, social historians and volunteers.

Our volunteers! Not really, it's the Winchester Regiment of the English Civil War Society...

We've been visited by pipers, skinners, barber-surgeons, nurses, herbalists, musketeers, pikemen, a Tudor beauty expert, an Elizabethan noblewoman and her maid, timber trebuchet-testers, longbowmen, feasters, revellers, rebels, preachers and even children suffering from plague! Some had never been to St Fagans before, and so I hope we'll see them again. I'm absolutely shattered but delighted to have learned so much during such a busy time of year.

The Tudor Tailors busy at work

My favourite sessions of the season were 'Tudor Tastes', in which social historians Sally Pointer, Suzanne Churchill and I tried out some bona fide 1500s recipes, on the hearth in Hendre'r Ywydd Uchaf. We ate very well but I must admit I'm glad we didn't get round to cooking the Turnip Pudding this time around.

See, from some angles, and when obscured by a basket-handle, even a pig's bladder can be beautiful

Close second to our 'Tudor Tastes' session were my foray into sporting history, exploring all sorts of extinct and frankly lethal sport with young people from Wales, Poland, Germany and France. The sessions were simultaneously translated into three languages - having been a linguist in a previous life, I was amazed at how we managed to share so much with each other as a group. Unfortunately, my Welsh wrestling demonstration skills weren't quite up to scratch; but helpfully, the pig's bladder ball gave us plenty to talk about.

See, from some angles, and when obscured by a basket-handle, even a pig's bladder can be beautiful

There are so many other sessions I'd love to put on my podium - but there's not a lot of time to dwell on them. This afternoon, we prepare to start the whole process again, as we fill the calendar for 2012 and 2013. I've got a few ideas up my sleeve - I'll let you know if they make the grade!

We welcomed the English Civil War Society last weekend, to explore the Battle of St Fagans, which took place near the museum in 1648. They brought with them not only a fair amount of weaponry (as you'd expect), but an amazing number of skills and objects to demonstrate. I think a list would be a bit boring, so here are some photo higlights from the week-end. Thanks to Alcwyn Evans for taking the photos, I was busy protecting the church from reforming zealots!

Settling in for a day of spinning at Cilewent farm

Setting up camp in Abernodwydd field

Fire!

A re-enactor family. The smaller members of the group did an excellent job too!

Pikemen waiting for the call to battle

A nobleman in St Fagans Castle, in 1640s costume.

Tomorrow, you are invited to come and join us for unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the most important document in Welsh legal history: The Acts of Union.

Parts of the document have left London for the first time since 1536, and are on display in our 'Making History 1500-1700' exhibition. They have been recalled from their recess, and will be going back to the Parliamentary archives soon. In light of this, we are calling an emergency debate of our own!

Figures from Welsh life will be leading the afternoon, including:

• Suzy Davies

- Conservative AM for South Wales West, Shadow Minister for Welsh Language and Culture

• Mark Drakeford

- Labour AM for Cardiff West

• Dafydd Ellis Thomas

- Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor-Meirionydd, Chair of the Assembly Commission

• Vaughan Hughes- Commentator and Broadcaster
• Nia Powell
• - Lecturer in Welsh History, University of Bangor
• Baroness Jenny Randerson
• - Welsh Liberal Democrat Member of the House of Lords
• Eirug Salisbury
• - Bard and Commentator
• Rev John Walters
• - Vicar of St Teilo's Church, Pontarddulais

We'll be exploring the role of the Acts of Union in the 21st Century, as well as the controversies they still raise. You're welcome to join us, as the day winds its way around many of Museum Wales' most iconic spaces - including St Teilo's Church at St Fagans: National History Museum.

Period music, light refreshments, after-hours access, simultaneous translation and a chance to explore the Act of Union up close are included, free of charge.

Meet at National Museum Cardiff foyer at 1.50pm tomorrow, as the afternoon session will take place in the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre at 2pm.

This will be followed by a trip to St Fagans to see the document 'in the flesh', and to look at contemporary objects from our 'Making History' exhibition. A discussion will be held in St Teilo's Church, looking at the broader European context of life in Wales under Henry VIII.

Please call Heledd Fychan on (029) 20 57 3268 to reserve a place, as they are limited.

You will need to provide your own transport to St Fagans for the 'behind the scenes' session. Buses Nos 32 and 322 depart from Stand D2 in the City Centre, to St Fagans at regular intervals.