Tredegar House and Park. The house and grounds are now in the ownership of Newport County Council. Many rooms have been restored and are open to the public. Image © Steve Burrow.

Silver embroidered blue damask court mantua (an open fronted gown with an elaborate train), made between about 1730-40.

This is a very grand robe which would have been worn for presentation at court.

This coat was probably worn by Sir William Morgan. It is of yellow lace pattern silk, dated to about 1725, and is of either English or French origin.

For glitz and glamour, look no further than the Tredegar Collection. This impressive collection of 18^th century costume was presented to the Museum in 1923 by Courtenay Morgan, also known as Lord Tredegar. The items belonged to his rich ancestors who wanted to flaunt their wealth and power. Each garment was designed to dazzle.

Although the Morgans owned Tredegar House near Newport, they spent most of their time in London. For the gentry, the capital was the place to be. Pleasure gardens, operas and assemblies - their lives revolved around socializing.

A royal debut

The Tredegar costumes were probably made in London, using the finest woven damasks and brocaded silks you could buy. The most elegant dress in the collection dates from around mid-1720s. The grandness of this open fronted blue gown - often called a mantua - suggests that it was made for a young lady's royal debut. The detailing is elaborate and elegant, both on the front and the back.The gown was much longer originally, but a large section was cut off during the 1800s, supposedly for a fancy dress party.

Whalebone corsets

Gowns like this one were very awkward to wear. To achieve the exaggerated look, women wore wide hoop petticoats to increase the width of their skirts. They also wore tight corsets stiffened with whalebone under their dresses. Corsets encouraged good posture by squeezing the upper body into shape. Style was more important than comfort.

This yellow brocaded frockcoat was made in the early 1720s. The floral design is typical of the period, so is the bright yellow colour.

Further reading:

M. R. Apted, 'Social Conditions at Tredegar House, Newport, in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries', The Monmouthshire Antiquary 3:2 (1972-3), pp. 124-54.

Janet Arnold, 'A Court Mantua of c. 1740', Costume: Journal of the Costume Society 6 (1972), pp. 48-52.

Avril Hart & Susan North, Historical Fashion in Detail: The 17^th and 18^th Centuries (London: V & A Publications, 1998).

When a miners' hospital closed in 2001, a working coalface that was used to exercise the patients for work again was dismantled and moved to the collections of Amgueddfa Cymru.

Talygarn House

Talygarn House: a view along the full-size model coalface

Talygarn House, Pontyclun, south Wales, was a large stone mansion that became a hospital in 1880. The interior is decorated with wood panelling and painted ceilings. The house is surrounded by extensive parklands on which were grown, according to legend, specimens of every tree that can be cultivated in Britain.

Talygarn as a Convalescent Home

In October 1923, Talygarn House was opened as a miners' convalescent home, and in 15 years of its opening it had more than 41,000 patients.

In 1943, the Miners' Welfare Commission was asked to organise a rehabilitation service for injured mineworkers. Due to a serious shortage of manpower at that time, it was vitally important for injured colliers to return to work as quickly as possible. For this purpose Talygarn House was purchased as a centre for the coalfields of south Wales.

By 1964, 95% of patients treated at Talygarn returned to the mining industry. It continued to serve as a rehabilitation and physiotherapy centre until it was put up for sale in August 2000.

Miner rehabilitation and the 'Model Mine'

Due to the need to harden the men up to return to the collieries, a carpentry shop was provided where patients cut wood and sawed logs. Miniature stairs and static bicycles were available to exercise unused muscles.

Talygarn House was also equipped with a grand 'Model Mine' in which patients could get used to working back in a mining environment. The structure was a long concrete tunnel supported by arch girders. The roadway was equipped with rails and the metal framework known as 'horseheads', which prevented falls of stone on a real coalface.

Relocating the mine

In 2001, the contents of the 'Model Mine' were donated to Amgueddfa Cymru as a 'permanent reminder to visitors of the work of the Talygarn rehabilitation centre'.

The coalfaces were dismantled as if they were the real thing. Despite working in only four feet of height, the thirty-foot-long chain conveyor was successfully disassembled and removed.

All the items were safely transported to the Collections Centre at Nantgarw. The Talygarn donation is a unique survival of a complete thirty-foot section of a typical semi-mechanised coalface of the early 1960s.

The death of Joan Morgan, in Bangor in 1998, ended a remarkable life in entomology [the study of insects] and resulted in a major acquisition of more than 50,000 specimens for Amgueddfa Cymru.

Mike Wilson, head of entomology at Amgueddfa Cymru inspecting the Bangor collection

Changes to teaching in British universities over the last thirty years has resulted in many teaching collections being gradually broken up or discarded.

Sometimes, these important university teaching collections have been built up over many years by dedicated individuals interested in teaching and research.

Joan Morgan

Joan Morgan moved to Bangor in 1953, teaching full-time at the University College, Bangor. For over forty years she was an enthusiastic field worker, collecting thousands of specimens, particularly from north Wales, building up an impressive insect collection at the university.

The collection's importance cannot be over-emphasized. It provides evidence of many species at many locations, along with reference material and around 60,000 card based records.

On retirement, Joan Morgan continued to maintain and add to the collection. After her death, the college agreed that the collection should be transferred to Amgueddfa Cymru.

The collection contains around 50,000 specimens, mostly British, and covers all groups of insects, including an excellent representation of specimens from north Wales.

After a quarantine period in a freezer the specimens were successfully integrated into the entomology collections at the Museum. This helped the Museum create the most important collection of Welsh insects in Britain. It is a very valuable resource for research by scientists worldwide.

In 1992 Wales's smallest post office was delivered to Amgueddfa Cymru. Thanks to the generosity of Post Office Counters Ltd, who financed the project, the small brick building was dismantled, transported and then re-built at St Fagans National Museum of History by the Museum's specialist re-erected buildings team.

Village post offices have played an important role in community life throughout Wales for the past 90 years. By the 1950s, virtually every village had its own branch, from which mail was distributed, parcels were collected and people gathered to catch up on all the local news. The country postman/postwoman on their bicycle, and later, in the red-painted Morris Minor or Fordson van, helped to keep people in rural communities in touch with one another by maintaining links and regular contact.

Wales's smallest post office at Blaenwaun, Carmarthenshire

Blaenwaun Post Office at St Fagans National Museum of History

The Country Post Office

Of course, country post offices were very rarely housed in the impressive buildings of those found in towns. They usually occupied a corner of the village store or the front room of a house. Sometimes these post offices sold a range of items, but some relied on the sale of stamps, postal orders, licences and savings certificates as their only means of income.

Blaenwaun Post Office, located about eight miles north of Whitland in Dyfed, was one such business. It was built in 1936 by Evan Isaac, a stonemason and his cousin David Williams, a carpenter. The Post Office was run by Mrs Hannah Beatrice Griffiths (nee Isaac), Evan Isaac's daughter, who also ran the pub across the road, the Lamb Inn, with her husband.

Mail was brought daily from Whitland and was sorted at the Post Office on a low bench in the back room. It was delivered to the local community by Mrs Griffiths, who completed the eight-mile round journey on her bicycle before going across the road to work in the Inn. Any customers who arrived at the Post Office when the Griffithses were working in the public house could press a button which rang a bell behind the bar.

The Post Office, which measured just 5m long by 2.9m wide, comprised of two rooms: an outer serving room with a counter and an inner office or sorting room with a small fireplace and a bench under the window. A timber partition wall separated the two rooms. The internal walls were painted chocolate brown to a height of about a metre above the floor then cream to the ceiling, with a broad black band between the two.

A painted sign made of heavy tin sheet on a wooden board was fixed outside above the serving room window. It read BLAENWAUN POST OFFICE. A small post box was mounted against the wall between this window and the entrance door.

In the early days, there was a telephone on the counter for the use of the Post Office and, one assumes, the villagers. Later, a public kiosk was erected outside the small building. In the office was a War Department Receiver for receiving urgent messages in times of emergency.

Following Mr Griffiths' death in the early 1960s, the business was relocated to a new bungalow built by his daughter, Mrs Evanna James. The old Post Office stood empty from that time until it was offered to Amgueddfa Cymru in 1991.

It can be visited today at St Fagans National Museum of History in the 'village' section of the open-air museum, near the bakery and the tailor's shop. It has been refurbished to its war-time appearance, and represents a period of Welsh history not covered in any of the Museum's other buildings.