J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Heritage preservation

Carmarthenshire Archives: the Right Hand and the Left Hand

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Democracy is a wonderful thing; or, as President Harry S Truman said, ‘if you can’t convince them, confuse them’. (Or don’t reply to their Freedom of Information requests; but that’s another story, for another day.) Such has been the case with the ongoing saga of a possible future location for a new Carmarthenshire Record Office. At pretty much exactly the same time that the county council was explicitly assuring several of those who had written to it about the matter – or at least, those to whom they deigned to reply – that they were seeking a site in Carmarthenshire, a very different story was appearing in the minutes of the latest meeting of the West Glamorgan Archives Service committee, held on 19 June 2015. These minutes have been mentioned in some of the local press reporting of the archives story, but they are available in full online, here, and tell a rather more complex tale than that which has appeared in either the press stories or Carmarthenshire’s own bland and uninformative statements.

West Glamorgan Archives Service is already run by a partnership, consisting of Swansea City Council, Neath Port Talbot Council, and Neath Antiquarian Society. Therefore, it has to hold regular meetings of the representatives of all the partners, and on 19 June they received a report from the County Archivist. The relevant text reads as follows:

Planning for the Future

It was outlined that the Archive Service was in the initial stages of preparation for a period of profound transformation which would see the most significant alteration for more than two decades to the way in which the service was delivered.  The current challenge was to understand and integrate each factor forcing change on the Archive Service and to produce a mutually agreed vision and forward plan which maintained service quality and was financially sustainable in the long-term.  It was added that the factors necessitating change were threefold: impending Welsh Local Government reorganisation; the generic remodelling of the way Local Authority Cultural Services were delivered; proposed sale of Swansea Civic Centre.  It was added that the anticipated deadline for Council services to vacate Swansea Civic Centre was approximately 5 years which provided a timeframe for the Archive Service to plan for its relocation of over 600 sq. metres of historic records from the Swansea Civic Centre basement. 

Reference was made to discussions between Swansea University, the City and County of Swansea, Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council and Carmarthenshire Council [my emphasis] to explore whether it was possible to develop together a shared vision for archive provision in South West Wales [ditto]. These talks had been attended by Welsh Government and facilitated by an external consultant.  It was added that a fact finding tour of the Keep, a shared archive facility in Brighton, took place in early May 2015. 

RESOLVED that a more detailed report regarding the fact finding tour of the Keep in Brighton be provided to the next scheduled meeting.

The specific background to this is that the current civic centre by the Marina on Swansea seafront is to be sold off and demolished in order to provide yet more yuppie flats – sorry, desirable bijou residences – despite it being a relatively modern building. Regardless of Swansea’s particular property juggling, though, this minute raises some very intriguing questions; indeed, the ‘right hand’ of Swansea’s relatively transparent proceedings has effectively pulled the rug out from under the ‘left hand’ of its rather less transparent counterpart across the Loughor Bridge. (My apologies for mixing my metaphors.)

Let’s leave to one side the issue of the probity of Carmarthenshire’s public statements, which still make no mention of a possible move to Swansea or of the discussions outlined in these minutes, despite the fact that this information is all in the public domain. Instead, let’s unpick some of the more intriguing elements of this story. Firstly, this project is to be part of ‘a shared vision for archive provision in South West Wales’. This will probably come as news to the good people of Pembrokeshire, which must have been physically ripped from South West Wales and is presumably now floating off into the Atlantic, next stop Barbados, taking its inconvenient state-of-the-art (but, sadly, already full) new record office with it. But hey, who cares about geographical realities if they stand in the way of neat corporate branding?

Secondly, the reference to ‘the Keep’ in Brighton, the new joint archive repository for East Sussex (despite being outside its borders), the University of Sussex, and Brighton museums, needs some clarification. There are several partnership schemes running archives in different parts of the country; in her guest post on this site, for example, former West Glamorgan county archivist Susan Beckley identified the complex arrangements that pertain at Glamorgan Archives in Cardiff. The difference between this and the facility in Brighton is that the latter involves a university, as would the proposed scheme at Swansea; there is a similar arrangement at Hull. (One wonders why the fact-finding team preferred a visit to Brighton over one to Hull. Answers on a postcard, please.) However, there is otherwise virtually no comparison between the situation in Brighton and the one which would exist in Swansea. All of the organisations involved in ‘the Keep’ are within the boundaries of one historical and geographical entity, namely Sussex (as is also the case at Hull); one can only imagine how the people of, say, Kent or Surrey would react if it was proposed that their archives should be moved to Brighton, yet that is effectively exactly what is being proposed for the people of Carmarthenshire. It is clear from the West Glamorgan minutes that a Welsh government representative has been involved in these discussions, and it’s common knowledge that the relevant government agency, MALD (no, that’s not the Welsh for ‘mould’: this is the new acronym for the former CyMal, and yes, I know it’s difficult to keep up…), is very keen for this partnership to go ahead. Indeed, the letter I received from Linda Tomos, its director, essentially admits that quite freely, even if it does not mention Swansea by name. One wonders why there is such apparent enthusiasm within MALD for an arrangement that quite evidently treats Carmarthenshire as a tacked-on afterthought to the so-called ‘shared vision…for south west Wales’, which is clearly nothing of the sort due to the omission of Pembrokeshire. (Further answers on a postcard, please.)

One also wonders how on earth this proposed partnership will fit into the proposed local government reorganisation in Wales – if Carmarthenshire is likely to disappear in the relatively near future, what on earth will be the sense in a ‘shared vision’ encompassing Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, and, umm, one third of the revived county of Dyfed, but not the other two-thirds? The only ‘vision’ apparent here is of one of Dante’s circles of hell, as reimagined by George Orwell. Moreover, as Susan Beckley demonstrated in her post, Neath Port Talbot has consistently been treated as a junior partner in the West Glamorgan partnership, and has suffered disproportionately as a result of cuts. Surely that would only be repeated in spades in the case of Carmarthenshire, which (apart from the Llanelli and Amman Valley areas) is completely different in nature to the other components of this potential shotgun marriage?

The dangers of Carmarthenshire being marginalised in such an arrangement are obvious, quite apart from the issues, previously explored on this site, of access to the new office, particularly for those who live in the west and north of the county and who rely entirely on public transport. Again, the comparison with Brighton’s Keep does not hold water. Sussex as a whole has incomparably better public and private transport infrastructure than Carmarthenshire – I lived there for a while, so I experienced the comparison at first hand. The Keep is served by no fewer than four bus routes which stop immediately outside it, as well as being a ten minute walk from a railway station; somehow, one doubts if any new site on the Fabian Way campus in Swansea would be anything like as accessible. Rye, on the eastern border of East Sussex, is almost exactly fifty miles from the Keep. To get from one to the other by public transport involves a train journey of one hour and twenty six minutes, followed by the ten minute walk in question, with at least one train an hour throughout the day. Newcastle Emlyn, on the north-west border of Carmarthenshire, is nearer to Swansea – forty-five miles – but to get just to Swansea rail station would take two and three quarter hours by bus and train, with a further leg out to Fabian Way (by means as yet undetermined) to add on top of that.

The conclusion to all of this is obvious and inescapable. Shoehorning the Carmarthenshire archives into a new partnership based in Swansea would obviously suit the county council, as it could effectively wash its hands of a significant amount of responsibility for something that has clearly become a severe embarrassment to the corporate image it wishes to present to the world. It would clearly suit the other partners, as they would acquire – for next to nothing, relatively speaking – a much richer and more comprehensive collection of archives than they would otherwise possess, in order to achieve their ‘shared vision for archive provision in South West Wales’ (still begging the question of where Pembrokeshire has got to; probably past the Azores by now). It would suit those who would like more democratic oversight of the Carmarthenshire archives, as a partnership would, of necessity, mean the establishment of the sort of committee that already exists in West Glamorgan, with public access to its proceedings; and involving other bodies would significantly reduce the possibility of Carmarthenshire council making yet another shambolic pig’s ear of its guardianship of the priceless documents in its care. It would most certainly suit the supervisory authorities, as noted above. It would, if truth be told, suit professional historians with cars who are based in Llanelli when they are in the area. Indeed, it would suit nearly everybody – except, that is, for the likes of the poor pensioner in Newcastle Emlyn or Llandovery or Laugharne, who decides one day that she’d really like to investigate an aspect of local history in depth.

But then, who cares about her?

 

Carmarthenshire Archives: the Perils of the ‘P’ Word

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This week, I’m delighted to welcome Susan Beckley with a guest blog about the Carmarthenshire Archives situation, essentially a response and sequel to last week’s post on this site. Susan worked as an archivist in Carmarthenshire from 1974 to 1986, and wrote the book Carmarthenshire Record Office: A Survey of Archival Holdings (1980). She was the County Archivist for West Glamorgan from 1992 to 2004, and is thus uniquely placed to comment both on the current situation and on a potential ‘partnership’ arrangement which could see the Carmarthenshire archives relocate to Swansea.

Next week will see a return to the usual subject matter of this blog, when I’ll have some very exciting news on the book front!

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As one of the county archivists involved in setting up one of the much vaunted successful  joint archive services in urban south Wales following Local Government Reorganization in 1996, I thought I should comment on the background to this.

  • Section 60 of the Local Government [Wales] Act, 1994 required each of the 22 new Principal Councils in Wales to set out a Scheme for Archives detailing their plans for delivering an archive service.
  • In Glamorgan and Gwent, the urban south Wales counties, the four post- 1974 County Councils of Mid, South, and West Glamorgan and Gwent, were to be replaced by twelve unitary authorities. The counties, by 1996, had three Record Offices: the Gwent Record Office at Cwmbran, the Glamorgan Record Office at Cardiff, jointly serving Mid and South Glamorgan, and the West Glamorgan Archive Service in Swansea.
  • Clearly it would have been impracticable and non-cost effective to dismember the three Record Offices between twelve successor authorities, and so Joint Archives Committees were established to oversee and monitor the services continued from the three existing Record Offices as follows:
    • Gwent Record Office serving the Councils of Torfaen, Monmouthshire, Blaenau Gwent, Newport, and Caerphilly [part]
    • Glamorgan Record Office serving the Councils of Cardiff, Vale of Glamorgan, Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taff, and Caerphilly [part]
    • West Glamorgan Archive Service serving the Councils of Swansea and Neath Port Talbot

In this way, the ancient County boundaries, which have so much significance for the shape and content of the collections, were respected, and, as far as I am aware, no collections were withdrawn, as essentially the same services continued, albeit with more complicated governance arrangements.

Since that time new archive premises have been opened in Gwent (at Ebbw Vale) and in Cardiff. While external grant funding can be obtained by some archive services, this is not always the case, and, at the very least match funding is normally required from the recipients. Carmarthenshire should be aware that should it transfer custody of its collections to Swansea, it will have to contribute towards the construction of a new facility on Fabian Way, and also to the exorbitant  costs of operating such premises nowadays, especially in an area where security concerns would be significant.

The proposal to make the treated documents available while they are being held in Cardiff in the short term, is effectively to render them inaccessible. I well remember when I was in Swansea, how members of the public from Swansea would complain about travelling to Cardiff to view local archives before the facility in West Glamorgan was established, and Swansea is only 40 miles from Cardiff, whereas Carmarthen must be 70 miles away.

If Carmarthenshire presses ahead with the idea of transferring custody of its collections to Swansea (following appropriate consultation with its depositors), it would be well advised to talk directly to Neath Port Talbot residents about exactly what they get out of their joint arrangement other than some outreach to schools. When I left West Glamorgan in 2004, there was equitable public access provision to the Archive Service in each of the three main towns, Swansea, Neath, and Port Talbot, and a part time service in Pontardawe (also within Neath Port Talbot).

Since then, presumably as the result of successive rounds of budget cuts, of which the service within Neath Port Talbot appears to have repeatedly borne the brunt, the public service in Port Talbot has been virtually abandoned by the Archive Service, the Pontardawe service has been discontinued, and efforts have been made to withdraw from the service in Neath, though this is being resisted by the Neath Antiquarian Society, the current ‘partners’ of the West Glamorgan Archive Service. The whole focus of the service is centred on Swansea, rather than on serving the wider West Glamorgan community.

 

Carmarthenshire Archives: The Future

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For those who might be new to the fraught saga of Carmarthenshire Archives, you can catch up on the ‘story so far’ here, here and here.

I expected this to be the first of two new posts about the situation in relatively short order. However, I’m still waiting for a response to the Freedom of Information requests I lodged with Carmarthenshire County Council, despite the deadline for this being today (12 August); I’ve received a holding reply, stating that ‘due to the fact that we having to carry out a manual exercise to identify all relevant correspondence, combined with officer’s leave commitments, we will be unable to respond within the 20 working days required by the Act’.

(I half expected this, given the difficulty of contacting pretty much any organisation during August; and to be fair, the Council’s Information and Data Protection officer has apologised fulsomely for the delay. Of course, the 64,000 dollar question will be the duration of the delay, but I’ll keep everyone informed about progress through the Facebook page.)

The post derived from the FoI material is likely to focus heavily on historical matters, namely the question of how and why the mould problem in the archive strongrooms was able to develop. However, my principal concern since beginning this online campaign has been with the future: namely, with ensuring that the collections are cleaned and made available again as quickly as possible, and that a new, properly staffed record office opens at a suitable location within a reasonable timeframe. In that respect, a little more information is now available, so I’ll place that in the public domain immediately, without waiting for the full response to the FoI request.

First, the Council has fulfilled a promise it made to me to provide a page on its website explaining the closure of the record office, and, in turn, I’m very happy to fulfill my promise to link to it on this site. However, this page still begs the critical questions of location, timeframes, and so forth, and provides no specific contact information for those like the several people who’ve told the Save Carmarthenshire Archives Facebook page that they were planning trips to the record office, in some cases from very long distances, but simply didn’t know that it was closed. (One wonders how many have turned up in the last few months at the former record office in Parc Myrddin after lengthy journeys, scratched their heads, cursed the Council, and set off forlornly for home again?) Perhaps most concerning is the single sentence about the bulk of the collection, ‘Phase two of the work on the remaining material is currently underway‘, which gives no indication of duration and which is then ‘parked’ to concentrate on the ‘good news’ story about the family history service that the Council clearly wants to trumpet. (As I’ve suggested before, though, I wonder what the chances are of this apparently so-successful service surviving in the long term in addition to a new record office…?)

Secondly, I wrote some weeks ago to Linda Tomos, Director of CyMal (the Welsh Government’s Museums, Archives and Libraries arm), and Jeff James, Chief Executive of the National Archives of England and Wales and Keeper of the Public Records, the individuals who head the two organisations responsible for oversight of Carmarthenshire Archives. I posed three questions:

  1. Does your organisation propose to take any punitive action against Carmarthenshire County Council for its clear and demonstrable failure to safeguard these nationally important archives?
  2. Is your organisation engaging with, and exerting pressure on, the Council to expedite the cleaning of mould-damaged documents, with the aim of making them available to the public again as soon as possible? If so, are you satisfied with the response from the Council?
  3. Is your organisation engaging with, and exerting pressure on, the Council to identify an appropriate new site for a replacement record office as quickly as possible, and to ensure that such a site is in Carmarthenshire itself, not outside the county boundaries (as has been widely rumoured)? If so, are you satisfied with the response from the Council?

They have both now replied, and the substance of their replies follows. First, Linda Tomos of Cymal.

The delivery of an archive service is the responsibility of Carmarthenshire County Council. However, in the current circumstances specialist staff from the Museums, Archives, and Libraries Division (MALD) of the Welsh Government are working closely with officers in Carmarthenshire to support the authority to address the issues facing the service.

Measures are in place to stabilise the environmental conditions in the archive storage areas. With the co-operation of officers in Carmarthenshire, MALO staff are monitoring the conditions in the storage areas and providing advice on any actions required to prevent further deterioration in the condition of the collections. Regular on-site visits are being undertaken by a MALO official (an accredited Conservator).

The Authority has assured us that firm plans are now in place to ensure the uplift and removal of the archive collections for cleaning and decontamination by the end of December 2015. The Authority is also discussing with neighbouring and other archive services in Wales, interim arrangements for the storage of, and access to, the collections once they are free of mould. We expect that these arrangements will be finalised in coming weeks and that the Authority will make details of the arrangements publicly available as soon as possible afterwards.

Once the uplift is completed. cleaning and decontamination of the collection will commence. This is a major undertaking and we do not anticipate that the majority of collections will be available until sometime in 2016. To assist researchers, we are working with the Authority to identify and prioritise the most in-demand collections for cleaning and return.

In the meantime, you may be aware that some material has already been cleaned and taken to Glamorgan Archives in Cardiff for storage. We have asked the Authority to explore what measures can be put in place to allow access to this material as soon as possible. This is now well in hand.

The future location of the Carmarthenshire Archive Service is a matter for the local authority to determine. However, we do expect Carmarthenshire County Council to explore all of the available options for the effective and efficient delivery of an archive service. This includes the potential for a partnership arrangement, as well as the development of an independent facility within Carmarthenshire. This is based on our experience in Wales of successful and highly regarded services provided through joint arrangements between up to six local authorities, as well as by individual local authorities.

Any new arrangement will require the Authority to draw up and submit to the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism a revised scheme for archives to comply with s60 of the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994. The Authority would need to have regard to any advice that the Deputy Minister provided. The Deputy Minister would need to be satisfied that any proposals would enable the service to meet the Archive Service Accreditation Standard in relation to governance arrangements, collections care, access and user experience.

This letter provides significantly more clarity than the Council has provided about the current location, and schedule for cleaning, of the archive collection. However, CyMal’s evident liking for partnership schemes rings alarm bells; while it is true, for example, that the multiplicity of ‘county boroughs’ in the historic county of Glamorgan share two facilities, this is a consequence of very different historical and geographical circumstances, as is the situation in Powys. Not that a partnership is necessarily a bad thing per se; indeed, some might say that anything that results in the County Council having less direct control over the archives can only be a good thing. Ultimately, everything hinges on the question of location.

Next, the reply from Jeff James of the National Archives.

I would like to reassure you that I am aware of the issues facing Carmarthenshire Archives Service. To date, The National Archives has sought a commitment from the County Council that the archive collections will be cleaned, properly preserved and made available to the public. This is a significant task, however, for the Council and its staff. [Especially as the record office has always had too few staff – D]

A number of actions have been taken already in order to achieve these objectives and ensure that collections are safe and secure in the short term, whilst plans for tackling the immediate mould problem are developed and implemented. A proportion of the collection has already been removed and treated, with the aim of making it publicly available at an alternative location. It is my understanding that the access arrangements are currently being agreed.

I have been informed that plans are being finalised to remove the remainder of the collections for treatment, which should result in the completely cleaned collection being made publicly accessible during 2016. The National. Archives will continue to monitor the response of the County Council to the issues and work closely with the Museums Archives and Libraries Division of the Welsh Government, which is providing practical support.

The accommodation at Parc Myrddyn is no longer suitable for archival purposes [it never was! – D]; however, the choice of location for the Carmarthenshire Archives Service is a matter for the County Council. My role as Keeper of Public Records is to ensure that any new arrangements are sustainable and meet archive standards for a Place of Deposit under s.4(1) of the Public Records Act, as well as the Archive Service Accreditation standard. To achieve this, ·The National Archives will seek to work with Carmarthenshire County Council in exploring all options, including partnerships. A considered approach should help to establish and maintain a service that will be viable in the long-term, ensuring that the collection is accessible to the public and preserved for generations to come.

There’s the ‘P’ word again, which, as I’ve previously suggested in this blog, might be an euphemism for ‘Swansea’… On the other hand, one could hardly demur from the sentiments expressed in the final sentence, which surely ought to be the objective of everyone responsible for, or simply interested in, the future of Carmarthenshire Archives.

Significantly, both letters ignore my first question about possible punitive action against the Council; clearly, this is not on the agenda, although readers of this blog might well think that it should be. However, both letters are models of openness compared to the vagueness and obfuscation one encounters elsewhere, so I want to thank both Linda Tomos and Jeff James for their responses, and for replying to me in person, rather than delegating the replies to subordinates. Above all, both contain clear statements that the supervisory authorities expect the entire collection to be available for public viewing, albeit at a place or places to be decided, during 2016, a significantly clearer commitment than the Council has yet given. This is clearly something for all of us to monitor, and to hold the Council to account over if it fails to deliver.

More Spinned Against Than Spinning

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For those who are getting confused, I thought I’d provide a helpful guide to what Carmarthenshire County Council’s public statements regarding the archives situation actually mean. Please refer to this as and when attempts are made to spin against future posts on this blog, or when the Council puts out a story in the press.

 

Statement – ‘We are committed to the future of the archives’.

Meaning 1 – ‘Only because it’s a statutory duty, otherwise we’d have binned all that c**p years ago and got the Chief Executive a bigger car’.

Meaning 2 – ‘Which means we don’t have to talk about the complete shambles we’ve made of the past or present state of the archives’.

 

Statement – ‘Carmarthenshire is proud of its heritage’.

Meaning 1 – ‘Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas.’

Meaning 2 – ‘What, you mean there’s more?’

 

Statement – ‘We are actively seeking a location for a new record office in Carmarthenshire’.

Meaning 1 – ‘”Actively seeking” doesn’t mean we’re going to find one.’

And we all know what that means…

Meaning 2 – ‘Swansea. What d’you mean, Swansea isn’t in Carmarthenshire? If we say it is, then it is. Besides, people in Bynea, are you good with that? There, told you so.’

 

Statement – ‘We are working closely with the National Archives and CyMal’.

Meaning 1 – ‘This is because they’ve sent several burly men in dark suits and sunglasses who are standing over us as we type’.

Meaning 2 – ‘This is because they’re panicking that they’ll be implicated for not throwing the book at us earlier’.

 

Statement – ‘Look at the wonderful shiny family history outreach service that we’ve set up in local libraries!’

Meaning 1 – ‘Yes, sir, this really, really means that we’re fulfilling our statutory duties. Honest, sir.’

Meaning 2 – ‘Which we’ll shut down like a shot and conveniently forget about as and when a new record office opens. Fund enough staff to operate both? Are you having a laugh?’

 

Statement – ‘We resent these unfounded rumours.’

Meaning 1 – ‘In a year’s time, these will be called “the truth”’.

Meaning 2 – ‘They’re  “unfounded rumours” because we’re not prepared to tell you what’s really going on, which is actually significantly worse than anything you can possibly imagine’.

 

Finally, a thought – if the ‘county’ record office does end up in Swansea, minus many collections that might be withdrawn by anxious depositors, and with the same pitiful number of overstretched staff as at present, then the county council will have ensured that the ‘Carmarthenshire Archives Service’ becomes the present day equivalent of Voltaire’s definition of the Holy Roman Empire: not Holy, not Roman, and not an Empire.

 

 

 

 

Location, Location, Location

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I hadn’t intended to write another blog about the Carmarthenshire Archives situation for a while, but I’ve been overtaken by ‘events, dear boy, events’…

First, the good news: apparently Carmarthenshire county council intends to provide a page about the archives problem on its website, finally acknowledging the facts that [a] it actually holds such things as ‘documents’ that might be of interest to people called ‘historians’, and [b] there really is a problem with those documents. Of course, it will be a complete coincidence that this has only happened after the launch of an online campaign, and proof of the strength of popular feeling provided, for example, by the 1,000+ followers of the ‘Save Carmarthenshire Archives‘ Facebook page, with the many strongly-worded comments on it… I’ve assured the council that I’ll happily link to and publicise such a page once it exists, in the expectation that it will provide ‘clear, detailed and regularly updated information’ on the situation. Secondly, more good news: I’ve had confirmation from several sources that there are serious discussions about possible sites for a new county record office. This has pre-empted my intention to produce a list of helpful suggestions. After all, I’m pretty certain that all of the following would have better environmental conditions than the former county record office in Carmarthen: Hogwarts, the Roman gold mines at Dolaucothi, the vast warehouse that appears at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (after all, surely Indiana Jones was one of the Joneses of Brynamman?), the Millennium Stadium (roof shut, obviously), the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s 1984, my local pub, and Llaregyb Welfare Hall. I ruled out the National Assembly building in Cardiff, as that has severe problems with hot air.

Welcome to the new Carmarthenshire record office
Welcome to the new Carmarthenshire record office

Seriously, though, several sources have backed up the rumour that I reported in an earlier post, namely that the possibility of moving the archives to the Swansea University campus is a very strong runner. This makes sense on a number of levels: conditions there would be light years removed from the veritable squalor of the old county record office, while the pooling of the Carmarthenshire archives with those from the university (such as the Richard Burton papers) and from West Glamorgan would create a repository of national significance – and perhaps even provide the embryo of a ‘National Archives of Wales’ in due course. But as I’ve pointed out before, a move to Swansea would be a disaster from the point of view of those living in the west and north of the county, particularly those who have to rely on public transport. For those who don’t know the local geography, Swansea University’s main campus at Singleton is actually quite a way outside the city centre, and Swansea itself is about fifty miles away from the extremities of Carmarthenshire. Swansea is also in a different county, which would make Carmarthenshire, to the best of my knowledge, the only local authority in Britain outside of London not to have its archives housed within its borders (with the debatable exception of, umm, Rutland).

However, it seems that a second strong candidate for the new location is the former Royal Naval Stores Depot at Llangennech. At least some of the buildings there ought to have environmental controls that meet all required standards: as I pointed out in Britannia’s Dragon, this site housed pretty well all the twentieth century personnel records of the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force between 1991 and 2008, and one assumes – perhaps naively – that the Ministry of Defence, at least, knew what it was doing in such matters. But questions have been raised about the current ownership of the Llangennech site, and it, too, presents serious geographical issues, being in the extreme south-eastern corner of the county and difficult to access by public transport. On the other hand, access by car from many parts of Carmarthenshire would be excellent, as the site is literally just off the M4; parking would be much easier than at Swansea University; and there would be no issues with the dreaded Swansea rush hour. But all in all, this and other potential ‘out of town’ sites present real problems of access by environmentally-friendly and age-friendly means, and hardly fit well with the council’s stated desire to be ‘a leader in the field of sustainability…conserving the earth’s resources and protecting the environment’ (Carmarthenshire County Council, Annual Report 2014-15 and Improvement Plan for 2015-16).

Finally, two reports on the outbreak of mould in the Carmarthenshire archives have been released under previous Freedom of Information requests, and are in the public domain; these are dated 10 December 2013 and July 2014. Taken together, they make absolutely damning reading, making it perfectly clear that the county council continued for years to house the archives in a completely unsuitable building and displayed a cavalier disregard for the environmental conditions required to store archives properly, no doubt because of penny pinching over heating costs and building maintenance. I hope to be able to provide further information when I receive responses to the FoI requests I’ve lodged with the council.

(My thanks to Jacqui Thompson of the ‘Carmarthenshire Planning Problems‘ blog for originally linking to these reports, and to the anonymous filer of the FoI requests.)

The Power of the Internet

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A very quick update, particularly for anybody who follows this blog but isn’t on Facebook.

We’re just coming up to the one week anniversary of the ‘Save Carmarthenshire Archives’ campaign going live online, and we’ve just chalked up a remarkable milestone – 1,000 ‘likes’ on the Facebook page! This, and the hugely supportive comments both there and on this blog (including some from as far afield as Australia and New Zealand), really demonstrates the tremendous strength of feeling about this issue, and sends out a very powerful message to Carmarthenshire County Council. The campaign is also front page news in the current ‘hard copy’ issue of The Carmarthenshire Herald. So thank you, all!

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Unless something unexpected happens, I don’t anticipate blogging about the archives issue for the next 2-3 weeks, partly because of other commitments, partly because I’m now waiting for replies to correspondence and FoI requests. However, I do expect to be able to post some news about developments with my books during that period, so the next post or two will probably be about matters seventeenth century and naval!