Blog | Museum Wales

Making blogs while the sun shines

Sara Huws, 26 July 2012

Reading back over my entries, it seems I only really like posting here when the sun is shining! It's another beautiful day at St Fagans and it seemed only right to fire up the blogging engine and start writing.

You'll find us in a very cheerful mood at the moment: after many months of working collaboratively, we handed in a dossier as thick as a loaf of bara brith to the Heritage Lottery Foundation. They, in turn, pored over it and decided to award St Fagans with a whopping grant of £11.5 million, to fund its redevelopment. We still have a few quid to raise in order to reach our goal, and so the '£1 appeal' was launched last week. Its message? If you've got a pound to spare, then we promise to do something amazing with it!

Our plans for the future, while unbelievably detailed, still seem a bit distant and unreal - but soon enough, you'll start to see the site start to change. The museum, as an entity, will change, too - and we hope you'll come along with us for the ride. We want to open up how we work, and give people from all walks of life a chance to take part in the day-to-day life of the museum.

At the moment, though, it's business as usual.

My Tudor Plant walks went off without a hitch (and by hitch I mean rain and slugs). I was joined by students from England, France, Germany and Japan, as well as a couple of English/Welsh/Spanish families. I was a linguist in a former life and so dredged as much vocabulary as I could from the back of my mind, so that everyone could follow the tour. We tasted and smelled our way around the gardens, where 16th century varieties still grow. We usually discourage people from picking plants while they're here, to leave enough for our furry/feathered residents - but on this occasion, we were allowed to have a nibble here and there. Thankfully, Bernice and Paul from the gardens department have been kind enough to teach me which ones to eat, and which to avoid!

Yesterday, I met with students from Cardiff University yesterday, to talk about how we can use information and objects from excavations to engage the public. We looked at all sorts of things: from the pigments on the church walls to cauldrons and Tudor toilet-seats. This morning, I helped Sian and Ian take eighty-four (we counted) cardboard shields up to the Celtic Village for a painting workshop.

The reason I find myself in the office is because I am preparing a lecture for the Eisteddfod. I'm honoured to be speaking, and want to make sure I show off St Fagans in its best light! The topic of the talk will be murals from the Vale of Glamorgan - reading about all these little fragments has me keen to traipse around a graveyard with my camera pretty soon.

I hope you're enjoying this sunny spell - if you're thinking of coming to see us, then have a look here for our upcoming events. If you're coming by bus, remember that, as well as the number 32, you can now catch a band new shuttle bus, the number 5, which takes you from the steps of the National Museum in Cardiff, right to our front door.

PS: next time there'll be pictures, I promise!

Publish date: 26 July 2012

Tagged with: St Teilo’s Church

Food from our shores

Introduction

For centuries, communities living close to the coast have taken advantage of the source of food available to them on the beach or coastal rocks. There is extensive evidence from prehistoric and Roman sites that shellfish have been harvested in Wales throughout the centuries. Free for their collecting, shell-fish have been found in profusion along the coast, the types most commonly collected and marketed by ordinary people being cockles and mussels.

Cockle gathering

During the latter half of the nineteenth and early decades of the 20th century, female cockle-gatherers were regular stall-holders at urban markets in south Wales. Others sold their harvest from door to door in industrial and coastal villages in both north and south. Cockles, boiled and removed from their shells (cocs rhython), were usually carried in a wooden pail, balanced on the vendor's head, while the untreated variety (cocs cregyn) were carried in a large basket on the arm.

By the time she reached her eightieth year one woman from Llan-saint, a coastal village in south Wales, had experienced sixty years of beach-combing for cockles. She referred to the usual pattern of daughters succeeding mothers in this occupation. They were dependent on this source of income. She recalled selling cockles for halfpenny a pint, but towards the end of her career the same quantity was sold for sixpence, a very mean reward for the tedious work involved. Gathering, washing and transporting them home from the beach was the initial stage, which had to be followed by a second process of washing, boiling and further transporting for marketing.

Served with bread and butter or oatcakes, cockles made a light meal and were included in various dishes containing eggs or milk and chives. Women in the village of Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, would sing the following rhyme as they sold the shellfish from door to door:

Cocos a wya Bara ceirch tena Merched y Penrhyn Yn ysgwyd 'u tina

(Eggs and cockles Thin oatcake The girls of Penrhyn Their bottoms ashake)

Welsh caviar?

Another important food product from the sea was an edible seaweed called laver. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries women living in the coastal regions of Anglesey, Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire were ardent gatherers of laver. Collected from sea-shore rocks and stones, it had to be washed in seven lots of water to rid it of all its grit and sand. All excess moisture was then removed, and the clean laver boiled away slowly in its own moisture for some seven hours. Finally, it was drained and chopped very finely to give a greeny-black pulp.

Tossed in oatmeal and fried in bacon fat, it was usually served with bacon. Know as bara lawr, llafan or menyn y môr, laverbread was prepared as a commercial product by Glamorgan families, and was sold along with the cockles on the market stalls. At one time, these two items were prepared and sold strictly by low-income families. Eventually their marketing was developed into commercial enterprises of considerable importance. Today laverbread, often called Welsh caviar, has found its way on to delicatessen counters and is offered as an hors d'œuvre in first-class restaurants.

Publish date: 23 July 2012

Tagged with: Agricultural, Craft and Transport Food History Social and Cultural History

Improve numeracy & get free bulbs for your school!

Danielle Cowell, 17 July 2012

Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales is looking for new schools to be involved in this exciting project and receive free spring bulbs.

Spring Bulbs for Schools (KS2)

Plant bulbs in your school grounds to study climate change. Join this UK wide investigation and improve science and numeracy skills. For more details visit www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/scan/bulbs

The application only takes a minute to complete and the project is FREE to all schools who apply by the 30th July.

Publish date: 17 July 2012

Tagged with: Learning Spring Bulbs Sustainability Tŷ Gwyrdd

‘Miners’ lives at 5½p each’: The Government Enquiry into the 1913 Senghenydd mine disaster

Bodies of the victims being recovered from the mine

The final death toll from the Senghenydd mine disaster on 14 October 1913 was 439 men. Some of the bodies were never recovered. It was the worst mining disaster in the history of the British coalfields.

At ten minutes past eight on the morning of 14 October 1913 the 950 men on the day shift at the Universal Colliery, Senghenydd had just began work when a huge explosion ripped through the workings.

The blast was so powerful that it sent the two-ton cage shooting up the Lancaster Shaft into the headgear.

The men working on the east side of the underground workings were all safely brought to the surface, but the west side was a raging inferno from which only a few escaped.

By 20 October the death toll had reached 440, including one rescue worker.

The subsequent inquiry could not determine the origin of the explosion although it was agreed that methane gas ('firedamp') was involved. However, it was apparent that there had been a number of violations of the 1911 Coal Mines Act.

In May 1914 the mine manager, Edward Shaw, faced 17 charges while the colliery owners, the Lewis Merthyr Coal Company, faced 4 charges.

Edward Shaw was convicted of 8 of the charges and fined £24 - leading a local newspaper to publish the headline 'Miners Lives at 5½p each'. The owners were convicted of the single charge of not fitting reversible ventilation fans and were fined £10 with £5.25 costs.

Of the disaster victims, 60 were younger than 20 years old, and 8 of those were only 14 years old. The disaster left 205 widows, 542 children and 62 dependent parents.

This was the second explosion at the Universal Colliery: in 1901, 81 men had died.

The Universal Colliery closed in March 1928.

Below is a copy of the complete Home Office enquiry on the 1913 explosion at Universal Colliery, Senghenydd.

Senghenydd-Explosion-Report-opt.pdf

Senghenydd Explosion Enquiry and Report to the Home Office 1913

Senghenydd-Explosion-Report-APPENDICES.pdf

Senghenydd Explosion Enquiry and Report - APPENDICES

Publish date: 6 July 2012

Tagged with: Heroes & Disasters History Industry - Workshop of the World Mining & Extraction Work & Labour

Coal Miners' Union Badges

Badges are an important way of showing a person's allegiance to a particular cause or interest. They can also commemorate a particular event.

There are many examples of badges connected to the coal industry. These badges were usually produced during industrial disputes or following mining disasters and were often sold to raise funds.

The greatest number of badges were produced during and after the 1984-85 miners' strike. They came in various shapes and colours but usually gave the name of the National Union of Mineworkers (N.U.M.) Lodge or area, as well as a particular symbol. This could be an icon of the mining industry such as a lamp, headgear, crossed pick and shovel; or an example of working class symbolism such as clasped hands, broken chains and the scales of justice. In addition, badges produced in Wales often include a red dragon or a leek.

The Industry Department of Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales has collected several hundred examples of these badges. Some are on display at Big Pit National Coal Museum and examples can be seen on our Images of Industry collections database.

If you would like further information, you may be interested to read 'Enamel Badges of the National Union of Mineworkers' by Brian Witts (2008).

Click on the thumbnail below for a selection of Badges from our Images of Industry collections database.