An opportunity to shape Coflein:- We Need Your Views!

Lecture and workshops at the Royal Commission, 14 October


On Tuesday, 14 October, 2014 the Royal Commission is inviting visitors to an afternoon of lectures, discussion and active engagement in evaluating Coflein, the Royal Commission’s online database. 

Coflein provides online access to the National Monuments Record of Wales ─ the national historic environment database, catalogue and digital archive.

Beginning with a welcome and introduction to Coflein by David Thomas, Head of Data and Technology, the afternoon will progress with workshops where everyone will have the opportunity to discuss the Royal Commission’s database of sites and collections, raise  queries, discuss problems they have encountered, and suggest future developments. If you are interested in archaeology and the historic environment, local history, aerial photography, the history of houses and religious buildings, maritime history and shipwrecks, there will be sources relevant for you on Coflein.

There will be two workshop sessions. The first will run from 2pm ─3.30pm and the second from 4pm─5.30pm. Light refreshments will be provided. For further information and booking, please contact Nicola Roberts: nicola.roberts@rcahmw.gov.uk Telephone: 01970 621248.

Everyone welcome, from novices to experts. Come along, discover more and gives us your views!


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The National Eisteddfod of Wales: Carmarthenshire, 1–9 August

The Maes looking splendid in preparation for next week’s event.

Next week, the Royal Commission will be joining other Welsh heritage bodies at this year’s National Eisteddfod in Llanelli. Throughout the week, staff will be on hand to answer enquiries and chat to visitors.  Come and visit us in heritage row (stand 601-603), where you will also find Cadw, the National Museum Wales, and Dyfed, & Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trusts. This year’s new exhibition will focus on the centenary of the First World War and the successful Britain from Above collaborative project. Highlights will include a talk by Dr Eurwyn Wiliam, Chairman of the Royal Commission, on Friday  8 August at 10.30am in Pabell y Cymdeithasau 2, on recent Commission discoveries in Dyfed: Darganfod hanes Dyfed: darganfyddiadau diweddar Comisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru ac eraill. A new collaborative quiz has been arranged by Cadw, with ten questions based on information easily retrievable from the stands of the four heritage bodies, with a prize of a year’s free family Cadw membership. Come along and have a try!

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The Royal Commission returns to Hay Castle for Hay Festival 2014

Hay Castle, with the thirteenth-century castle (left) and adjoining seventeenth-century mansion (right)

Hay Castle (NPRN: 25593) sits at the heart of Hay-on-Wye, home to the annual Hay Literary Festival. The 10-day festival, now in its 27th year, attracts writers, artists and performers from all over the world. This year it runs from 22 May─1 June.

In 2011, Hay Castle, a Grade I listed building, passed into the ownership of a registered charity, the Hay Castle Trust. The Trust, working with Cadw and the Brecon Beacons National Park, aims to ensure the permanent preservation of the site. The community-based project involves a process of rediscovery, conservation and restoration, with the aim of regenerating the castle into a centre for culture, arts,crafts and education. The Hay Castle Trust will be running tours of the castle throughout this year’s festival. Royal Commission Senior Investigator, Richard Suggett, will be leading tours (now fully booked) on Friday 23 May and Saturday 31 May.

Situated on the Welsh/English border, Hay Castle is unusual in that it has been continuously occupied for the last 800 years. Constructed in the twelfth century and occupied into the twentieth century, the castle is considered to be potentially the most important multi-period site on the Welsh side of the border. The medieval castle survives, with its thirteenth-century gateway and early timber gates still intact. The timber gates, with their original cross-bracing, are one of only three to four surviving examples in Britain.

Hay Castle’s thirteenth-century gateway with early timber gates

 Castle House, a seventeenth-century Jacobean mansion, was built alongside the castle’s keep. Recent tree-ring dating by the Royal Commission has established the exact date of the three-storey house as 1636. Despite two twentieth-century fires, its basic structure has remained intact.

Castle House and the castle’s four-storey keep

As the process of rediscovery continues, it is becoming apparent that the castle contains many highly significant and possibly unique architectural components. The walls are to be consolidated, with the aim being to repair rather than to replace. It is heartening to see the castle’s important historical features cared for in this way, with the building and grounds well on the way to becoming a focal point for the local community once again.

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From 2014 to 1525 – could you live in The Court?

This time last year production company Boom Pictures Cymru were looking for a group of people to take up the challenge of living in a Welsh Manor House (Y Plas) for three weeks in conditions as they would have been in 1910. Their time in Y Plas was documented and broadcast on S4C's living history series Y Plas last September.

The series returns in 2014 but the challenge has changed. This year, the production company are looking for people who are ready to take up the challenge of living in The Court – Y Llys.
The successful families and individuals will leave the comfort of their everyday lives and step back in time to the year 1525 to live in a Tudor court in Tretŵr court, near Crickhowell in southern Powys.

This is the time of Henry VIII, the time when noblemen led decadent lives feasting, being entertained by poets and singers, hunting and jousting. In the Tudor Age it was common for the noblemen and their servants to live and eat together, and don't forget this was before cutlery was invented!

Living in Y Llys will mean dressing, working, eating and spending leisure time exactly as the Tudors would have done in 1525, with cameras following every step of the way for the S4C living history series Y Llys, which will be broadcast on the Channel this autumn.

The production company are looking for 20 people to take part, and they will live in the court for three weeks during the autumn period this year.

The closing date for applications is Sunday 1 June. For more information and to apply contact Boom Pictures Cymru on yllys@yllys.co.uk / 02920 671545



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Wales Festival of Architecture: The Creative Space, 15 May - 17 May

Pant-yr-ynn slate mill, NPRN: 28260. This is one of hundreds of drawings by Falcon Hildred deposited in the National Monuments Record and now available on Coflein

Later this week, the Royal Commission will be contributing to this year’s Wales Festival of Architecture, a joint venture between the Royal Society of Architects in Wales and the Aberystwyth Arts Centre. A Royal Commission exhibition on the artwork of the highly accomplished, industrial-landscape artist, Falcon Hildred, will run until 28 May 2014: Worktown: The drawings of Falcon Hildred. In addition, architectural historian Richard Suggett will be leading a tour of the award-winning Arts Centre and its surroundings at 2pm, Saturday 17 May. To coincide with the 100th anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s birth, there will be a general theme of The Creative Space at this year’s festival, with emphasis on exploring the process of creativity. Other highlights include the festival launch: An Evening of Ideas; Spring School Inspiration Hour: Making History at St Fagans, and The Afternoon Play: Under Plywood, an irreverent review of the regeneration of our “ugly lovely towns”, presented by the Welsh Architects Theatre Studio.

Visitors to the festival will also be offered the opportunity to spend some creative time in a replica of Dylan Thomas’s iconic writing shed as it makes a special visit to the festival on its tour of the UK. Inside the shed, in honour of Dylan’s love of words, there will be the chance to invent your own perfect word and see it published in a Dictionary for Dylan.

For further details, please contact Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

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The Great Walk: Fan Llia and Fan Dringarth Guided Walk, 3 May

The rolling moorland landscape looking across the upper Llia valley to the south-east

On Saturday 3 May, David Leighton, an expert in uplands archaeology from the Royal Commission will be leading a guided walk around Fan Llia and Fan Dringarth in the beautiful Brecon Beacons. In a quiet area for walking, well hidden from more popular routes, this picturesque moorland walk is notable for monuments of prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval date, which can be seen along the route. Notable highlights of the walk include a massive block of sandstone and one of the largest prehistoric standing stones in South Wales at Maen Llia (NPRN: 84541), and the old toll road and possibly the line of the Roman road, Sarn Helen (NPRN: 407122), as well as the extensive remains of numerous historic period settlement sites in the Nant y Gaseg Valley.

Covering a total distance of about 13.5 km (8.5miles), this walk will follow a course along the western slopes of Fan Llia to the head of the Llia valley, across Bryn Melyn and Cefn Perfedd into Cwm Dringarth and tributary stream valleys below Fan Dringarth, and down Cwm Dringarth above the Ystradfellte Reservoir, returning to the carpark across the southern extent of Cefn Perfedd.
Walkers will meet at 10.30am at the parking and picnic area (SN92721646) on the unclassified road between Ystradfellte and Heol Senni. This can be accessed to the south from the A4215 Sennybridge to Libanus road.

For further information, email Nicola Roberts, nicola.roberts@rcahmw.gov.uk or phone 01970 621200. Places are limited to 30 on this walk.

View of Maen Llia from the north-west

A fuller description of  this walk , together with other walks and sites encountered along the route, may be found in a copy of  The Western Brecon Beacons: The Archaeology of Mynydd Du and Fforest Fawr by David Leighton which is available from the Royal Commission.

This walk has been organised as part of Ramblers Cymru and Cadw’s Great Walks programme. For further details of other walks amid a historic setting this spring, please use Cadw’s events finder: http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/events/ 

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Opening Our Doors to the Public

The day generated much interest in the Britain from Above project.

This last week has been all about public engagement, and what is more engaging than an Open Doors event? Last Thursday, the Royal Commission opened its doors to over 150 people in celebration of the work achieved here.

Maps galore in the Royal Commission's rich archive.

During school hours, older pupils from the local secondary schools Penweddig and Penglais were entertained with specifically organised Careers Heritage sessions offered in partnership with staff from English Heritage, working on the collaborative Britain from Above project. The main aim of these sessions was to demonstrate the broad range of career choices that are available in the heritage sector and the types of resources we work with. These range from technological advances in App creation to more standard buildings recording, aerial projects, conservation work and, of course, community archaeology projects. Experts from several departments presented on their skills and careers, encouraging the children to have a go with equipment and, more importantly, answering any questions they had about their careers.  The latter part of the afternoon was then reserved for the wider public, drawing them in to see our current and past projects, encouraging them to take an interest and ask questions about what we do here.

Much enthusisam for digital surveying.

All in all, I believe  it was a great success, and a great way to end our introduction to the work of our public engagement team ― from attending a talk to the U3A group in Aberystwyth with our own Britain from  Above officer Natasha Scullion, to an enlightening meeting with the Heritage of Wales Public Engagement Group about the brilliant but varied ongoing projects with heritage organisations across Wales, and then to the other end of the spectrum, watching and actually being part of a Careers Day for local schools! Excellent experience all round.

The Open Day was a real hit for all!

By Kimberly Briscoe, Community Archaeology Training Placement.

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National Eisteddfod 2013

Location of the 2013 Eisteddfod.

Next week come and visit us at the National Eisteddfod in Denbigh to find out more about our nation’s rich heritage of buildings and archaeology. Both Coflein, our online database, and our in-house experts will be available to answer your queries throughout the week. Our exhibition includes panels on the historic town of Denbigh, tree-ring dating, the artwork of Falcon Hildred, and the Metal Links project work at Amlwch. We will be located in “Heritage Row”, stand number 509-10, next to Cadw and Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust, so please call in and see us!

Important diary dates:
Wednesday, 7 August at 11am, Royal Commission Chairman, Dr Eurwyn Wiliam, will be talking in Pabell y Cymdeithasau 1 on “Darganfod Hanes Sir Ddinbych - darganfyddiadau diweddar gan Gomisiwn Henebion Cymru" (Discovering the history of Denbighshire: recent discoveries by the Royal Commission) and at the Denbighshire marquee (immediately facing the main entrance) on Thursday 8 August at 3:30pm.

On Friday, 9 August, military historian, Medwyn Parry, will be giving a talk on Olion Milwrol o’r Ugeinfed Ganrif yng Nghymru (Twentieth Century Military Remains in Wales) in Pabell y Cymdeithasu 2 at 10.30am.

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‘Worktown’ at the National Slate Museum

Falcon Hildred (centre), with staff from the Royal Commission and the National Slate Museum.

An exhibition of more than 30 prints by the north-Wales based artist Falcon Hildred has recently gone on display at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis. This is the second exhibition of the artist’s work since the Royal Commission acquired his unique collection of more than 600 drawings and watercolours in 2011, and the first ‘Worktown’ exhibition to take place in Wales.

Falcon Hildred is a highly accomplished artist who has dedicated his working life to recording the buildings and landscapes of nineteenth and twentieth-century industry, producing works of high aesthetic, historic and social value. He has recorded in detail technological and engineering change and a rapidly disappearing way of life. The drawings record Blaenau Ffestiniog (the artist’s home since 1969 and a place he has recorded extensively), and a number of industrial towns in Wales and England. The exhibition was curated especially for the National Slate Museum, which sits at the heart of the industrial slate landscape of Snowdonia. Speaking at the opening, Falcon commented that seeing his drawings at the slate museum was ‘like seeing them coming home.’

The Falcon Hildred Collection was acquired in 2011 with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and in partnership with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. The free exhibition will be on display at the National Slate Museum until the 6th January 2014. For further information about visiting the National Slate Museum, visit their website: http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/slate/

Visitors enjoying the short film about the artist, commissioned especially for the project.

Falcon Hildred signing copies of the Royal Commission’s book Worktown: The Drawings of Falcon Hildred, which accompanies the exhibition.

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