Cambria by Chris Jones

WALES’S MAGAZINE

cambria The National Magazine of Wales VOLUME/CYFROL 12 NUMBER/RHIF 2

Cylchgrawn Cenedlaethol Cymru £3.50 €3.50

‘AN IDEAL TERRITORY’? Low-flying military aircraft

The New National Welsh-medium College

Some Dylan Thomas secrets revealed Dyffryn Ceiriog: The Defiant Valley

CONTENTS VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2

8 8 8

EDITOR’S LETTER

LETTERS

POLITICS& OPINION

SIÔN JOBBINS:

Flying the Flag

‘AN IDEAL TERRITORY’? As a petition against military low-flying in Wales is prepared for Parliament, ROBIN LLEWELLYN looks at the issues surrounding low-level training sorties.

Y COLEG CYMRAEG CENEDLAETHOL

With the demand for Welsh-medium education ever increasing GERAINT TALFAN DAVIES describes the development of Wales’s new National Welsh-medium College.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS, TWO WOMEN GWENLLIAN MEREDITH on two pioneering Welsh women of the last century whose careers made a profound impact on our national life.

DYLAN THOMAS: FROM FOUNTAIN TO RIVER DERIC JOHN and DAVID N. THOMAS reveal some of Dylan Thomas’s littleknown literary works, and tell of his intimate relationship with Pontardulais.

8 8 8 8

MUSIC

30 32 35 36 44 45 46 48

FILM

PETER EDWARDS

ANTIQUES

EMILY BASELT STEIGER

ART

JENNY WHITE

MOTORING

JOHN A. EDWARDS:

DIRECTORY

The best places to eat in Wales

FOOD

DOROTHY DAVIES

OBITUARY

Michael Burn (1912 - 2010) by MEIC STEPHENS

ONLOOKER

Siân Phillips; Summer Harp Festival; National Eisteddfod

LEARN WELSH

MIRANDA MORTON: Defnyddiwch

WHAT’S HOT

cambria’s

TRAVEL ENVIRONMENT NATURE LITERATURE POETRY BOOKS

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

DANCE

Y CLAWR / THE COVER:

on Pays de Retz - the Breton marshes

GWYN GRIFFITHS VICKY MOLLER CHRIS KINSEY

on sustainable living in Wales

- Canals, crayfish and kingfishers

BETHAN KILFOIL

- Dyffryn Ceiriog; PROFILE: SAM ADAMS

ROBERT NISBET; HERBERT HUGHES MEIC STEPHENS ALICE DAY:

on the publishing scene in Wales

National Dance Theatre Wales

NORMA LORD:

Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod on Welsh filmmakers on Rob Clement’s mission

on Graham Sutherland Alfa Romeo invests in Wales

- The Abergavenny Food Festival

eich Cymraeg! -EISTEDDFOD

guide to events and exhibitions around Wales

Summer Harp Festival at the National Botanic Garden © Carl Ryan 2010

JOHN KEATES

CONTRIBUTORS VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2

2010 MEIC STEPHENS, is a journalist and poet and has written, edited and translated some 150 books about our country’s culture. FOUNDER & PUBLISHER

Henry Jones-Davies

is a regular and valued contributor to Welsh periodicals. SIÔN JOBBINS

PATRONS

Jan Morris D. Huw John Siân Phillips Dr R. Brinley Jones John Elfed Jones John Hefin Dr Arturo L Roberts Mary Lloyd Jones Meredydd Evans

is a journalist, author and renowned authority on Breton history, art and culture. GWYN GRIFFITHS

is Chair of the Implementation Board of Y Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol and Chair of the Institute of Welsh Affairs

GERAINT TALFAN DAVIES

EDITOR

Frances Jones-Davies POLITICAL EDITOR

Clive Betts FEATURES EDITOR

Frances Davies LITERARY EDITOR

Meic Stephens EDITOR-AT-LARGE

Siôn T. Jobbins JOHN A. EDWARDS

is a Welsh motoring journalist of many years experience.

ADVISORY BOARD

Professor Meic Stephens Aneurin Jones Jonathan Adams Myrddin ap Dafydd Wil Aaron Menna Elfyn Elisabeth Luard David Gravell

is a lifelong opera lover and music journalist. NORMA LORD

writes green articles and runs Ecotours in Pembrokeshire.

VICKY MOLLER

is a professional photographer specialising in extreme sports photography. CARL RYAN

RESEARCH EDITORS

Rhobert ap Steffan Jeremy Fonge Emily Baselt Steiger MOTORING EDITOR

John A Edwards ART DIRECTION

Simon Wigley PHOTOGRAPHY

is a poet who won the 2008 BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year Competition. CHRIS KINSEY

Carl Ryan, Mari Owen, John Keates, David Williams

is a professional photographer specialising in the landscape of Wales.

MARI OWEN

WEBMASTER

Chris Jones

cambria - THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE OF WALES © 2010. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced by any means without the prior permission of the publisher in writing. cambria is published bimonthly by Cyhoeddwyr Cambria Cyfyngedig, PO BOX 22, CAERFYRDDIN/CARMARTHEN, SA32 7YH, Cymru/Wales. ISSN: 1366-0675. All material submitted must be accompanied by a stamped, selfaddressed envelope. The publisher will not be held responsible for loss, damage or any other injury to unsolicited manuscripts or artwork (including drawings, photographs, and transparencies). We cannot guarantee a response to unsolicited matter. cambria magazine has made every effort to ensure that proper permission has been obtained for the reproduction of all illustrations in this issue, and we apologise unreservedly for any errors or oversights. Views and opinions expressed by individual writers in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or the publisher. All information in this publication has been verified to the best of the authors’ and publishers’ ability; however Cyhoeddwyr Cymrica Cyfyngedig does not accept responsibility for any loss arising from reliance on it. Subscriptions for 6 issues: British Isles £18 - All other countries £28. Single copies: £3.50 plus 70p postage. The first copy of a new subscription application will be mailed by second class post for addresses in the British Isles, and by surface mail for the rest of the world. Please allow 6 weeks for overseas delivery. Argraffwyd gan: HSW Print, Tonypandy. TM

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FROM THE EDITOR

Wylit, wylit, Llywelyn, wylit waed pe gwelit hyn. Ein calon gan estron w ˆ r, ein coron gan goncwerwr, Weep, weep, Llywelyn, you would cry tears of blood if you saw this. Our heart taken by a stranger, our crown by a conqueror. Friends of Cambria listened as Meic Stephens read this wonderful poem by Gerallt Lloyd Owen. I understood only the odd word here and there but the cadence of the words was haunting and the later knowledge of their meaning even more so. I do believe that every school child should hear them. Around the world children’s consciousness of their belonging is groomed from an early age, the Americans start every school day with the Pledge of Allegiance. I can still remember the old atlases at school when I was seven or eight; as you flipped through the dog-eared pages the dominant colour was pink, and we all knew that pink was the colour of the British Empire. It was doing a similar job, subliminally feeding our self-assurance, our innate belief in our place in the world, filling us with a feeling of security. That was pretty well forty years ago and although we didn’t realise it at the time, it was even then just a memory. That secure feeling is a great gift for an individual, but collectively it can take a long time to become accustomed to a world where the words ‘without let or hindrance’ are no longer in our passports, and even when they ceased to be used, they were already pretty meaningless. There is much talk today of an erosion of the Welsh psyche by the overwhelming influence of global commercialisation, and built into that psyche is a debilitating lack of confidence. In this lies the fragility of Wales today. There is much talk too of Wales being the poorest part of Europe - ever since I can remember this has been a recurring theme, the figures are made up, of course, from statistics built on low wage levels, high unemployment and declining economic activity. Yet Wales herself is actually rich, incredibly rich: in Roman times it was gold, later copper and other ores; in the industrial age slate and coal; and in the twentieth century it was - and still is water - and now to that list we can add alternative energy. Wales contributed enormously to the wealth and influence of Victorian Britain. This wealth has not been exhausted; beneath our feet the ground is still mineral rich, the wind continues to blow and the rain still falls. The land is beautiful, and whilst no breadbasket for cereal, we are nevertheless world famous for the excellence of our meat and dairy. Many of you are kind enough to send us ideas, suggestions and even articles on a wide variety of subjects, many of these, one way or another end up in the magazine. They are a constant source of inspiration. It is plain that there are many whose exploits and lives should not be forgotten, yet of whom little if anything is known. They are unsung and overlooked. So in this issue we start a series devoted to them. This is not about nostalgia, but about knowledge, memory and respect, and the power these have in helping to create the future.

ON A SUNNY SEPTEMBER DAY

MARI OWEN

FRANCES JONES-DAVIES

MYFYRDOD

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. EDMUND BURKE

(1729–1797) Anglo-Irish Statesman and Philosopher

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letters media bias weighs heavily against wales EDITOR,

Permit me to correct/challenge Clive Betts’ article Wakeup call for Plaid in Cambria (Summer 2010). His article contains two factual howlers. In paragraph seven he asks the essentially rhetorical question “Did Plaid not once hold 11 constituency seats in Wales, compared to an unchanged three now?” Plaid Cymru has never won more than 4 seats at any Westminster General Election, which they did in the elections of 1992, 1997 and 2001. For the record they won 2 seats in the General Elections of 1974 (February), 1979 and 1983 and 3 seats in the elections of 1974 (October), 1987, 2005 and 2010. Towards the end of his article he states “In Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, the party (the Liberal-Democrats), to Plaid’s fury, has acted to block Plaid running the council.” I can’t speak for Ceredigion, but in the context of Carmarthenshire this statement is absurd. At the last County Council elections in May 2008, the LibDems won only 1 of the 74 seats on Carmarthenshire County Council. Barely an adequate basis to “block” the 30 Plaid members from running the council! It appears that Mr Betts is reverting to his wide-of-the-mark mode at the end of the last century when - in an article in the Western Mail of 18 December 1998 - he predicted “the Liberal-Democrats are near certain to win 11 or 12 seats in the 60-seat Assembly (at the Assembly Elections of May 1999), mostly through the 5 regional lists”. In fact they won 3 list seats and 3 constituency seats.

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The general tenure of his article is based on the assumption that, politically, there is a level playing field for all 4 of Wales’s major parties Conservative, Labour, LiberalDemocrat and Plaid Cymru - at Westminster General Elections. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of the media diet of the people of Wales emanates from London. The three British parties benefit from an incessant stream of news and attention on television and radio, day-inday-out, year-in-year-out with Plaid getting virtually nothing. The same is true of the London daily newspapers - read by about 85% of the people of Wales that read newspapers. These are published with people in England - not Wales - in mind and not one of them has even a correspondent in Wales. For about a month before a General Election the coverage is even more lopsided in favour of the British parties and before last May’s election this enormous bias was even worse than ever before due to the 3 TV debates featuring the 3 leaders of the British parties, from which Plaid Cymru was banned. The extent of the bias in favour of the Tories, Labour and Lib-Dems is so great that I am amazed that any of Plaid’s candidates ever become MPs. The same is true but to a lesser extent - at National Assembly elections. It is not difficult to imagine what would happen if Plaid really had a level playing field in the political publicity/attention stakes, let alone if the current huge bias towards the British parties was reversed in favour of Plaid Cymru. Gwyn Hopkins Llangennech Llanelli

Elystan Glodrydd 1000 EDITOR

This year is the 1000th anniversary of the death of Welsh King Elystan Glodrydd (Athelstan the Praiseworthy) during a ‘civil broil’ on Long Mountain near Welshpool, and his burial at the church of St Mary in the place subsequently named after him - Trelystan, an ancient site built on top of a barrow. We are marking this with an historic assembly of his descendants on 24th October at Llanbister, Radnorshire. Elystan founded the dynasty of Rhwng Gw ˆ y a Hafren (Between Wye & Severn) in the old southern lands of ancient Powys, which antiquarians came to refer to as the 5th Royal Tribe of Wales. Other branches of the same old Powysian family produced the dynasties of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn in Powys and Trahaearn ap Caradog in Arwystli. The kingdom of Rhwng Gw ˆy a Hafren is perhaps the least known and most mysterious of all of the Welsh kingdoms. It existed independently of Powys, Deheubarth and Gwynedd, yet was a key region in Wales. Elystan’s descendants were the Princes of Maelienydd & Elfael and Lords of Gwerthrynion, Beullt and Ceri - all divisions of Rhwng Gw ˆ y a Hafren. They battled off and on for almost 200 years against the Mortimer family in particular, before losing their lands to that family and other Normans. This history was acknowledged in the coat of arms of Radnorshire that feature those of Cadwgan ab Elystan surrounded by the blue and gold bordure of the Mortimer family. We are holding what we believe

letters will be the first ‘gathering’ of any of the old Welsh dynasties in history the Scots and Irish have done this sort of thing for years. This may seem fanciful to some, and even challenging, but this dynasty and the region of Rhwng Gw ˆ y a Hafren were central to Welsh history - the last act in the life of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd took place in Buellt, reinforcing the strategic importance of the area, and Llywelyn was buried at Abbey Cwm Hir, which was founded by Elystan’s great grandson Cadwallon ap Madog, Prince of Maelienydd. Members were intricately involved in Llywelyn’s campaigns and one soldier poet Gruffudd Unbais of Ednop, Shropshire - was Squire to the Body of the Prince and is said to have served him in all his wars against Edward I. The family was closely related to that of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, The Lord Rhys and other key figures. Rhwng Gw ˆ y a Hafren faced the double challenge of being surrounded by more powerful Welsh kingdoms and facing assault from the Mortimer and de Breos families who ‘were seeking to uproot the authority of the descendants of Elstan Glodrydd with a ferocity unparalleled in the bloody chronicle of the March’ (John Davies, Hanes Cymru). If anyone descended from, connected to, or interested in Elystan Glodrydd and the dynasty of Rhwng Gw ˆ y a Hafren would like to join us in October, they are welcome to get in touch: fferllys@elystan.co.uk. Philip Beddows Beambridge, Munslow, Shropshire and Dr John H. Davies Llandysul, Ceredigion

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education weakness EDITOR

Many correspondents to Cambria bemoan the ignorance of people in Wales regarding their history. If the situation in schools was the same as I experienced in the Sixties, then that would not be surprising. However since the mid Nineties and the later establishment of the National Assembly, you might expect things to be rather different. After all, the National Curriculum for Wales, we are told, has been developed to suit Welsh pupils needs and incorporates something called Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig. Under this umbrella term, all subjects taught in all schools in Wales should reflect the contribution of aspects of Welsh culture, language and history to the life of Wales. Thus in the teaching programmes followed by teachers, there should be opportunities for Welsh pupils to learn about Welsh scientists, Welsh artists, Welsh writers, Welsh Geography and History, as well as the contribution of the Welsh language. In talking to people who ought to know better, I found that there is an ignorance of what is a claimed by the Assembly to be a key strand of education. Many think it is a Cwricwlwm CYMRAEG, i.e. about the language alone and is the responsibility of the Welsh language department. Admittedly, this can be considered a weak basis for criticism, hardly a conclusion based on scientific research. Thus, I decided to turn to Estyn` s website and look at a few Estyn Reports in South Wales. Again it was not a methodical research exercise, but time and

time again there was very little focus on how effective schools are in this respect. There were many references in English medium schools to poor development in many subjects, but when it came to the final recommendations this was ignored, with the school often receiving a good overall report. Estyn Reports on Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig itself are few and far between but point to patchy teacher training, a lack of commercially produced resources (text books) and time for teachers to develop their own resources (which is quite understandable). But why should heads in schools focus on this in their development plans if they get a good Estyn report despite ignoring Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig? Clearly there is a need for leadership here with the relevant Assembly minister leaning on Estyn to give a higher priority to Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig in its inspections. After nearly two decades of Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig, surely we ought to expect to see some positive results instead of the cultural and historical "cleansing" that our non Welsh speaking young people in particular are subjected to on a daily basis inside and outside of school. Huw Jackson Welling Kent

We are always delighted to receive letters of every opinion. It may prove necessary to edit letters for space and clarity. Letters should be exclusive to

cambria

magazine.

OPINION

Siôn Jobbins

Flying the flag

he Red Dragon is one of the most distinctive flags in the world, yet its origins are shrouded in the mists of time: in legends of Roman legions; Merlin’s Prophesy; Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon; the Tudors ... and in a bog standard member’s question in the House of Commons on a cold February day in 1959. Yes, the red dragon has been around for the fatter side of a millennium, but has only been the official flag of our country since 1959 - more rock and roll than bow and arrow. Yet the modern history of the Welsh flag (or ‘a flag for Wales’) is as interesting as anything cloaked in antiquity. In 1953 Wales was presented with a flag drawn by committee devoid of style or a fondness for Wales - a group which lurked within the nascent Welsh Office, or what was then the ‘Ministry for Housing and Local Authority and Welsh Affairs’. The flag featured a rather scrawny red dragon with a ribbon around it’s body bearing the motto ‘Y DDRAIG GOCH DDYRY GYCHWYN’ (‘the red dragon inspires action’), with a representation of the British Crown on top. It was set on the familiar horizontal white-and-green background of our present flag. According to the minutes of a Cabinet meeting in 1953, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill called the flag an “odious design expressing nothing but spite, malice, ill-will and monstrosity. The words (‘Red Dragon takes the lead’) are untrue and unduly flattering to Bevan.” (Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh Labour M.P.). Like Churchill, but for different reasons, Lord Elystan Morgan - then a trainee lawyer in Cardiganshire - didn’t like the flag either. He remembers the embarrassment of seeing it flying, commenting: “The flag was so laughable that people wouldn’t use it. It looked undignified. I remember my boss, Eric Carson, Clerk to Cardiganshire County Council, referring to the rather bedraggled dragon as ‘that one balled lamb’”. The sexual reference to the flag wasn’t out of context either. ‘Y ddraig goch ddyry gychwyn’ was not ‘unduly flattering’ (as Churchill thought) but the first line of a couplet by Deio ab Ieuan Ddu (1450-80) in celebration of a red bull fornicating - and it only ‘took the lead’ in as far as it fathered a new herd! Although the new flag was flown from official buildings and occasional public displays it was the traditional flag that was mostly used by the public. That flag is an adaptation of the Royal Badge created in 1807 - itself based on older designs and traditions. It depicted a red

According to the minutes of a Cabinet meeting in 1953, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill called the flag “odious design expressing nothing but spite, malice, ill-will and monstrosity.”

dragon placed on a green mound on a white field. But from old photographs and paintings it seems the flag was rarely used in the nineteenth century. Why I’m not sure. Maybe Britishness was so strong within Wales that not even Iolo Morganwg (‘Mad Ned’ to both friends and enemies) was mad enough to think of Wales as a constitutional nation state - a notion perhaps too dangerous or too abstract for the Welsh of the time? Following the First World War and then, particularly, the Second, the Red Dragon flag slowly gained popularity. But as the barrister and former Archdruid, Robyn Léwis (to whom I’m indebted for his article on this subject in the April 2009 edition of Llanw Llyˆn papur bro) notes, even in the 1950s it was quite rare to see the Red Dragon flown at all. He recalls: “I remember going to university in Aberystwyth in 1952 at the time of the competition to choose a capital city for Wales. There were five contenders; Cardiff, Caernarfon, Wrexham, Swansea and Aberystwyth. There were so many Union Jacks flying in Aberystwyth that I thought to myself ‘you’d think Aberystwyth was competing to become the capital of England.’” In many ways, the 1950s was the last Victorian decade - a peculiar time of subtle change amidst waning conservatism, with supporters of the Welsh language increasingly realising that Welsh couldn’t be saved through quiet favours bestowed by nice people. Culturally Wales appeared to be losing out to the Space-age razzmatazz of Anglo-American modernity, and politically to a British establishment indifferent to Welsh deference. In 1955 - during one of the most Anglicised periods in its history - Cardiff was made capital of Wales. Then,

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on 24th April 1956, a petition with 250,000 names was handed into Westminster by the all-party ‘Parliament for Wales’ campaign, while, in the same year, Ysgol Glan Clwyd in Rhyl became the first ever Welsh-medium high school. In 1958 Cardiff hosted the Empire Games. A backdrop was the threatened drowning of Tryweryn and a protest march through the bleak, blitz-damaged streets of Liverpool, behind a defiant Red Dragon flag. It was in this climate of change that in July 1958, the fate and future of a national flag came to a head. The Gorsedd of Bards’ proclamation ceremony was to be located within the walls of Caernarfon Castle. However, as Dilwyn Miles recalls in his book, Atgofion Hen Arwyddfardd, Cynan, the Cofiadur (registrar of the Gorsedd) failed to get confirmation that the traditional Red Dragon flag would be flown at the proclamation rather than the official ‘Welsh Office’ flag. Cynan believed that the dragon with the ribbon was ‘too limp’ (tila) to be seen if flown from the top of the Castle, and that the motto would be unreadable - not to say too undignified and laughable to appear on the National Flag of Wales. Maybe Cynan also remembered that at the National Eisteddfod in Pwllheli in 1955 activists removed the Union Jack from the top of the Pavilion, and he was keen not to see a similar event repeat itself at Caernarfon. Whatever the reason it was decided that the Gorsedd would only recognise the traditional flag, and with that, all the institutions and public bodies in Wales were called upon to follow the Gorsedd’s lead. The Gorsedd’s stance received near unanimous support, so prompting Raymond Gower - the Conservative MP for Barry - to table a question on a flag for Wales in the Commons on 23 February 1959. In response, Henry Brook, Conservative MP for Hampstead and Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister of Welsh Affairs, announced in March of that year that the Queen had given her seal of approval to the traditional Red Dragon, and the ‘Welsh Office’ flag was to be consigned to the furthest end of the cwtshdan-stâr of history. There is no doubt about the popularity of the Red Dragon. It is flown from public buildings, institutions, schools and - increasingly - private houses. But the issue of the national flag isn’t totally resolved. I, for one, would like an authority (perhaps the Assembly) to standardise the flag itself - as other nations have done - and remind flag-producers of the correct design and colouring. Others however, question if the Red Dragon is even the right flag for Wales. In the December 1998 issue of Planet magazine, Meic Stephens, the author and Literary Editor of Cambria

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argued that, while the Red Dragon should serve for “ceremonial purposes” … “for all [the] official purposes of an embryonic Welsh state, we surely need a tricolour”. He felt the Draig Goch reminded him of “our distant origins and our status (for more than a thousand years) as a ‘non-historic people’”. He’s right. To a large extent the flags of non-nation states do tend to be more elaborate and unorthodox - a vexillological version of a colourful national folk costume as opposed to the diplomat’s pin-striped suit of the tricolour. Meic designed a Welsh tricolour (the Trilliw) of green, white and red to the unusual and unique proportions of 1:1:4. I haven’t heard of the Trilliw since, but it was a point that needed to be raised. I have had a further thought. In light of the fact that since April 2010 the Assembly has responsibility over our maritime economy and that so many private boats already fly the Red Dragon, it’s surely time we adopted a maritime ensign for Wales, alongside the Red Dragon and those of Glyndwˆr and Dewi. This new flag would comprise a red dragon on a white field, with the green element of the current flag lowered to the level of the claws of the Dragon. This would overcome an inherent problem with the current flag: that it ignores the first rule of heraldic design, which, ironically, was spelled out by a Welshman (Humphrey Llwyd) in 1558. The rule of tincture, he argued, states that “metal should not be put on metal, nor colour on colour”. So, red should not be placed on green - as happens with our flag - since the colours become a dark blur beyond a certain distance. My suggested maritime flag would overcome this problem in relation to clarity of recognition at sea, but would still retain the essential elements of Y Draig Goch. Wales has changed a lot since Cynan’s single-minded campaign to get the traditional Red Dragon flag recognised as the only flag of Wales. This little battle was symbolically important, highlighting the quiet disquiet many felt about the way Wales was being treated. Cynan’s decision also proves that one person can make a difference and that once in a lifetime we owe it to ourselves and our nation to make a stand. Flags are a country’s Freudian slips. The original Welsh Office flag was a put-down flag. By its very design it conveyed subservience and tidy, conservative governance. The Red Dragon is a more confident and democratic flag. It was officially made the flag of Wales in March 1959 by the Queen. But its legitimacy rests in the Welsh people’s love and affection for it, for it was the Queen, through Cynan and the Gorsedd of Bard’s campaign, who bent to the will of the Welsh people. The flag is ours, let’s fly it high and often.

S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

LOW-FLYING AIRCRAFT

‘An Ideal Territory’ As a petition against military low-flying in Wales is prepared for Parliament, ROBIN LLEWELLYN looks at the arguments surrounding low-level training sorties.

he websites of the plane spotters leave helpful tips for people to join their hobby of watching the jets circling the valleys the pilots call the ‘Mach Loop’. They detail car parks and places to eat or sleep, and give pronunciation tips for Welsh place-names (‘Boolth’ for Bwlch, ‘Mah-hunth-leth’ for Machynlleth...). They detail paths to ascend the mountains which bear their new names: Bluebell Hill, Cad East, Corris Corner, Cad West. The jets can approach from a variety of directions. From the South they are flying low after practising at heights of 100ft over the Tactical Training Area that covers much of Powys, eastern Ceredigion and the northeast of Carmarthenshire. The enthusiasts listen to them via radio scanners: when the jets come from the north they hear the radio chatter as they avoid the congested areas around Liverpool, receiving clearance to descend

CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES

‘Although the three tactical training areas are almost entirely in Wales and Scotland, military aviation is allowed by a Royal Prerogative and is beyond the authority of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.’ into Low Fly Area 7 (Wales) from Swanwick Military control. They approach across the plateau around Trawsfynydd or the Bala area, and passing over villages might produce a handful of complaints to the MoD or to their local MP, such as: “All day we were subjected to deafening jets screaming overhead. You cannot imagine what it was like, every 5 minutes there was a fresh assault. It was dreadful… Now these new planes are so deafening they should not be allowed so low.”

or: “It is a known fact that excessive noise can cause stress and lead to other illness… For me it is a form of torture which is greatly affecting my quality of life.”

or: “My wife who was inside the house had like me to cover her ears to reduce the discomfort caused by the awful noise… Surely it is not permitted by the laws of the land that pilots in training should fly their aircraft in such a way as to cause physical discomfort and a real sense of intimidation to honest citizens in their own homes.”

They then descend near Dolgellau into the Dulas and Dyfi valleys where the pilots are hemmed in by the mountainsides, the number of jets in such confines causing what pilots call a ‘choke point’. In the 1990s MoD-funded statisticians sought to estimate the regularity of civilians being over-flown and developed formulae of probability for overflights from an initial study in the Vale of Evesham. Their estimation that residents would experience four significant over-flights per day has not travelled well from that wide plain to the steep valleys of Mid Wales: Meinir Wyn Jones taught at Dinas Mawddwy school for seven years, keeping a log of the sorties which disrupted lessons and terrified children in the playground. In one day she recorded sixty sorties overhead during school hours. - A Harrier jet rips through the air a few feet above a farmhouse in mountainous country near Dolgellau.

A OES HEDDWCH?

Beyond the village the jets continue up the Cerist Valley disproportionate number of young people in the Dinas before climbing steeply to clear Bwlch Oerddrws, rising Mawddwy and Llanuwchllyn areas have hearing probnorth towards Tabor and Brithdir. Perhaps they will then lems”. Llwyd will present a petition to Parliament in descend and circle the Loop again, exhilarating the cluster autumn declaring the opposition of the signatories “to low of spectators above the passes. Later they might publish flying activity in north-west and central Wales. The noise, their photographs and videos online, sharing comments danger and subsequent oppression of human rights are in such as: “watching those RAF pilots fills you with nothing excess of reasonably acceptable levels. We call on the but British pride. Hands up to the Americans too..” Westminster Government to cease low flying in these areas Military flying operates outside UK environmental noise and thus to behave according to the standards of all other laws which hold 66 decibels to be the permissible level of European countries.” daytime noise, the jets producing noise in excess of 125 The MoD point to the ‘inconclusive nature’ of existing dB. Although the three tactical training areas are almost scientific evidence concerning the risk to health from lowentirely in Wales and Scotland, military aviation is allowed flying, and directed me towards a feasibility assessment by a Royal Prerogative and is beyond the authority of the they sponsored for a large-scale epidemiological study of Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. The Ministry of over-flown areas. This concluded that “an insufficient Defence claim that the minimum number of sorties are number of persons were over-flown regularly enough to flown to prepare pilots for combat, but the nature of their provide any statistically significant datasets to analyse with own regulations are not based on any international scientifany scientific credibility.” ic consensus of their safety and the monitoring of limits I asked Dr Ian Flindell, who led the assessment study, imposed – 100 or 250 ft, 450 or occasionally 550 knots, is why one of the Tactical Training Areas of Wales or conducted by the forces themselves. Scotland was not used instead of the Vale of Evesham. He Britain’s low-flying limit of 100ft is below that of the argued that: “The problem with 100 ft training areas is USA (500ft) and European countries, and Germany - havthat there are even fewer people available to study, so while ing extensively studied links between low-flying and health the noise exposure will be greater, the resident population - raised the minimum altitude for military flying from density was judged to be too low for statistical purposes.” 75m to 300m as soon as it regained national sovereignty in The sparsely populated nature of the areas used for low1990. Given that the MoD last year paid out £700,000 to flying works against the arraying of mass human data into Welsh farmers in compensation for damage to livestock statistical research that can isolate the health impact of flyincluding miscarriages among their cattle, many residents ing from other environmental hazards. Such studies would are asking themselves what the impact is on human health. only be possible by civil airports in densely populated Researchers at the German Federal Environmental areas, such as a recent German Federal Environment Agency used a number of scientific approaches to build up Agency study analysing the health data of over a million a body of findings which, taken together, indicated a sigpeople living close to Cologne Airport. This showed (in nificant risk to health caused by low-flying. They discovDecember 2009) that men living under flight paths had a ered temporary blood pressure increases and temporary 69% higher rate of hospitalisation with cardiovascular shifts in hearing following over-flights, together with perproblems than residents in quiet areas, while women had a manent hearing and cilia damage in animals. Small scale 93% higher rate, and women were also 172% more likely epidemiological studies also revealed differences in hearing to suffer a stroke. problems which correlated to low-fly areas. Such data concerning civil aircraft does not transfer to I asked Dr Hartmut Ising who military jets, but restricting the led that research what he thought discourse of potential effect to NERVE - The pilot of a Hawk training jet waves as he roars through Dinas Pass, Dolgellau earlier this Summer. of the British restrictions on lowconclusive (necessarily large-scale) flying. He replied that at 250ft “if statistical evidence only serves to the speed is not higher than 420 exclude military aviation from kn, health hazards could be excludthe informed scrutiny of public ed. At 100 feet even this speed and parliament. Local epidemiowould cause hazardous noise – for logical studies would be one way the ear as well as circulation.” of informing the debate, and Elfyn Llwyd MP’s constituency apart from Brecon and Radnor’s office is in Dolgellau, beneath the Roger Williams, all of Mid northern slopes of Cadair Idris. “I Wales’s MPs – Jonathan know for a fact,” he says “that a Edwards, Mark Williams, Glyn CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES

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Davies and Elfyn Llwyd - backed German MoD perspective, there is such research in principle, with no need for reviewing the current Jonathan Edwards adding that it restrictions on low-flying.” was down to the MoD to prove Britain’s military flying training low-flying was safe. Albert Owen system was privatised in May this MP (Ynys Môn) argues that lowyear, Lockheed Martin and UKflying protects 500 jobs on the based Babcock International havisland through RAF Valley, but ing won a 25 year contract to prowhen informed by his aides that vide Britain’s Military Flying CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES my call related to low-flying wouldTraining System for the MoD. So n’t take the line or release a comfar they haven’t explained how they ment. will develop effective simulator training while delivering Elfyn Llwyd is also concerned that their have been nearpromised savings to the tax-payer, but in February this year misses between helicopters working in the Snowdonia the Canadian simulation technology company CAE National Park and military aircraft, while Meinir Wyn announced it had been awarded a series of contracts Jones remembers two crashes in the area. Official figures totalling £38 million to upgrade German simulators, show that military aircraft were involved in 323 near-missincluding fitting the Typhoon and Tornado simulators es with other aircraft between 2004 and 2009. with terrain-following radar – the technology allowing very Aside from the questions about an impact on health or low-flying aircraft to maintain a constant distance away safety, low-flying sorties for fast jets have a contested stratefrom obstacles. gic value in modern warfare. The only part of the sky that CAE Director of Marketing and Communications Chris Afghan and Iraqi insurgents could target was the lowest Stellwag confirmed that these simulators possess the techaltitudes, and the development of smart weapons has nology for low-level flight training, and described how his changed the type of sorties being flown. company designed and developed the Common Database The low-flying training in Wales has no bearing on what for the United States Special Operations Command. This is happening in Afghanistan, according to Alan Brookes, is a system of accurately simulating the entire earth’s surDirector of the Air League: “The challenges in Afghanistan face so clients may quickly access information for training are to do with operating in the desert terrain, in the heat purposes, potentially allowing military pilots to fly at short and the dust, and whether you are flying at 300feet or notice simulated operations to any locality in the world. 1000ft it does not make a huge amount of difference. The US-based Environmental Tectonics Corporation has Low-flying is used against opponents with sophisticated also developed High G simulators, replicating the G-force technology, and the Taliban don’t have anything like that. levels combat fighter pilots face in real operations. Pilots The training for Afghanistan will be happening in the might insist they are not a substitute for live flying, but the United States. The Tornado technology includes the continual development of simulators puts pressure on the Raptor Pod, which can see something at 20 miles away, so MoD to review the necessary volume and altitude of trainthey can target opponents while standing off them. ing flights, and to explain why the UK, alone in Nato, Training would involve adjusting to the desert terrain and conducts low-flying at 100ft. working with the Americans, none of which pertains to MPs of the most affected region differ on whether lowWales.” flying should continue; Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) Given such current commitments, is the current level of stressed the importance of low-flying but said Mid Wales low-flying really necessary? As a strategic asset in the Cold should no longer be receiving more than its ‘fair share’. War, planners had envisaged Nato strike aircraft flying Roger Williams described the ‘geography and topography’ beneath Soviet radar and destroying the communication of Mid Wales as ideal for “our forces to train in as near to centres behind advancing Warsaw Pact armies. As tensions combat conditions as possible”, but argued low-flying have renewed with Moscow after the South Ossetia conshould take place within set times, and that there should flict, I asked Lieutenant Colonel Holger Neumann of the be “no flying for most of the time”. Elfyn Llwyd Luftwaffe whether Germany’s low-flying restrictions didn’t (Meirionydd Dwyfor) argued for the banning of low-flyhamper his country’s ability to fulfil its Nato obligations. ing, while Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Neumann described how German jets practise low-flying Dinefwr) described the practice as an “obsolete military over the sea and at 500ft in New Mexico, and use a new tactic” and called for the Welsh military tactical training generation of full-mission-simulators to practise missions area to be scrapped. including low-level sorties. He insisted that, “from a The current petition is not the first on the issue from

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house as especially revealing. Having heard her complaints they told her that Mid Wales was chosen for low-flying as it is ‘uninhabited’. “Officially”, Rees stresses, “we don’t exist.” Meinir Wyn Jones, who logged the flyovers above Dinas Mawddwy is now head teacher at Brithdir school, and she will be looking out for the enthusiasts on the pass on her journeys to and from work: “To realise that now it has become entertainment on the Bwlch makes me cringe” she says. “Some planes come round four times to entertain, it is so wrong for the people in the villages. When I see people on the Bwlch I know there will be jets over later.” As the jets of sixteen air forces fly over the pass, occasionally pulling loops or performing for the photographers, it will be with the assurances of the MoD that the safety of the public is of paramount importance. If such assurances are to be supported by a transparent engagement with international noise research and a precautionary approach to protecting the public living in mountain areas, then the MoD will need to move on from pleading the ‘inconclusive nature’ of existing research and either radically raise the minimum altitudes or positively prove that the current system is safe.

A R D D A N G O S F A • E X H I B I T I O N

Wales: The composer John Metcalf, whose work was played during the Queen’s signing of the Act bringing in self government in 1999, was an active member of a Lampeter-based group which produced a similar petition in 1993. He mentioned further research from Japan describing a serious impact on children’s immune systems and attention span caused by aviation noise, and blamed the lack of progress on the issue partly on public perceptions and partly on the military themselves: “Society doesn’t really understand noise. It understands visual things very well… In noise as in other things, the military are above the law. They are like the tobacco companies, blocking knowledge of noise for 40 years and then paying compensation. The significant thing about industrial noise legislation and noise control is that it doesn’t touch the military. Because they are blocking things out, they’re missing out on things they shouldn’t be.” Marian Rees, one of the leading figures behind the current petition, also blames the military, seeing low-altitude training as merely a “recruitment tool” for the RAF and the official complaints investigations as a public relations exercise. She repeats a justification made by two members of the MoD who had experienced the noise levels at her

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Y Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol The National Welsh-medium College GERAINT TALFAN DAVIES

n 1950, at the age of seven, my parents put me on a bus each day to travel from Barry to Cardiff to attend the first Welsh-medium primary school in a city that had yet to be declared the capital of Wales. It had opened a year earlier and was housed in two rooms of an Edwardian school building down the road from the Ninian Park football ground. For me the arrangement lasted only a year, as in that time my parents and other friends made arrangements to set up a Welshmedium primary school in a church vestry in Barry itself. My sister and I were among its very first pupils. A family move to Swansea in 1952 meant that we both switched to Ysgol Lonlas, my third Welsh language primary school. But there was no Welsh-medium secondary school, so in 1955 I started at the Bishop Gore Grammar School. A quarter of a century later, in 1980, when my own children left Ysgol Bryntaf, they were able to move to a Welsh-medium secondary school in Cardiff. Ysgol Gyfun Glantaf had opened two years earlier, and by now there are more than ten Welsh-medium primary schools and two Welsh-medium secondary schools in the city. They are a measure of the astonishing growth in Welshmedium education throughout Wales, which has seen the total numbers in Welsh-medium secondary education grow from a standing start to nearly 40,000 over the 54 years since the establishment of Ysgol Rhydfelen in Pontypridd in 1956. Given that rapid growth at the primary and secondary levels of education, it is not surprising that in the last decade the pressure has grown to expand the provision in higher education, where some 4,000 students are cur-

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Welsh-medium schools are a measure of the astonishing growth in this form of education throughout Wales, which has seen the total numbers in Welsh-medium secondary education grow from a standing start to nearly 40,000 over the 54 years since 1956. rently studying all or part of their degree courses through the medium of Welsh. Early in this decade a campaign was begun, led by Dafydd Glyn Jones, a distinguished academic, and coeditor of the definitive English-Welsh dictionary published in 1995. He and others argued for the creation of a separate Welsh-medium college within the University of Wales, but it ran into two problems - cost, and the withdrawal of several higher education institutions, including two of the most active providers of Welshmedium courses, from the quasi-federal University of Wales. As universities grappled simultaneously with both widening access and cost pressures, the focus shifted inevitably towards teaching larger numbers, an uncomfortable climate in which to seek expansion of courses more likely to appeal to only small numbers. But it was not an issue that could be put to one side, especially in a political context in which all parties were committing themselves to the development of a bilingual Wales. If progress was to be made an academic planning and funding mechanism had to be found that would through cut through the conventional paradigm and institutional perspective to create a system that, although working with the institutions, could take a pan-Wales view and expand the Welsh-medium provision while ensuring that the limited funds available were spent to best effect. The first step was the creation in 2007 of the

Centre for Welsh Medium Higher Education (CWMHE) a small but highly effective team, under its Director, Ioan Matthews - to start the planning process. The centre, working with academic staff from all the HEIs, has produced subject development plans for more than 20 subjects as well as postgraduate scholarship and teaching fellowship schemes that have results in more than 70 awards. These have been underpinned by a national staff development framework that has offered workshops and training courses designed to ensure consistent quality standards in Welsh-medium provision. It has also developed several polished, user-friendly websites: Y Porth (The Gateway) a virtual learning environment that is designed to encourage collaborative working across Walesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s geographically dispersed institutions - a highly cost-effective basis for expanding provision; and Mantais (Advantage), both a marketing campaign - working with the further education sector and the schools - and a site that provides a comprehensive guide to Welsh-medium courses in all the institutions. Despite the excellent work of the centre, it was felt that there was still a need for a more robust and independent institutional framework. The necessary political commitment was enshrined in the One Wales agreement between Labour and Plaid, following the 2007 Assembly elections, and soon after a Planning Board was established - led by the former Vice Chancellor of Swansea University, Professor Robin Williams - to study the various options. It was this body that finally laid down the essential elements of what had become known as the Coleg Ffederal concept - an independent legal entity that would incorporate the CWMHE, link together all the universities, but also marry them to a range of stakeholders. In April this year I was asked to Chair a Shadow Board, or Implementation Board as it was more properly known, to put some flesh on the concept and put in place the necessary detailed work that would allow a permanent Chair and Board to take the reins early in 2011, with a view to having this innovative new college up and running for the 2011-12 academic year. By September we were able to present a plan to the universities and to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales that would see the creation of a company limited by guarantee, which would bring together the universities and other stakeholders - parents, the schools, the FE sector, language organisations and, importantly, employers. The body would have a new title - Y Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (The National Welsh-Medium College) - and would be run by a Board of Directors of 12 people plus an independent Chair. Six

of the directors will come from the universities, and six will represent other stakeholders, including staff and students. The Board will be accountable to a body of Members which again, will be divided equally between the universities and the other stakeholders. Importantly, although becoming the key organisation in the strategic development of Welsh-medium education, the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol will work with and through the exiting institutions, as their commitment will be crucial to its success. Things now look set fair, but the challenges ahead are substantial: increasing the number of staff in the universities who can deliver courses in Welsh at the necessary standard, providing status for research and publications in Welsh, developing innovative teaching methods including distance learning, ensuring seamless collaboration across institutions in different parts of Wales, contributing to work force planning in those fields where there is an undoubted demand for Welsh-speaking graduates, and ensuring that Welsh language pathways from schools and FE colleges are smooth and attractive. This last point is crucial, because success will be measured not so much by the increase in teaching provision as by the increase in demand. The Williams Report suggested that a target of a 50 per cent increase from the current 4,000 students within five years. That will be the biggest challenge of all. And all this will have to be delivered against a public expenditure background of unprecedented difficulty. However, it would surely be illogical to boast of all the advances in Welsh-medium primary and secondary education without a commitment to a complementary development in higher education. Y Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol will provide that commitment and, along the way, perhaps set a new benchmark for collaboration and the efficient distribution of scarce resources.

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G R E AT W E L S H W O M E N

One Hundred Years TWO PIONEERING WOMEN OF WALES GWENLLIAN MEREDITH

s we come to the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is perhaps worth remembering two very different women who devoted their lives, energies, and personal wealth to the promotion of Wales, its people and particularly women’s rights just a century ago. The first was Gwenllian Elizabeth Fanny Morgan, whose talents for activism lay in steadfast, intelligent leadership, and whose diligent advocacy for women’s rights achieved many necessary changes to the lives of women and those in need. The other was Margaret Haig Macworth [née Thomas], later Viscountess Rhondda. Both were born into privilege, but Gwenllian Morgan chose to work from her home in Brecon. In contrast, Lady Rhondda began her career as an early advocate of Christobel Pankhurst’s militant branch of the WSPU, when she took an assignment to bomb a post box on Risca Road, Newport. For that crime she was sentenced to prison, but rather than accept a bailout from her estranged husband, Lord Macworth, she chose to go on a hunger strike. After five days of hunger protest, the authorities released Lady Rhondda. From this one act of violence against the state, Lady Rhondda changed her tactics, no longer violent but no less Viscountess passionate in defence of her causes. She Rhondda always had an abundance of restless energy, seeking rather than waiting for the next step to forward her efforts for the rights of women. But events, as they often do, stepped in to change Lady Rhondda’s approach to political activism. The 1917 sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania not only marked the entry of the United States into World War I, it was also to radically impact on the future of Lady Rhondda, who craved excitement wherever she was and in whatever she was doing, no less so on the Lusitania’s fateful voyage home from America. According to her autobiography, it may have been this craving for excitement which saved both her life (and her father’s) when they decided to stay on deck late into the night, for when a sudden explosion hit the ship they were not trapped below.

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‘She took an assignment to bomb a post box on Risca Road, Newport. For that crime she was sentenced to prison, but rather than accept a bailout from her estranged husband, she chose to go on a hunger strike.’

Her father, created Viscount Rhondda for his service to the government, died suddenly two years after the Lusitania incident. His daughter Margaret then became Viscountess Rhondda. In 1922 she divorced her husband, became a devout Christian (the conversion apparently a result from her near brush with death on the Lusitania) and began her campaign for the right of women peers to be allowed to take their seats in the House of Lords, a privilege eventually achieved in 1953, albeit too late for the activist Viscountess, but at the very best she lived to appreciate the political recognition for women peers in Britain. Though less notorious, Gwenllian Morgan too deserves remembrance. Born in 1852, soon after the death of her father, aged only sixteen, Miss Morgan moved from the family home at Davynock to set up house in Brecon where she immediately began taking an active part in community life. She had a genuine kindness and concern for those less fortunate than herself in which her devotion to Brecon and its citizens gave her much joy. According to reports and through her personal letters, her service had nothing to do with the Victorian attitude that women of social status must devote some energies to ‘good works’ in some form of Christian charity. She did as she believed best: a woman of privileged birth yes, but a woman of arrogant complacency, no. The culmination of her political activities came in November, 1910, when Gwenllian Elizabeth Fanny Morgan became first female mayor in Wales for the Borough of Brecon, and only the second female mayor in Britain, eight years prior to British women receiving the vote. Sadly her victory came with a burden. Several of her male Councillors descried the idea their mayor was a woman; however, they had no choice but to accept

Gwenllian Morgan

her as she topped the polls by 110 votes. Her sister Nellie acted as Mayoress during her tenure in office. The election of a female mayor was, incidentally, made possible by the 1907 Act of Parliament, designated as The Qualification of Women Act, which also stated that any woman serving in a borough council must either be a spinster or a widow. Gwenllian, however, preferred to be called Miss Philip Morgan after her father Philip Morgan, who received appointments as perpetual curate of Penpont (1841-64), the small parish church where she is buried, and of Battle, near Brecon (1859-64), and from 1864 till his death in 1868, rector of Llanhamlach. She enjoyed the advantages offered by her family’s liberality towards the education of women, and throughout her life and public career, often displayed an intolerance for staid tradition, most particularly regarding women and their place within society itself. Buckingham Place, Brecon - home of Gwenllian Morgan

A Welsh patriot, teetotaller, avid member and supporter of temperance, a member and chair of numerous committees for education, a poor aid worker, women’s rights advocate Plaque, Buckingham Place and activist for changes to the public health system, Miss Philip Morgan all the while maintained her idea of Christian principles, in name and practice. In her spare time Gwenllian Morgan wrote antiquarian articles for Brycheiniog and other journals, in addition to writing a biography of Theophilus Jones, the eighteenth century historian of Breconshire. But her major intellectual pursuit was the poet and poetry of Henry Vaughn, Silurist. Her desire was to produce the definitive compendium of his works, unfortunately she died before accomplishing this feat. Yet her intensive study of Vaughn’s poetry earned her an honorary MA from the University of Wales in 1925. She received other honours from those she served, one of which came from 1,000 women who signed a petition recognizing her efforts to the community as mayor and citizen, and commissioned her portrait which still hangs in the Old Guild Hall, Brecon. Peeresses of the realm, women from noble families, women from Wales and England, signed and contributed their names and money to the homage. One of the signatories was a fellow Suffragette, Mrs Sara Lees of Oldham in Lancashire (later Dame Sarah Lees) who was also elected Mayor of her home town on 8 November 1910. It is fitting to have Miss Morgan’s own words elicit some of her personality. In her final letter as Mayor of Brecon, Miss Gwenllian Philip Morgan wrote to her contemporary, Sara Lees, ‘I want my last letter written as Mayor of Brecon to go to you, congratulating you on the successful year of office which ends tomorrow. It has all been so satisfactory and so triumphant, and the fact that you have received the writ for two Parliamentary Elections in such a constituency is most remarkable. I also want to tell you how stunned (and angry) I feel by the morning’s news, that it is Mr Asquith’s intention to introduce an adult Suffrage Bill for men to the exclusion of women! It is the worst thing he has done for us, and men will never allow women to be included in it, as they so much outnumber the male voters.’ Gwenllian Morgan retired from her civic duties to a private life, but did not end her public activities. She deserves remembrance for her passions and efforts in the centenary of her Mayoralty of Brecon.

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From Fountain to River: Dylan Thomas and the Bont DERIC JOHN

& DAVID N. THOMAS

hen a film producer asked Dylan Thomas to write about the Rebecca riots, he soon realised that the poet was “passionately interested” in the subject. Dylan set his story in Pembrokeshire in 1843, presumably drawing on the destruction of several tollgates in the county that year. But there are passages in Rebecca’s Daughters which suggest that Dylan might also have drawn upon the far more significant events of 1843 in Hendy and *Pontardulais (the Bont). Both settlements were hemmed in by tollgates, and on September 6th Rebecca planned a simultaneous assault on two of the gates. Police were called to the Bont to defend the lower gate by the Llwchwr river. Soldiers were also sent to the Hendy but the attack there didn’t come for another three days. The confrontation in the Bont was one of the most serious of the Rebecca incidents, involving a pitched battle between the rioters and the civil forces. It was also the only time that police and troops had managed to get in position before a tollgate attack happened. Dylan’s script PONTARDULAIS: THE FARMERS ARMS IN 1926

seems to reflect this. An assault is planned on what he calls the Rhos Goch gate, but - just as at the Hendy - the rioters fail to appear, and the soldiers sent there vent their frustration at not being at the nearby Carew gate, the flames from which are lighting up the sky. Dylan also describes how a DYLAN THOMAS young woman, Rhiannon, falls in love with the leader of the Rebeccaites. Her love deepens as she and her maidservant watch from her carriage as he leads the action at a tollgate. Was this just the writer’s imagination at work, or did Dylan know about the romance behind the Pontardulais riots? In July 1843, the Bolgoed gate at the top end of the Bont, near the Fountain Inn, had been destroyed. The leader was Daniel Lewis, a weaver and poet, said to be a man of “unusual culture” who fostered “the radical ideas of the time”. As he led the attack on the Bolgoed gate, his love Elizabeth Davies looked on with her maidservant from an upstairs window of the Fountain. Betrayed by an informer, Daniel was arrested but eventually released. He and Elizabeth later married and had several children, the last being a girl they called Morfydd. If Dylan did draw on the Pontardulais riots, where did his information come from? One source could have been Morfydd’s son, Wynford Vaughan Thomas, a life-long friend of the poet, and a man who was proud of his grandfather’s part in destroying the Bolgoed gate. Wynford’s parents had lived in the Bont, and he had several cousins there. Thereafter, he came back to the Fountain throughout his life, the last time to open the new Rebecca lounge just before he died. Dylan already knew the Bont well. St Teilo Street was the main A48. From an early age, he came through the town by car and bus on his way to visiting his many aunties who lived on the farms around Llangain. And then there was the Swansea Little Theatre in which the young Dylan played an active part. It ‘carted plays around the valleys’, as he put it, to audiences that he suspected didn’t understand a word. He was on the road in 1933 and 1934, travelling by bus through the Bont, making two trips to Llandybie and another to Llandeilo. The Bont’s main industries were coal and tinplate and St Teilo Street boasted not one but two Co-ops, the Star

*Pontardulais is spelt with one ‘d’ in this article because the town was originally ‘Pontaberdulais’, shortened over the years to Pontardulais.

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PONTARDULAIS: ‘FROM FOUNTAIN TO RIVER’

grocery shop, the Tivoli cinema and a handsome Mechanics’ Institute that put on political talks, improving lectures and even Displays of Dancing by Madame Parsley and her daughter. The Bont was also a pub crawlers’ paradise, especially for someone like Dylan, who could get off the Swansea bus at The Fountain and then stumble his way down through the town, visiting eight pubs in all. And this was no furtive affair. The pubs were all on the main road, making it a very public pub crawl indeed. The forces of law and order were close at hand: the police station and no fewer than seven chapels and churches also sat, watchfully, along the main road. This was a community that did its drinking and praying in the open, and took both seriously, just like its rugby and choirs. It was a long walk from the Fountain to the next pub, the King Hotel, but Dylan could always stop at the police station, where the sergeant knew his relatives down in Ferryside. His daughter remembers several encounters in the Bont: Dylan playing a tune on the milk churns outside the police station; walking thoughtfully through St Teilo’s churchyard; and visiting Granny Williams, across the road from the station, to talk at length about the Rebecca riots. Granny was “old Bont”, born in the village, just like her father and his parents before him. She and Dylan would have got on well; she was a real local eccentric, toothless and unwashed, sharing her damp, tumbledown cottage

with her chickens and pets, perhaps bringing back memories for Dylan of his holidays at dilapidated Fernhill. What’s more, she was family, related by marriage to one of Dylan’s Llangain cousins. Eccentric she may have been, but Granny Williams was nobody’s fool. She was well read, even scholarly, and some of her books and papers have survived. She contributed material to Lewis Evans’ book on the Bont, and she certainly knew her Rebecca history. At the time of the 1843 attacks, her grandfather was living near the lower tollgate by the Llwchwr. He was also a weaver, just like Daniel Lewis whom he undoubtedly would have known for much of his life. Sitting round the cauldron in her cottage, Granny Williams would have fired Dylan’s imagination with stories about turnpikes and tollgates, stagecoaches and rioters. The King Hotel was the colliers’ pub, and whilst Dylan had sneered at them in his letter, he enjoyed their company and the pubs they used. After the King, Prayer Alley started in earnest, four chapels and a Church in the short stretch to the river. Passing Trinity, Dylan might have remembered that it was the home of Cwmni Dan Matthews, one of the most successful drama groups in Wales. Both he and his company had won many awards. But Matthews, whose first production had ironically been Jack y Bachgen Drwg/the Naughty Boy, is also remembered as a man who “did the rounds”, using his work as an insurance PONTARDULAIS: THE FOUNTAIN HOTEL IN THE 1920s

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agent to indulge his “liking for the ladies”. On Christmas Day, 1918, Matthews called at Myrtle Hill, the home of painter Alf Williams, who was one of Dylan’s Llangain uncles. Alf and the children weren’t there, but Matthews had come to see Alf’s wife, Margaretta. They had it away, and again on Boxing Day, followed by a night of passion in a Builth Wells guesthouse. But Alfred Hayden Williams was not a man to mess with. He was well-known in the Bont, not least as a secretary of the rugby club. He immediately started divorce proceedings and won custody of the three children, with costs. Dan Matthews soon bounced back, winning at the 1921 Eisteddfod in Caernarfon, though it took him several more years to get elected to the committee of the rugby club. Next came the Farmers Arms. It had been involved in the July attack on the Bolgoed gate, when a tollkeeper was taken there and chained in the pub’s stables. And it was also Wynford Vaughan Thomas territory. His mother, Morfydd, had kept the pub for ten years, and her brother before her. Was this where Wynford told Dylan about the Rebecca in his family? A hungry drinker could now head for Domachi’s café for a steam pie, as Tommy Farr often did, and it kept him fighting fit. But Dylan had another option, that of calling in at his uncle Alf ’s shop, just a few doors up from the Wheatsheaf pub. Alf had married again, this time to his Ferryside cousin, Mary Hannah, known for most of her life as Bal. She was also an important auntie in her own right; she and Dylan’s mother, Florence, were first cousins with a half-sister in common, and they remained close all their lives. Bal and Alf had their own child, Allan, who was just Dylan’s type for a quick pint or two. He’d been in the tinplate works and down the mines. He was a gifted musician, playing the violin in the Swansea Philharmonic and saxophone in the Roy Allan Band; you could hear them for two bob most Saturday nights at the Luciana Ballroom in Gorseinon. Sitting in the Wheatsheaf, did Allan and Dylan ever talk about the other big family secret that had been kept hidden from the poet’s biographers? Allan’s grandmother had been raped by Dylan’s grandfather, George. In 1860, he had married Hannah Williams of Llangain. Five years and three children later, he raped Hannah’s younger sister, Amy. The scandal sent George and Hannah packing to Swansea, where he eventually made good, becoming a railway inspector and a chapel deacon, all the while fathering six more children, the last being Dylan’s mother, Florence. Amy also did well. She gave birth to George’s daughter, and then went on to marry the pilot of the Ferryside

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lifeboat. They had four children, one of whom ended up in the Bont selling wallpaper and paint. After the Wheatsheaf, Dylan could move on to the Dulais Glen, where the tinplaters drank, and enjoyed themselves in the high-class Function Room, with its boxing, concerts and ballroom dancing. It was then just a short walk over the level crossing to the Gwyn Hotel. No doubt Dylan took the railways for granted but without them he could not have earned a living as a poet. And trains were in his blood; both his grandfathers and an uncle had been railway men, as had Florence’s cousin, William Proper Williams, a platform foreman at the Bont station, who made sure that people, cattle and tinplate were kept on the move. The end was now in sight. The Red Lion and the Black Horse, both of which had seen action in the attack on the tollgates, stood at the bottom of the Fforest hill, the road out of the Bont to Carmarthen. A little way up lived the painter Vera Bassett. Then came the home of Catherine Williams. She had married into Granny Williams’ family and was Dylan’s third cousin, related three times over, once by blood and twice by marriage. At the very top of the Fforest lived another aunt, Minnie Olive. She had spent part of her childhood with Dylan’s paternal grandparents. She later married D J Bowen, whose twenty years as headmaster at Hendy school have been described as “inconspicuous”, marked by his use of the whip, as well as his indifference to both the Welsh language and the local community. Dylan’s journey through the Bont from Fountain to river can be seen as a rite de passage, and not just as an opportunity for a few drinks. The Bont was a border settlement, the main river crossing between sooty Glamorgan and sheepy Sir Gâr. For the young Dylan, it was also the crossing point from his nuclear to his extended family, from his mother’s apron strings to the looser reins of the aunts to whom he was farmed out. This estuarine line of aunties stretched from the Bont through to Ferryside and Llandyfaelog. It was at its most intense in the square mile around Llansteffan and Llangain, where the farms were mostly occupied by his various relatives. Such was their impact on his life that one of his girlfriends later observed that Dylan grew up with “a thing about aunties”, but that is another story. And the film script that had been helped on its way by a toothless old lady from the Bont? It finally appeared in 1992, starring Peter O’Toole, Joely Richardson and our very own Ray Gravell. Notes, references, pen portraits, photos and family histories: http://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomaspontardulais/home

Number 5 Cwmdonkin Drive DYLAN THOMAS’S BIRTHPLACE AND HOME RESTORED EMILY BASELT STEIGER

alking through the streets of Swansea, you can’t throw a stone without hitting some landmark or other touting a relationship with the famed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: “He lived here!” “He wrote here!” “He drank here!” “He may or may not have had occasion to cross by this spot!” Clearly some of these places have a stronger claim to the poet than do others. While even Dylan’s beloved city of Swansea itself - which he once described as “an ugly, lovely town” - contains enormous significance for any Dylan fan, true enthusiasts know

that the best place in Swansea, and perhaps the world, to get a glimpse into the poet’s life is at his birthplace and childhood home, 5 Cwmdonkin Drive. Dylan lived at Cwmdonkin Drive until he was twenty-three and wrote fully half of his poetry there. And now, nearly a century after Dylan’s birth, enthusiasts - of Dylan, of history, and of poetry - have the unique opportunity to experience a small slice of his life by visiting this beautifully restored home. Thanks to the efforts of Swansea couple Anne and Geoff Haden, 5 Cwmdonkin Drive is now open not only for house tours, but also for overnight stays and genuine, homecooked Edwardian dinners. The Hadens have resorted Dylan’s birthplace with loving detail, even combing through the house room-byroom with the Thomas’s 80-yearold former housekeeper to insure the accuracy of the decor. A house tour at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive promises even the most

learned Dylan devotee a chance to hear exciting, intimate stories about the poet - including the Hadens’ analysis of how, as a people-watcher, Dylan would have loved Facebook, had he lived long enough to encounter it. Dinner at Cwmdonkin Drive, meanwhile, is an evening guaranteed to be full of excellent conversation, trading jokes and stories with the Hadens and other guests, and, of course, Anne’s delicious cooking, which has been featured on the television program Come Dine with Me and will undoubtedly leave you stuffed and satisfied. And, finally, a night spent at Cwmdonkin Drive is an instant step back in time to 1914 and will be a night not soon forgotten. You won’t find wireless internet or premium TV channels here, but you will experience the peace, restfulness, and quiet of life in the early twentieth century, and gain an unmatched understanding of one of Wales’s most celebrated poets. There are no ghosts haunting 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, but after sleeping for a night in Dylan’s home and, if you choose, even in his “tiny renovated bedroom,” with the “hot water pipes very near” that “gurgle all the time,” as he described it - it’s hard not to claim that you’ve had some sort of encounter with, if not Dylan’s spirit, then perhaps his creative spirit. To see, eat, and sleep where Dylan spent so much of his life, where he wrote so much of his work, is to experience the impact of this great poet in a whole new way. It’s impossible to say how much of an impact Dylan’s presence actually had on many of the landmarks in Swansea which claim him, but in the case of No. 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, the impact is a powerful one. This particular Dylan Thomas landmark is one that should absolutely not be missed. ALL PHOTOGRAPHS

RYAN

G R E AT W E L S H M E N

Sir Isambard Owen DR. D. GERAINT JAMES

all and desperately thin, blessed with a formidable intellect, Sir Isambard Owen was the quintessentially successful Welshman of the nineteenth century, who left an indelible imprint on both the advance of medicine and Welsh education. Although the son of William George Owen, chief engineer of the Great Western Railway and nephew of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the young Isambard chose to dedicate himself to medicine, qualifying as a doctor at St. George’s Medical School, London, in 1875. Originally from Chepstow, where he was born at Bellevue House on December 28th, 1850, he was to remain an ardent supporter of all things Welsh throughout his life, soon joining London’s Cymmrodorion Society (in 1877) for which he re-wrote its prospectus. More to the point, he quickly became involved in the struggle to improve primary and secondary education in Wales, courageously promoting the use of the Welsh language in schools just 30 years after the publication of the notorious ‘Blue Books’. His main contribution to Welsh academic life, however, was in the foundation of the University of Wales, and later of its medical school in Cardiff. He wrote the University’s Charter, and from 1895 until 1910 - was its Senior Deputy Chancellor, the stand-in for two Princes of Wales (later Edward VII and George V) when they served as Chancellor. In the meantime, Sir Isambard’s own career equally prospered. He became a consultant chest physician in 1880 and Dean of St. George’s Hospital and medical school in 1884, then principal of Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne from 1904-09, before returning south to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol in the year that its Royal Charter was granted. Interestingly, Sir Isambard was to succeed another Welshman, Professor Conwy Lloyd Morgan, a psychologist well-known for his experimental work in animal psychology (‘Lloyd Morgan’s Canon’.) Although Isambard Owen stood six-foot tall, he was always under ten stone, a drawback which was only once overcome - and that in order to row in the Downing College boat. This frail-looking ectomorphic physique was combined with a high intellect, punctiliousness and obsessional personality, so it was not surprising that he

ISAMBARD OWEN IN 1909 © UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

was a lifelong sufferer from migraine. Also in keeping with his ectomorphy was his high forehead, Roman nose, delicate chin and long tapering fingers. His eyes were bright blue and his voice deep and melodious. He enjoyed cycling; and art and music appealed to his Celtic taste. From close personal acquaintance, my father described him thus: “His was a most charming personality. His charm seemed to me so overwhelming that if he had asked the King for home rule for Wales, his Majesty could not refuse his request with keen and incontrovertible argument; with a suavity mixed with gravity, with an eye radiating kindness and keenness, he would overcome the strongest opposition, and make friends of his opponents ... all of which combined to make him a successful diplomatist.” My father and Isambard were great friends, serving together respectively as secretary and president of the Welsh Language Society, while lsambard, in turn, served on the Council of Welsh National Eisteddfodau from 1885 to 1905. He also funded his friend Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte (a Welsh speaker) to an honorary membership of the Cymmrodorion. Isambard married into a Merioneth Welsh family, and his wife Ethel Holland Thomas (1868-1929) joined the Welsh Gorsedd with the bardic name Eluned Holland. She had been entranced by a bronze bust of Sir Isambard by Goscombe John and confided to her sister her love at first sight, protesting that “ ... if Sir Isambard Owen doesn’t ask me I will die an old maid”. The Goscombe John bust is now to be found in the council chamber of the University of Wales, Bangor. Their two daughters, Heulwen and Hedydd, have published a joint biography of their father. It is a mine of information and a joy to read. Isambard died from a sudden stroke on January 14th 1927, in Paris, and his wife on June 15th, 1929. He was cremated and his ashes were buried in Glanadda Cemetery, Bangor.

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Greenland: Looking to a future for Welsh heritage. DAVID HOWELL

eritage and Welsh national identity have for many years been inseparable. The hopes, ambitions and insecurities of the national psyche have often been rooted in that which is recorded in the country’s history books, and displayed in museum galleries. Whist images of castles, national costumes and coal mining might be dismissed as a dated cliché, such aspects of the heritage resource have had a clear influence on the development of a Welsh identity. The intangible heritage of Wales, sustained in the ‘traditional’ dance, poetry and song of the local and national Eisteddfodau, also retains a key position in the image of Welsh identity. Yet Wales has been changing, not least due to the dawn of political devolution. A little over ten years into the life of the Welsh Assembly, the idea of Welsh identity might be seen to be very different to what it was before, and as Wales’ confidence in its new political identity grows, what is the future of heritage in Wales? Perhaps this process of change was best illustrated in the winter of 2009, as the then First Minister Rhodri Morgan prepared to relinquish his position. In a speech given marking the end of his tenure as leader of the Welsh Assembly, he spoke enthusiastically of Wales as an ‘outward looking nation’, commenting on what was perceived as a recent move away from a historical lack of confidence in Wales, manifest in a protective and defensive stance taken to Welsh cultural identity. Was this then a role of heritage, a manifestation of what it was to be Welsh that had to be protected from external influences that might corrupt and undermine it? To some extent perhaps this was true, but what is certain is that the heritage of Wales has also played a central role in the process of Wales becoming an ‘outward looking nation’. Cultural tourism coming into Wales has long been cited as a key force of economic enhancement, whilst the success of ‘Wales Smithsonian Cymru’ at the 2009 43rd Smithsonian Folklife Festival in the U.S.(held up as an example by Morgan in his 2009 speech), illustrates the way

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Greenland’s unassuming National Museum in Nuuk, the country’s capital.

in which Wales might be ‘sold’ beyond the borders of the country. Far from being a guarded secret, Welsh heritage is rapidly becoming the showpiece in the salesroom for Wales in the world. Whilst the short term benefits of this growing promotional role of Welsh heritage might be heralded as part of a necessary process for Wales to make itself known in the wider political world, might we be at risk of compromising the resource that was once so guarded? Of course, ideas such as additional income and creation of jobs through heritage are no strangers in Wales, Blaenavon’s rejuvenation in relation to its World Heritage Site status is a well known example, whilst the very preservation of such sites might be in jeopardy were it not for the continued interest of the tourist driven economy. But what consideration is given to the integrity of our current use of heritage, and what might be the implications of Wales selling its heritage, perhaps even its identity, to an international audience? In order to address these issues, an ongoing research programme carried out in the South Wales Centre for Historical and Interdisciplinary Research (SWCHIR) at the University of Wales, Newport, is looking at ways in which other nations have seen the use of their national heritage evolve, in relation to the growth of their own political autonomy or independence. One example considered in the summer of 2010 was the island nation of Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat in the national Kalaallisut language). In recent years Greenland has commanded increased international media coverage, largely for environmental rather than cultural reasons. As the effects of global warming are felt, Greenland has become not only the focus of debate in relation to rising sea levels, but also in light of the large deposits of natural resources that are being discovered beneath the frozen landscape. The discovery of resources such as oil has in turn led to new debates within Greenland about the political future of the nation. Although given home rule in 1979, Greenland continues to exist within the Kingdom of Denmark, and the issue of independence remains a key political issue, especially so since the separatist Inuit Ataqatigiit party took

control of the Greenlandic parliament in 2009. As talk of political independence grows though, how is this impacting on Greenlandic identity, and what, if any, consequences can be discerned for the use of the nation’s heritage? Although the heritage resource in Greenland is very different to that in Wales, when we consider the role of the cultural sector, there is similar ground to be considered. Cultural centres in the capital of Nuuk, such as the National Museum of Greenland, founded in the 1960s, and the Katuaq Cultural Centre opened in 1997, mirror trends which are beginning to emerge in the Welsh cultural-heritage environment. Whilst these trends are encouraging for the role of the arts in establishing new identities in post home rule era Greenland, they are not as encouraging for the more traditional heritage centres. Certainly in the National Museum there are concerns that the importance of the nation’s heritage has become diminished to a point where the relevance of heritage to contemporary Greenlanders is coming into question. Pauline Knudsen, curator of the National Museum, talking on the nature of museum visitors, noted that local visitors have almost completely disappeared. Apart from prescribed school visits, the core of the museum audience is now derived from passing tourists. Thus, the nation’s heritage is rapidly becoming the domain of the outsider. In the museum at least, this is perceived to be linked to the former local-national audiences now concentrating on the growing political voice found in debates on independence or increased political powers, Greenlanders looking forwards rather than backwards. Some might casually suggest that the wider tourist audience has always been at the heart of the success of museum-heritage sites. Yet according to staff at the National Museum of Greenland this is only recently the case in Greenland, and in Wales, sites such as St Fagans (Wales’ most popular museum/heritage site in terms of visitor figures) draws well over half of its numbers from within a local south Wales based catchment area. In Greenland this heritage audience appears to have been lost to the contemporary arts scene. The Katuaq Cultural Centre, offering a home to the arts in Greenland, brought in an audience of 120,000 visitors in its first year of existence, staggering considering that its home town at the time had a population of few more than 14,000. Julia Pars, managing director of the centre, describes the site as aiming to become a ‘cultural power-place of Greenland’. Since the centre’s opening, Pars noted that the growth in the contemporary arts scene has been marked, with much thanks going to the presence of the Katuaq centre in Nuuk acting as a host venue and creating a platform for new artists to exhibit their work. Much of the work seen in Greenland is based on traditional skills and art forms, with numerous traditions being adapted for more commercial

ends. Yet as well as being a means for the preservation of traditional crafts (although the crafts themselves are being dramatically altered to become attractive to a growing international audience), the contemporary art scene is now providing a platform on which Greenlanders can question their changing identity. Artists such as Linda Riber have questioned the idea of Greenlandic identity in the current political climate in an exhibition hosted by Katuaq. As the issue of political autonomy becomes more relevant for Greenlanders, more and more it seems that the notion of identity is to be found in the questions posed by the nation’s artists, rather than in the display cabinets of the museums, which may point to a Greenland past, distant and detached from the ambitions of today. Wales may never be faced with the choices confronting Greenland today, that of breaking away from its financially endowed neighbour of Denmark (in political terms if not geographic ones), but the potential impacts of growing political autonomy may already be felt. For instance, the controversial movement of archaeology collections away from the National Museum in central Cardiff to St Fagans, ostensibly part of a move to develop a more coherent story of Welsh history at the site, might better be understood as part of a move to develop the Cathays site as a new home for the arts scene in Wales. Fiscal support for the financially struggling Wales Millennium Centre further indicates the emphasis placed by Welsh government on supporting the cultural arts sector, perhaps in preference to the heritage environment. Be it in preference to heritage or not, both examples point towards a change in attitude, one which embraces the ideas of an ‘outward looking nation’ as evidenced through an increased support for the arts. As such changes occur, might we see the same effects for heritage in Wales that are being seen in Greenland? By considering Greenland, and other nations going or having gone through a process of political independence/devolution, the SWCHIR led research project hopes to suggest a pattern for heritage use, in the years following devolution in Wales. It is possible that we will find the same change of emphasis on heritage in Greenland occurring in Wales as well, that the national heritage becomes less a beacon of national identity and self awareness, and more a vehicle for national promotion, appealing more and more to the international visitor, rather than the local community. Would this be a negative development for Welsh heritage? This is a far more challenging question for another time. What is certain though is that the role of heritage in Wales is changing, and, as the first ten years of devolution gives way to the second decade, it is now of particular importance that we give consideration to just what role Welsh heritage has to play in a country that is increasingly looking to its political place in the future, and less to its historical place in the past.

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Languages in danger RHOBERT AP STEFFAN

very month after reading my National Geographic I feel depressed by the global destruction and exploitation of natural habitat by man and the consequent threat to endangered animal species. But we ourselves are also losing something precious: our languages. As a Welsh-speaker I am acutely aware of the predicament faced by “minority languages” so I relished the opportunity to attend the 14th Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) held at University of Wales Trinity St David, Caerfyrddin, on behalf of CAMBRIA. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Reversing Language Shift’ and delegates attended from all over the world ranging from the optimistic Basques to the very pessimistic Irish. We had reports from Australia and New Zealand, Polynesia, China, the Americas, Africa and, closer to home the Celtic countries and Guernsey where there are only 200 speakers of Guernesaias, (a form of Norman French) left on the island. The FEL manifesto clearly underlines the scale of the problem: “At this point in human history, most human languages are spoken by very few people, but that majority of languages are about to vanish. The most authoritative source on the languages of the world, the Ethnologue

RHOBERT AP STEFFAN

‘It is difficult to imagine many communities sustaining everyday use of a language for even a generation with fewer than 100 speakers: yet at least 10% of the world’s living languages are now in this position.’

lists nearly 7,000 living languages. Population figures for just over 6,000 show that:

• 52% of languages are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. 28% are spoken by fewer than 1,000.

• • 83% are spoken only in single countries, and so are particularly exposed to the policies of a single government.

At the other end of the scale, 10 major languages, each spoken by over 109 million people, are the mother tongues of almost half of the world’s population”. More important than this snapshot of proportions and populations is the outlook for survival of the languages that are spoken. Data about this is scarce, because of the sheer variety of the human condition: a small community, isolated or bilingual, may continue to speak a unique language for centuries, while elsewhere a populous language may for social or political reasons die out in little more than a generation. The period in which records have been kept is too short to clearly document trends: for example the Ethnologue has been issued only since 1951. However, it is difficult to imagine many communities sustaining everyday use of a language for even a generation with fewer than 100 speakers: yet at least 10% of the world’s living languages are now in this position. Some of the forces which threaten languages are clear: the impacts of urbanisation, Hywel Glyn Lewis (LEFT) and Nick Ostler with their joint publication Reversing Language Shift / Gwrthdroi Dyfudiad Iaith.

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RHOBERT AP STEFFAN

Delegates at the Conference at University of Wales Trinity st David, Caerfyrddin.

Westernisation, (Anglicisation in Wales), and global communications grow daily, all diminishing the self-sufficiency and self-confidence of small and traditional communities and nations. Discriminatory policies and population movements also take their toll of languages. There is agreement among linguists that over half of the world’s languages are not being passed on to the next generation. We are living at the point in human history where, within two generations, most languages in the world will die out. This mass extinction of languages may not appear to be obviously tragic. Some people believe that a reduction in the number of languages will increase communication, and help to build nations, even global solidarity. On the other hand, we know that human life across the planet depends on our ability to develop cultures enabling survival in a variety of environments. These cultures have been transmitted by languages, through oral traditions and, more recently, through writing. So when language transmission breaks down there is always a large loss of inherited knowledge. Once that knowledge is lost - whether its value is recognised or not - a nation and indeed the whole of humanity is poorer. A large part of the pride and identity of a nation such as Cymru will be lost if Cymraeg is lost. And there is another kind of loss, of a different type of knowledge. As each language dies, many sciences - linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology - lose one more precious source of data, one more of the diverse and unique ways that the human mind can express itself through a language’s structure, vocabulary and idiom.

The result of the impending loss of most of the world’s linguistic diversity cannot be predicted. But language loss is generally irreversible and has no known positive outcomes. Every endangered language has its own specific problems and solutions. The Irish have ‘transmission difficulties’ where the language is not being passed on to the next generation. Two leading delegates from the Gaeltacht predicted that if present trends continue the language has only 20 years left. In Scotland the problem is finding qualified teachers amongst its 60,000 native Gaelic speakers. The Cornish are still trying to standardise ‘Kernewek’ but cannot get the four language groups to agree on one form of spelling! In New Zealand, while the Maori language is fairly safe, there is some difficulty in providing education for non Maori speakers. In the USA languages like Dakota are viewed as ‘sacred’ by tribe elders who don’t like the thought of it being taught in classrooms. Meanwhile Basque and Catalan are witnessing a tremendous revival. The number of Basque speakers has risen from 20% to 30% since the demise of Franco and in a recent poll 70% of Euskadi’s population said they wanted their children to be educated in Basque only (20% were for bilingual Basque/Spanish education, and just 5% opted for Spanish only). I came away from the conference both sad and happy after having absorbed so much knowledge. Whilst Cymraeg is comparatively safe when compared with certain other minority languages, we must not drop our guard and the battle is far from over. We need to be aware of the dangers and pitfalls and can learn much from the shared experiences of others. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION VISIT

www.ogmios.org

Cambria thanks Conference Chairman Dr Hywel Glyn Lewis of the University of Wales, Trinity St David, and Dr Nicholas Ostler, President of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, for their help and support.

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Amidst the Breton Marshes GWYN GRIFFITHS

he Pays de Retz is no longer part of the administrative region of Brittany, but all signs suggest that it would like to be re-united into Brittany. Brittany has a better image than Loire Atlantique, a region centred on Nantes which was knocked together after the fall of France in 1940 a separation confirmed after the end of hostilities to the dismay of all Bretons. The Breton flag flies above hotels and tourist offices and towns like Pornic, on the Atlantic coast and south of the Loire estuary, display the Breton version of their names even though Breton has not been a language in common use in these parts for a thousand years. In the words of Pierre Abelard, medieval philosopher, theologian and lover of Heloïse - this is the Marais Breton, the Breton marshes. In Le Pallet, quite close to Nantes, there is a museum jointly celebrating his memory and praising the famous dry Muscadet wine. It is actually called the Musée du Vignoble Nantais - although Abelard gets equal prominence. Imagine a museum dedicated to Baptists and beer! But this is France and wine and philosophy go together, like Muscadet and oysters. The easiest way to get to the Pays de Retz is by crossing from Plymouth to Roscoff by Brittany Ferries, then driving towards Morlaix, follow the signs to Lorient, join the Brest-Nantes road and aim

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for Saint-Nazaire Cross the mouth of the Loire via the dizzyingly high, spidery Saint-Nazaire bridge, and you have arrived. It may be quicker to drive from Saint-Malo, using the Brittany Ferries crossing from Portsmouth, but the traffic is less intimidating. We stayed at the Arc en Ciel, a modest hotel on the edge of Pornic. Pornic is a delightful little town, a pleasure port full of sailing boats and a large number of restaurants with prices varying a lot. It was once a favourite playground of the Paris rich before they discovered La Baule. For walkers it is excellent, with the paths of the customs men above sheltered, sandy coves. Along these paths you find strange contraptions called carrelets, nets attached to four rods which can be wound up and down for catching fish. I have rarely seen them in use and when I have the nets were always empty. I’m told that a similar system is used in Sri Lanka. Then there are the marshes with all the birds and wildlife. At La Maison du Lac in Saint-Philibertle-Grand Lieu - twinned with Radyr - it is possible to view the wildlife out on the marshes via a close-circuit TV system. In winter the marshes are flooded forming the Grand Lieu, said to be France’s largest natural lake. A few miles down the coast from

In one of the great heroic deeds of the World War II the Cambeltown, chocfull of explosives, was rammed into the Normandie dry-dock to stop the Germans using it to service their battleships.

Pornic is Bourgneuf-en-Retz, not a very noteworthy little town but it has the best small museum I have ever seen. Set in a former Greyfriar monastery it has Roman archaeological remains, an excellent geological display, and every type of craft and industry ever practised in the area is explained and featured. There were coopers, thatchers, stonemasons, brick-makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, agriculture, winemakers … a terrific collection of ploughs. Wildlife and crafts connected with the marshes are all represented - peat-cutting, thatching and the “fields”, on the northern side of the Loire, where the sea-salt is gathered. It is gem of a museum run entirely by friends and volunteers.

A ‘carrelet ’ - the fishing system of Pays de Retz

GWYN GRIFFITHS

llydaw Brittany

Brest

Sant Malou St Malo

Sant Brieg St Brieuc

Roazhon

Kemper

Rennes

Quimper ai n

An Oriant lu Gw i

Paris

One of a number of pre-historic burial chambers near Pornic

Vi l

Lorient

Sant Nazer St Nazaire

FRANCE

Naoned Nantes

Lac de Grand Lieu

Pornizh Pornic

ire Lo

PAYS DE RETZ

Pays de Retz landscape near the Lac de Grand Lieu

The harbour at Pornic (Breton Porzhnizh)

It is only a short journey by car back over Saint-Nazaire bridge to the sea-salt fields and the marshes of La Briére, north of the Loire, another haven for birds, and boat trips along the canals with their gleaming, peaty waters. The area was immortalised in the novel La Briére by Alphonse de la Chateaubriant. He was a strange character. During World War II he edited a pro-Nazi weekly called La Gerbe (The Sheaf), at the end of which he was lucky to escape to Switzerland dressed as a nun where he died in 1951. The bridge - if you dare look while driving - offers a terrific view of the Loire and the shipyards of Saint-Nazaire and we are reminded of one of the great heroic deeds of the World War II when the Cambeltown, chocfull of explosives was rammed into the Normandie dry-dock

in 1942 to stop the Germans using it to service their battleships. This daring attack was planned by two Royal Engineers captains, one of whom was W. H. (Bill) Pritchard of the Royal Engineers, the son of a Cardiff Dockmaster. The film Attack on the Iron Coast was based on this suicide mission although it does not specify SaintNazaire nor acknowledge the bravery of the local people who hid the British and Canadian commandoes who scuppered the ship before it exploded. Among the legendary figures of Pays de Retz is Gilles de Rais, a fifteenth century abuser of children who allegedly killed his wives and was the inspiration for Bartok’s opera Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard). A number of his castles, some in ruins, others like the one in Pornic less so, are dotted around the region. There are villages with thatched roofs, also Italianate towns, like Clisson with its red roofs, the Breton Tuscany. The Pays de Retz comes a close second to Provence in the annual sunshine league for the whole of France. You are also less likely to meet British people in this area than anywhere I know in the whole of France. Whether readers consider that a plus or minus is not for me to say. BOOKING INFORMATION:

www.brittanyferries.com UK RESERVATIONS:

0871 244 0744

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AMGYLCHEDD / ENVIRONMENT

The revolution starts at home VICKY MOLLER

have an aerial photograph of homes around me in Wales from the 1960s. They were tiny cottages, with A3 sized windows. Old neighbours recall how full they were of children, aunties, cooking, laundry and visitors. Whatever their failings, they would heat up quickly. A blink of an eye later and these cottages are gone. Grand houses now stand where the cottages were, with oil heating bills of £1,000 and rising. Some are empty most of the year, while others house two point something people (census average). The bills are doing what climate change couldn’t: focusing householders’ awareness on eco measures and renewable energy. However, as these eco costs rise, there is still a resistance to commit to this way of living. One problem for householders is the range of choices and new technologies on the market. There are advisers who can help, but are they commercially driven and taking account of your situation? For example, solar hot water is one of the most obvious technologies to install, but the cost of installation is high and it is often expensive to maintain, especially if there is only one person in the house. Filsol, the Welsh manufacturers of solar water heating and solar photovoltaic (PV) solutions, advise people NOT to buy their products under these circumstances. The Welsh way to learn is from each other. The Green Building Forum www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk is a website offering pioneering home owners and builders a chance to have their questions answered. I run monthly eco-tours to homes with diverse approaches and technologies which participants find inspirational and helpful in making their own decisions, and I sell a DVD Within our Power looking at how Pembrokeshire neighbours use wind, water and sun to warm and power their homes. [vickymoller@ecocymru.org TEL: 01239 820971]. There are some basics to consider before jumping for one or Barn timber frame ready for cladding another gateway to escape what is fast becoming an obsolete lifestyle

of fossil fuel dependency. Questions such as: Do I want a long term solution or a quick fix? How much energy do I want to put into a new lifestyle, or do I want an effort-free plug and play solution? Do I want to explore community solutions before going for an individual one? What future changes do I factor in, e.g. rising fuel costs, lower income, changed occupancy of my home? How much do I want to rely on the global economy? What are my local resources and are they sufficient? These are not easy or comfortable questions to address, so they should be allowed to simmer in the background and the subconscious. Possibly a decision will emerge one bright morning unexpectedly. There are government measures in place designed to accelerate the decision to adopt microgeneration in the UK. These feed-in tariffs pay for whatever you generate, whether you use it or not. Since it started in April, the first wave of customers for solar electricity and ground source heat pumps emerged. The business sector and financiers soon flocked to the scene, starved of profitable places to invest in the economic downturn. A government guaranteed income of around 10% meant fresh pickings for a quarter of a century. Already 40% of new microgen capacity was not down to householders as intended, but to business investment, with supermarket giants among the early birds. There is, however, the risk of early review of the scheme, nothing is guaranteed to last. Wales has been following its own road to renewable energy, away from fossil dependency. Since 2000 the HEES (Home Energy Efficiency Scheme) has spent millions topping up insulation and draught-proofing in 10,000 Welsh homes a year. In 2005 a policy for siting renewable energy was laid down in TAN 8, the Welsh Assembly Government’s Technical Advice Note. It hoped to pre-empt arguments about wind turbines. The approach was first proposed in Cynog Dafis’s seminal document A Sustainable Future for Wales in 1998, when it met with opposition but has since been envied and emulated. Wales has had far less frivolous applications for ineffective turbines than England, and Scotland adopted the same spatial approach in 2008. Wales’s Green Building Charter is unique in the UK. Forty leading building organisations including the Federation of Master Builders, CBI Wales, The National Trust and Deeside College all signed the founding document in 2008, and membership, which is committed to lowering CO2, has since grown. In 2009, a target for new homes to be zero carbon from 2011 was given legal status, part of the bold leadership of Jane Davidson, Minister for Environment in the coalition government. Welsh builders merchant chain Robert Price has trained the staff at its 17 branches to help customers understand and apply the TAN code.

The same year, a permitted development order for solar panels was enacted/created in Wales. It was later than the English version but even less restrictive and in time for the feed-in tariffs this year, so planning would not prevent uptake. Potentially the most dramatic move of all, One Planet Development, was announced in July. Wales has carved a niche in pioneering eco policy and the technical revolution is underway, with new equipment evolving at speed. The scale and complexity varies from small hand tools, some ancient ones re-engineered, to a complex plant, the size of a factory. So is it a technical or an attitude revolution which is needed to save the planet for future life? That has also been fermenting in the backwaters over the years, and has blossomed in Wales this summer. To really live within nature’s bounty, modestly, a person needs to live in a different sort of home, in the right habitat, a compatible human and natural environment. This is easier to set up anew in a green field site but planning does not allow development in the countryside. For nearly 20 years a slow battle for a new category within planning to allow truly sustainable livelihoods in the countryside has been waged. Except that the proponents eschew words like battle and enemies, they could not persist with their unas-

sailable patience if this thinking clouded their clarity of purpose. 12 years of non-battle in Pembrokeshire produced the first UK ‘low impact’ policy. Under it the round houses at Brithdir as well as a new village near Crymych were permitted. The village in Crymych is the first permanent low impact development anywhere. Though people have been developing this way of life for ever, the coming out of permaculture livelihood has drawn the crowds in. Every month the eco village in Pembrokeshire, which is still under construction, has an open day. I took my eco-tour group there and they exclaimed: ‘We thought this was a niche interest, it’s like Blackpool!’ The nine small-holdings must each meet up to 75% of their needs from their 5+ acres - food, water, waste disposal, electricity, heat and income. The young families admit they are inexperienced, learning on the hoof how to build a home, live from the land and offer a viable product to the wider economy. They are building with materials to hand, without access to the large sums associated with construction. There is a sense of urgency, because if they are not set up and successful within five years, they could lose their planning permission. There are people in the area who also help, such as the young

people who are swept up by the enthusiasm, as well as the like-minded. We who know a thing or two about living off the land and within renewable energy, were truly impressed by the ‘design rich’ permaculture of the village. It ensures nothing is wasted, everything is multifunctional and each function is served, if possible, by more than one system. Nature is part of a complex web of usefulness to humans, and the arrangement is reciprocal. The vision could spread through Wales. In July this

year revisions to TAN 6 were announced which enable One Planet Development, such as the eco village, to be built anywhere in Wales. There are of course, very tight conditions and requirements to prevent floodgates. The planning process is not for the faint-hearted, but the portal is open to a sustainable future. A solution that the combined might of the world’s governments could not even progress towards at the COP meetings, is now a real possibility here in Wales.

The Green Guide for Historic Buildings Prince’s Regeneration Trust.

Insulation was a mix of mainly sheeps wool, Tri lso9 and a heavy blanket over the doors! My only criticisms are firstly, it recommends punctilious rule following, but read between the lines and it shows how to negotiate with rule makers using the principles on which they must base their decisions, and this book will be a tool of influence too, a must read for all L.A. listed building and conservation officers. Secondly, it assumes a static energy demand - an absurd assumption which underlies nearly all building and policy decisions. Again the book reflects on the changing uses and lifestyles of buildings and urges owners to understand historic use and performance, present uses and to imagine future changes to use before making any decisions. Sadly, the subtitle ‘How to improve the energy performance of listed and historic buildings’ belies its wider relevance, and its appearance means it will never grace a coffee table; it is likely to be mistaken for a museum catalogue and end up in the recycling bag! I will hand over to a ‘Charles’ who wrote the introduction: ‘It is my belief that the entire fabric of society is closely interwoven with that of our built environment. We can capture the social and cultural energy (of these buildings) as well as the carbon which has been invested in them, often over hundreds of years. The solutions for our listed buildings and our environment both lie in working with the grain of Nature.’ This guide draws together two goals which are close to my heart - firstly, the careful stewardship of the UK’s rich heritage and secondly, the need to protect the environment, including taking urgent action to avert the climate change crisis. Many people believe that these goals are in conflict, that old buildings leak energy through their windows, rooves and walls and are bad for the environment, so cannot be re-used sustainably. This guide seeks to dispel that, and other myths.’

(TSO £24.99) VICKY MOLLER

ow long have we waited for a tool to steer decisions on greening our homes in Wales? And here it is from an unexpected source and a misleading cover. The Regeneration Trust has focussed on historic and listed buildings but its relevance is to all buildings especially in Wales with our old cold stone homes of cultural character. It is written in the simple explanatory format of a practical guide, with lots of tables for quick comparisons, decision-making pathways. It’s a cross between an enlightened management tool, a hands-on instruction manual and a crisply simple inspiring read. Whilst I am in my element with terms like cold-bridging, breathability, U values, heat pumps and exchangers, solar thises and thats, it can sound like architraved ecobabble to the humble house-owner who just wants to know what is safe and wise to do to pre-empt soaring energy bills without regrets. The guide makes it easy. It takes you through the planning, data gathering and consenting processes. It provides comparison tables eg between woodchip and pellets, or different solar panels and provides cost effectiveness charts. For the historic buildings it shows where to get grants and tax rebates, who is expert in what, who advises the planning decision-makers. It is interwoven with case studies, showing the decision path of those who have gone ahead. One such is Llanerchaeron in Aberaeron which encompasses a John Nash country house, working organic farm, walled gardens, outlying homes and parkland. The National Trust which owns it has installed district heating using 25kW pellet biomass boiler and ground-mounted solar water panels. These provide all the heating and hot water. They found the boilers’ ash required emptying only twice a year and the pipes hoovering only after 500 hours of use: very little work for 90% reduction in carbon.

Kingfisher

Chris Kinsey

Gl as y dorlan

Nature Diary

oing back to Leominster, as my father was dying, took me back to my beginnings. Leominster, known as Llanllieni, possibly, ‘church of the streams’ was raided by Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and seized by Owain Glyndwˆr. The Llugwy (Lugg) and the Kenwater run through town, and the Arrow is only a mile or so to the south. When I was a child the Pinsley Brook was central too - right outside our house. It flowed on to the Old Priory, where it once provided the water supply and waste disposal. From the age of two, the Pinsley lured me with treasures. I trailed toads to a tunnel of willowherbs, sudsy hemp agrimony and foaming meadowsweet. I spied on moorhens through branched bur-reeds and watched water snails tumble through Canadian pondweed. It was a jewelled place threaded by azure and red damselfies; patrolled by common aeshna dragonflies. Nearly stagnant in some stretches, it was skinned in emerald duckweed and rich in frogspawn and squiggling tadpoles and crawling with caddis fly larvae. I soon took to wading and fell in trying to pick marsh marigolds. I lost a welly in a later attempt to gather Flag irises from the marsh at Eyton Common, but I didn’t have to hop home as I had my bike. These experiences cured me of the habit of picking wild flowers, but nothing stopped me paddling and netting: minnows, sticklebacks, bullheads, stone loaches and, once, a Kenwater crayfish. Having to choose flowers for my father’s funeral made

EWA KADEWSKA

me realise that it was Leominster, too, which fostered my love of wild flowers over cultivated ones. I’ve always loved the kind of wayside flowers which wouldn’t easily make a bouquet: celandines, fumitory, scarlet pimpernel, poppies and bindweeds. We ended up choosing a spray of yellow flowers with blue/purple ones – the colours of my favourite ivy leaved toadflax. In addition to the lush plants of water meadows, the town’s back walls and alleyways gave me a fascination for plants that grow on nothing much at all. I remember reaching from my pram to tight-lipped toadflax, navelwort, wall rue and maidenhair spleenwort. I dawdled home from school wondering more about these rock plants, thriving on a scrape of lime mortar, than the secret, probably grand, gardens stretching out on the other side of the walls. The Montgomery Canal is now nearest thing to my Pinsley paradise. I’ve cycled beside it often this summer. Amidst the nodding bonnets of long swathes of invasive Himalayan balsam, I’ve recognised the towering flowers of early childhood and a few I’d nearly forgotten: hard set figworts and marsh and hedge woundworts (the plants have antiseptic properties) and the one I shouldn’t have overlooked, forget-me-nots. I’ve watched moorhens walk on water with the aid of lily pads and nets of pondweed, showing the white V of retreat in their hind feathers. Near Aberbechan, shoals of dace corral themselves into a section saying: ‘No Fishing’. By the bridge at New House I surprised a kingfisher. For a heartbeat, we were neck and neck, but it soon sped to a turquoise blur then disappeared down to the Severn. August Bank Holiday Monday, at Belan Locks, the air was a whirr with mating dragonflies. Flesh flies and cabbage whites were obeying King Lear’s command to, “Let copulation thrive”, too. Fish jumped for insects and a sunbathing pike, the length of my forearm, responded to my peer by vanishing in a down-swirl, faster than forgetfulness. PHOTOGRAPHS:

kadewska@btinternet.com

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Sense of Place

The quietly defiant valley BETHAN KILFOIL

ou might easily miss Dyffryn Ceiriog. The turning is sudden, off the B5070 in Chirk. And the valley doesn’t go anywhere, except into itself. Which suits it, thank you very much, because Dyffryn Ceiriog is a self-contained, quietly defiant valley which has always done its own thing. It has defied history and defies expectations: a valley right on the English border which has retained its Welsh identity and language; a valley with a scattered population of a few hundred which has produced several literary figures; a valley with a rich history and a busy rural present-day life. chirk castle

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It has defied history and defies expectations: a valley right on the English border which has retained its Welsh identity and language; a valley with a scattered population of a few hundred which has produced several literary figures; a valley with a rich history and a busy rural present-day life. And it’s beautiful. The valley meanders, green and steep, its slopes dotted with farms, through a string of small villages, following the fast-flowing river Ceiriog, up into the heather and sheep of the Berwyn mountains. Starting in Chirk (as indeed I did, because Chirk cottage hospital is where I was born) the entrance to Dyffryn Ceiriog, if you’ve managed to swerve in time, is marked by Thomas Telford’s seventy-foot high aqueduct, carrying the Shropshire canal over the river, and by the even higher viaduct. On the other side, the town is dominated by Chirk Castle, a fourteenth century marcher fortress and seat of the Myddelton family, with its famous gates. An elaborate confection of white lace ironwork, they were made in the early eighteenth century by the renowned blacksmiths, the Davies Brothers of Esclusham, near Wrexham.

Then, with Offa’s Dyke up on your left, the road leaves Chirk and follows the river through thick trees, and in spring, the smell of wild garlic. You pass through Pontfadog, with its celebrated oak tree, reputed to be over a thousand years old. On through Dolywern, where there’s another sharp turn over a bridge, and you arrive at Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog, or Glyn, the valley’s biggest village (where my parents now live), spread in the crook of the valley’s elbow. Here, there’s always something going on - children walking to and from the village school, a football match being played on the field, people stopping to chat outside the shop or the Post Office. There’s a

chirk castle gates

thomes telford’s aqueduct

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dyffryn ceiriog

chapel, a church (where I was married), a chemist, and two pubs, one of which, Y Dderwen, is now run as a restaurant by a young local couple. Sadly and controversially, the small bank is gone: the Midland decided to rationalise last year, despite local protests. There’s only a cashpoint now. There have been other occasions when resistance to outside threats succeeded. In 1923, a plan to flood part of the valley and create a reservoir to provide water for Warrington was defeated by a local campaign backed by influential supporters, including Lloyd George, who famously described Dyffryn Ceiriog as “little bit of Heaven on earth.” And further back in the twelfth century, Henry II and his army were attacked by Welsh fighters in the Ceiriog Valley and were then beaten back by atrocious

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weather as they tried to cross the Berwyns. In the nineteenth century, Glyn boasted fulling mills, slate quarries and a tramway. Today there are plans for a small tramway museum, and one of the old mills now houses one of the village’s flourishing home-grown businesses - Theo Davies and his sons’ wood workshop. Halfway up the main street is the village’s most fascinating building, which will be celebrating its centenary next year: the Ceiriog Memorial Institute, founded in 1911 to commemorate one of the valley’s famous sons, the poet John Ceiriog Hughes, who was born in 1832 further up the valley in Llanarmon, and who wrote some of Wales’s favourite poems. Lyrical and deceptively simple, they capture the essence of the place, the stream, the

mountains, the wind, and the exile’s longing. Ceiriog is only one of the valley’s literary stars. There’s an argument that Guto’r Glyn, the fifteenth century poet and soldier was from here; Huw Morys, known as Eos Ceiriog, Wales’s most talented seventeenth century poet and staunch royalist, spent his life in the valley; the nineteenth century poet Robert Elis, or Cynddelw was the Baptist minister in Glyn for four years; and Islwyn Ffowc Elis, who wrote the most influential and popular Welsh novels of the twentieth century, lived in Aberwiel, a farm just above the village. The tradition continues, with one of Wales’s present-day novelists, Elin Llwyd Morgan, who lives in Glyn. Inside, the Ceiriog Institute’s two rooms are lit through lovely stained glass windows, depicting Ceiriog,

Llanarmon dyffryn Ceiriog

and other notables, including a well-loved local doctor, John Matthews, shown with a group of grateful patients. There are portraits of Lloyd George, and the Myddelton brothers, Sirs Hugh and Thomas. The sides of one of the rooms are lined with book-cases paid for by the people of Patagonia, who donated their scarce pennies when Richard Jones Berwyn, who was from nearby Tregeiriog, went round their farms on horseback to collect money. The Institute has a stage and is used for local meetings and events, and behind it is a small musuem, with a display of items including Huw Morys’s walking stick, Ceiriog’s smoking cap and a piece of seventeenth century London water pipe, part of the system engineered by Sir Hugh Myddelton, who masterminded the piping of

clean water to London. The story of Dyffryn Ceiriog is never far from water. Following the river upstream from Glyn, the valley narrows. (To the right, a road goes up to Nantyr, a scattering of farms where my mother was born, and where my brother and I spent sunlit holidays playing with our cousins in the fields and lanes around Nain’s house). The road passes through Pandy, which got its name from a fulling mill. The former mill is now a glass studio and gallery. Just outside Pandy is Pont-y-Meibion, the farm where Huw Morys lived, and the scene of a memorable encounter recorded by George Borrow, who had gone there on a pilgrimage to find the seat where Eos Ceiriog used to sit and compose, and had to fight through brambles to find it . The road passes through

Tregeiriog, and finally arrives in Llanarmon, Ceiriog’s birthplace, resting peacefully at the far end of the valley, at the foot of the Berwyns. There’s a church surrounded by ancient yews, two drover’s inns and a road over the top to Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant. Beyond there’s only the river and the mountains that inspired Ceiriog, a place that has survived against the odds: Aros mae’r mynyddoedd mawr, Rhuo trostynt mae y gwynt.... Ar arferion Cymru gynt Newid ddaeth o rod i rod... ...Ond mae’r heniaith yn y tir A’r alawon hen yn fyw. (The mountains wait there still, the wind roars over them...change has blown over Wales...but the language and the old songs live on in the land) All photographs by JOHN KEATES © 2010 www.johnkeates.co.uk

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Literature Profile Sam Adams POET

& NOVELIST

PAUL GROVES

ilfach Goch is a cul-de-sac between the Rhondda Fawr and the Ogwr Valley. It was rigorously exploited for coal production from the 1880s until the 1950s. Sam Adams’s father was a colliery electrician there, the only one at The Squint - as the Glenavon drift mine was known until an accident underground in 1947 deprived him of the use of his right hand. It was during the war years in this busy and bypassed environment that Sam grew up. Born in 1934, a dozen or more years after his two sisters, he was, he says, probably ‘spoiled’, but his life was not untouched by pain. The younger of his sisters lost her husband at sea and, in addition to his father’s accident, his mother became increasingly unwell and soon after the war was confined to a wheelchair. Despite darker passages, he looks back on childhood as a time of much happiness, and of adventure as he had the freedom of the mountain to roam. He took readily to schoolwork and as a ten-year-old progressed from the boys’ elementary in Gilfach to the grammar school at Tonyrefail, where he passed the School Certificate Examination at fourteen and studied geography, French and English at A-level. He went up to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1952 and graduated with Honours in English in 1955. At Aber he regularly represented the college at rugby, tennis

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and badminton, and edited the college magazine, The Dragon, where his first poems and short stories appeared. He counts himself fortunate to have had the opportunity of prolonging his college career by doing research on Thomas Hood, the nineteenth century humorist and poet. Aber was a big part of his life; friendships made there flourish still. He had, in his own words, ‘fiddled with writing’ since childhood, and introduction to the poetry of T.S. Eliot whilst he was in the sixth form proved a seminal influence. Dylan Thomas’s Collected Poems, an eighteenth-birthday gift from a cousin in his first term at Aber, was another. Its galvanising effect was reinforced when the poet came to read to a packed audience at the university’s Exam Hall, almost exactly a year before he was to die in New York. Sam met his future wife Muriel in 1955. In 1958, having qualified as a teacher, and finding jobs scarce in south Wales, it seemed a good idea to work in Bristol, where Muriel was already teaching. The chance of a late appointment at Lockleaze Comprehensive School introduced him to a splendid headmaster, a man of culture, who did all he could to encourage young staff. In his second year, Sam became school librarian and, two years later, senior housemaster. In another year he was Head of English. He and Muriel married and settled in the city, where their children, Nick, who works in television as a colourist, and Jonathan, the architect of the Wales Millennium Centre, were both born. In 1966 he returned to Wales as a lecturer in English at Caerleon College of Education. Now there was time for writing, which had taken second place during eight

hectic years of teaching. An encounter with Roland Mathias began more than forty years of creative friendship (culminating in 2001 and 2002 with Sam’s editions of Roland’s Collected Short Stories and Collected Poems). In 1969 he had his first poems and reviews published in Poetry Wales, and not long after became the magazine’s reviews editor. So began an enduring friendship and literary association with Meic Stephens. He took over the editorship of PW from Meic in 1973. At the same time he was editing the anthology Ten Anglo-Welsh Poets for Carcanet, writing a monograph on Geraint Goodwin in the Writers of Wales series and, at Roland Mathias’s suggestion, researching an article about Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn Prichard for the Anglo-Welsh Review. All three were published in 1974, the same year he joined Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Schools, and helped tide him over two decades of weighty responsibility in the education sector during which creative writing was confined to all-too-brief holidays. The first fruits of his retirement in 1995 (in addition to the collected editions of Roland Mathias’s work) were the Writers of Wales monographs on Roland Mathias (1995) and Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn Prichard (2000), and what has become a continuing series of ‘Letters from Wales’ for the Carcanet magazine PN Review. Journeying, Sam’s second book of poems, the steadily accumulated product of his years in the Inspectorate, was published in 1994. The third, Missed Chances, which followed rather more quickly in 2007, is a delightful blend of fact and speculation which sheds the shackles of a purely descriptive approach. Lately he is mining family history, bringing to life far-off and seemingly fanciful occurrences,

such as his being christened over the coffin of his grandfather, who died ten days after he was born. But it is Prichard again, elusive author of Twm Shôn Catti, who has occupied most of his thought and time in recent years, and is the subject of his debut novel, Prichard’s Nose, newly published by Y Lolfa.

Not every grown-up has fame or fortune, but everyone has had a childhood. From that melting pot we have all emerged; and any writer who captures the freshness of those days without the circumspection of adulthood intruding is to be lauded. Witness Sam’s remarkable poem ‘Sliding’. It resurrects the blitheness

of early youth that so many of us diminish or forget. Read it, and be transported to more elemental times. One hopes to see him add to his roster of publications, each of which is written with insight and loving attention to detail. Even now, in his seventy-sixth year, his is a name to watch.

A Welshman in the Bronx Graeme Kent

Rhondda was hoping for a major upset, building hillside fires to be ignited in the event of a Farr win and eventually ignited anyway in honour of his real achievement of scrapping through 15 punishing rounds with an overwhelming favourite. Farr was an unlikely but remarkable sporting hero. Orphaned when 18, the survivor of a pit collapse, he set off for London in search of fights, to follow the career he regarded as the lesser of two evils. When he finally came into some money, after an early booth career which saw him ship 30 defeats (often to poor hometown decisions), he spent some money on a gramophone, records of Handel and Verdi and on five pounds’ worth of sweets from a shop in Clydach Vale, for the local children. He was a dour, gruff man, but had huge reserves of articulacy and awareness. His own self-description might have been written about himself by Dylan Thomas:

little too much artistic licence, as when he tells us that the fight’s promoter “allowed himself the luxury of a sour grin”. But generally this is meticulous, vivid sports-writing at its best.

(Gomer, £14.99) ROBERT NISBET

he story of Tommy Farr’s fight with Joe Louis for the world heavyweight championship in 1937 is one of the most re-told stories in Welsh sport. This present re-telling by Graeme Kent is researched in considerable detail and written with such a degree of narrative skill that a reading of it can add enormously to our awareness of that night’s striking events. The Tonypandy boxer was seen as a rank outsider when he set off for his fight with one of the most celebrated world champions. It was a match which owed a great deal to the machinations of corrupt boxing politics, probably as squalid in the 1930s as at any time. But the

...a bowelless fellow quick to anger, just and only a pug, impossibly rough, uncouth, the stormy petrel of the ring.

Graeme Kent’s account of Farr’s travails is fascinating in its wellpaced unravelling of a whole sequence of quite bizarre events. Just occasionally he allows himself a

Tonnau Tryweryn Martin Davis (Y Lolfa, £ 8.95)

Y Llwybr Geraint Evans (Y Lolfa, £7.95) RHODRI Ll. EVANS

ryweryn. It is without doubt one of the most evocative and emotionally-charged words we have in Welsh. The whole tumultuous, shameful debacle of flooding the village of Capel Celyn in Cwm Tryweryn in the early 1960s in order to supply the city of Liverpool with drinking water still has the power to boil blood today, and ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’; the graffiti ‘lest we forget’, has since been tattooed on Wales’ psyche as well as on its walls. It is against this historic backdrop that Martin Davis sets his novel, Tonnau Tryweryn. A novel that teeters between love saga, thriller

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and political drama, it follows the trials and tribulations of three main characters: Mefina, Emlyn and Des and the role Tryweryn plays in all their intertwined lives. It is not about the actual flooding of Capel Celyn, more the human effect of it all. This, surely, is the work’s highest ambition and to be fair, the focus does remain on the characters throughout. However, these characters have more than a whiff of cardboard about them and as a result, are extremely hard to tolerate, let alone empathise with. Although the writing is lucid enough, the bi-polar nature of many of the characters will confuse and irritate many a reader. Mefina and Emlyn can feel the lows of dark depression and the highs of hope and optimism all within the space of a paragraph. It simply doesn’t fly.

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One has to applaud the effort, but too many clichéd characters and a lack of any real depth leave this novel at the water’s edge. Far more engaging is Geraint Evans’ debut novel, Y Llwybr. When Elenid Lewis is murdered on a dark pathway on her way home from a gig at Aberystwyth University’s Student Union, Dyfed-Powys Police’s inexperienced CID detachment is called upon to solve the crime. From the onset, the story moves at a decent pace. No flowery descriptions of lambs in fields here; just cold, hard case development. The title is extremely apt, as the story wanders down many a path during the investigation and the author’s attention to detail should be commended. This is a carefullywoven tale. One complaint, however. Apart from a few rare examples (ex-PC Syl Davies - a delightful cameo), dialogue between the characters seems old-fashioned on many an occasion. Detective Inspector Gareth Prior’s interaction with his team is extremely formal and way too clinical. He addresses them as ‘chi’, despite all of them being fairly near the same age as him. And his use of their surnames as punctuation to his sentences is infuriating at times (Welsh detectives have been speaking in this weird way since the 1950s and it is a mystery as to why contemporary authors would think that this is somehow a prerequisite of modern Welsh detective fiction. It is not.). Thankfully, the plot and its pace are the novel’s salvation. Such is its force, it even manages to camouflage the ever-so-slightly damp ending. The author has an obvious knack for this sort of genre writing, and as DI Gareth Prior’s first case comes to a close, one can only hope that a sequel is one the way, with added character development,

please. But for the moment, Y Llwybr is a promising debut.

Herbert Williams Phil Carradice (WRITERS OF WALES, UWP, £16.99) PETER FINCH

ith UWP’s long-running series of critical monographs, Writers of Wales, it is usual for the subject no longer to be with us. These volumes, originally produced so much taller than wide that they became known as books designed for reading in telephone boxes, are restricted to the proven great and the genuinely good.

Herbert Williams is almost the last of his line. He’s a writer from the heart of ‘the second flowering’ of Anglo-Welsh poetry. Someone who took the platform with Harri Webb, John Ormond, Leslie Norris and Glyn Jones, he was a 1960s prodigy earnestly promoted as the poet to watch by Meic Stephens, a writer from an age when the Anglo-Welsh were a bur-

geoning force. He was born in 1932 and has outlived almost all his contemporaries. Amazingly this is the first full-length study of his work. Herbert Williams Aberystwyth-born and a mixture of Gavin Ewart, John Wain and Philip Larkin, half renegade, half man of the people - is well capsulated in Phil Carradice’s sympathetic one-hundred page portrait. The study tracks his life. A childhood in Trefechan, confined to a TB sanatorium at Talgarth for two years, jobs in the Midlands, Cardiff, Gower, back to Aberystwyth, and return to Cardiff. He worked as a reporter on local papers, notably the Echo and the Western Mail, as a radio journalist at the BBC, as a freelance producer, a Tourist Board researcher. All the time he was writing - poetry, fiction, history - a teller of tales and a recounter of the travails and glories of the human spirit. He’s cast as a self-styled outsider, a man whose work was never studied, who never won prizes and somehow always got excluded when the high-flyers were lining up. But much depends on where you sit. To me, this consummately skilled writer with a great line in stage performance has forever been a central figure among our writers, to be mentioned in the same breath as John Tripp and Leslie Norris. Although as it turns out Tripp and Herb didn’t get along much and Norris spent most of his time elsewhere. Phil Carradice examines the prose and the clear, measured poetry in depth but offers less by way of context. We get family but little literary milieu, not much on his time as magazine editor for Roundyhouse nor his relationships with the larger writing scene. But don’t let this put you off.

Carradice celebrates Herb as you’d expect him to, with easy-going panache. And the subject approves. He’s told me so.

The Carmarthen Underground Gaynor Madoc Leonard (Y LOLFA £7.95) BARRIE LLEWELYN

ales is the World. Carmarthen is the home of the CIHQ, the espionage epicentre. Only the very highest echelons know how far the Carmarthen Underground extends, but Secret Agent Wyndham (003) has heard rumours that, ‘…it spreads it tentacles as far as Llansteffan in one direction. Llandeilo in another, Newcastle Emlyn in yet another, and all stations in between. Perhaps...even…as far as Swansea.’ The Boss sends Wyndham on a mission that involves dying his hair blond, changing his name to Haydn and travelling by underground and coracle to Myddfai to investigate the disappearance of several tourists. At the same time his colleague, Aneurin, has been kidnapped and is being brainwashed by a powerful and evil cabal intent upon creating chaos in deadly ways. With the help of some immediately friendly and resourceful locals, a special agent from the WBI (Wales Bureau of Investigation, of course), and an extremely helpful cat called Hannibal, Wyndham/Hadyn foils the enemy and the whole (real) world has changed. On the way there is such fun. The Carmarthen Underground is

Gaynor Madoc Leonard’s first novel and she must have had a ball writing it. The quick pace is peppered with telling portraits of characters. Of the bad guys there is the selfimportant Sheriff of Myddfai, a ‘… rugby player who had won two caps at international level’ and his Deputy, Dai Sluice, also the local plumber, who ‘…enjoyed the importance his position gave him…[as]…he swaggered along beside the sheriff.’ Among the good guys is Merle Jenkins, the vicar’s luscious daughter who watches the village from high up in the church tower through a camera obscura. The camera obscura, talcum power to detect footprints and Wyndham/Haydn’s mobile Blackcurrent, are just some of the high-tech gadgetry in use. In contrast there is a tenderness for landscape and myth which slows the pace just enough to add a passion that is crucial to the atmosphere of the story and to this kind of humour. Is there a name for Welsh satire? The Carmarthen Underground shares the, self-effacing wit of recent products like Gavin and Stacey and the film, Very Annie Mary. There is the same isolated environment and stereotypical characterisation underlined by a strong feeling of fervour for Wales. Why don’t we call it hwyl?

POETRY ON THE DEATH OF A CLOWN So Tommy Cooper is dead - long live the clown. His striving for regality led to a disastrous commonality that made joyous retainers of us all.

HOUSEHOLD GODS Treat warily the gods of goods, the Saxon business warriors. Here, where we are, the gods of gale and breeze can bring us echoes of Hibernia. Here, on our Celtic coast, we have the trees' blown heights. Indoors and out, the muse of history is in the stitched and faded things, tokens of time's ravages and generosities. ROBERT NISBET

No snide comic he, no word-juggler, no burnished performer, but a bumbling, bungling clown with assured failures. He dangled on the flimsiest rope of insecurity, and tweeked the nerves of our vulnerability. He cracked his ribs against the rock of our complacency and mocked our stifling banalities. He uncreased our iron masks by inconsequential guffaws of relentless mirth. And when he died, so publicly, fooling around on the small screen, it seemed an appropriate exit, hamstrung between laughter and tears where reality, ever ambiguous, lies. HERBERT HUGHES

BARDDONIAETH The publishers are most grateful to the trustees of the HARRI WEBB FUND who have generously sponsored this page. A fee will be paid for every poem published. Poems for consideration should be sent to: DR MEIC STEPHENS, 10 HEOL DON, WHITCHURCH, CARDIFF, CF14 2AU. Please send a stamped address envelope if you want your poems to be returned.

MEIC STEPHENS ALSO RECOMMENDS Susan May, Cerddi’r Galon: Telynegion i Ddysgwyr (CARREG GWALCH, £4.95) • John Albert Evans, Llanw Bwlch (GOMER, £7.99) • Clare Dudman, A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (SEREN, £8.99) • Karen Jankulak, Geoffrey of Monmouth (WRITERS OF WALES, UWP, £16.99) • Elfyn Pritchard, Ar Ddannedd y Plant (GOMER, £6.99) • Jen Llywelyn (ed.), R.M.Lockley in his own words (CARREG GWALCH, £8.50) • T.Llew Jones, Llên Gwerin (LLYFRAU LLAFAR GWLAD, CARREG GWALCH, £8.50) • Mererid Hopwood, Cynghanedd i Blant (BARDDAS, £6.95) • David Williams, Eisteddfod (CARREG GWALCH, £20) • Judith Barrow, Pattern of Shadows (HONNO, £8.99) • Huw S. Thomas, Brwydr i Baradwys? Y Dylanwadau ar Dwf Ysgolion Cymraeg De-Ddwyrain Cymru (UWP, £48) • Anthony Griffiths, Elenydd: Ancient Heartland of the Cambrian Mountains (CARREG GWALCH, £12) • William Owen, Cân yr Alarch (Y LOLFA, £7.95)

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Books New gems from the UWP MEIC STEPHENS

lthough there was the usual flurry of new books published in time for the National Eisteddfod at Glynebwy (not Glyn Ebwy, by the way), I have spent the month since then reading books from the University of Wales Press. I am pleased to report the Press has a new Director, namely Helgard Krause, a Welsh-speaker and former Head of Sales and Marketing at the Books Council, who has had a good deal of experience in the field of academic and trade publishing, which is precisely what is needed if it is to recover lost ground and re-establish itself as a leading publisher. Among the Press’s recent triumphs has been to bring out seven volumes devoted to the life and work of that brilliant forger Iolo Morganwg, under the editorship of Geraint H. Jenkins. At last we are able to see in fascinating detail some measure of what Wales owes to the stonemason from Llancarfan in the Vale of Glamorgan, and in what his genius consisted. The new volume, The Bard is a Very Singular Character (UWP, £48) by Ffion Mair Jones, is a study of how Iolo struggled to overcome his ‘marginality’, within literary society both in London and Wales, and draws on the books he owned and marginalia written on his correspondence with famous figures of his day. Against the odds, he won his status as the foremost authority on the antiquities of Wales by dint of sheer hard work and sometimes low cunning, but always with the inter-

ests of his country, and his beloved Glamorgan, at heart. That other genius, Dafydd ap Gwilym, is by common assent the greatest of all Welsh medieval poets. He extended the purview of Welsh poets by making the language a fit vehicle for love, nature poetry and uncommon wit. Despite the claims made for him, few can read his poems nowadays in their original language. So Cerddi Dafydd ap Gwilym (UWP, £65), edited by Dafydd Johnston, Huw Meirion Edwards, Dylan Foster Evans, A. Cynfael Lake, Elisa Moras and Sara Elin Roberts, is to be warmly welcomed. The text presents Dafydd’s poems in the original as well as a line-by-line version in modern Welsh which, for all their complexity, puts them within reach of the contemporary reader. This is a handsome book, elegantly printed, clearly annotated, and a delight to read. It would make the ideal present for a student or for someone’s birthday. For those with an interest in the sociology of the Welsh language, I recommend Welsh in the Twenty-First Century (UWP, £29.99), a collection of essays edited by Delyth Morris. Among the expert contributors are Glyn Williams, Colin H. Williams, Hywel M. Jones and Colin Baker. This is essential reading for anyone engaged in bilingual education or minority language planning. Next comes a most unusual book, The Entrepreneurial Society of the Rhondda Valleys 1840-1920 (UWP, £48) by Richard Griffiths. Until now almost everything we know about the Rhondda has been written about the workers and their unions. But this book looks at the sources of wealth in the Cwm: the coalowners, the railway builders, the landowners, the contractors, the merchant capitalists. The author focuses on his own family, and oth-

Dafydd ap Gwilym, is by common assent the greatest of all Welsh medieval poets. ers like it, and shows how they operated in the Porth-Pontypridd area. He has done them proud and demonstrated what industrial south Wales owes to the entrepreneurial spirit. Jamie Medhurst’s A History of Independent Television in Wales (UWP, £24.99), is an analysis of the role and contribution of ITV in Wales, mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. It looks at some pioneering work done in the Independent sector, particularly in game shows, historiography and news gathering, and brings the story up to 1997. This book will no doubt be read by students of the media (the author is a lecturer in Media History at Aberystwyth), and perhaps by those with an interest in the cultural politics of the period. But most of what it has to say now seems like ancient history and will not catch the eye of the general reader. Many media insiders wil be riled by some of his wilder conclusions. Lastly, readers who know of my interest in Radnorshire will forgive me if I draw their attention to the appearance of an English translation of the first volume of Ffransis Payne’s classic study, Crwydro Sir Faesyfed, first published in 1964. It has been published in the Transactions of the Radnorshire Society and is available only by subscription (£15) to the Society, whose Secretary is Mrs Sadie Cole, Pool House, Discoed, Presteigne, Powys LD8 2NW.

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Dance

ALICE DAY

NATIONAL DANCE COMPANY WALES ALICE DAY

he National Dance Company Wales, previously known as ‘Diversions,’ was created in Cardiff in 1983 by Roy Campbell-Moore and Ann Sholem, for the creation and performance of innovative choreography, and to nurture and drive the art-form of contemporary dance. The Company has come a long way in its twenty-seven year history, and the conferring of the new name last year was a public acknowledgement of the mileage travelled, and the contribution that has been made to Welsh dance, at home and internationally. The exhilarating performances are complemented by a wideranging programme of engaging participation and education work throughout the community and the development of dance at the Company’s home, Dance House at Wales Millennium Centre. The Company is still led by Artistic Director Ann Sholem, who has regularly persuaded the most exciting and sought-after choreographers in the world to work with the Company. This Autumn’s tour, which starts on 28th October in Newport, is no exception, and, to prove the value of such collaboration, American Stephen Petronio has conducted four open rehearsals over the past month at the Company’s home in the Wales Millennium Centre and Cambria enjoyed visiting one of these, prior to attending an exclusive preview showing of the finished product before it was taken out on tour. Petronio’s new work By Singing Light has been inspired by two poems by Dylan Thomas: ‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’ and ‘Lament.’ It was commissioned after Petronio declared an interest in Welsh choral music to

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Ann Sholem, and some performances will feature live choirs! The project became a truly international collaboration when composer Son Lux became involved to write an original score, which includes the two Dylan Thomas poems, set to music to astonishing effect. Lux’s score also uses audio recordings of Mansel Thomas’ mixed choir arrangements of two Welsh folk songs ‘Pe cawn i hon’ and ‘Ar lan y mor,’ which interweaved throughout proves haunting and evocative of Wales but in a thoroughly modern way. It is always thrilling to witness a performance of music and dance that have been created for, and inside of, each other, as both of the works performed this season are. Bearing in mind that the company is small by dance company standards - only eleven dancers - every single member makes up for it in quality. There was not a dancer on the stage who’s presence was not felt, who’s technical ability and stamina did not impress, or from whom an exuberance and love of their craft did not shine. One of the choreographic themes of By Shining Light, is people assisting other people, which translates on stage to a situation in which every dancer must pull their weight continuously in

order to keep moving, and it is a testament to their teamwork and faith in each other that they move so intuitively and fluidly. In groups this strikes one as beautiful, but when the concept is repeated in pairs it

becomes poignant. What is also apparent in this work, and what I love most about this company, is that every dancer is encouraged to be individual, in looks and style, and in watching them I was gradually filled with light, and felt myself to be witnessing life at its best. The second of this season’s works, Romance Inverse, is also a mystical, visual and emotional conversation with the audience, as intended by its choreographer, Itzik Galili, who uses changing spaces blocked out by boards and light to demonstrate the communication barriers created and broken down between people. The first half sees the dancers, all of one gender, separated from each other, sometimes lost, and the second half sees the boards gone, and light showing new spaces where interaction between couples can evolve. As with By Singing Light the music itself is worth every second but combined with the dance makes even more sense. For Romance Inverse, widely renowned European group Percossa have used composer Steve Reich’s ‘Six Marimbas’ to create a rhythmic sensation uniquely suited to the primal themes of this particular choreography. National Dance Company Wales are doing us proud. There was not a moment when the audience was not enthralled and entertained. This is dance at its best; accessible to anyone who is human, because it speaks straight to the soul through the eyes and ears. The show visits Newport, Hereford, Newtown, Huddersfield, Llandudno and Brecon during October and November. Meanwhile there are a number of open events at WMC throughout the Autumn and Winter, for which tickets are required and some of which are free. For example, on the 26th of November there will be a showcase of dances choreographed by members of the company, which in previous years has been a delight.

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Music LLANGOLLEN INTERNATIONAL MUSICAL EISTEDDFOD NORMA LORD

hy is Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod like a good fried breakfast? It may look great on television but you miss all the flavour. Arrival on the Maes immediately created strife between my partner and me: I wanted to wander around mopping up the atmosphere, whilst he didn’t want to miss the choral competitions in the pavilion. We heard IN GLORIOUS COLOUR - TIBETAN MONKS AT LLANGOLLEN the last couple of children’s choirs, followed by several dance groups from a competition which had been startthat evening. I suspect I was not the only one who ed earlier. I was easily hooked and the Maes-wandering wished I had booked for The Armed Man earlier in the had to wait until the next day. week, and, if Bond was LIME’s attempt at engaging a The One World, One Stage concert on Wednesday younger audience, I’m afraid it didn’t work. The highnight was a riot of colour and emotion which clearly light of the evening was the opening massed choir from demonstrated that Wales does not, in fact, have a the Junior Children’s Choir competitors under the baton monopoly on hiraeth! A moving speech by President of Ralph Allwood, Director of Music at Eton College Terry Waite invited every participating nation to join the and long-term “bard” of Llangollen. procession to the stage for the welcoming ceremony. The It must be very difficult to judge the various groups hilarious Jaipur Kawa Brass band and the mystical against each other in such an eclectic mix, and LIME has Tibetan Monks, both long-established Llangollen some critics who disapprove of its international basis, as favourites, received a warm welcome from the crowd. An if this devalues Welsh culture in some way, perhaps impressive inaugural performance by the huge because this necessitates bilingual commentary? As a Llangollen Community Choir was followed by several of Cymraes by elective adoption, I find this very sad. Why the Eisteddfod’s most spectacular competing groups. is Wales so ferociously proud of her cultural tradition in At the Thursday night concert electronic string quartet camera, and yet so reluctant to demonstrate this pride to Bond appealed less to many Llangollen regulars, and, the rest of the world? The difficulties of comparison are indeed to me too. Two elderly ladies sitting within addressed at Llangollen by means of adjudication panels earshot decided that these musiSINGING FOR THE WORLD - ONLY MEN ALOUD AT LLANGOLLEN cians were miming to a recording, and I realised that I had no interest in the veracity of their speculation, and that this quartet, which had much inspired me twenty years ago when newly formed, had travelled so far down the electronics highway as to have left me way behind. Even Vivaldi’s Four Seasons sounded as if it were emanating from a rather crude computer programmed to prioritise volume and speed, rather than musical instruments, and Karl Jenkins’s Palladio fared little better. Not so much crossover, more annihilation, and it was very difficult to find any real enthusiasm in the Pavilion

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CDS from many different countries, but it was hard to discern any serious partisanship, and the panel which awarded all three places to Wales, in spite of strong competition, in the Junior Children’s Choir class consisted of a Hungarian, a Norwegian.and a Frenchman. Ysgol Gerdd Ceredigion’s Islwyn Evans had a good week, taking 4 well-deserved places in 6 competitions and reaching the final of Cor y Byd with his chamber choir, Cywair. Top choral honours, however, were justly awarded to the University of Santo Tomas Singers from Manila, who presented choirs in most classes, won two outright and other places, going on to take the Pavarotti trophy in the final Cor y Byd competition. Although the main folkdance prize was won by Dawnswyr Bro Cefni, I was generally less impressed with Wales’s Dance entries than the Welsh singers (choral and solo). I was unable to stay for Saturday’s choreographed folkdance class, but felt that Bro Cefni, in particular, “overdressed” their unchoreographed dancing, and, unlike the adjudicators, I did not care for the presentation of the courtly Meillionen o Feirionydd as a haymaking romp. The Maes offered more entertainment through the offstage mingling with so many exotic visitors than the rather dull trade and exhibition stands, Trefor Jones’s clog-making being one exception. The exuberant performers on the outdoor stages were always arresting, if sometimes rather noisy. The only low note of the week was, for me, the shameful indifference of the teenaged element in the crowd around the Jaipur Kawa Circus in the Amphitheatre to the call for dedicated silence. Most did stand and stop talking eventually, but it took far too long. It would be good to put this down to young visitors being unable to understand the announcement, but I fear this was not the cause. Among many superb treats this week, two in particular will remain with me. The first was Ulybka from Belarus, for their astonishing speed as well as their youth and apparent physical fragility, which forcibly reminded us of the ongoing legacy of Chernobyl, and the second the Polish dance group Hulajniki whose sheer athleticism caused a mass holding of breath every time they appeared. Equally memorable, on account of their humanitarian statement as much as their spirited singing, are the South African Cantare Children’s Choir, with their black and white patterned face paint highlighting their mixture of race. This group, and the delightful Young People’s Chorus of New York City, of similarly mixed origins united, in this instance by “stars and stripes” uniform, look set to carry forward the original Llangollen message of peace and harmony through music for many decades to come.

Adnodau gyda Blodau CATSGAM (Fflach CD314H) £11.99 ALICE DAY

ATSGAM stand out from the crowd, due to their original and flowing melodies, given to a mixture of political and fun lyrics, and delivered mellifluously by the voice of Catrin Brooks. Upon listening to this album I sometimes feel that choruses and bridges have been bolted on to songs as if to make them fit some standard pop-song structure, at the expense of originality. It is also a general pity that bands still continue to devalue their creative melodies and lyrics by adding them to the cheesiest of sixties backing music, and expect us to carry on backing them. There are, however, tracks on this album that are purely magical, and well worth the purchase. I am talking about the tracks such as Billy Gibbs and Chei, in which a beautiful fusion of protest music and Welsh folk emerges, phoenix -like, delighting you with its fresh colours, and haunting you with its message.

TIR Cerys Matthews (Rainbow City Records) RCMCD005 £11.95 ALICE DAY

erys has successfully applied her own style to our traditional Welsh songs, including Calon Lan, Llwyn Onn and Hen Wlad fy Nhadau, and created a refreshing and soulful interpretation. She sings rawly and purely, sometimes ‘a capella’, once in a duet (with Bryn Terfel on the track Migldi Magldi), in a manner perfectly suited to the beautiful simplicity of lasting traditional melodies. TIR also compiles photos from the 1880s to 1940s of people at work and play - scenes contemporary to the music, enhancing the treasure-status of this release. Thirty-six pages contain annotated pictures, and Lyrics in both Welsh and English. This music never ages too much, but Cerys has certainly made it young again, and made it her own, it is a joy to hear. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves to feel uplifted by the magic of Welsh song, and anyone who would like to be!

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Film Film in Wales PETER EDWARDS, Chairman of the Film Agency for Wales, explains how Welsh filmmakers are enjoying box office success

hen we think of film in Wales we generally think of the actors: Burton, Baker, Hopkins, Zeta-Jones or Ifans. The list is long and glorious but it is no longer the complete story. In the last four years film-making in Wales has found its feet. In the late nineties the great Welsh film “Twin town” showed what could be done but there was no continuity and the next ten years were quite bleak apart from films such as House of America, Beautiful mistake and Amma Asante’s A Way of Life, which I supported when I was at ITV Wales. The gestation period for film is quite long and difficult and the beginnings of one of the present batch goes back five years to the Arts Council’s and subsequently a Film Agency award to Gideon Koppel to allow him to make what was then called The Library Van and is now known internationally as Sleep Furiously. This touching, personal film documents with love and tenderness the village of Trefeurig which gave him and his parents safety and shelter following their escape from Nazi Germany. The universal parochialism of the film was recognised around the world and earned it The Guardian First film Award against competition from 200 other films. The Film Agency’s policy is unashamedly to back the talent, no matter where their stories are set, or whatever the subject matter. Our argument is that Welsh people are citizens of the world and they have something to contribute and it is not for us to restrict their humanity by saying that they have to shoot in Wales or that the story has to contain sheep, tall hats or male voice choirs. Remarkably some contain all three but that is their choice…. Mugabe and the White African is the debut feature documentary from Welsh producer Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock, which gained rave reviews, awards (Best Documentary British Independent Film Awards, American Film Institute Silverdocs), significant box office returns and international sales. Continuing our African theme Welsh director/producer Gabriel Range then gave us I am Slave shot in Sudan and London. The films and talent are rapidly gaining a reputation for quality and integrity but film from a small country needs to be doing lots of things and we have great hopes that Submarine and Hunky Dory will put Swansea on the map around the world with comedy, music and song from new young Welsh actors and actresses, providing

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jobs and economic benefit for those areas during production, and promoting cultural tourism and a showcase for Wales following release. Partnerships are really important to us as the money we have to invest in projects is small. In fact, every film we make has to be co-financed so we’ve done a lot of work to encourage our broadcasters to work alongside us and the Welsh talent. This has borne fruit with films like Marc Evans’s Patagonia (S4C) and Vaughan Sivell’s Third Star (BBC Wales). These films are currently gaining fans and plaudits in the festivals (Patagonia is selected for the London Film Festival, whilst Third Star was the closing film of the Edinburgh Film Festival) and in the press. Patagonia is in Welsh and Spanish and tells two stories on opposite sides of the world culminating in a wonderfully natural debut performance from North-Wales singer Duffy. Third star is a poignant life affirming, tender story which takes the form of a journey along the South Pembrokeshire coast to the most beautiful beach in the world, Barafundle Bay. Other partnerships spread far and wide, include co-financing a number of films with the Irish Film Board and others co-produced out of Canada, Australia, and so forth. One of the surprises in this current group of films is Gruff Rhys’s (Super Furry Animals) and Dylan Goch’s beautifully endearing film journey Separado. Made for next to nothing the film takes us on an “igam ogam”(zig zag) journey into Brazil and Argentina in search of his long lost cousin and singer René Griffiths. This film is breaking new ground in finding new audiences by playing it in places like the ICA in London, the Green Man festival and as part of Gruff ’s concerts world-wide. Our early target was to make three films a year - this has been far outstripped and films like Hunky Dory, Submarine, Little Matador and Resistance all promise a fascinating future. At the Film Agency for Wales, our role is to support new and exciting talent both financially and culturally, and to promote access to them through a network of independent cinemas and film festivals, as well as through UK and international distributors. It is this work that invigorates our entertainment culture and gives us variety of vision and opinion which makes Wales a better place to live. The Film Agency for Wales is the sole strategic agency for film in Wales. The Agency offers a range of funding and support for cinemas, film festivals, education providers and for the development and production of feature films, with an emphasis on those films that support key Welsh talent, particularly writers, directors and producers.

www.filmagencywales.com

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Holy Heritage ROB CLEMENT ’S MISSION EMILY BASELT STEIGER

ever has the old adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” been truer than at the antique shop run by Rob Clement in the Memorial Baptist Church of Builth Wells, Powys. Here you’ll find everything from antique salvaged furniture to silverware, much of which narrowly missed the classification as ‘trash’ - because Clement rescues many of his treasures from skips: it’s amazing what’s thrown away in the name of ‘fashion’. “Recycling - that’s the name of the game,” Clement says. The seemingly-endless collection of antiques and bric-a-brac crammed into the church began in Clement’s early adulthood, when he found a Victorian coaching lamp in an old shed and gave it to friends to sell in London. After decades of visiting house clearances, auctions, and skips, Clement opened his antique shop a year and a half ago and has since managed to stuff the Memorial Baptist Church to

overflowing. Clement’s customers range from seasoned antique hunters to those who wander through the church as though it were a museum, and many find something that catches their eye: a glass sugar shaker, an old book about the moors in North Yorkshire, a restored chest of drawers, or an antique rugby ball. Clement, however, isn’t in the business to make money, but to give back to the community and contribute to the future of Wales. “Builth has needed something a bit different, and now it’s got it,” he says. He also expresses sadness for the amount of recycling beyond simple paper and plastic that isn’t being done. “So much is being unnecessarily destroyed: so many attitudes need to be changed”. To Clement, a patriot who is “very much for a proper Welsh government,” restoring and selling antiques isn’t just about the principles of reduce, re-use, and re-cycle: it’s a means of passing on Welsh history and heritage to the next generation. In addition to the furniture restoration he’s undertaken - Clement is especially fond of working with wood, which he finds therapeutic the Pontarddualais native has restored several seventeenth to eighteenth century Georgian houses to their former splendour. With the help of a restoration team composed primarily of his friends and family, Clement says it takes him about a year to restore a home, but it’s time well spent. Just as any Cadw-restored castle stands as a monument to medieval Wales, so too do Clement’s houses help preserve Welsh history in a very real, very living way. And for those who find a million-pound Georgian home somewhat out of their price range, the Memorial Baptist Church is stuffed with countless other relics that stand as testimony to Wales’s past. In fact, even the Memorial Baptist

Church itself is an example of Clement’s dedication to recycling and preservation. The Church houses a listed organ that, until Clement finished restoring it in July, hadn’t been played in twelve years. The organ holds a certain amount of sentimental value for Clement, whose late mother was one of the finest pianists and organists in Britain during the 1930s and ’40s. Though he and his mother didn’t always get along, Clement admits that his efforts in restoration are also a way of creating a legacy for his parents. “I’m doing it partly for my mum,” he says. He takes great delight now when patrons, especially children, come in to play the organ, and hopes some day to host concerts there. In the future, when his warehouse of antiques has been sold, Clement plans to convert the church into a healing centre housing complementary therapists, along with a vegetarian cafe. Clement himself has been a spirit healer for the past 15 years. It’s his way of preserving the historic church in a useful manner as well as atoning for any bad karma in his life. After having spent some of his adulthood in England, Clement explains that he’s “come back to Wales to die, as a good Welshman is meant to do.” If being a good Welshman is his goal, Clement has surely already accomplished it by helping to build a sustainable Wales that preserves the past while recycling (and incorporating) it into the future. “This is an absolute gold mine,” one of Clement’s patrons says of the antique store. Clement says he gets that comment a lot, “but I’m not so sure about the gold,” he counters. And certainly, while most of the objects in the Memorial Baptist Church may not actually be gold, his customers do have a point: that his efforts to preserve, restore, and recycle the items that represent the historical heritage of Wales are, undoubtedly, priceless.

Art GRAHAM SUTHERLAND

The essential call of Wales A new exhibition at Pure Art in Milford Haven brings the work of Graham Sutherland back to the town that was his ‘third home’. JENNY WHITE tells how Pembrokeshire unlocked the genius of one of Britain’s greatest artists.

raham Sutherland was one of the greatest artists of the last century. His reputation was built on several distinct strands of work: starting as an etcher, he went on to become a distinguished war artist and later a portrait artist, as well as completing several important religious commissions including the famous Coventry Cathedral tapestry, Christ in Glory. But arguably the most important and enduring theme throughout his life was landscape painting, and for this he depended on Wales Pembrokeshire in particular. Such was the importance of Pembrokeshire to his work that he bequeathed a large body of work to Wales. The recent opening of the Graham Sutherland Gallery in St David’s re-established a public exhibition space for his work in the country that made him a painter something that had been lacking since the closure of the Graham Sutherland Gallery at Picton Castle some years ago. Now a gallery in Milford Haven, Pure Art, is holding an exhibition and sale of Sutherland’s Pembrokeshire sketches, original signed prints, watercolours and ceramics. The show is a rare chance

ROCK PYRAMID

to view and buy his work in the town that was one of the main bases for his frequent visits to Wales. His biographer Roger Berthoud records how the Lord Nelson Hotel in the town became a ‘third home’ for Sutherland and his wife Kathleen, who visited Pembrokeshire twice a year, for a month in the summer and a fortnight around Christmas time, from 1968 until his death in 1980. In his book, Sutherland, Berthoud writes: “He and Kathleen always stayed in the same rooms, overlooking the car park, at the Lord Nelson Hotel, sometimes eating in Chez Gilbert, a restaurant in Haverfordwest. Graham spent much of his afternoon sketching and taking snaps in his favourite spots, the foreshores at Sandy Haven and near Picton and Benton castles. He particularly loved St Ishmaels and the walled wood by Monk Haven, and there were trips to Wolf’s Castle, Porthclais and other old haunts….Kathleen would go with him, reading in the parked Jaguar

WATERCOLOUR

after a walk…while he sought out an old theme or a new juxtaposition of forms which might unlock the door to a painting. His theme once found, he would settle on a little canvas folding stool and sketch it.” Some of these sketches will go on sale at Pure Art this October. They make compelling pictures in their own right as well as providing a vivid insight into Sutherland’s working process. The overriding impression they give is of an intimate and enduring relationship with the Welsh landscape. To trace the beginnings of this relationship, and to understand the true significance of Wales to Sutherland as an artist, it is necessary to look back to his life and work before he discovered Pembrokeshire. Born into a Surrey-based middle class family, the son of a civil servant, Sutherland was initially destined for a career as an engineer on the railways but after a year as an apprentice at the Midland Railway Works, it became clear that he was not suited to that line of work. He

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FIREBIRD I

ORIGINAL SIGNED PRINT

begged his parents to be allowed to follow a career in art, and his father found him a place at Goldsmith’s School of Art. Here Sutherland studied etching and started to produce intricate pastoral pieces in the tradition of Samuel Palmer. CONVOLUTED LANDSCAPE

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WATERCOLOUR

After college he held several successful exhibitions and started to establish a reputation for himself as an etcher. This was during the heyday of British etching, and his work provided a significant income, which he supplemented with teaching work at Chelsea School of Art - a position he held for many years. Sutherland’s career progressed well, but by the end of 1927 he was beginning to feel that his nostalgic, romantic vision of the English countryside had brought his work to a dead end. He was aware that the world was in the midst of seismic political and military upheavals and his etchings increasingly seemed disconnected from the times in which he was living. Sutherland needed a new direction and a new source of inspiration. He started experimenting with watercolours and oil paints, and

looked to British surrealist Paul Nash for inspiration - a move which caused him to break acrimoniously with the Royal Society of PainterEtchers, who were appalled at the challenging new direction his work had taken. Sutherland started making trips to Dorset in search of inspiration, and took several commissions for commercial design work as he gradually left etching behind. However, it was not until 1934 that he really found what he had been questing for. It was a conversation with gallery owner Robert Wellington that gave him the key. Wellington asked whether Sutherland would consider holding an exhibition of paintings at his gallery, Zwemmer’s. When Sutherland told him he had no paintings, Wellington suggested he visit Solva and St Davids in search of inspiration, recommending that he take in the view from Whitesand Bay looking towards the Preseli Hills. That summer Sutherland found exactly what he needed. Here was a landscape of ‘exultant strangeness’, which was to unlock his true genius as an artist. In a famous open letter to patron Colin Anderson he wrote: “The quality of the light here is magical and transforming - as indeed it is in all this country. Watching from the gloom as the sun’s rays strike the further bank, one has the sensation of the after tranquillity of an explosion of light. Or as if one had looked back into the sun and had turned suddenly away.” Sutherland found that in Pembrokeshire he was able to sketch on site, but had to let what he had seen dwell in his mind for a time before attempting to paint it much like Wordsworth’s description of poetry as ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’. He told Colin Anderson: “It seemed impossible for me to

WWW.ARTWALES.COM WALES’ PREMIER GALLERIES sit down and make finished paintings ‘from nature.’ Indeed there were no ‘ready-made’ subjects to paint. The spaces and concentrations of this clearly constructed land were stuff for storing in the mind. Their essence was intellectual and emotional...I found that I could express what I felt only by paraphrasing what I saw…it was in this area that I learned that landscape is not necessarily scenic, but that its parts have an individual figurative detachment.” The writhing, sensual and sometimes sinister shapes that Sutherland found in the Pembrokeshire landscape were a result of this ensuing fascination with its many forms and layers. He wrote: “Farms and cottages - glistening white, pink and bluegrey, give scale and quicken by their implications our apprehension of the scene…The astonishing fertility of valleys and the complexity of the roads running through them is a delight to the eye. The roads form strong and mysterious arabesques as they rise in terraces, in sight, hidden, turning and splitting as they finally disappear into the sky. To see a human figure descending such a road at the solemn moment of sunrise is to realise the enveloping quality of the earth which can create, as it does here, a mysterious space limit, a womb-like enclosure - which gives the human form an extraordinary focus and significance.” He developed an abiding fascination with Pembrokeshire, and his sketches record his intimate engagement with: “The deep green valleys and the rounded hills…the high overhanging hedges by the steep roads which pinch the setting sun, mantling clouds against a black sky and the thunder…phantom tree roots, bleached and washed by the waves…the twisted gorse on the cliff edge…twigs, like snakes, lying on the path, the bare rock, worn, and showing through the path.” These revelations led to a transformation in his work, which was greeted rapt enthusiasm by his patrons and by art critics, who delighted in the ‘visionary intensity’ of this new work. Roger Berthould writes: “By 1940 he had graduated from group exhibitions to one man shows and had come to be seen as the most talented painter of his generation.” Sutherland the etcher was now triumphantly replaced by Sutherland the painter - and this had only been possible because of the transforming, inspiring and enlightening effect of the Welsh landscape.

‘Canvas Hat’ oil on linen 2010 50 x 50cm

SHANI RHYS JAMES 7 - 28 October 2010

‘A Scattering of Snow, Moel Arthur’ oil on canvas 2010 60 x 80cm

SARAH CARVELL 30 October - 23 November 2010

‘Frog Courtier, Cinderella, Birmingham Royal Ballet’ mixed media 2010 102 x 75cm

JOHN MACFARLANE GRAHAM SUTHERLAND EXHIBITION

Pure Art, 6 Vanguard House, Nelson Quay, Milford Marina, Sir Benfro, SA73 3AH. Saturday October 2nd - Saturday October 23rd 2010 Tel: 01646 694591 www.artpure.co.uk

26 November - 23 December 2010

MARTIN TINNEY GALLERY 18 ST. ANDREW’S CRESCENT CARDIFF CF10 3DD Tel: 029 20641411 mtg@artwales.com

ORIEL TEGFRYN

CADNANT ROAD MENAI BRIDGE ANGLESEY LL59 5EW Tel: 01248 715128 art@orieltegfryn.com

A FA L A U / A P P L E S

Welsh Marches Pomona Michael Porter and Margaret A.V. Gill (Marcher Apple Network, £25) EMRYS BOWEN

his beautiful book provides information about 31 varieties of apple which are native to the Welsh Marches. Many have been growing there for centuries, while others have been ‘rediscovered’ by enthusiasts quite recently. The life-size water-colour illustrations of blossom and fruit

‘pomona’ - roman goddess of plenty

are by Margaret A. V. Gill, who lives in Glasbury, and the text, by Michael Porter, sometime Biology Master at Christ College, Brecon, gives detailed botanical descriptions to enable all varieties to be easily identified. Both are life members of the Marcher Apple Network which since 1993 has worked to protect traditional orchards in the Border counties and they must be

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congratulated on producing such a splendid and useful book. The very names are redolent of orchards and their fruit, though most have English origins: Onibury Pippin, Tewkesbury Baron, Bridstow Wasp, and so on. But a few have kept their original Welsh names: Landore, Marged Nicolas, Pig yr Wyˆdd, Brithmawr. I seem to remember that Iolo Morganwg made a list of Welsh names for apples but none appear here. Even so, this book has much to intrigue the reader in Wales and the Border counties. Take this typical entry: ‘Mature trees of Pig yr Wyˆdd (‘goose’s beak’) are growing in several farm orchards in the Dinefwr region of Dyfed.The trees are vigorous and produce heavy crops. Branches produce burrs at the base which, under damp conditions, may develop roots, allowing them to be detached and grown into separate trees. Several Welsh varieties that show this potential for vegetative propagation are called ‘pitchers’ in south Wales. The fruit is in season from September until Christmas. It cooks to a thick purée, retaining plenty of acidity, even at the end of the year.’ The Marcher Apple Network maintains five ‘Museum Orchards’ which are managed in traditional ways to favour biodiversity and where unidentified apples and pears are grown alongside local varieties. It has recently been given the new Paramor Orchard in Powys, where all the apples described in this book are to be cultivated. A regular news sheet is published to keep the society’s 300 members informed about events. Copies of this book and further information about MAN are available from Peter Austerfield at 01432 830208 or by email: chairman@marcherapple.net

Aberglasney Gardens One of the most remarkable gardens in the country

GRAHAM RANKIN

Aberglasney Gardens contains a collection of rare and unusual plants within a stunningly beautiful historical setting Excellent Shop, Plant Sales and Café Open all year Llangathen, Carmarthenshire SA32 8QH Tel: 01558 668998 www.aberglasney.org.uk 4 miles west of Llandeilo, 12 miles east of Carmarthen

THE APPLES OF WALES AND THE MARCHES This unique and beautiful work by Michael Porter, illustrated by Margaret A.V. Gill, available from The Marcher Apple Network, price £25. Contact PETER AUSTERFIELD at 01432 830208 or email: chairman@marcherapple.net

Autumn colour with a difference Stunning and rare fungi Join us on Sunday November 7 at 2pm for a Waxcap Walk

The National Botanic Garden of Wales Llanarthne, Carmarthenshire, SA32 8HG. TEL:

01558 668 768

www.gardenofwales.org.uk

MOTORING

Alfa Romeo invests in Wales JOHN A EDWARDS

he Millennium Centre has done much to boost Wales’s standing in today’s imageconscious world, so a link-up with the prestigious Alfa Romeo marque should add further credibility to its iconic status. As exclusive automobile sponsor, the Italian sporting car manufacturer, and its Cardiff dealership Lookers, have become official partners to the Welsh centre for the arts now recognised as an internationally significant cultural landmark. Alfa Romeo will provide vehicles and funding to support the Centre’s commitment to encourage learning, and to showcase and nurture creative talent. This echoes the promises emblazoned across the front of the Centre: CREU GWIR FEL GWYDR O FFWRNAIS AWEN / IN THESE STONES HORIZONS SING. Pictured (BELOW) outside the Millennium Centre is the new Alfa

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Romeo Giulietta, which has been liveried in a design created by the Centre. The Giulietta is the latest manifestation of the marque’s sporting heritage, with the iconic Alfa Romeo grille, hatchback versatility and rear doors with cleverly disguised exterior handles. In recent independent group tests, the Giulietta held its own dynamically against the marketleading Volkswagen Golf and Ford Focus with one added benefit charisma. Prices start at £16,995. Alfa Romeo cannot yet exactly boast a millennium in business but 2010 does celebrate their centenary, making them one of the oldest manufacturers of sporting cars. One could even say they invented the sports car - and to put things into perspective, Enzo Ferrari served his motor racing apprenticeship as an Alfa Romeo driver and tester.

Remembering Parry Thomas

Welshman breaking the World Land Speed Record on Welsh soil (well, sand actually!) has to be a high point in the history of our small country. John Godfrey Parry Thomas was born in Wrexham in 1884, where

his father was the church curate. Educated at Oswestry School, became Chief Engineer for Leyland Motors in Preston and then left to gain fame as one of Britain’s leading racing car designers and drivers, a dual career unthinkable in today’s age of specialisation. A confirmed bachelor, he lived literally ‘on the job’ at the Brooklands race circuit in Surrey, where he had workshops and lived at The Hermitage, a bungalow located inside the track perimeter. Known for his predilection for fairisle pullovers and Turkish cigarettes he kept a donkey at the circuit to entertain visiting children. His love of children was further reflected by his endowment of a cot at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, London which he did without any self publicity. He won many races at Brooklands in cars he had built or modified himself, but gained lasting fame by taking the World Land Speed Record in 1926 at 170.62mph on Pendine (Pentywyn)Sands, Carmarthenshire. In February 1927 his deadly rival Malcolm Campbell beat this speed with 174.22mph - again at Pendine - and in trying to retake the title in the following month Parry Thomas tragically lost his life. After the accident he was buried in Surrey at St Mary’s Church, Byfleet, while his car – officially, ‘The Higham Special’ - was interred in Wales in the sands of Pendine . Nicknamed ‘Babs’, the car was powered by a massive 27-litre aero engine driving the rear wheels via external chains one of which broke killing him instantly. Before the record attempt he had said prophetically: "If I don’t get the record now I may as well leave her here", which perhaps explains the curious decision to bury the car. In 1969 ‘Babs’ was exhumed

The off-white pub khaki plaster cracked with nervous boast, ekes a living from legends revving in the yard, waiting always for the strand yawning on another seagull morning.

DESIGNER-DRIVER PARRY THOMAS BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HIS LEYLAND THOMAS NO 1. UNLIKE ‘BABS’, THIS WAS A RACING CAR RATHER THAN A RECORD BREAKER.

from her sandy grave by Bangor Technical College engineering lecturer Owen Wyn Owen of Capel Curig, who carried out a long, painstaking restoration. This historic car can now be seen at the Pendine Museum of Speed during the summer months. Our hero was always known as Godfrey to his family and Thomas to his work associates, with Parry Thomas becoming effectively a double-barrelled surname. Parry was his mother’s maiden name and she was reputed to be a descendant of the notorious ‘hanging’ Judge Jeffreys. There has always been some confusion over Parry Thomas’s year of birth. His tombstone says 1885 as does the definitive biography by Hugh Tours but his birth certificate clearly states 1884. Earlier this year Tony Challis, who was a long standing member of the Welsh Group of Motoring Writers and an accomplished poet, passed away and as a tribute to him, here is the poem he wrote in 1999 dedicated to the memory of Parry Thomas: What wraiths of sand and sound haunt behind holiday laughter, here on the rim of the impossible where a smoothing sea frees and impedes local and rover a planetary engine ticking over.

Out on the headland time and the wind twine in dance, the reckless Twenties wave and goggled like a pilot in a car powered for flight he fought to keep the earth in sight. The fastest, bravest, almost again, forged in prim Welsh prayers, turned on the lathe of Brooklands pride, the engineer icon or our common quest tried and died and parked at rest.

Wales shines in Wales

In the twenties, the World Land Speed Record was the Holy Grail for an increasingly mobile and technological age, but in more recent times it has lost much of its aura of glamour. To some extent this is because today’s record-breaking projectiles are virtually wingless jet aircraft which are difficult to relate to any concept of a normal wheel-driven car. But this is not to gainsay the skill and courage of Squadron Leader Andy Green who reached the supersonic speed of 763mph in Thrust SSC at Bonneville Salt Flats BBC

in the USA in 1997. Tellingly, he is an RAF pilot rather than a racing driver. Happily two new, more affordable - if less rapid - categories of record breaking have now emerged for electric and steam-powered cars which are both wheel-driven. And with them comes a dashing new British hero: Don Wales, whose ancestry is impeccable in that he is the grandson of Malcolm Campbell and nephew of Donald Campbell, to say nothing of the blessing of his surname - which comes from the Yorkshire side of the family! In 2000, with a speed of 137mph, Don broke the electric car world record on Pendine sands in Bluebird Electric, reviving the famous car name used by his grandfather. This record was broken in 2004 by a group of American engineering students with a speed of 271mph at Bonneville Flats - but Don still holds the British record. Following this, Don had attempts at the electric world record in the States in 2005 and 2008, both unsuccessful due to weather or battery problems. But, ever versatile, he became test driver for the British Steam car team and in 2009 achieved the steam car world record over one kilometre with a speed of 148mph at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Earlier this year he entered another and more light-hearted field of record-breaking for lawnmowers! At Pendine he took the world record with a speed of 87.83mph in a Countax mower which, to meet regulations, still had to retain its grass cutting capability! With electric-power rapidly gaining importance in the world of motoring we can safely assume that there will be many more future challengers for the Electric Land Speed Record title.

THE CAMBRIA DIRECTORY H O T E L

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Grove hotel Narberth

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The Grove Restaurant serves modern country food using locally sourced food wherever possible.

The Grove, Molleston, Narberth, Pembrokeshire, SA67 8BX TEL:

+44 (0)1834 860 915 +44 (0)7881 673 592 EMAIL: info@thegrove-narberth.co.uk

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A U R A N

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N W I D

Falcondale Mansion Hotel Relax : Indulge : Refresh

SIR GAERFYRDDIN THE ANGEL, Salem, Llandeilo,Tel (01558) 823394 Former Welsh Chef of the Year Rod Peterson has built up a well deserved reputation for top quality produce and cooking at this highly acclaimed restaurant cum pub which features in The Good Food Guide. Swansea bay mussels with Thai green curry sauce, roast saddle of venison served with prune boudin, all done to perfection. Breads and ice creams are also freshly made on site. Two AA rosettes. From £20. From £22

FAIRYHILL BAR AND BRASSERIE @ MACHYNYS, Machynys Peninsula, Llanelli, Carmarthenshire. Tel: (01554) 744994 (for Brasserie bookings) Looking onto the Loughor Estuary and the Gower, the ethos is consistent with that of Fairyhill at Reynoldston and the ambience is assisted by contemporary wood and slate. The Bar offers hot griddled paninis, and local pork sausages, mash & onion gravy, while the Brasserie serves dishes like real prawn cocktail & spicy sauce, and Machynys fishcakes, warm tartare sauce and steamed greens. Starters from £3.25, Main courses from £10.00.

Y FFIGYSBREN - THE FIG TREE, Dryslwyn Fawr, Llanarthne, Tel (01558) 668187. Converted from a threshing barn this stunning contemporary restaurant is Routier Listed with menus which include delicious slow roasted lamb shank in a port and black cherry sauce and pan fried chicken supreme with chorizo and sunblushed tomatoes. Wonderful home made puddings and ice creams also feature on the Sunday lunch set menu - £16.95. Accommodation available in 51cottages from £60.00 per day .

CEREDIGION THE FALCONDALE MANSION HOTEL, Llanbedr-pont-steffan / Lampeter, West Wales. Tel (01570) 422910. This Victorian mansion is situated at the head of a forested valley, overlooking the university and market town of Llanbedr-pontsteffan/Lampeter, in fourteen acres of parkland with a ten-acre lake. Signature dishes on the Brasserie menu include Pantysgawn goats’ cheese croute, braised lamb ‘Henrietta’ with a honey and mustard sauce, and banana fritters in cinnamon sugar as a dessert. From £18

GWYNEDD BODYSGALLEN HALL, Llandudno, Tel (01492) 584466 www.bodysgallen.com A magnificent seventeenth century country house surrounded by wonderful gardens, with traditional country house style cooking. Sample the baked Welsh goat’s cheese soufflé, baked turbot with noodles and a Provençale dressing and chocolate fondant to finish. From £22

PLAS BODEGROES, Pwllheli, Tel (01758) 612363 www.bodegroes.co.uk

Lampeter, Ceredigion 01570 422910 www.falcondalehotel.com info@falcondalehotel.com

Crug-Glas Country House 22222 Situated near St Davids, 1 mile inland from the coast, offering accommodation of the highest standard, rooms with copper baths to double spa baths and four poster beds. In the dining room we offer outstanding food using the finest local produce. ABEREIDDY, SOLVA, HAVERFORDWEST, PEMBROKESHIRE, SA62 6XX TEL: 01348 831302 EMAIL: janet@crugglas.plus.com

www.crug-glas.co.uk

Elegant, romantic and unpretentious. A very pretty Georgian house set in beautiful grounds with something for every season. A classic menu with style: seared breast of pigeon on bubble and squeak, smoked chicken and celeriac soup, kebab of mountain lamb on a bed of cous cous, apricot and ginger parfait. Michelin Star Sunday lunch £17.50 Appetiser and three courses £40

MORGANNWG FAIRYHILL, Reynoldston, Gower, Nr Swansea, Tel (01792) 390139 www.fairyhill.net This charming hotel has ample grounds to explore, including woodland and a trout stream. A wide variety of choices on the menu include chicken and laverbread sausage, Welsh Black fillet of beef with a crispy won ton and chilli sauce, followed by seasonal poached pears in red wine. From £18.95

CASNEWYDD / NEWPORT THE CHANDLERY RESTAURANT, Newport, NP20 EHTel (01633) 256622 www.thechandleryrestaurant.com Beautifully restored Grade 2 listed building – a relaxing place to dine. Former National Chef of Wales, Simon Newcombe and wife Jane have achieved accolades in all major food guides, including 2AA rosettes and a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Seasonal à la carte and business lunch menus updated regularly on website. Enjoy Trio of Duck (potted duck, Lady Llanover salt duck, foie gras), Roast Loin of Brecon Venison with balsamic braised red cabbage, pommes cocotte, Hot Chocolate Fondant with white chocolate mousse, milk chocolate sorbet. 3 course a la carte approx. £27.00. 3 course business lunch £12.95.

PENFRO LLYS MEDDYG, Trefdraeth / Newport. Tel (01239) 820008 A cosy bar, walls hung with paintings by Peter Daniels, an open fire and candlelight, provide an intimate atmosphere. To start, try the DoubleSmoked Salmon Surprise, followed by Supreme of Organic Chicken with Ginger, Lime and Green Onion, and the Chocolate Orange Truffle Cake for dessert. From £19.

POWYS BARN AT BRYNICH, Brynich, Aberhonddu/Brecon, Tel (01874) 623480 www.barn-restaurant.co.uk Converted 17th Century barn restaurant in a beautiful courtyard setting with panoramic views of the Brecon Beacons. Also self catering accommodation adjoining. Superb seasonal menus featuring home grown and local produce including Welsh Black Beef and Breconshire lamb. Main courses from £9 to £18.

CARLTON RIVERSIDE (formerly Carlton House) Llanwrtyd Wells, Tel (01591) 610 248 www.carltonrestaurant.co.uk This restaurant with rooms has changed location but maintained its strong culinary identity in Britain’s smallest town. With an impressive backdrop, the menu is as breathtaking as the scenery that surrounds it, inside and out! The menu embraces the ingredients of Wales but unleashes them in a European style that shows itself in such dishes as the Warm Salad of Seared Scallops, which incorporates Carmarthen ham and the Roast Fillet of Local Beef with a morel and Madeira sauce. Daily Menu £35 for four courses. Room rates from £40

FELIN FACH GRIFFIN, Felin Fach, Nr Aberhonddu/Brecon, Tel (01874) 620111 www.felinfach.com This is a traditional, farmhouse style inn, with a very relaxed atmosphere. It has a good variety of seasonal soups, gazpacho being one of them, divine Wye salmon, accompanied by new potatoes with chive butter, and home made chocolate mousse, making it simple yet still managing to get the taste buds going! From £18

LAKE VYRNWY HOTEL & SPA, Llanwddyn, Powys, SY10 0LY Tel: 01691 870 692 www.lakevyrnwyhotel.co.uk Our menus reflect a genuine enthusiasm for food, using the very best local ingredients and classical bases and reductions to produce modern British cuisine. Our restaurant overlooks the stunning Vyrnwy reservoir and dishes include: Seared tuna loin, glazed with Welsh rarebit on a tomato and red onion salad, followed by Roast shoulder and cutlet of lamb, smoked bacon, pea and leek compote with braised shallots and garlic. For dessert Rhubarb clafoutis tart with vanilla ice cream, served in a tuille basket. 3 course lunch £19.50, 5 course dinner £39.95

MYNWY THE BELL AT SKENFRITH, Monmouthshire, Tel (01600 750235) www.skenfrith.co.uk (OS 457200)

THE DRAGON INN, Crughywel /Crickhowell, Powys NP8 1BE. Tel (01873) 810362 www.dragoncrickhow-

More a restaurant with eight extremely comfortable rooms, The Bell is perched on the banks of the River Monnow, surrounded by beautiful Welsh countryside. The regularly changing menu offers fresh, seasonal food from mainly local suppliers with vegetables, herbs and fruit from The Bell’s own kitchen garden. Scallops, Fillet of Welsh Beef and Steamed Sponge Pudding, Earl Grey Syrup and Jam-on-Toast Ice Cream are some of the hot favourites. The wine list is extensive and very good value. After eating, try one of The Bell’s very popular walks.

ell.co.uk This Grade II2, Visit Wales 32, historic Inn on Crickhowell High Street has been providing hospitality for over 400 years. Under head chef Robert Duggan the restaurant offers a combination of traditional British and modern European dishes, sourcing local meat and vegetables. Fish is brought in daily from Plymouth and Swansea. Dishes include Monkfish & Prawns in a creamy, garlic sauce; pheasant with Stilton and bacon on braised red cabbage and port wine sauce; breast of duck on wilted Pakchoy with egg noodles and honey & soy dressing.

If it’s not here, how can we recommend it?!

THE HAND at LLANARMON

A centuries-old inn set in the heart of the beautiful Ceiriog Valley - “The Valley of the Poets” - some of the most breathtaking countryside in Wales. Superb cuisine, freshly prepared from locally sourced produce with a minimum of fuss and formality and, of course, drinks for every taste. Comfortable accommodation in ‘Character’ and ‘Country’ rooms, maintained to the highest standards.

THE HAND AT LLANARMON, LLANARMON DC, CEIRIOG VALLEY, LLANGOLLEN LL20 7LD T:

01691 60 06 66 E: reception@thehandhotel.co.uk www.thehandhotel.co.uk

TYDDYN LLAN

Llangoed Hall

RESTAURANT WITH ROOMS

Voted Wales' Good Food Guide Restaurant of the Year 2010

LLANGOED HALL HOTEL LLYSWEN, BRECON, POWYS, LD3 0YP EMAIL: enquiries@llangoedhall.com TEL:

01874 754525

FAX:

01874 754545

The Dragon Inn

Some of the finest food in Wales Please contact us for up to date special offers or visit www.tyddynllan.co.uk LLANDRILLO, NR. CORWEN, DENBIGHSHIRE, NORTH WALES LL21 0ST 01490 440264 FAX 01490 440414 EMAIL tyddynllan@compuserve.com

TEL

PENTRE-MAWR COUNTRY HOUSE

The hotel is open all year for lunch and dinner except Sunday evenings. The Dragon is a superb base for exploring Powys, Gwent and the South Eastern Valleys.

5 star country house hotel. AA finalist 2009/10, Landlady of the Year. Restaurant open to non-residents Friday to Saturday.

THE DRAGON INN, CRICKHOWELL TEL: 01873 810362 www.dragoncrickhowell.co.uk

Lake Vyrnwy Hotel & Spa

LLANDYRNOG, NR. DENBIGH, LL16 4LA Tel: 01824 790732 Email: info@pentremawrcountryhouse.co.uk www.pentremawrcountryhouse.co.uk

Sychnant Pass House OPEN ALL WEEK TO NON-RESIDENTS LICENSED FOR CIVIL CEREMONIES HEATED POOL, SUITES WITH HOT TUBS

Lake Vyrnwy Hotel & Spa, Llanwddyn, Powys, SY10 OLY

Telephone 01691 870 692 to make a booking EMAIL: info@lakevyrnwyhotel.co.uk

www.lakevyrnwyhotel.co.uk

TEL: 01492 585486 info@sychnant-pass-house.co.uk www.sychnant-pass-house.co.uk

EMAIL:

TheWelsh Kitchen

DOROTHY DAVIES

A paean to good food

bergavenny, Ludlow and Narberth are all well known now for their food festivals. According to Nick Miller of Miller Research (UK) Ltd and one of The Abergavenny Food Festival sponsors, there are upwards of sixty food festivals across country now and one can be found somewhere pretty well every weekend. They are a great reminder of how bounteous Wales is and how lucky we are to live in this land which produces such superb dairy products, beef and lamb. They also provide a good day out for all the family - a day which can live on in your larder, fridge and freezer for quite some while; delicious memories and incentives to revisit. The warm hospitality permeates the entire area, and is very much in the air. This year the festival at Abergavenny was busier than ever, the bedecked market hall became so crowded entry had to be controlled but the good humour was such that nobody minded, the jostle adding to the hwyl rather than detracting from it. The town streets were crowded with stalls and people, many of the pubs and cafes had tables and chairs outside adding to the holiday atmosphere. In venues all over town, hotels and pubs and shops, the theatre, talks and demonstrations take place. Up at the Castle, it is perhaps rather more child-friendly, festooned with tents stuffed with entertainment and yet more stalls, music, talks

The Market Hall - heart and soul of the Abergavenny Festival

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Food Academy at the Castle

and workshops and games. And the festival is not just confined to the town: in hedgerows and fields and along the river mycologists, herbalists, fishermen and foragers are introducing groups of the curious to food from the wild. It seems that Abergavenny and all its surrounding countryside has thrown itself into this festival with gusto, everything is a paean to food. Last issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s article on Maesmynnis lavender generated a huge amount of feedback, and one of the most exciting discoveries at Abergavenny was a lavender digestive. Made by C r a d o c B i s c u i t s ( 0 1 8 7 4 624339) of Brecon the pale flecked ovals are pretty to look at, and when you bite into one the scent hits the hard palate rather than the t o n g u e .

Company, also of Brecon, can be found on the internet or telephone 01874 690 378; they deliver within a thirty mile radius. There are always lots of chutneys but not quite so many jams. In the Market Hall we found Miranda’s Preserves (01348 872011); her products have nothing in them you wouldn’t find in your own kitchen. The strawberry and plum is a winning combination in which neither taste dominates. Her gooseberry curd is divine. Claws Shellfish are always on my list. their prawns taste sweeter and fresher than any one finds in supermarkets. Apparently they are frozen so I am not quite sure why this should be. This is only a tiny taster of what Abergavenny has to offer. There are so many who deserve to ‘Their prawns taste sweeter and fresher than any one finds in supermarkets” have the excellence of their produce extolled. Look out for the food festivals near you. Go and Encouraged by Allie Thomas who makes the biscuits, I tried one nibble your way around them. with goats cheese, wary at first and not convinced that this This year for the first time Abergavenny is having a Christmas would make a good combination. I was pleasantly surprised. At Food and Drink Fair - on 5th December. the moment her biscuits are only available from Farmers’ markets Tickets can be bought online for £3.50 at and a few local outlets around Brecon, Crickhowell and Hay. www.abergavennyfoodfestival.com MWYNHEWCH! To go with them there is an incredible choice of cheeses. Cheese stalls abound, predominantly Welsh but also English, French and Italian (Puglia had a stand and were sponsors this year). At the Eisteddfod I tried Blaenafon Cheddar and was thrilled to find it here too. Their straight cheddar is wonderful, mellow to start and then building up in intensity; they also do it in more varieties than I could have imagined, even toffee apple! I do like the addition of herbs in some cases, but generally speaking I don’t want my cheese dotted with bits of apricot or run through with chocolate (yes, I did see a chocolate flavoured cheddar, in the interest of science I should have tried it but I really couldn’t bring myself to do so). Blaenafon cheddar is seasoned 300m below ground level in an old mine shaft, which apparently has the ideal conditions: dark with a stable low temperature. Olive oil is another good thing to try here. There are several importers, and the Puglians’ olive oil is aged underground too, in a cave. It is interesting to be able to taste so many varieties at one go. This is the place to choose the oils that will add savour to your tomatoes, perhaps drizzled over a chunky and warming peasant soup in the depth of winter, or peppery-backed oils with a bit of punch or simply smooth and delicate ones. They all go well with bread; there is something about the sight of piles of well-made loaves and the fresh-baked scent which digs into the very core of our being. There are a few breadmakers at the festival - to my mind too few - they sell out quickly and should be visited early. You are very lucky if you live near a good breadmaker, otherwise your best option is to trawl the food festivals and farmers’ markets. Caroline’s Real Bread

Hotel & Restaurant Review THE WALNUT TREE, Llanddewi Skirrid, Abergavenny, NP7 8AW T: 01873 852797 www.thewalnuttreeinn.com

GWESTY CYMRU, Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth, SY23 2AZ T: 01970 612252 www.gwestycymru.com

match for The Walnut Tree in elegance can be found in Aberystwyth. Gwesty Cymru could not be more different. A world away, sitting in the shadowy embrace of slate and dusky lighting, surrounded by the lilt of Welsh and gossip of ‘cyfryngis’ (some fascinating snippets!), a very Welsh menu is every bit as pleasurable. On the wall is a slab of slate and carved into it a couple of lines of Mererid Hopwood’s poetry written especially for the venue. Throughout the restaurant and the rooms, everything, from the art on the walls to the oak furniture in the rooms, is Welsh, perhaps barring only the soap! The bar is at the back of the restaurant, and in the daytime not very noticeable, but of an evening it comes into its own and contributes well to party atmosphere. After dinner is over it is a very pleasant place to sit and drink and talk the night away. The food is hearty and helpings are large. I was taking my son back to university and he was in his element - this was a worthy last meal of the vacation. At lunch they do a dish of the day with a complimentary drink for £7.95. I decided on this option while my son opted for steak with all the trimmings. The special was rabbit and smoked bacon pie the chef had personally shot the rabbit in nearby Llanilar. An added bonus I thought. Welsh Rarebit figures largely on the menu in several incarnations and sizes; it was good but it was totally eclipsed by the absolutely superb Roast Plum Tomato soup. Well and truly defeated by the light flaky pastry and rabbit, I eyed my son’s Creme brulée warily; “lush!” was his judgment. I tried the merest morsel of the obviously homemade biscuit on the side, which was crisp and light with a hint of bitterness, and a good foil for the sweet cream of the brulée; but best of all - the spiced cherries, the rich syrup redolent of clove and cinnamon, but by this stage I was beaten and the regret of those abandoned cherries accompanies us all the way to Bangor. CLl-P

here are many reasons for eating out, from marking a celebration right through to not having time to cook or the larder being bare. Whatever the reason, it should always be a pleasure. I hate being disappointed, leaving a restaurant resenting paying because I could have done it better. Bar food in a pub is one thing, but in a restaurant I want what my mother calls ‘restaurant food’, something that you can’t or wouldn’t really think of doing at home yourself, either because it is too complex or because it requires a kitchen which is on the go round the clock, with all the stocks, sauces and reductions. This is the sort of food you will find at The Walnut Tree, Abergavenny. The Walnut Tree is a finely-tuned machine, it functions beautifully even in the absence of Shaun Hill. Another bugbear: restaurants which charge a premium price but the food is not as good when the chef is off; a really good chef and a really good restaurant mean the training is such that if, for some reason or another, he or she isn’t there, it is not at all noticeable. Within moments of being seated and hot on the heels of the menu, arrived a small plate of amuse bouche: a particularly delicious little choux pastry, crisp and light perfection, stuffed with trout and dill in a creamy sauce; that and a little cheesy biscuit with sesame seeds made a great accompaniment while reading the menu. At lunch there is a set menu: £17.50 for two courses or £23 for three, although the beautiful little rolls conspire to leave insufficient room. Most memorable were deep fried courgette flowers - the scent and light crispness of the batter like a burst of sunshine; the ricotta and basil stuffing, the drizzle of sauce with a hint of parmesan. I must have it all again. The menu is a wonderful cosmopolitan mix of Italian, Spanish, solid bourgeois French (boudin of tête de veau), and traditional local with the occasional twist of ginger and chilli added to the mix. Blade of beef with morels and celeriac purée could not have been more richly unctuous. The ambience is elegant and cool with beautiful natural lighting. The wine list is interesting, thoughtfully put together and, with a handful of exceptions, very affordable! The overall perfection highlights the one flaw, albeit a small one. The training of the staff just doesn’t match the excellence of everything else. They are not quite eagle-eyed enough, as getting the bill took three attempts, and while the waitresses were very pleasant I felt that a better knowledge of the menu details was needed. CLl-P

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Bob Roser and Bill Reese

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Michael Burn JOURNALIST, SOLDIER AND WRITER WHO TOOK PART IN THE COMMANDO RAID ON ST NAZAIRE IN 1942

MEIC STEPHENS

ichael Burn had a long life strewn with risks, setbacks, disenchantments and deceptions, and illumined by love affairs, literary acclaim and marvellous friendships. Man about town, journalist, soldier, poet, novelist and playwright, and latterly a breeder of mussels on the Dwyryd and Glaslyn estuaries of north-west Wales, he lived his life with panache and a debonair grin for whatever befell him, be it incarceration in Colditz during the second world war or the gloomy spectacle of the Communist show-trials of central Europe which he covered for The Times. There were contradictions in his character, flaws and conflicts even, which he wrote about with selfknowledge and a gentlemanly regard for others that won him the affection of many friends. Born into a well-todo home in Mayfair in 1912, he observed unemployment and the most appalling poverty while living with a Yorkshire miner’s family in the early 1930s and the experience left an indelible mark on him. By instinct republican, he was sent to cover the royal visit to Canada and the United States in 1939 and reported it rapturously. For a while he was duped by the Nazis but became a Marxist while a prisoner of war after taking part in a commando raid against the German fortified harbour of St Nazaire in 1942. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he left the Church as a consequence of its teachings on homosexuality which he had practised intermittently since his schooldays. Unhappy with his sexuality, he gave up homosexual relations soon after meeting Mary Booker, and they lived happily as man and wife from their marriage in 1947 until her death in 1974. Michael Burn’s father, Sir Clive Burn, was a solicitor

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employed as Secretary to the Duchy of Cornwall, a royal fief with huge states in the West Country and on the South Bank of the Thames. The boy was sent to Winchester and spent his holidays with grandparents in a villa near Le Touquet on the Normandy coast. He soon rebelled against the class into which he had been born: the Wykehamist became an agnostic and only the study of History held any appeal for him. At New College, Oxford, he did no work whatsoever, left after his first year and, intent on joining the Fourth Estate, and in 1933, drawn by his love of Wagner, took flight for Germany, where he moved from Schloss to Schloss as the guest of aristocrats deeply implicated in the rise of National Socialism. He was briefly taken in by the Nazis, mainly because of what they seemed to be doing about reviving the German economy and abolishing the class system which he saw as a cancer eating at the heart of British society. Back in London by 1934, Burn found a reporter’s job with The Gloucester Citizen, which belonged to Lord Rothermere, the pro-Nazi owner of The Daily Mail. Still preoccupied with the scourge of mass unemployment, he took up the cause of Forest of Dean miners while, at the same time, enjoying the hospitality of the Earl of Berkeley. On holiday in Germany in 1935 he attended a Nazi rally at Nuremburg, met Hitler who signed a copy of Mein Kampf for him, and visited the Dachau concentration camp in the company of Unity Mitford and her sister Diana Guinness, soon to be married to Oswald Mosley. The scales dropped from his eyes on his return to London. What changed his mind about Hitler was a week spent as a paying guest in the home of a Barnsley miner, where he saw the effects of economic depression

and social deprivation at their most baneful; he remained in contact with the family for the rest of his life. Soon afterwards, in 1937, he ‘was received into The Times’, whose policy of appeasement had held sway throughout the ’thirties. Micky Burn was given the job of covering the abdication crisis, following the paper’s line that the king should not enter into a morganatic marriage with Mrs Simpson. It was at this time he met and went to bed with the promiscuous Guy Burgess. At the outbreak of war Burn joined the Territorials and, after the most basic training, saw guerrilla action around Mosjoen in German-occupied Norway which ended in disarray for the British troops. The audacious Commando raid of 1942 on the German-held port of St Nazaire, in which Burn took part, was more successful in that it denied sanctuary to the Tirpitz, the largest of all the German battleships. The Commandos rammed HMS Campbeltown, packed with explosives, into the harbour defences and then fought their way ashore. Though typically modest about his role in blowing up installations, Burn was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the assault. He was captured twice in twentyfour hours, the first time talking his way out of a tight corner in fluent German. As he was led away by his captors, Burn put up his hands with fingers in a V for Victory sign, in defiance of Nazi cameras recording the surrender for Goebbels. The incident was seen in a cinema newsreel by a woman named Ella van Heemstra living in the occupied Netherlands whom Burn had befriended just before the war and whose daughter later became the filmstar Audrey Hepburn. The shot appeared in his autobiography, Turned towards the Sun, which appeared in 2003. Burn spent the rest of the war in POW camps, including Spangenburg and Rothenburg, ending it at Colditz, where he specialised in making short-hand transcripts of the BBC news from a clandestine wireless set. By now ‘slightly to the Left of Major Attlee’, he became a Marxist under the tutelage of a brother officer, gave talks on politics and economics to ‘a captive audience’, and wrote the drafts of two books. For years thereafter his parents corresponded with the families of those who had lost their lives on the St Nazaire raid and Burn served as President of the Society that was formed to keep survivors in touch with one another. After the war, by which time he had fallen in love with Mary Booker, he was sent by The Times to Vienna and

then to Central Europe with special responsibility for the Balkans, where he made friends with the hitherto unapproachable Soviet press corps. Among the events he covered were the rigged trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, the Roman Catholic primate of Hungary who was imprisoned by the Communist government in 1949, and for whom Burn, now a practising Catholic, had great sympathy. His conversion to Catholicism, his wife’s religion, lasted from about 1940 to 1994, when he felt obliged to leave the Church of Rome on account of its teachings on homosexuality. His sexual proclivities caused him great anguish but he was able to write about them with a light touch. Mary knew of his homosexuality, considering it ‘a part of a general male retardation’, but their marriage turned out to be extremely happy. The house known as Beudy Gwyn, with its stunning views across the Dwyryd estuary near Minffordd in what is now Gwynedd, was renovated by the Burns in 1951. There he resumed his writing career. He had begun as a playwright with The Modern Everyman (1947) and now had some critical success as the author of The Night of the Ball (1956). His first novel, Yes, Farewell (1946), was followed by Childhood at Oriol (1951), The Midnight Diary (1952) and The Trouble with Jake (1967). He published five collections of poetry, including The Flying Castle, a fantasy demonstrating his mastery of rhyming quatrains, and was awarded the Keats Poetry Prize in 1973. He also wrote on political and sociological subjects in such books as The Labyrinth of Europe, Mr Lyward’s Answer and The Debatable Land. Micky Burn’s autobiography deals with important events and famous people, but at its heart, as with all good examples of the genre, it is the author’s own personality - intelligent, modest, painfully honest, drily witty, courageous, highly principled and unfailingly urbane - that shines through. The same qualities are to be seen in his book Poems as Accompaniment to a Life which was published in 2006. Michael Clive Burn, journalist, soldier and author: born London 11 December 1912; MC 1942; Times reporter 1936-39 and Central Europe Correspondent 1946-49; married 1947 Mary Booker née Walter (died 1974); died Minffordd, Gwynedd, 3 September 2010. Michael Burn was a supporter of, and valued contributor to cambria. This obituary appeared in THE GUARDIAN on 24 September.

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Siân Phillips in Swansea O N L O O K E R

At an Institute of Welsh Affairs seminar PHOTOGRAPHS

JONES

he celebrated Welsh actress Sian Phillips may be 77 years old, but she doesn’t look it and, as demonstrated by her appearance at a recent Institute of Welsh Affairs function at the Towers Hotel outside Swansea, she certainly doesn’t act it. Seated in front of 40 guests on a bright Sunday morning, Phillips put her much younger microphoned interviewer, Professor Peter Stead, to shame when she turned down the mic offered to her. “I think I’m alright,” she said, projecting her voice in the way only a professional with years of theatrical experience can do. For the next hour, Phillips discussed with Stead - and the audience - how being Welsh has influenced her as a professional actress. She cites, in part, her ever-present connection to the culture. “I think oppressed people tend to be a little more aware [of their culture]...and we tend to remember that we were oppressed in Wales,” she said. This awareness has also helped her deal with fame, since, as Phillips explained, “it’s very against the Welsh culture to be pretentious or unreasonable or grand.” Despite the renown she’s gained with roles such as Livia in I, Claudius and her long tenure on Broadway and the West End, Phillips has never once forgotten her “idyllic” childhood in Wales, where she spoke Welsh almost exclusively while growing up. “I knew from a very early age I lived in the most wonderful place,” she said. Nevertheless, Wales wasn’t always the easiest place for an aspiring actress to live. “I wasn’t allowed to go to the cinema. Period.” she said in reference to her family’s disapproval of an acting career. “My grandmother would have been scandalised. We never did tell her I’d become an actress.” Though she always knew she must some day leave Wales to pursue her dream, she credits the traditional Welsh love of theatre with giving her the opportunity to start her career when she was young. “Every Saturday there would be an eisteddfod and I would go and compete,” she recalled. Winning those competitions eventually gained her recognition and an offer to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Even after having travelled and performed all around the world, Phillips still claims that she has “never lived anywhere that’s as amusing or interesting or nice as the place [she] grew up in West Wales.” In fact, her love for her country has only grown. “The longer you’re away,” she said, “the more Welsh you feel.” EMILY BASELT STEIGER

Summer Harp Festival At the National Botanic Garden of Wales PHOTOGRAPHS

RYAN, MARI OWEN

O N L O O K E R

he harp gained further recognition of its status as the national instrument of Wales with the launch of the very first Summer Harp Festival of Wales at the National Botanic Garden at the end of August. Catrin Finch and Claire Jones (Royal harpists past and present) were the main attraction. There was even a chance for eight lucky people to enjoy a masterclass with Catrin Finch herself as well as the ‘Hands on Harp’ and ‘Beginner Harp’ sessions held throughout the two day festival. Children were a major feature, with a year 3 class orchestra (including seven lay harps) from Baden Powell Primary School in Tremorfa taking part, while Sian Wynn from Cardiff presented the Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan Music Service harp ensemble. The festival also featured a musical ‘Storytelling with the Harp’ experience, plus a harp orchestra, numerous recitals, talks and tours for harpists of all ages and abilities.

Telynau Teifi to the fore! Catrin Finch gives a masterclass; BOTTOM RIGHT : Meinir Heulyn with cambria‘s Editor Frances Jones-Davies. TOP

RIGHT:

BELOW:

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2010 Worldwide Welsh Award O N L O O K E R

Presentation to Merêd and Phyllis Evans at the Eisteddfod PHOTOGRAPHS

OWEN

2010 ACC/WWWA One of the nation’s most prestigious awards, Anrhydedd Cymry’r Cyfanfyd - The World Wide Welsh Award, given for an outstanding contribution to Cymreictod worldwide, was this year presented to Merêd and Phyllis Evans in front of a packed Pavilion in Glyn Ebwy. Merêd, a veteran campaigner for Welsh language rights and tireless promoter of Welsh culture, received the award (by Rhiannon of Tregaron) jointly with his wife Phyllis, who has devoted decades of research into traditional Welsh folk music and published several seminal works on the subject. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT : In the Pavilion - (L-R) Henry Jones-Davies, WWWA Wales Co-ordinator, Dr. Arturo Roberts, WWWA International Co-ordinator, Prydwen Elfed-Owens, Eisteddfod President, Phyllis and Merêd Evans; The presentation; Dafydd Wigley speaks at a reception for the couple in the National Library stand just before the ceremony; Dr Arturo Roberts speaks; Merêd replies; The 2010 WWWA recipients Phyllis and Meredydd Evans.

Eisteddfod Genedlaethol 2010 New Gorseddogion, new Prifardd - honoured in Glyn Ebwy PHOTOGRAPHS

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O N L O O K E R

MARI OWEN

ABOVE: The Chairing ceremony - with the new Chaired Bard, Tudur Hallam, from Foelgastell, Sir Gaerfyrddin. First, called from the crowd (TOP RIGHT) by Archruid T. James Jones, he is then chaired as Prifardd of the 2010 National Eisteddfod. BELOW:

New White Robed Gorseddogion honoured in Glyn Ebwy 2010 include Robert Hughes, Mary Wiliam, the Rt. Rev. Edwin Regan, Bishop of Wrexham, Dewi Pws Morris, Angharad Mair, Tim Rhys Evans, founder of Only Men Aloud, Jill Evans MEP, and Geraint Roberts, David Bryan James, Ion David Thomas, Rhys Jones and Dylan Cernyw. Angharad Mair

Tim Rhys-Evans

ARCHDDERWYDD CYMRU

Jim Parc Nest (T.James Jones)

DEFNYDDIWCH eich Cymraeg ! MIRANDA MORTON

Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru, Blaenau Gwent a Blaenau’r Cymoedd

leni roedd yr Eisteddfod Genedlaethol yng Nglyn Ebwy, tref ddiwydiannol yn ne Cymru. Roedd yr Eisteddfod ar safle hen weithfeydd dur. Mae’r cyngor sir yn gweithio’n galed i ddatblygu’r safle. Maen nhw’n adeiladu ysbyty newydd ar y safle ac mae cynlluniau i adeiladu tai ac ysgol newydd. Unwaith, roedd miloedd o bobl yn mynd i’r safle i weithio ond ym mis Awst eleni, roedd miloedd o bobl yn mynd i’r safle i fwynhau’r Eisteddfod. Gwˆyl ddiwylliannol ydy’r Eisteddfod. Mae hi’n digwydd unwaith y flwyddyn ac mae cystadlaethau i farddoniaeth, cerddoriaeth, drama, dawnsio a hyd yn oed wyddoniaeth. Ond mae’r Eisteddfod tipyn bach fel yr wˆyl gelfyddydau yng Nghaeredin ym mis Awst bob blwyddyn. Mae gwˆ yl swyddogol ond mae llawer iawn o bethau answyddogol, diddorol yn digwydd hefyd. Mae llawer o’r cystadlaethau yn y pafiliwn pinc ond mae llawer o stondinau ar y Maes hefyd. Y “Maes” yw’r enw am safle’r Eisteddfod. Mae rhai pobl yn mynd i’r Eisteddfod i gystadlu ac i weld y cystadlaethau yn y pafiliwn ond mae llawer o bobl hefyd yn mynd i’r Eisteddfod i gael hwyl, weld hen ffrindiau, i wneud ffrindiau newydd ac i gael profiadau newydd. Eleni, ro’n i’n gwirfoddoli ar stondin Oxfam Cymru drwy’r wythnos. Bob bore, fe es i ar y trên o Gaerdydd o Lyn Ebwy. Bob bore, roedd y trên yn llawn o bobl ar eu ffordd i’r Eisteddfod. Fe weles i lawer o hen ffrindiau ar

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y trên bob dydd ac roedd hi’n hyfryd i gael y cyfle i siarad a chlywed eu newyddion i gyd. Deg munud ar y bws am ddim o’r orsaf drenau i’r Maes a dyma ni yn yr Eisteddfod. Ein gwaith ni ar stondin Oxfam Cymru oedd dweud wrth bobl am waith Oxfam. Mae Oxfam yn gweithio gyda phobl dlawd ledled y byd i’w helpu nhw i gael dwˆr glân, mwy o fwyd, addysg a gofal iechyd. Yn y stondin roedd arddangosfa luniau o bobl syn gweithio gydag Oxfam yn Affrica. Gyda phob llun, roedd cerdd am y llun gan fardd Cymraeg. Ddydd Mercher yr Eisteddfod, roed agoriad swyddogol yr arddangosfa. Fe ddaeth Carwyn Jones AC, prif weinidog Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru, i agor yr arddangosfa ac fe ddaeth rhai o’r beirdd i ddarllen eu cerddi ac i siarad am y cysylltiad â’r lluniau. Ro’n ni wedi trefnu’r arddangosfa a’r agoriad swyddogol ers wythnosau ac roedd popeth yn iawn. Ddydd Iau, ro’n ni’n lansio’r apêl am arian i helpu pobl Pacistan ar ôl y llifogydd trwm yno. Doedd dim llawer o amser i baratoi - dim ond un dydd ar ôl y penderfyniad i gael apêl o gwbl! Roedd y bobl ar y Maes yn hael iawn. Do’n i ddim yn gweithio ar stondin Oxfam bob awr o bob dydd - fe ges i gyfle i grwydro’r Maes hefyd. Fe brynes i lawer o lyfrau o chryno-ddisgiau. Bob blwyddyn, mae cyhoeddwyr a chwmnïau recordiau yn rhyddhau llawer o lyfrau a chryno-ddisgiau newydd yn yr Eisteddfod. Weithiau, mae gormod o ddewis. Fe ymweles i â’r stondinau i gyd hefyd. Rydw i eisoes wedi penderfynu i fynd i Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Wrecsam a’r Cylch yn 2011. Efallai y gwela i chi yno. GEIRFA

am ddim Celfyddyd, celfyddydau Cryno-ddisg, cryno-ddisgiau Diwydiannol Gwirfoddoli Gwyddoniaeth Hael Hyd yn oed Llif, llifogydd Safle, safleoedd Stondin, stondinau Tlawd

free art CD industrial to volunteer science generous even flood site stall poor

What’s

hot in Wales

ANGLESEY’S ORIEL TEGFRYN, ONCE FAMOUSLY ASSOCIATED WITH SIR KYFFIN WILLIAMS, has just been taken over by the Martin Tinney Gallery, renowned for promoting Welsh and Wales-based artists. Situated on the Menai Bridge, Oriel Tegfryn has a long and respected history as the premier gallery in North Wales. An exhibition of female artists, such as Claudia Williams, Mary Lloyd Jones, Vivienne Williams and Sally Moore, will be showing throughout October and November. The gallery is open from Monday to Saturday, 10am-5pm and Sundays (from October 17), 11am-4.30pm.

INFORMATION:

01248 715128

ON 16TH SEPTEMBER, THE

ˆ R AS PRINCE OF 610TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PROCLAMATION OF OWAIN GLYNDW WALES, work began to secure the motte at Glyndyfrdwy near Corwen which is in danger of collapse. This is the only visible remainder of what was one of Owain Glyndw ˆ r’s main residences. Minister for Heritage, Alun Ffred Jones, said: “The work to stabilise this iconic monument and improve access to the site will ensure that it can be enjoyed by future generations.” The proclamation in 1400 of Owain Glyndw ˆ r as the Prince of Wales marked the beginning of the war of independence that led to the establishment of an independent Welsh parliament at Machynlleth and later, Harlech Castle. INFORMATION: www.cadw.wales.gov.uk

THE HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT OF WALES adds

about £840 million to the nation’s economy, and supports the equivalent of 30,000 full-time jobs, according to a new report from CADW. The historic environment’s direct contribution to the economy, the report continues, is around £1.8 billion, mainly thanks to tourism. The adaptation of historic buildings can provide a basis for social and economic regeneration, while their conservation protects landscapes and habitats, provides opportunities for paid and voluntary work, and enhances our collective sense of belonging and local pride, cadw argues. www.cadw.wales.gov.uk.

INFORMATION:

MAPS AND OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION relating to various environment

and landscape designations - such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Special Areas of Conservation - can now be downloaded from the Countryside Council for Wales’s website, thus easing access to a wealth of information previously only available in printed, archived form. INFORMATION: www.ccw.gov.uk

DYFI VALLEY

SEED SAVERS HAS PRODUCED A REPORT on the benefits and drawbacks of growing fruit in Powys, the report is expected to be a valuable guide to those who propagate and plant fruit trees in the county’s damp climate. The report will also look at orchard management systems and their effects on fruit production and their environmental and wildlife values. INFORMATION: www.dyfivalleyseedsavers.org.uk

BEE PART OF IT! - THE NATIONAL

TRUST AT DINEFWR PARK, Llandeilo, has been taking part in a national campaign to save our dwindling honey bee populations. Half of Britain’s bee colonies were lost between 1985 and 2005. The new hive at Dinefwr is one of 45 established by the ‘Bee Part Of It’ campaign across the UK with the aim of creating greater public involvement in an increasingly serious problem.

INFORMATION :

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-dinefwrpark

and

www.wbka.com (Cymdeithas Gwenynwyr Cymru / Welsh Beekeepers’ Association)

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