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Welsh history

Ancient Wreck

03/04/2017 by J D Davies

To Wales for the weekend for my ‘big birthday’ (clue: I won’t see my twenties again – or several other decades, either). While there, we went for a bracing walk along Cefn Sidan beach, one of the relatively lesser known treasures of the Welsh coastline. By any measure, the beach is stunning in its own right – over seven miles of uninterrupted broad sands backed by a country park built on the site of an old WW1 and WW2 ordnance factory. But the feature that makes Cefn Sidan unique is the extraordinary profusion of visible wrecks, a reminder of its tragic history as a particularly dangerous stretch of coast. The prevailing sou’westerlies led many a ship to be blown off course into Carmarthen Bay, where the endlessly shifting sandbanks, notably the Carmarthen Bar, led to them ending up on Cefn Sidan. Local legend has it that many were lured there deliberately, too, by the wreckers who thronged this stretch of the coast – the Gwyr-y-Bwelli Bach, the people of the little hatchets. There’s an imaginative account of their activities here, although Adeline Coquelin was actually the niece of the Empress Josephine, not her husband Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Coquelin gravestone, Pembrey church

We did our walk during the couple of hours before low tide, and saw around half a dozen wrecks in that time, part buried in the sands. (Others, notably the iron ships Teviotdale and Craigwhinnie, and the huge Hamburg windjammer Paul, lie further out into the Gwendraeth estuary.) Several of the beach’s wrecks were exposed by the storms of 2014, having been buried for many years, and constant changes in the sands regularly unearth other remains. Sadly, though, none of the wrecks on the foreshore have been positively identified. It’s been suggested* that the first one, only some 800 metres from the main access point to the beach, is the wreck of the Brothers, barque rigged, built at Hull in 1822, and en route from Bahia to Liverpool when she came ashore on Cefn Sidan on 20 December 1833, perhaps due to the activities of the gwyr-y-gwelli bach. Personally, I have my doubts about this identification; the wreck seems simply too intact (relatively speaking) to be of that vintage. Another candidate is a French ship named the Marie Therese, lost in 1907, although I’ve not been able to trace much information about her. Maybe some of the sailing ship buffs and marine archaeologists who follow this blog might want to contribute their thoughts, based on the following photos!

The first of the Cefn Sidan Wrecks – but is it the Brothers, lost in 1833?
Another view of the same wreck
Final view of the same wreck – one for this blog’s many futtock fetishist followers
A much smaller but quite broad hulled wreck- maybe a coasting collier?
Another view of the same ship
Only a few score yards further lie these skeletal remains
…and immediately astern of the previous wreck lies this very small craft

 

*  Tom Bennett, Wrecks on Welsh Beaches (e-book available via Google Books)

Filed Under: Maritime history, Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: cefn sidan, Shipwrecks

Carmarthenshire Archives (and more) Revisited

13/03/2017 by J D Davies

Regular readers will remember that, some eighteen months ago, this site built up quite a head of steam about the dire state of Carmarthenshire’s county archives. To cut a long story short, a serious outbreak of mould was discovered in the strongrooms, leading to the closure of the record office, the records becoming completely unavailable (initially because of our old friend elf ‘n’ safety, then because they had to go away for cleaning), and serious suggestions that the county’s archives would end up in a shared facility completely outside the county, e.g. in Swansea. Obviously, this had a huge impact on those who wanted to work on the archives; and one of those, a normally mild-mannered historian who’d been researching the fascinating and eccentric Stepney baronets of Llanelli for many years, but whose book about them was now completely stymied by the closure, decided to investigate further. Following a crash course in Freedom of Information requests and the like, a sorry saga emerged of a local authority that, over many years, had simply refused to spend money on maintaining the correct conditions in the strongrooms, which blatantly ignored warnings from the national regulator, and which then simply didn’t communicate on any meaningful level with any of the stakeholders in the record office once the inevitable crisis developed. This all eventually got picked up by the press, and strange to say, the council then did begin to engage with those whose persistent requests for answers had fallen on deaf ears, most notably the Friends of the Archives, and to work towards a new facility in the county. For those interested in tracing the entire affair, or who are otherwise in a particularly masochistic mood, go to this website’s search facility on the main menu, type in ‘Carmarthenshire Archives’, and then follow through the sequence of posts.

Since then, things have been relatively quiet. The County Council committed itself to spending over £2 million on a new records office in the centre of Carmarthen, and that should be going ahead over the course of the next year or two. Meanwhile, the irreplaceable documents themselves are being cleaned, albeit at a staggering cost which would not have been necessary if the council had invested a tiny fraction of it in properly maintaining the archives over the last fifteen years or so. When they’ve completed the process, the documents are going to Glamorgan Archives in Cardiff and the Richard Burton Archives at Swansea University for temporary storage, and are being progressively made available once again for public access. For my part, I’ve been keeping my powder dry (and any further potential FoI requests, etc, on the back burner), giving the council the benefit of the doubt – and, if truth be told, my work schedule has militated against getting more actively involved.

The old bishops’ palace, home to Carmarthenshire county museum

Meanwhile, though, the wider heritage situation in Carmarthenshire has seen some dramatic changes. There’s also been considerable concern in recent years about – to give but two examples – the state of the county museum in the former bishop’s palace at Abergwili, and Parc Howard in Llanelli, where I spent many happy hours as a child. Abergwili is a marvellous museum, reflecting the county’s rich and remarkably varied history, and it’s in a historic building; William Laud, no less, lived there, as a did a later bishop, Lord George Murray, who invented the Admiralty shutter telegraph system used in the Napoleonic wars. (I wrote an article about him in the county’s outstanding local history journal, The Carmarthenshire Antiquary.) But chronic under-investment over many years, combined with under-staffing, led to serious issues with the fabric of the building, and questions over the future of the collection. Parc Howard, which was gifted to the people of Llanelli by my old ‘friends’ the Stepney family, contains the town’s museum, but for as long as I can remember, it’s been under-publicised (not even signposted from the main road) and consequently under-visited.

The conjunction of all these concerns led a like-minded group of individuals to come together to see if something could be done. These are people who have had many years’ experience of working or volunteering in various heritage sectors, plus the odd stray blogger-cum-mild-mannered-historian, and they organised a series of meetings open to all interested parties. Many representatives of local groups throughout Carmarthenshire came along, demonstrating a real depth of interest and concern, and to cut a long story short, out of this emerged the Carmarthenshire Heritage Group, a properly constituted ‘umbrella’ group which has been engaging with the council and trying to raise awareness. Toward the latter end, this group now has a Facebook page, which has ‘inherited’ the old one called ‘Save Carmarthenshire Archives’, which I ran, and I’d strongly urge anyone who’s interested or concerned to ‘like’ us there! (A new Twitter account will also come on stream soon.)

Parc Howard mansion and grounds, Llanelli

The good news is that there’s been some positive movement. At Abergwili, for example, substantial funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund will see major work on the grounds to transform them as part of the exciting ‘Tywi Gateway’ project, and remedial work will also be carried out on the building. The council has also appointed a museums development manager, and seems at the moment to be bucking the nationwide trend of closures and rundowns. The future of Parc Howard, though, remains uncertain, following botched attempts to involve commercial organisations in developing it as a wedding venue, real concern about future access to the museum collection, and questions about how sensitive any developments at this much-loved site will be. Meanwhile, too, there remains uncertainty about other heritage sites in the county, not all the direct responsibility of the council, such as the former Gelli Aur mansion and country park in the Tywi valley.

As for the archives, while all might be well in the medium to long term, the short term situation remains unsatisfactory. Although I haven’t worked on the records that have become available after cleaning, I know someone who has; and according to this contact, accessing Carmarthenshire’s records can involve a fraught saga of contact details that don’t work, a lengthy journey to Glamorgan Record Office (which is well outside the centre of Cardiff, and thus very difficult to reach by public transport), and dealing with staff who, naturally, aren’t familiar with the Carmarthenshire materials. Admittedly, things might improve somewhat when more of the records are available in Swansea…but somehow, I can’t see myself completing the Stepney book any time soon (also in part, of course, because people keep signing me up to write fiction, and with the best will in the world, that pays rather better!)

To end, though, on a really upbeat note – I was astonished and delighted to learn that Llanelli library, where I basically self-taught myself my initial historical research skills, is in the top three of the entire country for loans made … At a time when libraries are being closed left right and centre, partly by local authorities using the specious grounds that ‘nobody uses them any more’ in order to cut costs, it’s pleasing to see that Llanelli is bucking the trend. Maybe one day, too, I’ll go in there and see some annoying bespectacled twelve year old demanding to see the latest edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships…and at that moment, I’ll know that my work here is done.

 

(NB all views expressed in this post are entirely personal, and do not necessarily represent those of the Carmarthenshire Heritage Group.)

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: Carmarthenshire Archives, carmarthenshire heritage group, Carmarthenshire Museums

On This Spot, In 1753, Nothing Happened. Or Alternatively, It Did. [Rebooted]

06/03/2017 by J D Davies

Ridiculously busy ATM as I enter the home straight with the new Quinton novel, The Devil Upon the Wave, and try to finish off a couple of other commitments ASAP too, so a re-blog this week of a post from the relatively early days of this site, back in January 2013. However, this has regained its contemporary resonance thanks to the current presence on TV of an adaptation of Len Deighton’s alternative history novel, SS-GB…and in an age of ‘alternative facts’, alternative history is arguably more popular, and certainly more pertinent, than ever. Indeed, I really want to have a crack at writing some myself one day, although convincing my agent and publisher is taking a little doing! So let’s go back to those innocent days of January 2013, when Barack Obama was about to be sworn in for his second term…(and there’s a piece of alternative history for my American friends straight away – what if the twenty-second amendment had never been passed?)

***

I’ve just finished reading one of my Christmas presents, C J Sansom’s alternative history novel Dominion. This is set in 1952, but a very different 1952: Lord Halifax, rather than Churchill, becomes Prime Minister in 1940 and sues for peace after Dunkirk, as a result of which Hitler obtains a free hand in Europe while giving Britain similar carte blanche in its Empire, the arrangement which Hitler always said he wanted. So by 1952, Britain is ruled by a vicious right-wing regime headed by Lord Beaverbrook, with Oswald Mosley as Home Secretary and Enoch Powell as India Secretary. (Having pretty much started my research on the 17th century navy thirty-plus years ago by reading Sir Arthur Bryant’s classic Pepys trilogy, I particularly loved Sansom’s throwaway line that the ‘Fascist fellow traveller’ Bryant was now education minister.) Churchill is leading an increasingly widespread and successful armed resistance, while in Berlin, Hitler is dying of Parkinson’s disease, and in Washington, Adlai Stevenson has just become President after twelve years of a Republican, isolationist White House. Sansom’s creation of this alternative world is remarkably impressive, his attention to detail quite extraordinary – for example, as someone who’s spent many hours working at the Institute of Historical Research in London University’s Senate House, I loved the idea of it having been taken over by the German Embassy (ambassador – Erwin Rommel), with Gestapo torture cells in the basement where I used to thumb through the 17th and 18th century editions of the London Gazette. Having said that, I thought that the plot itself was a bit disappointing – a massive and distinctly unlikely coincidence followed by a fairly conventional chase thriller and a somewhat flat ending. Overall, though, I enjoyed it a great deal, principally because of its brilliant depiction of a chillingly plausible alternate reality, and thought I’d use it as a launch pad in this blog for some thoughts about alternative histories and their validity.

Before I do so, however, I want to comment on what is, in some respects, the most remarkable thing about Dominion, namely Sansom’s author’s note. Much of this is taken up by a lengthy, vitriolic and highly personal attack on the Scottish National Party and its leader, Alec Salmond. This seems bizarre on several levels. While the excesses of nationalism certainly form one of the central themes of the book, Scotland plays only a small and tangential part in the plot; while one wonders how on earth Sansom’s publisher let his rant see the light of day, given its likely effect on sales north of the border. (Equating Scottish nationalists, even if only implicitly, with German nationalists wearing SS uniforms and Mosley’s Blackshirts,  is hardly likely to be classed as a PR triumph.) Whether authors should use their notes as bully pulpits in this way is a moot point, of course. Sansom had put across the point that ‘nationalism = bad’ clearly enough in the book, including the odd side-swipe at the SNP, so on one level, spelling it out in such an explicit way in an author’s note as well might be considered excessive, and perhaps even patronising to a readership who are assumed to be too lumpen to pick up on the (already not particularly subtle) anti-nationalism message in the novel itself. Moreover, I don’t recall George Orwell feeling the need to hammer home the message that ‘totalitarianism = bad’ in separate author’s notes tacked on to the ends of 1984 or Animal Farm; his texts alone spelled out the message, in the most powerful manner imaginable. Surely if one wants to get a message across in a novel, the novel itself should do the talking? For what it’s worth, you’ll never get an overt political message in any of my books, certainly not in any of the novels (although I have to admit that I’ve taken a few juicy swipes at Welsh local authorities and politicians of all persuasions in my forthcoming book, Britannia’s Dragon); I might explain the reasons why in a future post!

***

Alternative history has a long and respectable pedigree, its offshoot ‘counterfactual history’ a rather shorter but even more respectable one. The difference between the two is explained concisely by an entry in the much-maligned Wikipedia, but to over-simplify outrageously, historians write counterfactual history, and tend to do so as a fun exercise, while novelists write alternative history, and tend to do so to push deeply serious agendas. Many highly distinguished historians contributed ‘counterfactual’ essays to such books as What If? and Virtual History, both published in 2000, while one of my favourite examples of the genre is the brilliant essay by Geoffrey Parker, one of the historians I respect the most, on what might have happened if the Spanish Armada had won – an alternative history also beloved of novelists, most notably in Keith Roberts’ brilliant Pavane. My first introduction to the genre was reading, as a teenager, Winston Churchill’s famous essay on what might have happened if Lee had won at Gettysburg, which opened my eyes to the fundamental truth that many of the great events of history turn upon the very smallest matters of chance and sheer luck. From time to time over the years, I’d dabble in other examples of the genre. For example, the only Kingsley Amis book I’ve ever read is his relatively little-known alternative history novel, The Alteration, which proceeds from the assumption that Catherine of Aragon gave Henry VIII a son, so the Reformation never happened, so twentieth century Britain was still Catholic. But without the challenge of the Reformation, Catholicism – as in Pavane – has remained repressive and hostile to scientific advance; for example, electricity is banned, but great airships cross the Atlantic thanks to sophisticated use of compressed air. The Alteration – the title is a double meaning, the main plot focusing on a struggle to prevent a boy soprano being castrated to preserve his voice – illustrates an important point about alternative history fiction, which is that it’s really a form of alternative science fiction; the difference being that whereas SF takes its starting point as now, alternative history places its starting point somewhere in the past and projects forward from there. In that sense, it’s essentially a literary version of steampunk!

Moreover, the distinctions between the various genres have always been blurred. It could even be argued that all historical fiction is ‘alternative history’ – no historical novel can ever be 100% ‘accurate’, so it’s bound to be presenting an alternative, at least partly imaginary version of the past. A good example of the blurring might be a book like Saki’s When William Came, published in 1913, which I’ve been reading on my Kindle. At the time of publication, it was a deliberately frightening vision of Britain under the rule of a victorious Kaiser, so essentially a work of ‘science fiction’; now, it reads as an alternative history, a sort of Dominion of its day. As such, it’s an example of one of the most useful and important aspects of alternative history, its ability to get us thinking about uncomfortable truths that might have been swept under the carpet by the actual outcome of events. Dominion is very good at bringing this out, thus placing it squarely in the tradition of other accounts of imagined occupations, such as When William Came, Owen Sheers’ Resistance, the classic 1942 movie Went The Day Well? and one of my favourite cult films, the underrated Devil Ship Pirates. So Sansom’s Britons of 1952 are divided between the resisters, those who wish to stay out of politics, and those who admire Nazi Germany and positively relish the opportunity to give free rein to their anti-Semitism and other prejudices. The experience of occupied France and the Channel Islands suggests that this is how things were bound to have been if Britain had lost the war, but it still makes uncomfortable reading.

Some historians still get very stuffy about alternative and counterfactual history, claiming that anything not firmly grounded on documentary evidence isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Personally, I find this attitude terribly blinkered. Of course, good historical writing has to be grounded in fact, based on careful analysis of reliable sources, but to take imagination out of history is rather like draining the colour from a Brueghel painting. In a nutshell, how can we possibly understand the past properly without trying to reconstruct the alternative futures that people living at a particular time imagined might lie ahead of them, or without attempting to get some sort of understanding of their hopes and fears of those futures? To take just one example, let’s consider an event that’s been used as the basis for more than one alternative history book. Let’s imagine that Bonnie Prince Charlie won in 1745, and what might have followed from his victory. A Catholic restoration, probably; but what else? Purges and retribution from above, collaboration and resistance from below – or tolerance, reconciliation and a golden age, as Sir Charles Petrie’s fanciful alternative history suggested? Perhaps a power struggle between the pragmatic Charles on the one hand and his more rigid father and brother on the other? The arrival of a French army to bolster the insecure Jacobite regime? The end of burgeoning democratic institutions such as Parliament and a free press, perhaps – and what might the impact have been on American colonies still thirty years away from asserting their independence? Would they have become independent at all if there was no Seven Years War between King James III & VIII and his staunch ally Louis XV? Going down this road and trying to construct an image of the sort of state, or states, that the Jacobites might have created in Britain is an important exercise, because it allows us a glimpse into the mental world of the Georgians who were petrified by the prospect of a Jacobite victory; therefore, an imaginary reconstruction of what a Jacobite Britain might have looked like can give us a better understanding of why people opposed it so vehemently. (If anyone wants proof that contemporaries really did speculate about the nature of a Jacobite future, have a look at Daniel Defoe’s And What If the Pretender Should Come?, published in 1713.)

Moreover, a totally rigid adherence to the random survivals that constitute what we call the ‘historical record’ – what Thomas Carlyle, a century and a half ago, rightly called ‘dry as dust’ history – has led many historians to fall into the trap of believing in a teleological vision of the past, which comes to be seen as an inevitable progression towards a particular outcome. The Whig and Marxist interpretations of history are classic examples of this, but so too are some of the more exaggerated manifestations of the doctrine of American Exceptionalism and (here I’ll agree with Sansom, up to a point) some of the ways in which the histories of Scotland, Ireland and Wales have been mangled to serve particular agendas. When writing the ‘medieval’ section of Britannia’s Dragon, for instance, it became clear to me that the traditional picture of poor, weak, divided Wales facing inevitable defeat against the far more powerful English juggernaut is a false construct, created by historians who saw Welsh history exclusively in terms of an unequal relationship between just two clearly defined modern countries, England and Wales, and projected that relationship back into the past. (Not just Welsh historians with chips on their shoulders, either; the idea of the inevitability and rightness of English expansionism still has a powerful influence on English attitudes to history, including a markedly malevolent one on the extreme right.) In fact, the story of Anglo-Welsh relations from about 900 to 1400 needs to be seen in the broader context of the whole Irish Sea, with the complex power balance between the northern Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd, the southern one of Deheubarth, England (itself not as monolithic as sometimes assumed), the Dublin Norse, the native Irish, the Manx, the Scots and above all the Norse in the Hebrides, being critical to Welsh prospects of remaining independent, and the Battle of Largs (1263), when the Norse of the Isles were decisively defeated by the Scots, as a crucial factor in indirectly determining the fate of Wales. One of my favourite books of last year, which I mentioned on this blog almost exactly a year ago, was Norman Davies’s Vanished Kingdoms, a brilliant study of some of the lost states of Europe, which took the line that there was nothing ‘inevitable’ about those states’ disappearance and the survival of the ones which we have today, arguing that the obsessive concentration of historians on the development of the surviving modern states alone seriously distorts historical realities.

Of course, there are dangers to alternative history, too. At the more harmless end of the scale, the internet is full of discussion forums, Wikis and so forth, where people with too much time on their hands create elaborate edifices of the imagination; for instance, while researching Britannia’s Dragon I came across a staggeringly detailed account of the ‘Royal Welsh navy’ (yes, complete with aircraft carriers and submarines), the Wales in question having successfully regained its independence under Owain Glyndwr in the fifteenth century. But it’s only a relatively short step from such innocuous pastimes to preferring the alternative history to the real one; witness the ‘Confederate’ mentality which can’t really accept that the South lost the Civil War, or the ‘Braveheart’ school of Scottish history. (OK, another point where I don’t entirely disagree with C J Sansom.) And that, in turn, is only a relatively short step away from the conspiracy theory mentality which holds that what we’re experiencing is the false, alternative history, while the real truth of what happened in key events – JFK, 9/11, etc etc – is being kept from us.

I thought I’d finish with the one and only piece of alternative history I’ve ever written; or at least, written to date, as putting this blog together has whetted my appetite to write more! This was the opening of my essay on ‘James II, William of Orange and the Admirals’, published in By Force or By Default? The Revolution of 1688-9, published in 1989.

Imagine an alternative 5 November 1688. Almost at the moment that the vanguard of William of Orange’s invading army sets foot on the sands of Bridlington Bay, the mastheads of the English fleet are sighted, closing rapidly in line of battle from the south-east. The Dutch fleet, trapped between the enemy and a lee shore, and hampered by the need to defend several hundred transports clustered in the bay, struggles vainly to gain sea room. The battle is short, sharp, and decisive; by nightfall, most of the Dutch transports are ablaze and the shattered remnant of the escorting fleet is heading in disarray for Holland, bearing aboard it a sadder, wiser and disheartened Prince of Orange.

When news of the crushing victory reached Whitehall, James II gave orders for a Te Deum to celebrate the triumph of his fleet and the preservation of his throne. Provincial noblemen returned, dispirited, to their estates, and prepared to draft loyal addresses congratulating the king on his victory; colonels hastily burned incriminating correspondence and ordered their regiments to give three huzzahs for King James and the Prince of Wales; Anglican clerics agonised over drafts of sermons which would try to show that such a clear manifestation of God’s providence was not proof that He was, after all, a Roman Catholic God; and generations of historians yet unborn were condemned to spend their professional lives considering just why James II had such unanimous support from the political nation in 1688.

Filed Under: Fiction, Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: Alternative history, C J Sansom, Counterfactual History, jacobites

An Investigation into Welsh involvement in the ‘Protestant’ side of the Thirty Years’ War

12/09/2016 by J D Davies

This week, I’m delighted to welcome a guest blogger to the site! Victoria Yee of the University of St Andrews has uncovered some fascinating material about the Welsh involvement in the Thirty Years War. This is a conflict that’s always fascinated me – indeed, I taught it for a time, to A-level students – so I’m really pleased to be able to facilitate this.

***

Traditionally it has been assumed that the British in general played an unimportant role in the international conflict of the Thirty Years’ War, recent scholarship, notably from Steve Murdoch, however, has overturned that assumption.[1] The role of the Welsh, however, is still one which is often still overlooked or assumed to be negligible. Once one begins looking, however, it becomes obvious that there is a much greater contribution than might have been imagined.

There has been almost nothing written on this topic in the past save one article, written more than forty years ago.[2] What is possible here is merely a brief analysis, compared both to the amount of source material and to the research that still can and should be done on the topic.

The Welsh and the English are often considered together as a result of Wales being a principality of the English crown. However, the Welsh were not English: their customs, history and, above all their language can attest to that. Ordinary foot soldiers of non-noble birth perhaps could not even communicate with their English counterparts. Therefore it  seems only right to investigate their contribution separately.

There are, however, many difficulties in researching specifically the Welsh in the seventeenth century. Most prominent is that, for many commentators, the identifier “English” may be applied to a Welshman with just as much validity as “Welsh”. Furthermore, names can often be misleading as to nationality as well as being adapted or misunderstood in different national contexts: for example, Pierre la Boorre, mentioned in a document in the Rotterdam Archive, might be mistaken for a Frenchman if not specifically identified as a “Walsman” [‘Welshman’].[3] Conversely, there are also those with names which appear to be of Welsh origin who in fact are Scottish or English such as William Gwyn who’s name was actually Gunn and he came from the Highlands. It must be admitted that in writing on this topic, it has been necessary to make some assumptions of nationality based on names; while generally accurate there is a considerable margin for error which must be kept in mind.

***

It is possible to see a significant contribution from the Welsh in many of the European conflicts of the age which has been largely underappreciated heretofore. For example, Jacob Matheusz (probably a Dutch transcription of the surname ‘Matthews’), originally from Cardiff, is recorded to have died participating in the siege of ‘s-Hertogenbosch of 1629  during the Eighty Years’ War,[4] two brothers from Wales are said to have served in Sweden’s campaigns against Russia in 1609-1610,[5]  and there also appears to have been a great number of Welsh soldiers who participated in the wars in France and the religious wars in the Netherlands.[6] Closer to home, there have been some indications that the Welsh military presence in Ireland was impressively substantial: it has been calculated that in the seven years between 1595 and 1602 Wales sent 8,241 men over to Ireland.[7] The sheer volume of soldiers recruited for service in Ireland may indeed have had something to do with proximity, but nonetheless, this, taken with evidence of Welsh involvement in many other European conflicts of the time, paints a picture of a valued and experienced military contingent coming from the Welsh counties.

This is further supported by the research conducted on the Welsh in the Civil Wars in Britain which took place during the time of the Thirty Years’ War which depict the Welsh as loyal and fierce fighters.[8] Even their women were seen as fierce fighters, with one commentator fearing that there were Welsh women among a royalist force with “knives neere half a yard long, to effect some notable massacres with.”[9] Indeed, their value is shown by the fact that there appear to have been several Welshmen entrusted with high positions of authority on both sides of the Civil War with, for example, John Jones of Maes-y-Garnedd, serving as a colonel for the Parliamentarians[10] and Sir Henry Stradling of St Donat’s, Glamorgan, appointed by the Earl of Newcastle as the Royalist governor of the castle, city and citadel of Carlisle and commander of the foot brigades there, under Colonel Gray.[11] The faith in both Welsh soldiers and commanders perhaps indicates a certain level of military experience previous to the wars on British soil, perhaps gained in the Thirty Years’ War.

Indeed, it is clear that there was extensive recruiting taking place in Wales for soldiers for the Thirty Years’ War, although the records have not been fully investigated. There is a brief mention of a levy in a passage from the Acts of the Privy Council of England on the 8th of June 1630: “his Majestie hath beene graciously pleased to give permission to our verie good Lord the Lord [James] Marquis Hamilton for the levying and transporting of six thousand English Voluntiers, to be imployed in the service of the King of Sweden” which includes permission for Captain Roger Powell and Captain John Powell to recruit soldiers in Monmouth, Glamorgan, Carmarthen, Brecknock (Brecon) and Montgomery as well as permission for a Lieutenant Colonel Sir William Valentine  to recruit in Brecknock, Cardigan, Radnor and Pembroke.[12] Similarly, there also appears to be a commission issued to a Captain Thomas Davies, written in Dutch, to recruit men from Wales for service in the Dutch Republic.[13] Additionally, there is a letter from the Privy Council to John Egerton, the Earl of Bridgewater in 1635 which instructs him to raise “sixe hundrede & fourty footemen” with an attached list of places in which he was to recruit; for example, ninety men should come from Carmarthen, seventy from Flint and one hundred and fifty from Glamorgan among several other Welsh counties.[14]

Although it has been difficult to confirm the arrival of these troops on the continent, there is plenty of evidence that there were certainly Welsh soldiers who did arrive. For example, Laurence Howell is listed as a captain in Danish service,[15] while Robert Ellice is said to have served under Gustav II Adolf during the Thirty Years’ War[16] and Listian Owen is recorded to have served under Robert Stuart, also in Swedish service.[17] There also some wonderfully unmistakable Welsh names which appear in the muster rolls in Sweden, for example, Lewis Ap Hugh who served in William Ramsay’s company in 1629.[18] Most of the Welsh soldiers serving in Sweden, however, seem to have served in the regiment of George Fleetwood: to name but a few, these include, Walter Jones, a drummer,[19] Thomas Wynne, a reformado Ensign[20] and Thomas Edwards, a Lieutenant under Fleetwood between 1629-32.[21] Fleetwood’s regiment, indeed, were present at many of the decisive battles of Thirty Years’ War: having fought at Stralsund in 1628 in Danish service, the regiment then transferred into Swedish service, where they participated in the invasion of Pomerania and at several important battles in German lands, such as the Battle of Frankfurt an der Oder in 1631 and the Battle of Breitenfeld later in the same year. Furthermore, although Fleetwood departed in September 1635, it has been argued that the regiment itself stayed in Sweden and became integrated into the Army of the Wesser, meaning that the Welshmen in the army in all likelihood also took part in the Battle of Wittstock in and the siege of Leipzig both in 1636.[22]

Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau's painting of a scene from one of the great battles of the Thirty Years War, Rocroi 1643
Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau’s painting of a scene from one of the great battles of the Thirty Years War, Rocroi 1643

The most famous Welshman of the war merits his own discussion, however. Sir Charles Morgan of Pencarn, a related branch of the Morgans of Tredegar, had an extensive military career, spending much time in Dutch service[23] as well as famously taking a regiment of around 6,000 men to aid Christian IV’s campaigns in Germany even though it arrived after the battle of Lütter in 1626 and was therefore, from Christian’s point of view, too late.  He continued to fight for the Danes until he was forced to surrender the garrison of Stade to General Tilly in 1628. While it is significant in itself that a Welshmen was of such a high rank and making a decisive difference in the course of the war, it is also important to note that many of the soldiers in his command were likely to be of Welsh extraction also. Most notably, Colonel Thomas Davies of Gwysaney, Flintshire who wrote that “all our kindred are well that are with me” referring to his comrades from Flintshire,[24] implying that there were many more Welshmen serving in Charles Morgan’s regiment than the surviving records can specifically name, indeed it is plausible that some may even have followed him back into Dutch service following the Danish exit from the conflict.

Moreover, in Monro’s famous account of the Thirty Years’ War,  Sir Francis Trafford’s company in Danish are specifically identified as “being Welsh” and serving with their Scottish comrades[25] Far from being uninvolved militarily, then, it seems that there were Welshmen present at many of the crucial battles of the Thirty Years’ War; and certainly they seem to have been present in not only Dutch service, which had a previous history of Anglo(including Welsh)-Dutch military forces, but also in both Danish and Swedish service as well.

Aside from the military sphere, there is also evidence of Welsh participation in many other aspects of the Thirty Years’ War. Information is harder to come by for these aspects, however, which means that this section is more cursory out of necessity rather than by choice.

Although there is distinctly less primary evidence readily available for the naval sphere than for the military sphere, there are some tantalising indications that there may have been a more substantial Welsh naval contribution than may be apparent at first. There are indeed some indications from the Civil War period that the Welsh participated in a naval capacity: for example, Sir Henry Stradling, mentioned above, was appointed the Vice-Admiral in 1642 of the ships which were sent “to lie upon the Coast of Ireland.”[26] Most of the references to Welsh seamen, however, are in relation to the Dutch East and West India Companies, as both sailors and soldiers. For example, to name but a few, there are references to an Evert Jorisz (possibly Morris), Eduart Price Rednocher  and Jan Morgam all of Wales (described as being Wales in England) who, among others, were ready to pledge their service to the Dutch East or West India Companies.[27] Although these sailors were not directly involved in the Thirty Years’ War, it can be argued that they had an impact on the events of the war: these trading companies proved crucial to funding the war effort of the Dutch Republic and contributed significantly to their power and prestige in the world.[28] Furthermore, it has been suggested that during the course of the Thirty Years’ War “Asia became a major theatre of battle as each side sought to disrupt the trade of the other.”[29]

There are also indications that the Welsh were involved in the political and diplomatic sphere of the Thirty Years’ War, although here, it must be admitted that their involvement seems less crucial, with most occupying lower positions or playing more peripheral roles. For example, Richard Mostyn is noted to have accompanied Prince Charles along with Buckingham to Spain for the attempted Spanish Match[30] and James Howell, who is listed as a secretary to Leicester in 1632 during his embassy to Denmark and can be found in correspondence organising his travel.[31] Similarly, a Thomas Jones was recorded as a servant of Robert Anstruther accompanying him on his diplomatic missions in 1627; he is given permission in February of 1627 by the Privy Council to “crosse the seas into the Lowe Countryes” taking “three trunks for their master.”[32] The exception to this perhaps is Sir Sackville Trevor, whose actions may indeed have changed the course of British history when, having accompanied Charles to Spain in 1623, he is alleged to have rescued the prince from drowning in Cadiz harbour.[33]

There is naturally also political involvement in any decision made by Parliament through the presence of Welsh Members of Parliament. Following the Acts of Settlement, each county and shiretown in Wales obtained a Member of Parliament (except for Merioneth which had no borough MPs and Monmouthshire which had two knights of the shire) and, following the appointment of a Member of Parliament to Haverfordwest in 1543, Wales had a total of twenty-seven MPs.[34] Even though this provision was less than the number of MPs supplied for English counties it is important that there was still Welsh representation in Parliament and therefore a contribution towards political decisions made regarding the war on the continent as well as in domestic affairs of the time. A certain level of engagement and interest is certainly visible among the Welsh MPs; most notably Herbert of Cherbury, who wrote extensively on the events of the Thirty Years’ War and other conflicts of the day, particularly writing on the Expedition to the Isle de Rhé.[35] The Wynn family also keep up an interest in events as they developed on the continent; for example, Sir Richard Wynn writes in June 1621 to inform his father that “the King and Queen of Boehmia are still at the Hage [Hague] to the great dishonour of our nacion” and that “the king of france has a great armie going towards Rochell the only strong towne the protestantes hold in france.”[36] It is certainly evident from these letters that there is not only an interest but an involvement and concern for the events unfolding on the continent; they are not the letters of a mere casual observer.

Furthermore, there is evidence that there was a certain amount of arms manufacturing located within the Welsh counties. Although much of this evidence comes from the Civil War period, there are a few indications that these industries may have been in place prior to the outbreak of Civil War and may therefore have been in use for the Thirty Years’ War. For example, Oliver Cromwell writes to the Committee of Carmarthen in 1648 informing them that he desired that “we may have your furtherance and assistance in procuring some necessaries to be cast in the Iron-furnaces in your county of Carmarthen, which will the better enable us to reduce the Town and Castle of Pembroke.”[37] This explicitly informs us that an iron-furnace which could be used to cast “Shells for our Mortarpiecce,” “cannon-shot” and “culverin-shot” was in existence prior to the Civil War.[38] Similarly, it is recorded that in 1643 Robert Dolben was tasked with manufacturing gunpowder in North Wales, [39] while a Captain John Young and his associates were appointed gunpowder makers in Glamorgan.[40] Peter Edwards suggests that these furnaces were in place beforehand and were simply repurposed as Royalists were pushed south: the Royalists were able to utilise “a number of ironworking sites that could be geared up to produce ordnance and munitions,”[41] implying that these were working centres of ironmaking before the Civil War. Indeed, Morgan Rees argues that the centres of the iron industry, Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, were established during the second half of the sixteenth century, estimating that blast furnaces and forges began to appear in the Taff Valley sometime between 1564 and 1600.[42] Although it is unsure whether the purpose of these foundries was to produce arms and ammunition it is certainly a possibility that they did. The development of this industry also meant that the iron created in Wales could be conveyed to other areas of Europe; although Rees suggests that, certainly before the Thirty Years’ War, the iron was mainly distributed to various places within the British Isles rather than abroad.[43]

Overall, the evidence presented here gives an indication of the extent of Welsh involvement in almost every sphere of the Thirty Years’ War from soldiers of all levels of seniority to political involvement both in Parliament and accompanying diplomatic missions abroad. Although the sheer numbers of Welshmen involved with the wars in central Europe are likely to be less than the numbers of Scots or even, perhaps, English, what can be demonstrated is that they should not be ignored or generalised away entirely. This research should be seen as a starting point for a reassessment of the role of the Welsh in the seventeenth century political world. For too long the Welsh have been assumed to have been merely spectators, if they were aware of what was happening at all. The sources thoroughly disprove this: not only were there many Welshmen who took an interest in the events of the day and took the time to write letters to friends and relatives to discuss them, but there were also many who were deeply involved with the events themselves, with many even participating in the most crucial battles of the war. Indeed, it has only been able to touch upon the Protestant side, and indeed there is likely to be much more to be said on Welsh involvement in the Catholic armies.[44] The work of a reassessment of the significance of Welsh participation is, by no means, complete, and there remains much scope for future research.

 

Victoria Yee

University of St Andrews

 

 

[1] See for example Marks, Adam, England, The English and the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), phd thesis, (St Andrews, 2012)  and Murdoch, Steve (ed.), Scotland and The Thirty Years’ War 1618-1648, (Leiden, 2001.

[2] Tucker, Norman, ‘Volunteers in the Thirty Years’ War’, National Library of Wales Journal, Vol 16, no. 1. (1969).

[3] Stadsarchief Rotterdam, ONA Rotterdam, 190/37/53

[4] A document in the Rotterdam Archive records his brother as co-heir along with his widow: “Antony Matheusz van Kaerdif, gelegen in Wals Engelandt, broer van wijlen Jacob Matheusz, gesneuveld in het leger voor ‘s-Hartogenbosch, als diens mede-erfgenaam, en Janneken Gillisdr van der Goude, weduwe van de overledene”, ONA Rotterdam, 184, 88/157.

[5] SSNE nos. 1401 and 1402

[6] See Trim, David J. B., Fighting ‘Jacob’s Wars’. The Employment of English and Welsh Mercenaries in the European Wars of Religion: France and the Netherlands, 1562, 1610, PhD Thesis, King’s College, University of London (2002), p. 336.

[7] Morgan, Rhys, From Soldier to Settler: The Welsh in Ireland, 1558-1641, PhD Thesis, (Cardiff, 2011), p. 26.

[8] See for example, Evans, Robin, ‘The ‘Loyal Unknown Soldier’: Wales and the English Civil War’, History Review, no. 53, (December 2005).

[9] 31st March, 1643, Ingler, William, Certaine informations from Severall parts of the kingdome, <http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search/full_rec?EeboId=53403815_155795&ACTION=ByID&SOURCE=pgimages.cfg&ID=53403815&FILE=..%2Fsession%2F1461506520_25935&SEARCHSCREEN=CITATIONS&VID=155795&PAGENO=4&ZOOM=75&VIEWPORT=&CENTREPOS=&RESULTCLICK=&GOTOPAGENO=&ZOOMLIST=75&ZOOMTEXTBOX=&SEARCHCONFIG=var_spell.cfg&DISPLAY=param%28DISPLAY%29>, p. 87

[10] Jones, John Graham, The History of Wales, (Cardiff, 2014), p. 81.

[11] Glamorgan Archives, D/DXGC/109/1 and D/DXGC/109/2.

[12] Acts of the Privy Council of England, Vol 43, (1630-1631), <https://tannerritchie.com/shibboleth/memso/browser.php?bookid=1655>, pp. 376-7.

[13] Mentioned in Tucker, ‘Volunteers’, p. 62.

[14] National Library of Wales MS 9062E/1622

[15] SSNE no. 212.

[16] See the Dictionary of Welsh Biography entry: <http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-ELLI-ROB-1640.html>.

[17] SSNE no. 3238.

[18] Krigsarkivet, Rullor 18, 1629, ff. 229-230

[19] Krigsarkivet, Rullor 1631, Preussen feb. vol 13 among others.

[20] Krigsarkivet, Rullor, 1630, Preussen, Okt, vol 31 among others. .

[21] Marks, Adam, England, The English and the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), phd thesis, (St Andrews, 2012), appendix 7, p 198.

[22] Marks, The English and the Thirty Years’ War, appendix 8, p. 201; cf. SSNE no. 2208.

[23] See SSNE no. 89.

[24] NLW MSS 1593E

[25] Brockington, William S. (ed.), Monro, His Expedition with the Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-Keys, (Connecticut, 1999), p. 96.

[26] Rushworth, John, Historical Collections Containing the Principal Matters which Happened from the Meeting of the Parliament, November the 3rd, 1640 to the end of the year 1644, (London), Volume IV, part three, p. 777.

[27] ONA Rotterdam, 293, 50/64; ONA Rotterdam, 373, 57/120; ONA Rotterdam, 302, 96/198.

[28]For a discussion of the reasons for the origins of the Dutch East India Company see Enthoven, Murdoch and Williamson , The Navigator, (Leiden, 2010), pp. 4; 59 cf. Boxer, C. R., The Dutch Seaborn Empire, 1600-1800, (Middlesex, 1973), p. 4.

[29] Ibid., p. 69.

[30] Tucker, ‘Volunteers in the Thirty Years’ War’, p. 67.

[31] SSNE no. 1355; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1631-3, <https://tannerritchie.com/shibboleth/memso/browser.php?bookid=360>, pp. 382, 390, 409, 412.

[32] Acts of the Privy Council of England, vol 42, 1627 Jan-Aug, <https://tannerritchie.com/shibboleth/memso/browser.php?bookid=933&gt;, p. 65.

[33] Dictionary of Welsh Biography, The Trevor family, Sir Sackville Trevor, <http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-TREV-TRE-1500.html&gt;

[34] Jones, J. Gwynfor, Early Modern Wales, c. 1525-1640, (Hampshire, 1994), p. 176.

[35] NLW GB 0210/E5/2; NLW GB0210/E5/4/13; NLW GB0210/E5/4/18

[36] NLW MS 9057E/959

[37] Carlyle, Thomas, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches with Elucidations, Vol IV, (New York, 1845), p. 240

[38] Ibid., p. 240

[39] NLW Wynn Papers, no. 1723

[40] Edwards, Peter, Dealing in Death: The Arms Trade and the British Civil Wars, 1638-52, (Gloucestershire, 2000), p. 116.

[41] Ibid., p. 97.

[42] Rees, D. Morgan, Mines, Mills and Furnaces: An Introduction to Industrial Archaeology, (London, 1969) p. 52

[43] Ibid., p. 53

[44] For example see the section on Catholic exiles from Wales in Davies, John, A History of Wales, pp. 247-9.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: Thirty Years War, Welsh military history, Welsh soldiers

Highways and Byways of the 17th Century: the Naval Engagement at Swansea, 1660- The Last Shots of the British Civil Wars?

27/05/2016 by J D Davies

This week, I’m cross-posting a blog that I first published earlier in the week on my Welsh naval history site, britanniasdragon.com.

The restoration of the monarch in 1660 was an astonishingly rapid development, one which could hardly have been foreseen at all until just before it actually took place. Inevitably, this led to much confusion, perhaps especially in outlying parts of the country, and created opportunities for the unscrupulous to try and take advantage of the situation before certainty returned. A particularly interesting example of this took place at Swansea in May 1660, in an incident that has only recently come to light. This may well have a claim to be the last engagement – and certainly the last naval engagement – of the British civil wars.

***

On 9 March 1660, a thirty ton vessel came to an anchor in Mumbles Road. She was the Royalist privateer Henrietta Maria, commanded by Captain George Dowdall, sailing under a commission that had been issued by James, Duke of York (the future King James II) at Brussels in the previous July. Dowdall was unaware that King Charles II had been proclaimed in London on the previous day, and proceeded to capture several ships within Swansea Bay. Complainants hastened to Cardiff to demand action from Colonel Edward Freeman, governor of the castle and one of the commissioners of militia for Glamorgan. Freeman immediately despatched soldiers to the Mumbles, and went down himself on the following day. He informed Dowdall of the astonishing developments in London, ‘telling him he daily expecteth his Majesty’s arrival, at which the said captain was very glad’; Dowdall immediately agreed to restore the prizes he had recently taken, and not to attack any more shipping. Freeman then proclaimed the King aboard the Henrietta Maria, at which ‘Captain Dowdall caused divers guns to be fired and he and all his soldiers [sic] uttered many expressions of joy’. Dowdall and his crew then forebore from attacking any other potential prizes in Swansea Bay.

There matters rested until about the fifteenth, when the frigate Lichfield sailed into Mumbles Road. She was an altogether different proposition to the relatively small Henrietta Maria – a Fifth Rate frigate of 24 guns, although ironically, she, too, had been a Royalist ship, captured by the Commonwealth navy in 1658. Her captain, William Barker, gave the order to open fire, and the Henrietta Maria cut her anchor cable and sailed for the mouth of the River Tawe. The Lichfield pursued her, firing all the time. The Henrietta Maria anchored at Swansea Quay, but still the Lichfield followed. The Royalist ship now cut her other anchor cable and sailed even further upstream, where the larger Lichfield could not follow. The Henrietta Maria sailed ‘above the town’, but then ‘stuck at the Point’ and could go no further. Barker sent some forty to sixty men ashore, heavily armed with cutlasses and muskets. They boarded the ship, stripped the crew (beating some of them in the process), broke open chests and boxes, and pillaged the money on board, most of it takings from the prizes the Royalists had taken – perhaps £500, according to one source, £300 of which (another source says £360, yet another £380) was in Dowdall’s sea chest, together with some £80 worth of other goods plundered from prizes, including canvas, fine linen, tobacco, clothes, arms and ammunition.

Meanwhile, Dowdall and Barker were having a frosty encounter at the nearly adjacent house of William Jones, the mayor of Swansea. Dowdall stated that he sailed with the Duke of York’s commission, and ‘hoped that he [Barker] was not an enemy, saying he was a servant of His Majesty’s’. Barker replied stiffly ‘that the King had no need of such servants’, and told Dowdall that he was sending the Henrietta Maria to Plymouth as a prize, which is what he duly did.

The affair at Swansea was one of the first things that crossed the Duke of York’s desk during his earliest days in office as Lord High Admiral, following his entry into London with his brother on 29 May; a week later, on 5 June, James ordered Barker to ensure that the contents of the Henrietta Maria were not embezzled (wishful thinking, as the ship had obviously been cleared out at Swansea) and that it should be placed in safe custody. What ultimately happened to the ship and the money she had been carrying would require further work in the papers of the High Court of Admiralty, but William Barker certainly never held a command in the Restoration navy. There is no further record of Dowdall, either; he was probably an Irishman (a George Dowdall had been Archbishop of Armagh in the sixteenth century), and one of those serving on his ship as a volunteer was ‘Captain Owen Sullivan’ of Munster, ‘gentleman’.

As for the engagement between the Lichfield and the Henrietta Maria in Swansea Bay, it may well have a claim to be the last ‘battle’ of the British Civil Wars, and certainly deserves a footnote in the naval history of Wales.

 

Sources

  • National Archives, Kew, High Court of Admiralty papers 13/73 folios 520-1, transcribed byMarine Lives
  • National Archives, Admiralty papers, 2/1732, folio 1

Filed Under: Naval history, Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: Civil Wars, James II, Swansea

Carmarthenshire Archives (and Museums): a Brave New World?

22/02/2016 by J D Davies

It’s been a while since I posted about the situation with Carmarthenshire Archives, which took up so much space on this blog in the second half of last year, so I thought it was time I provided you with an update. My last post on the subject contained the unexpected but very welcome news that the Council’s executive board had decided to invest in a new facility within the county. Following this, things seems to be moving forward quite rapidly. Here’s the text from a newsletter that’s been sent out by the heritage monitoring group nominated at the end of last year at a well attended meeting of representatives from many of the local history and heritage groups; the next of these meetings takes place this week.

“ARCHIVES – HOME IN CARMARTHEN” – the future for Carmarthenshire Archives looks cautiously promising thanks to the efforts of the Friends of Carmarthenshire Archives and other dedicated historians.  Discussions between concerned parties and CCC have taken place on three occasions in recent months with a shared vision of a successful, modern and sustainable future for the archives prioritising a Carmarthen/Carmarthenshire service. £2M now confirmed in the capital programme (£125k 2016/17 and £1,750K 2017/18) and CCC are currently working with a Consultant to “scope a number of properties in Carmarthen against a set of criteria – economic, practical and access”. A recommendation is anticipated in 6-8 weeks.  CCC has agreed to consult with the Friends on a regular basis to consider developments and to keep in touch with members’ views – including the vision for an archive service remaining within Carmarthenshire rather than a regionalisation model which could result in the loss of the archives from the county, negative consequences for depositors and researchers within West Wales. It has been agreed to improve the archives services on CCC website and the Friends are inputting into this process.

Regardless of what happens over the new building, the thing that particularly pleases me about this is the way in which the council is now actively consulting with the Friends of the Archives – something that was one of my principal objectives when I started to campaign about the issue last year. The timescale is also positive, although there are still plenty of unanswered questions, such as the exact location, size and staffing of the new site. But one of the most important points of all, that the facility should be within Carmarthenshire, now seems to be set in stone. As for the other most important point – that the damaged archives themselves should be cleaned and made available to the public as soon as possible – progress has certainly been made, and one can only assume that the remaining materials will gradually become available again in the coming months.

However, the group has also been trying to raise awareness, and to secure the future, of Carmarthenshire’s museum service, which has suffered from severe underinvestment over many years. Unfortunately, whereas the archives situation is unique to the county, that with the museums is part of a much bigger national issue; virtually every day seems to bring a new report of a fine and much-loved regional museum being threatened with closure, or actually closing. I very nearly blogged last week about the threat to the Lloyd George Museum in Gwynedd, but fortunately that decision has been deferred. However, I intend to produce a substantial blog about the museums crisis some time in the next few weeks, either myself or with a ‘guest blogger’ who’s very experienced and knowledgeable in the sector. In the meantime, here’s what the newsletter says about the specific situation in Carmarthenshire.

MUSEUMS CHANGE LIVES – but throughout the UK they are closing or are under threat because of cuts in council budgets by the government. The Welsh Assembly’s “Expert Review of Local Museum Provision in Wales 2015” and Welsh Heritage Bill – propose ways forward. At our county museum in Abergwili, County Councillor Gravell reports that “plans are moving forward at a pace with the Tywi Gateway scheme” – initiated by the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust to develop the Bishop’s Park with plans being submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund this summer. Meanwhile, in limbo, in the midst sits the Bishop’s Palace, a Listed building, home to the wonderful treasures given by us, the public, over more than a century. At Llanelli Museum Cllr. Gravell reports that “the Leader and our officers are meeting with user groups there to positively discuss the future viability of the Mansion house”. Plus “exciting plans are also afoot for the Museum of Speed, linked to the wider regeneration masterplan for Pendine”. Even before the recent cuts, our museum service was suffering from twenty years of neglect – BUT there remains huge potential for local regeneration, job creation, social inclusion, tourism, pride – and fun!

In a nutshell, then, watch this space for further updates on all of these important heritage stories (particularly as I guarantee that for the next four months, this blog will be a referendum-free zone…)

 

Filed Under: Heritage preservation, Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: Abergwili, Carmarthenshire Archives, Carmarthenshire County Council, Carmarthenshire Museums, Parc Howard

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