history
‘The Llanboidy molecatcher’ gan James Lewis Walters
Sylwais i ar y llun am y tro cyntaf llynedd. Ar y pryd roeddwn i’n chwilio am bethau eraill yn Amgueddfa Sir Gâr, yn hen Balas yr Esgob yn Abergwili. Hongiai’r llun yn swil, mewn lle anamlwg y tu ôl i ddrws. Ei destun eithriadol ac arddull medrus a ddenodd fy llygad gyntaf. Arhosodd y llun […]
Remembering Walter Conway
In the last couple of weeks I’ve been in and around Tredegar – Tredegar as it is today, but mostly Tredegar as it was in the first part of the twentieth century. Most people know about the town’s best known resident, Aneurin Bevan, and many know about Bevan’s pre-War experience of the pioneering services run […]
Micromuseums
Micromuseum is a new word for me. But that was the topic of a presentation to the Friends of the Glynn Vivian last week by Fiona Candlin of Birbeck College. It was the ideal talk – funny and self-deprecating but full of ideas that rattled your lazy assumptions about what museums are about. And it […]
Two Scilly visitors
On 22 October 1707 Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovell was guiding his fleet of fifteen Royal Navy ships back towards the England coast after a failed attempt to defeat the French fleet near the Mediterranean port of Toulon during the War of the Spanish Succession. It was a difficult voyage. The weather was stormy, and Shovell, […]
The socialist submariner
My friend J. asked me the other day whether as a child I’d read stories set in schools. I said I couldn’t recall reading any, despite being a greedy reader – unless you counted Tom Brown’s schooldays, a present from some well-intentioned aunt, which I found unreadable and never finished. The only explanation I could […]
George Ace, pioneer cyclist
Wandering among the memory theatres of Wales over the last year or two I’ve come across some fine institutions, some striking objects and some remarkable characters. In Tenby Museum they remember the happily named George Ace, a distinguished figure from the heroic days of cycling. George Ace was born in 1861 and came from Swansea. […]
Y Garn Goch
Bûm yna am y tro cyntaf rhywbryd tua diwedd y 1970au. Cofiaf ddilyn y lôn gul, droellog o wastatir afon Tywi, i fyny’r rhiw o bentref Bethlehem, cyn parcio’r car ar droed y llwybr. Cofiaf hefyd y waliau cerrig sychion yn amgylchynu’r ddau fryn, yn ddiamddiffyn i’r gwyntoedd o’r gorllewin – neu’n waeth, gwyntoedd dwyreiniol […]
Turner at Ewenny: a political artist?
Recently I’ve been looking into the strange fate of Ewenny Priory at the time of its dissolution in the 1530s and 1540s. Sooner or later anyone interested in the history of the priory can hardly escape an encounter with the remarkable watercolour of the church’s interior that JMW Turner painted in 1797, when he was […]
Blwyddyn Chwedlau Cymru
I’r swyddogion yn Llywodraeth Cymru sy’n gyfrifol am baratoi cynlluniau i ddenu twristiaid i Gymru, mae ‘diwylliant’ Cymru yn broblem y mae hi bron yn amhosibl dod i afael â hi. Y prawf diweddaraf o hynny yw’r ymgyrch bresennol Blwyddyn Chwedlau Cymru. Llynedd oedd ‘Blwyddyn Antur’, a ‘Blwyddyn y Môr’ oedd hi yn 2018: pynciau […]
Against heritage
Having spent a big chunk of my adult life trying to help look after bits of it, I’ve developed a strong dislike, bordering on contempt, for the word ‘heritage’. Why, I wonder? Etymologically it’s an innocent enough word – something inherited, passed on from one individual or community or age to another. So what’s so […]