history
Saving the gannets
The jaunty oil sketch may look charming, but it conceals an ugly story. It was painted by a well-known Cardiff artist, Thomas Henry Thomas, after a visit he and three friends from the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society made to Grassholm (Gwales) on 26 May 1890. They’d come to study the bird colonies, especially northern gannets and […]
Shakers
If you live in Swansea and you’re serious about paint, then Rabart in Gendros is the place for you. Llanelli may be Tinopolis, but Rabart is the metropolis of paint tins. It has thousands of them, stacked high with every type and colour of paint you might feel a desire for. You don’t need to […]
Fathers and sons
In time, they say, sons turn into their fathers. For a while I’ve been aware of this metamorphosis taking place in myself. The most obvious change is physiognomic. Nowadays my head and face seem, to me at least, remarkably close to how my dad looked in his later years, though in my younger days I […]
Aberystwyth yn 1863
Roedd oes newydd yn ddechrau gwawrio i dref Aberystwyth yn 1863. Ym mis Awst y flwyddyn ganlynol cyrhaeddodd y rheilffordd o’r Amwythig, ac agorwyd yr orsaf drenau. Bron ar unwaith daeth hi’n bosib i bobl deithio i’r dref yn hawdd, yn arbennig i hala eu gwyliau haf yn yr ardal. Yn 1864 dechreuodd Thomas Savin […]
A tiger in the castle
Powis Castle is quite a frightening place. A huge lump of sandstone glowering down on the Severn valley from its ridge, it was always intended to be intimidating, when it was first built by Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn, a Welsh ally of the Normans, and later on when it was controlled by the powerful Herbert family. […]
Y llyn a ddiflannodd
Rydyn ni’n hen gyfarwydd yng Nghymru â’r arfer o greu llynnoedd newydd. Cronfeydd dŵr yw’r rhan fwyaf ohonyn nhw, wrth gwrs. Mae eu henwau – Efyrnwy, Clywedog, Elan, Claerwen, Brianne, Tryweryn – yn niferus, ac yn atseinio’n alarus trwy’r degawdau, ynghyd â geiriau cysylltiedig: boddi cymoedd, symud cymunedau, codi argaeau concrit. Ond mae hanes arall […]
Swansea’s golden age of innovation
After five years of labour our baby was born last week. It weighed in at a whopping 1.88 kilograms and almost 600 pages. Its many parents are rightly proud of it. You’ll have guessed by now that it’s a big book. Entitled Swansea’s Royal Institution and Wales’s first museum, it will stand for many years […]
Cymru ar goll yn ‘Union’
Bûm yn gwylio cyfres ddiwethaf David Olusoga at BBC2, Union, a wnaed ar y cyd â’r Brifysgol Agored. Rhaid dweud bod y cymhelliad y tu ôl i’r cynllun pedair rhaglen yn un i’w ganmol: i esbonio sut y daeth y ‘Deyrnas Unedig’ i fod, a sut datblygodd y syniad, a’r realiti, dros y canrifoedd. Y […]
On bedsits
We’re having some work done in our bedroom, so I’m currently sleeping in the attic, my normal place of work during the day. In other words, the attic is now my bedsit. It’s a slightly strange experience, and it’s got me thinking of bedsits of the past. My first was in Bath Street, in the […]
Against zips
Technical innovation is a strange thing. We tend to think that the growth of new and improved technologies is a constant. Engineers, we imagine, are always searching for better ways of organising the way things work. And, beyond perfecting existing devices, they’re always trying to abolish existing, inferior means of achieving ends by inventing completely […]