Things from Carmarthenshire

We’ll call him Dai Stoneface.  He stares out at us with dark, gouged eyes.  Someone has flattened his nose in an ancient fight, the same with the ears.  Could he have been a professional boxer?  Even the mouth is belligerent, the narrow lips drawn together in grim silence.  As someone said, you‘d feel nervous if you encountered him outside one of the rougher pubs in Carmarthen late on a Saturday night.

Dai’s proud sandstone portrait looks out from the front cover of Carmarthenshire in 100 objects, a new book launched by the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society in Carmarthen last weekend.  I asked why the editors had chosen him for the cover.  The answer was that Stoneface was missing – no one knows what happened to him after he was discovered near Llandysul and then sold before the Second World War – and maybe his new notoriety might prompt his private owner to recognise him and come forward.

Mr Stoneface is one of the first exhibits in the chronologically arranged collection of objects in the book illustrating the rich history of Carmarthenshire.  He appears early because it’s thought he belongs to the pre-Roman period, when cultures around the Celtic world placed sculpted (severed) heads in temples.  Head-worship was common, and echoes of it appear in the Mabinogi stories.

The editors have chosen their objects well.  They come from all periods, from all parts of the county, and they tell stories of all kinds – about religion and education, about secular power, about rural and industrial labour, about important events and trends, and about everyday life.  Carmarthenshire’s mixed past, combining rich agricultural traditions with intensive industrial development, helps contribute to the huge variety of objects included. The photos, taken by the Society’s current Chair, Peter Rowland, are uniformly excellent – crisp, detailed and colourful.

The Society asked its members for ideas for inclusion, and among the objects are many held in private hands.  These are often unexpected or rarely seen, although it would be hard for most people to track down the original objects.  The rest come from public collections, notably Carmarthenshire Museum in Abergwili.  Again, the county is lucky, in that the Museum, founded by the Society in 1908, has one of the best and most diverse local museum collections in Wales.  It was begun by the indefatigable eccentric George Eyre Evans, who presided over the Museum’s first home in Quay Street, Carmarthen.  He had a magpie’s instinct for searching out and snaffling antiquities of all kinds for preservation.  I once met Cefni Barnett, then curator of Newport Museum, who began as an assistant in Quay Street.  He recalled Eyre Evans demanding that he make an appearance by shouting loudly, ‘Custos!’

Other objects in the book come from an impressive number of other sources in the county – Park Howard, Llanelli, Llandovery Museum, the Ammanford Miners Heritage Centre, the Public Hall Cinema, Brynaman, the Trostre Works Cottage and Industrial Museum, the Gwili Valley Railway Collection, the Felinfoel Brewery and the Museum of Land Speed, Pendine – as well as many outside the county.  Many of these were established relatively recently, testimony to the continuing appeal of local history and the instinct to collect and preserve objects of value and significance to local communities.

The English and Welsh texts facing the illustrations were written by Society members, experts in the period or context of the objects.  They’re brief but they do their job well, giving just enough information to identify the objects and set them in context, and leaving readers to explore for themselves what is important and significant for them.  And perhaps stimulating them to go and see the original objects, or research them more fully (there’s a helpful bibliography at the end of the book).

All the objects in the book earn their place.  Not all are things of beauty – there’s a rock-grader from the Carmarthen Workhouse, a First World War wooden cross and a Spanish Civil War death certificate – but a good many are striking and handsome: an expressive bronze crucifix figurine of a crucified Christ from the medieval Friary in Carmarthen, the alabaster Madonna and Christ from Kidwelly Church, William Dobson’s brilliant portrait of Richard Vaughan, 2nd Earl of Carbery, William Williams’s elegant grandfather clock, made in the 1770s and still in Pantycelyn, the spare and classical chair from the seminal Carmarthen Eisteddfod of 1819, Ben Jones’s multicolour quilt, and my personal favourite, the astonishing oil painting by James Lewis Walters, The Llanboidy molecatcher.

‘100 objects’ books have multiplied since the British Museum published its The world in 100 objects in 2010.  Carmarthenshire in 100 objects is one of the very best.  Every home in the county – and plenty outside it – should own one.

Eurig Davies, Heather James and Dylan Rees (ed.), Carmarthenshire in 100 objects / Sir Gaerfyrddin mewn 100 gwrthrych, Carmarthen: Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society, 2025.  ISBN 978-1-0369-3531-3.  £20.00