9 May 2020

More deserted farmsteads …

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Archaeology, Heritage (General), Welsh History | 1

Well, this is Bwlchygelli, at ST 16711 84736

just where John Owen said it would be, in the dip between Blaen-nofydd and the Heol Hir.

Can’t think why I hadn’t spotted it before. Perfectly obvious that heap of stones was once a building.

‘ Brains first, and then Hard Work’ said Eeyore.

John Owen suggests Bwlchygelli and Bwlchylechfaen could originally have been squatter settlement on the older estates of Cefncarnau and Cefneinion. There was lead working in the area, and there are the remains of quarries and limekilns on the lane from Blaen-nofydd – this is the limekiln at ST 16595 84695.

Both farms were small, not much more than smallholdings: possibly early industry provided some casual work for wages, with the farm worked mainly by the women of the family for sustenance. That was quite a common pattern in early industrial areas.

I’m still not sure about Ty-Draw, though. There’s no evidence of a structure down the hill.

There are some possible features just below the track,

but the house marked on the tithe plan is further down. Part of the problem is that we are on the edge of 3 parishes so the lines on the plan don’t totally match up, but I’m wondering if it could be further down the slope again, below the track that goes towards Cefn Carnau Lane.

(Also it’s Ty Drav on the map but I’m sure it should be Ty Draw.)

Nell will be pleased to have another look.

All that’s left of Ty’n-y-parc now seems to be this ruined cowshed at ST 17830 85903,

though there are some tumbled stones under the trees.

John Owen remembered a forester living there in the late 1950s but the forest has now completely taken it over.

Another puzzle. The farm marked as Cefn-carnau-fach on the early and current OS maps is the one which is called Cefn-carnau-uchaf on the tithe plan. The farm called Cefn-carnau-uchaf on the OS is just Cefn Carnau on the tithe plan. Who is right – or did the names change?

4 May 2020

Lost farmsteads: update

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Archaeology, Heritage (General) | 7

My old student Dave Standing (tweets as @AncientTorfaen ) suggested that the mortar in the farmhouse walls might give an idea of dating. We had an energetic discussion of this on Twitter and I’m not sure how well it works – but in general it’s suggested that the paler the mortar, the earlier the building, and when you get to the C19 it’s the dreaded black mortar.

Of course, all this is dependent on being able to see the mortar in the first place. Here are the walls of the unidentified farmhouse in Coed Wenallt: you’d have to take these apart to get mortar samples.

This was the only wall I could get to at Cwmnofydd:

rendered and heavily patched with cement, but is this a bit of creamy-beige mortar under the render?

And the farm at the top of the Heol Hir: quite a lot of coarse pale greyish-brown (while balancing precariously on a pile of logs, with the dog on the lead because there were sheep about …)

Looking again at the map, I realised I’d misidentified that farm. It’s not Bwlchygelli but Bwlchylechfaen. Bwlchygelli is back a bit along the path AND I HAVEN’T SPOTTED IT – time for another trip. The moral of this is that you need both field work and desk-top survey.

We went up the ridge towards Rudry Common then down the lane towards the Wern-Ddu clay pits. When we were nearly back down at the Heol Hir we spotted this at about ST 17270 85337 –

spoil from the old quarry, or is it suspiciously rectangular?

(You can just see Nell on top of the ‘wall’ here.)

There is a farm marked in the area, Ty-Draw, marked as a ruin on the 1840 tithe plan, but from the map it looks to be below the track, and down quite a steep slope.

Then there’s Ty’n-y-Parc, the other side of the railway tunnel and in the woods towards the Rudry road at ST 17827 85906. Not sure if that one is still there – there’s something on the modern map but it could be a ruin.

Watch this space …

23 Apr 2020

Lost farms, lost settlements

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Archaeology, Heritage (General), Welsh History | 0

To distract us during the lockdown, while we can’t do much in the way of fieldwork, we’ve been having a discussion on Twitter on the mapping and listing of deserted settlements. @DrFrancisYoung asked if anyone had ever done an atlas of all England’s deserted villages – so I said ‘and the Welsh ones’. It was suggested that Wales needed a separate volume – fair enough, there are differences, different settlement patterns, much more dispersed settlement, hamlets rather than villages. Also the perennial problems of funding and getting it noticed. Then @A_N_Coward rather proved my point by pointing out that our online resource Coflein ‘has site types for ‘deserted settlement’ and ‘deserted rural settlement’ with about 400 sites between them (although there’s probably some overlap) and a nice distribution across Wales. Many have pics (mostly aerial photos): https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/search/result?PCLASSSUB=97280&SEARCH_MODE=COMPLEX_SEARCH&view=map https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/search/result?PCLASSSUB=500312&SEARCH_MODE=COMPLEX_SEARCH&view=map ‘

so actually we seem to have done it. Mind you, there’s some debate about what constitutes a settlement – how many cottages?

Meanwhile, my walks with my neighbour’s dog had taken me over towards the Wenallt, just north of Cardiff, and the little valley of the Nant Cwmnofydd: and at about grid ref ST 14702 83939 what should I find but what looked like the ruins of a row of cottages.

And in the Wenallt woods themselves, at about ST 14959 83860, another farm or group of cottages.

I wondered on Twitter how old they were, what the people who lived in them did for a living, and when the Record Office would be open again.

@DrIestynJones pointed me in the direction of http://geoarch.co.uk/reports/1999-06%20Wenallt520slags.pdf which is a report on some early ironworking slag and other remains further down the Cwmnofydd. I don’t think the cottages were that old – but where there was medieval ironworking there may have been post-medieval working as well.

Several people pointed me to online maps, including @MusicNLW who led me to the National Library of Wales’s amazing Places of Wales site https://places.library.wales/ . You need a place name to get in but once you are there you can scroll around, look at the 1840 (ish) tithe plans, an old OS map (2^nd edition, I think, early C20) and the modern map (Google not OS, alas, so not brilliant for anything off road). Then you can pull up data from the tithe surveys – field names, crops, tenants and owners. It can be tricky tying up early C20 trackways with modern rights of way but it’s doable.

A bit of work on that suggested that my first batch of photos was not a row of cottages but a whole little farm, Cwmnofydd (about grid ref ST 14702 83939). It was there on the early C20 map and presumably occupied – one wonders when it was deserted and how it became so completely derelict. There are other lost farms in the area – Cefncarnau Fawr, up on the ridge to the north, around ST 15053 84409, was a big farm complex with a massive barn and other outbuildings

but that too is completely lost.

I still can’t identify the site on the other side of the stream at around ST 14959 83860. It doesn’t seem to be marked on the 1840 map so it may have been deserted and in ruins by then.

Walking a bit further with Nell the spaniel got me to the other side of the main road over Caerphilly Mountain and along the lane to the Heol Hir. Here the trees were cleared a couple of years ago and you could see the foundations of another little farm at ST 16943 84871 (easier to see just after the trees were cleared)

– here it is now

I found this one on the 1840 plan – I thought in the original posting that it was Bwlch-y-Gelli but it’s actually Bwlch-y-Llechfaen so I’ve corrected it (a bit difficult to identify as we were on the edge of 2 plans and they didn’t quite match up). That too was still there in the early C20 but it’s now just a little bit of tumbled stone under the brambles.

It’s often surprising how quickly a building can degenerate into a ruin. This is Penybryn Cottage, on the road between the Black Cock and Rhiwbina Hill at about ST 14293 84426.

My father-in-law remembered it in the 1930s or 1940s with a huge family living in it. Once the roof goes, the whole building goes.

Penybryn Cottage is on the map but I couldn’t find this one,

across the road and a bit further uphill. Quite a substantial building, with its own bread oven.

There are others that aren’t on the map. A traditional platform house near the top of Castell Coch woods, round about ST 14009 83746:

and some ‘structures’ around the iron-mining pits, a little further into the woods, round ST 13876 83545 (these grid references are a bit vague).

These might just be spoil heaps from the iron mines but this one looks rather rectangular. (It was actually easier to see before the trees were felled.) Probably not a house either, though – somethig to do with the iron mining? The whole area is pockmarked with diggings for haematite iron ore,

some of it probably 16^th and 17^th century.

When Natural Resources Wales were preparing to fell the conifers on this side of the forest because of the dreaded phytophthora ramorum, they said they had a detailed survey of things like the iron pits and possible charcoal burning platforms, something like a Lidar survey. I wonder if it’s ever going to be publicly available?

And I must remember that @AncientTorfaen wanted to know what colour the mortars in the old houses were.

14 Apr 2019

Swansea the Riverside Town

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Heritage (General), Welsh History | 0

Gerald Gabb has sent me the following information about his magnum opus – the completion of his 3-volume history of Swansea.

The 1840 view above by Alexander Rolfe (Glynn Vivian Art Gallery) decorates the slipcase of my new book, “Swansea the Riverside Town”, which has been 12 years in the making.

It will be launched on Saturday 18^th and Sunday 19^th May between 10 and 4.00 at Swansea Museum – full details here.

book details

If that date does not suit, there are –

Further launches at Sketty, Newton, Bishopston, Reynoldston, Mumbles, the Central Library and in Swansea Market

As well as talks and events in the National Waterfront and Swansea Museum, and at Clydach, Fforestfach, Glynneath, Gowerton, Killay, Llansamlet, Loughor, Morriston, Neath, Penlan, Pontarddulais, St.Thomas and Trallwn, at which the book will be available.

Dates, times and venues are given below – just scroll right down.

It’s an expensive book, so anybody coming to have a look at it, or only to hear the talk and have a chat is sincerely welcomed. All talks are planned as being interesting in themselves – they are not just adverts.

You can also get in touch via g.gabb@ntlworld.com or 01792/613262. In that way you can arrange delivery of a copy, or call in to see one at 38 Woodland Avenue, West Cross SA3 5LY.

Keep going down !

Or try a shop: Swansea Museum (open Tues-Sunday, 10-4.30)

Cover to Cover, Newton Rd., Mumbles

Waterstones, Oxford Street, Swansea

Norton Stores (opposite the Beaufort)

or further afield at College Street Books, Ammanford or Seaways Bookshop in Fishguard.

TALKS & EVENTS

Pre-publication talks

Saturday 13^th April 2.30 RISW lecture, Swansea Museum

Wednesday 17^th April 3.00 SKETTY LIBRARY

Thursday 25^th April 2.00 TOWNHILL LIBRARY

Saturday 27^th April 11.00 HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, National Waterfront Museum

Talks & events at which the book MAY be available

Saturday 4^th May PENNARD LIBRARY 10.30

Tuesday 7^th May OXFAM BOOKSHOP, Castle Street 7 for 7.30

Wednesday 8^th May 7.00 OYSTERMOUTH LIBRARY please ring, email or call in for a ticket: 368380 judy.knight@swansea.gov.uk

Saturday 11^th May Local & Family History Fair, NATIONAL WATERFRONT MUSEUM, 10-4.00

with talk at 11.30

Wednesday 15^th May PENLAN LIBRARY 10.00

Formal Launch

Saturday/Sunday 18^th/19^th May SWANSEA MUSEUM, 10-4.00 both days

On Saturday, Prys Morgan (11.30) & Peter Stead (2.30) have kindly agreed to speak.

The author will give presentations at 11.00
on Sunday. The book will be available throughout both days.

Follow-up launch sessions

Thursday 30^th May 10.30-12.30 ST.PAUL’S PARISH CENTRE, Delabeche Rd, Sketty,

talk at 11.00 (ample parking)

Saturday 1^st June 9.30-4.00 SWANSEA MARKET table in the centre, chat but no lecture

Saturday 8^th June 10-1.00 NEWTON VILLAGE HALL, by St.Peter’s Church, talk at 11.00

Thursday 13^th June 7.00 Tabernacle Chapel Hall, Chapel Street, Mumbles – a COVER to COVER BOOKSHOP event – please book: sales@cover-to-cover.co.uk, 01792/366363 or at the shop

Saturday 29^th June ST TEILO’S PARISH HALL, Bishopston 10.30-12.30 talk at 11.00

Saturday 20^th July 2.00 SWANSEA CENTRAL LIBRARY Discovery Room, upper floor

Friday 26^th July Reynoldston Village Hall 6.45-8.30 talk at 7.20

Saturday 27th July, 10.00: Swansea History walk led by Gerald Gabb, beginning and ending at Swansea Museum – roughly 2 hours, level throughout. Tea & coffee available at the museum on return. For further details contact John Steevens, john@steevens.co.uk or 01792/643791 ALL WELCOME (Royal Institution of South Wales event)

Other talks & events where the book will be available

Monday 3^rd June FFORESTFACH LIBRARY 10.30

Wednesday 5th June 2.00 circular Swansea History walk led by Gerald Gabb, – about 2 hours, level, meet at Swansea Museum (a Gower Walking Festival event, places limited, book at info@gowerwalkingfestival.uk or on 07340/672963)

Friday 7^th June U3A Family History group 10-12 members only

Tuesday 11^th June 10-12.00 Swansea Eastside Historical Society,

Community Room, St.Thomas Community Primary School

Tuesday 11^th June 7.00 GOWERTON LIBRARY

Friday 28^th June 2.00 KILLAY LIBRARY

Wednesday 3^rd July 2.30 LLANSAMLET LIBRARY

Saturday 6^th July 2.00-3.00 PONTARDDULAIS LIBRARY

Friday 20^th September 7.00 CLYDACH HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Clydach Community Centre

Saturday 28^th September RISW/HA History Day in the museums 10-4.00

Friday 11^th October 2.30 LLANSAMLET HISTORICAL SOCIETY Trallwn Community Centre

Thursday 17^th October 8.00 OYSTERMOUTH HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Ostreme Centre

Saturday October 26^th RISW Local History Bookfair, Swansea Museum 10-4.00

Wednesday 6^th November 7.00 GLYNNEATH HISTORICAL SOCIETY Glynneath Training Centre

Thursday 7^th November 2.30 LLWCHWR HISTORICAL SOCIETY the Institute, Lime St., Gorseinon

Tuesday 12^th November 7.30 KENFIG SOCIETY Pyle Parish Hall

Monday 18^th November 7.00 NEATH ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY the Old Town Hall

Tuesday 3^rd December 2.00 MORRISTON LIBRARY

…….and probably a summer talk at the Glynn Vivian, details to follow

SHOPS try Swansea Museum, open 10-4.30 Tuesday to Sunday

or Cover to Cover, Newton Road Mumbles, and Waterstones in Oxford Street all of whom have been very supportive. Norton Stores (formerly Ian Boyd’s) will have copies, as will College Street Books, Ammanford and Seaways Bookshop in Fishguard. Waterstones in Oxford Street and the National Waterfront Museum may also be stockists.

Payment

At the time of writing it is hoped that a card reader may be in use, but, to be safe, please bring cash, or, that old fashioned item, a cheque-book.

5 Oct 2013

Pontypool – not quite what you expect of a Valleys town

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Heritage (General) | 0

Excellent MA field trip to Pontypool, led by Steve.

For the full description, go to http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/welshstoneforum/newsletter/ and click on newsletter 7.

Meanwhile, here are some photos: at the Gorsedd stones

heading intrepidly past the cows

to the Folly tower (actually a rebuild – the original was such a key landmark that it had to be demolished during WWII)

Back in the centre of town – how many listed buildings can you count?

The famous pop factory is lithology heaven, a crazy quilt of scraps of stone left over from other buildings

and the old Quaker meeting house and burial yard clearly ought to be listed (but isn’t)

all in all a pretty good day.

19 Aug 2013

If the past is a foreign country, should you get its geography right?

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Heritage (General) | 0

Hilary Mantel says that if you want to write historical novels and you include facts you should make sure that those facts are right. Jim Crace, whose novel Harvest has made it to the Booker longlist, thinks otherwise:

‘I’m not interested in that at all. I don’t want facts, I want to make things up and to dig deep into traditional storytelling to produce a tale that illustrates the subject matter I care about.’ (from an interview in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/aug/16/jim-crace-interview )

Mantel also says we should not apply modern priorities to the people of the past – something some serious historians could usefully pay attention to. But here again Crace disagrees:

‘I’m not interested in anything else but foisting those sensibilities and writing books that concern the 21st-century. None of this is a critique of what Mantel does so perfectly. It is just to illustrate that for me it is a whole different ball game.’

I haven’t read Harvest (and let’s be honest I’m unlikely to). Apparently it’s set in an unnamed English village, an indeterminate number of centuries ago, at the moment when peasant farmers were forced off the land to make room for sheep. The narrative mentions post-horses and plague is a threat. A surveyor draws maps. We seem to be in the seventeenth century.

Crace was inspired by noticing for the first time some fields around Watford Gap: ‘I noticed that the surrounding fields were full of ridge and furrow. As a Midlander and a big walker I’d always loved ridge and furrow fields, the plough-marked land as it was when it was enclosed. It is the landscape giving you a story of lives that ended with the arrival of sheep.’

The problem is that it probably wasn’t like that at all: the whole business of depopulation and enclosure is much more complex and very few villages were removed to make room for sheep. Crace’s ridge and furrow could have survived until the eighteenth or even the early nineteenth century, when enclosure of common land took place to facilitate commercial farming. You’d have to go to the County Record Office, look at estate papers and enclosure awards … and that might spoil the whole story.

So does it matter? It’s clearly a powerful and well-written book. Crace’s other concern was the parallels between his story and the eviction of indigenous people by soya barons in south America, and he uses his historical narrative for a powerful modern critique.

But should we call it a historical novel when he clearly isn’t at all concerned with history?

These issues are trending on Twitter with the broadcasting of the final episode of The White Queen. Of course, we didn’t expect them to get the Welsh contribution to Bosworth right. Too much to hope for. But apparently they didn’t get the Stanley contribution either – and my friend Philip Beddows (of Teulu Elystan Glodrydd – tweets as @Fferllys) spotted one of Henry Tudur’s men in Richard III’s colours and carrying the badge of the white boar. Now, this could have been a radical new insight into battlefield tactics – but it’s much more likely to have been a mix-up in the wardrobe pantechnicon. Badges and colours were specifically supposed to have prevented that sort of confusion!

11 Aug 2013

Rise up Women who Weren’t Born Yesterday (again)

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Heritage (General) | 0

Does my 30 seconds of fame on Countryfile qualify me to speak about the problems of academic women in the media?

Of course, if you are a female academic of a Certain Age, you aren’t cutting it in the media these days if you aren’t getting at least a dozen abusive tweets a day … what is it with these guys? Are they threatening to rape us because we are so gorgeous that they are helpless with lust – OK, that can’t be it – so they are threatening us with rape as a punishment for being uppity, mouthy women who have the nerve to get paid for being on the telly. So sex with them is going to be so nasty that the mere threat of it will have us slinking off to clean behind the fridge. Are they really saying their technique is so bad that their embraces are the stuff of our worst nightmares?

And that’s not the only problem we face – and some of them are worth a bit more thought. ‘Blimey’, a colleague said about my Countryfile appearance, ‘sneeze and you missed it … a 10 minute interview cut down to 30 seconds, if that, with a jokey anecdote about medieval monks getting p*ssed (snigger, snigger)’. It seems we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If we try to be accessible we are accused of trivialising but if we go for the difficult stuff we are elitist. (I was called elitist once, by a man at the Heritage Lottery Fund. It still rankles.)

I suppose I can claim to be able to speak about these issues. I’ve been doing bits and pieces in the media for about 20 years now, ever since the first flurry of coverage of our Penrhys pilgrimage project. News interviews, several appearances with Trevor Fishlock and a whole radio series with him. Three television programmes with Huw Edwards off of the news, though I have yet to meet him; a programme with Iolo Williams – didn’t actually meet him either; but I did met Robert Beckford, Eddie Butler and Mal Pope, and I’m at the end of this one with Terry Jones http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhFEvbuBXMU .

And my hair is grey and I don’t wear makeup, never mind Botox. I haven’t yet made it to the dizzy heights of my own series, but you never know.

All these programmes have involved some sense of compromise. Academics tend to think in 1-hour lectures and 20-minute conference papers. We want to be able to say ‘On the one hand this … on the other hand that … what we really need is at least 5 more years’ research and a big conference’. Instead of which you have 2 minutes to make your point, you spend most of the afternoon walking up and down a hill while the camera crew faffs around with the big jib, and your brilliant insights get cut in favour of a few jokey references to medieval beer drinking.

So is it worth it? Well, of course, it does impress the management. You can write learned papers until your hand drops off, but when I was in Towns of Wales with Eddie Butler I had pro-vice chancellors queuing up to tell me how great it was. And it is actually fun. I have colleagues who pretend to be blasé and bored by it all, but there is something very satisfying in being treated as an expert. It’s a balancing act – you get more time to make serious points in programmes like The Real Patron Saints, but you get more people actually looking at you on Countryfile. And ultimately this is what we owe to the people who pay our wages. If we can’t communicate with the widest possible audience, we probably haven’t understood our subject properly ourselves.

Mind you, I still think this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhFEvbuBXMU goes too far. It’s not so much the fake costumes and the fact that the medieval pilgrims are singing a 17^th century hymn to a tune collected in the early 20^th century by Vaughan Williams. It’s the assumption that pilgrims are all about fake medieeval recreation. Apparently you can’t be a pilgrim in hi-tec boots and Goretex: you have to dress up in a robe and sing strange songs.

More about pilgrimage next week – time we finalised arrangements for this autumn’s trek to Penrhys … monastic robes optional!

20 Jul 2013

Inhabiting the past

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Heritage (General) | 0

Off to the National History Museum at St Fagans, ostensibly to talk about the Welsh background to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. My plan was to challenge some traditional ideas about Cromwell and the Acts of Union and to look at the family and career of his colleague in Wolsey’s household, Robert ap Rhys of Ysbyty Ifan (more on him at http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-history-month-ysbyty-ifan-2045988 ). But the group I was talking to was much more interested in the question of why we read historical fiction and on the relationship between novel and history.

I had to admit that I don’t read much historical fiction – it’s difficult when you keep spotting the mistakes. Mind you, I’ve never encountered anything as bad as the romantic novel set in early 19^th century India (probably best not to name the author) in which a colleague of mine from the British Library found six major errors on page 1. I find historical detective fiction easier to cope with, but even there you can have problems. I had to give up on the Shardlake novels after two of them had major inaccuracies that actually affected the plot and took you off in quite the wrong direction. Should this matter in a work of fiction – well, yes, if it affects the credibility of the plot, I think it does.

But as a sixteenth-century historian I then had to say that I found Wolf Hall very good. I can’t fault Hilary Mantel on her research. I don’t see the late medieval church the way she does, though – or does she? We see it through Cromwell’s eyes, and it is part of her skill as a novelist that she persuades you into his viewpoint. In Wolf Hall, too, she is trying to build sympathy for Cromwell and his ideals, so that when he has to do much nastier things in Bring Up the Bodies we are carried along with his ultimate vision.

There’s an interesting podcast with Hilary Mantel herself talking about all this at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2012/dec/21/hilary-mantel-wolf-hall-podcast . She does say that she wasn’t trying to rehabilitate Cromwell, but that she relished his company.

We went on to look at the church, where the texts on the walls are nearly finished. This gives another slant again on the late medieval church – the depth and richness of spiritual life for the ordinary parishioner. The liturgical reconstruction project we did there a couple of years ago was relevant to one of the key problems in writing historical fiction. Unless you are writing a very post-modernist novel, you can’t have gaps – and there are so many gaps in our historical knowledge. Often they are in the details of everyday life, the things that are so commonplace they never get recorded. We have the same problems in understanding medieval religion, and this was one of the things the Experience of Worship project was designed to help with. We know that the celebration of the Mass needed an incense boat, holy water sprinkler, jug and basin for the priest’s hand-washing, pax, etc, etc – but what exactly did you do with them, and where did you put them when you weren’t using them? And we know that the priest had helpers – but for a chantry mass in a small parish church, how many helpers, and how would they be dressed, and what would they actually be doing? All these things are part of the texture of everyday lives – so somehow the historical novelist has to fill in that cross-hatching because the historians can’t commit themselves.

16 Jul 2013

Heritagising dissent

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Heritage (General) | 0

Michael Heseltine – flak jacket wearer, Tory leadership challenger, hero of the Westland Helicopter affair – seems to be turning into a sort of Dear Old Man. My university has just given him an honorary doctorate. When I got over gritting my teeth and rambling on about the dear old days at Greenham Common *wholefamilyyawn* I started to think about what is happening at Greenham now.

A little while ago, we went down to Basingstoke for a family get-together. To get from south Wales to Basingstoke you now go round that famous Newbury bypass, so I hadn’t really realised where I was … then the woods started to look a bit familiar … then we came out of the trees and there was Yellow Gate. Where we did circle dancing in the road, got dragged away and flung into vans, where we tried to stop them throwing our quilts and our knitting into the muncher … and now it’s all clean and tidy and they have planted a nice little peace garden. We won, the missiles went away – so why did I feel vaguely disappointed? Would it have been better if, instead of a pretty little garden, the struggle was commemorated by a couple of tatty benders, a cooking fire and a latrine pit that really needed re-digging?

How can we commemorate dissent without sanitising it? It’s very much in our minds at the moment because of the struggle over the Newport Chartist mural. Paul Flynn has made the very good point that it was never meant to last, and it would cost more to remove, conserve and reinstate it than it would to commission a new piece of artwork. Nevertheless, its loss has obviously touched a raw nerve in a community which is also being threatened with the loss of museum and art gallery provision. But the Newport Chartist mural itself sanitised the story of protest – the banner saying ‘Votes for all men’ was conveniently obscured so that we didn’t have to remember that the Chartists had nothing to say about votes for women.

Did the Suffragettes feel the same sense of deflation when they looked back at that glad confident morning in November 1918, when the Parliamentary vote was restored to women? How would they feel about the way we commemorate their struggle, with plaques and exhibitions of banners?

10 Jul 2013

St Teilo’s Church – the writing on the wall

by Madeleine Gray | posted in: Heritage (General), Wall Paintings | 3

Another lovely afternoon, this time at the National History Museum in St Fagan’s watching the conservators paint the texts under the re-created wall paintings. Their experience must be something like that of the original painters: they are painting texts mainly in Latin, in black-letter script. It’s not so much writing as paintings of words. There are decisions to be made about abbreviation marks, and occasional mistakes. The dynamic must be very similar to that in a medieval parish when texts had to be chosen and written out, then painted and (presumably) checked by the priest.

This whole business of text in wall paintings is very odd. We were surprised by the amount of writing we found on the walls of St Teilo’s. There were captions – ‘Ecce Homo’ above the Bound Christ, ‘Sancta Trinitas’ under the Trinity – but perhaps more significant was a series of prayers which could guide worshippers round the church. The Image of Pity had what looks like the famous late medieval prayer ‘Jesu mercy, Lady help’ (interesting that this one was in English) and a fragment of a litany, ‘A dent …’, possibly ‘A dentibus mortis’ or ‘A dentibus infernis’ … from the teeth of death, good Lord deliver us. Under the north-west window was something we have interpreted as ‘Jesu Christe deus et homo da nobis pacem’ – ‘Jesus Christ, God and man, give us peace’. This sequence has now been fleshed out with quotations from familiar Bible passages and bits of the Easter services to accompany the paintings which tell the story of the Crucifixion.

But why would a medieval congregation have spent time and money on painting texts on its church walls when hardly any of them could read? Of course, even if you couldn’t read, writing was Important – it told you that what you were looking at was significant. It could even have magic powers. Badges with fake writing on them, charms in strange garbled words on scraps of paper – these all suggest writing had power.

But there is more to it than that. Some of the writing was probably recognizable, even if you couldn’t read it all. The A and M of Ave Maria, the J of Jesu Mercy: people learned to identify these and to respond to them. And the efforts they went to suggest that writing had meaning for them, even if they couldn’t ‘read’ it as we would use the word. They knew it could be read, it could be read to them, they could learn what it meant. We identify the pictures by their captions; they recognized the text from the pictures.

Of course, all this is a huge challenge for the Museum to explain. Few of their visitors will be familiar with the Latin liturgy, or even with the Bible stories on the walls. They do not want to over-interpret: it’s important that visitors experience the building for themselves. But how do you explain a medieval church to a modern audience?

Why are they pouring water on that man’s head?
Why are those men kissing?
Why is that lady showing her breasts?