8th May 2020 marks the 75th Anniversary of VE Day. Victory in Europe Day in 1945 celebrated the end of World War Two when fighting against Nazi Germany came to an end in Europe. Celebrations erupted throughout the western world, especially in the UK and North America, with more than one million people taking to the streets, village greens and town centres to celebrate across Britain.
The National Wool Museum had a VE Tea Party planned to mark this day, but as we’re all staying safe at home, our team would like to share some of their delicious VE Tea recipes with you in the hope that you can create your own celebration to mark this important occasion.
LEMON SPONGE
Lemmon Cake
8oz. margarine
8oz. castor sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
9oz. self - raising flour
1 dessert spoon lemon juice
TOPPING
2 Tablespoons caster sugar
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
Preheat oven at 180°C 350° F Gas mark 4
Grease and line 11" x 7" tin. Cream butter and sugar until pale and creamy, then beat in the eggs. Add a tablespoon of flour with the last amount of egg to prevent curdling. Add the lemon juice. Fold in the rest of the flour with a metal spoon.
Place in tin and bake for about 45 mins.
Meanwhile make topping by mixing lemon juice and castor sugar.
Remove from oven, prick all over with a skewer and spoon topping over the hot cake. Leave to cool in tin until topping is absorbed.
SCONES
Scones
1 lb. self- raising flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 oz. butter
2 oz. castor sugar
½ pint milk
beaten egg to glaze
For the filling:
strawberry or raspberry jam
quarter pint double cream, whipped
Preheat oven 230° C 450° F Gas mark 8
Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Rub in butter until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add castor sugar and mix to a soft dough with the milk.
Turn onto a lightly floured table, knead quickly, then roll out to ¼ inch thickness. Cut into 20 rounds with a 2½ inch cutter. Place scones on greased baking trays and brush tops with beaten egg or milk. Bake in oven for 8 - 10 minutes. Cool on a wire tray.
When cold, split and serve with jam and whipped cream.
On a Monday morning in January 2016 I received a phone call from the Museum’s archaeology department in Cardiff. It turned out that the storm a few days earlier had shifted the sand in Oxwich Bay on the Gower. Apparently a wreck had been uncovered and some old wooden casks were visible!
Because National Waterfront Museum in Swansea is the home of our Maritime Collection, I was asked to take a look and grab a few images before the sand covered it up again. As curator I’m part of the National Museum’s History & Archaeology Department, and I studied archaeology at Trinity College Carmarthen so I was well up to the task. Now, as much as I love a field trip, it was January and a cold wind was blowing from the Atlantic, but the weather in two days’ time was supposed to be fine. I hunted for my wellies (found in the boot of the car eventually) and charged my camera batteries.
So Wednesday morning bright and early found me in the car park for Oxwich Bay. Time was on my side, as at nine o’clock the tide was out as far as it would go that day. I had vague directions to follow as to where on the beach the barrels had been found – a very crude ‘X marks the spot’ hand drawn map. There was no scale on the map so I started at the western end of the beach and worked my way across it, zig-zagging to check out every little bump in the sand.
There were a lot of bumps too! Many pieces of metal, plainly from ships that had ended up there. Bits of steel rope, hull plating and rusty conglomerates. It was a lovely day for the search even though a keen wind was
Barrel exposed on the beach
blowing from the north now making the tops of the breakers misty. Then in the distance I spotted a larger disturbance in the sand and I could make out barrel shapes. There appeared to be six barrels and pieces of broken barrels, none of them were intact. They were lovely wooden casks and we had all hoped that they might be at least a few hundred years old. Alas, their proximity to a piece of steel hull spoke of a more recent wreck. Throughout the Twentieth Century, during WW2 and just after, a number of ships ended up on Oxwich Beach. Some were re-floated but others were broken up for scrap.
With such scant evidence it was impossible to tell which our ship was. The barrels contained a hard concrete-like substance, which later proved to be lime - originally a powder, it hard set hard in the sea water. Lime is used for a number of things such as making cement or lime mortar; as a soil improver just spread on the land, and for marking white lines on football pitches!
Wooden barrel containing hardened lime revealed by winter storms at Oxwich Bay
I took plenty of images and luckily had remembered to take a 30cm ruler with me to give a scale to the casks. As I worked I noticed the tide had turned and was getting closer and closer soon to cover the scene. It was time to leave and make my way back to the Waterfront Museum.
Are the barrels still visible? I don’t know. The power of the sea shifts the sand about after every storm revealing and then hiding historic treasures away maybe for another seventy years, maybe never to be seen again….
In my previous blog I explained what rafting bivalve shells are and how Caribbean bivalves are ending up on British and Irish shores attached to plastics. There are numerous records of non-native bivalves on plastics in the southwest of Ireland and England but nothing has yet been reported in Wales, which is something that I’m trying to rectify. To encourage recording I’m enlisting citizen scientists – volunteers from the general public – who can help to spot and identify these rafting species in Wales. But first of all, I want to check to see if there are rafting species turning up on our shores so I began talking to groups who already go out on the shores to survey, beach clean or educate.
Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).
In December 2019 I met with a fantastic group of people at PLANED in Narbeth. PLANED have excellent coastal community links and everyone I spoke to was enthusiastic and willing to incorporate the rafting bivalves project into their usual activities of beach cleans, foraging, outdoor activities or education. They were keen to help record any rafting species that they discover and we talked about how to identify any bivalves found. Since then I have been working on an identification guide that I plan to develop with the help of these community groups.
Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach
In February 2020 I met up with 35 people at the Pembrokeshire Coast National Parks offices in Pembroke Dock. They were eager to learn more about non-native bivalves on plastics. After lunch, those daring enough braved the freezing temperatures and gales to carry out a mini beach clean at Freshwater West beach. We found a lot of large plastic items in less than half an hour which we brought back to the car park for a closer look. Even though there were a lot of pelagic goose barnacles (stalked crustaceans related to crabs and lobsters that attach to flotsam) on some items, proving that the items had been floating in the ocean for a long time, no non-native bivalves were found.
Plastics found at Freshwater West beach - no bivalves attached, though!
Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).
conference where I presented the project and had several more offers of eyes on the ground to record and test the identification guide, which is great news. I’ve also set up a Facebook page where volunteers can post images of any suspected non-native bivalves for me to identify. I’m hoping to meet up with several more groups later in the year to ask them to look for these pesky hitchikers so we can find out if and where they are attempting a Welsh invasion!
If you would like to help record non-native bivalves on plastics on Welsh beaches then do contact me at Anna.Holmes@museumwales.ac.uk
The National Wool Museum in Drefach Felindre is home to a comprehensive collection of tools and machinery involved throughout history in the processing of woollen fleece into cloth. It also holds the national flat textile collection and the best collection of Welsh Woollen blankets with documented providence dating back to the 1850s. These range from large double cloth tapestry blankets that are now very collectable, to plain white single utility blankets from WWII. In this blog, Mark Lucas, Curator of the Woollen Industry Collection for Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, shares his knowledge of the heritage of Welsh blankets and some fine examples from this important collection.
Welsh Blankets traditionally formed part of the bottom draw for Welsh brides. A pair of Welsh blankets was also commonly given as a wedding gift. The would have travelled great distances with people moving during the Industrial Revolution looking for work, but wanting to keep a small piece of home with them. Thus, Welsh blankets have found their way across the world, adding a touch of homely aesthetic to a room by day and providing warmth at night.
Narrow Width Blankets
Narrow Width Blanket - two narrow lengths stitched together.
Narrow width blankets were the earliest, woven on a single loom. They were made of two narrow widths hand sewn together to form a larger blanket. Single loom blankets of this type were the norm before the turn of the twentieth century when the introduction of the double loom enabled the weaving of broader widths of fabric. However, many of the smaller mills, as well as individual weavers, did not convert to wider looms and, as a result, narrow-loom blankets continued to be produced in significant quantities during the 1920s, 30s and even later.
Plaid Blankets
Plaid Blanket
Plaids were popular during the nineteenth century, usually featuring strong colours against a natural cream background. The introduction of synthetic dyes in the late 19th century allowed weavers to mix more coloured yarns into the designs, although some colour combinations were subtle, others could be gaudy. Many smaller mills continued the use of natural dyes well into the 20th century. The natural dyes were made from madder and cochineal for reds, woad and indigo for blues, and various berries and lichens for other shades. The National Wool Museum has its own natural dye garden and hosts courses and talks throughout the year on natural dyeing
Tapestry Blankets
Tapestry Blanket
Welsh Tapestry is the term applied to double cloth woven blankets, producing a pattern on both sides that is reversible and is the icon of the Welsh woollen industry. Examples of Welsh tapestry blankets survive from the eighteenth century and a pattern book from 1775 by William Jones of Holt in Denbighshire, shows many different examples of tapestry patterns. Double cloth was first used to make blankets, but its success as a product for sale to tourists in the 1960s led to its use as clothing, placemats, coasters, bookmarkers, tea cozies, purses, handbags and spectacle cases. Because of the hardwearing quality of the double cloth weave the material has also been used for reversible rugs and carpeting.
Honeycomb blankets
Honeycomb Blanket
Honeycomb blankets are a mixture of bright and soft colours. As the name implies the surface is woven to produce deep square waffle effect giving the blanket a honeycomb appearance. This type of weave produces a blanket that is warm and light.
With the current resurgence of Welsh blankets for a decorative home-style item there is much interest in old blankets and the designs patterns. Antique blankets have become very popular with interior designers and feature heavily in home décor magazines. They are used as throws and bed coverings in modern homes with many high-end textile designers as well as students researching old patterns for inspiration for their new designs.
Caernarfon Blanket
Many of the fine examples in the Museums’ blanket collection come from mills across Wales that ceased production long ago. A highlight is the collection of Caernarfon Blankets. These were produced on Jacquard looms in a range of colourways. Only a few mills used Jacquard looms, which can make complicated designs and pictures. The Caernarfon blankets show two pictures one with Caernarfon Castle with the words CYMRU FU (Wales was) and a picture of Aberystwyth University with the words CYMRU FYDD (Wales Will Be). It is believed that these blankets were first been made in the 1860s, and last produced for the investiture of Prince Charles in 1969. A recent donation to the museum is an earlier example of the blanket featuring two images of Caernarfon castle. Woven by hand it contains a critical spelling error - Anglicising the name to Carnarvon.
The gardens of the Quarrymen’s Houses at the National Slate Museum are a popular part of the visitor experience - but the planting choices are not just there to look nice - they're there to add an extra layer of meaning to the stories of the quarrymen’s families and lives.
The gardens are mostly tended by a hardworking team from Gwynedd Council working from their base at Melin Glanrafon, Glynllifon. The team is part of Gwynedd Council’s adult, health, and wellbeing department, and offers training and experience for adults with learning difficulties. The team are contracted to look after the gardens all year round and to ensure that they are in tip top condition for visitors.
Cadi Iolen, Curator of the National Slate Museum explains more about the history and context for the gardens:
“The Quarrymen’s Houses were moved from Tanygrisiau to the National Slate Museum 21 years ago. Each house reflects a different period in the history of the slate industry – from 1861 in Tanygrisiau at the rise of the industry to a household in 1901 on strike during the Penrhyn Lockout of 1900 -1903 and a house in 1969 in Llanberis - when Dinorwig quarry closed for the final time.
Initially we sought advice from the head gardener at our sister site, St Fagans: National History Museum, who outlined what we should use for each house in order to further interpret the living conditions at the time. After that it was over to the gardeners to grow and prepare all that was need for the gardens.
Our 1861 house has a herbal garden including fennel, mint, and st john’s wort. The 1901 house is more practically planted with a vegetable garden in the front as well as the back as the family would have needed to grow their own food at a time of particular hardship. By 1969, the gardens become much more decorative with wallflowers, begonias and lots of colourful planting similar to the gardens that we grow ourselves today. We also grow potatoes and rhubarb in the back of the Education House which our actors in residence refer to when on site and which are occasionally used in the cafe. ”
