Ymgysylltu â'r Gymuned

While I enjoy going to the Youth Forum very much, I have to say a once-in-a-lifetime experience was not what I was expecting when I turned up last week. But there we were, in the art conservation room, a few feet away from an original Van Gogh, out of its frame on the next table, having just come back from being loaned to an American museum. I could have actually touched it (and I was quite tempted, though of course I didn’t).

Now, I’m not exactly an art aficionado, as you can properly tell by the way I haven’t included the name of the painting because I don’t know it, but I have to say it was pretty amazing. 

However, the focus of the meeting was actually the imposing The Welsh at Mametz Wood by war artist Christopher Williams, which is going to be part of a new exhibition focusing on the First World War battle at Mametz in a few months time.

This is a battle where hundreds of men from the Welsh Division were killed in July 1916, and thousands more were injured, something that the painting certainly doesn’t shy away from. It’s big, bloody, and quite brutal. While war sketches of poppies blooming among the trenches and beleaguered soldiers limping through mud evoke the tragedy of the slaughter that took place, they arguably don’t capture the fighting itself, but the aftermath, the few moments of calm in a four-year storm.

Christopher Williams (1873-1934), Cyrch yr Adran Gymreig yng Nghoed Mametz,1916 © Amgueddfa Cymru

Williams’ painting does the opposite. The desperate struggle of the hand-to-hand slaughter was immediately obvious. It felt almost claustrophobic, the way the soldiers were almost piling on top of each other, climbing over their fallen comrades to try and take out the machine gunner. It was certainly a world away, as we discussed, from the posters bearing Lord Kitchener encouraging young men to enlist. We also talked about the way the painting is quite beautifully composed, almost in a Renaissance style.

It was hard to look at, but at the same time it was something you wanted to look at. 

After this, we went to the archives to look at some sketches made by Williams and other artists while at the trenches. I was about to get goosebumps for the second time that evening - one of them still had mud from the trenches staining the edges!

In any other context, 100-year-old mud probably wouldn’t have been very exciting, but this mud is so strongly linked in people’s minds with images of the First World War.

Think of the trenches, and you think of mud. People slept, ate and died surrounded by this mud; it seems to be inextricably bound up with the nightmare of having to live and fight in that environment, and made looking at the sketches even more powerful.

Another document we looked at was a sort of manual given to recruits of the Royal Welsh Division, containing poems, stories and pictures that the soldiers would have submitted themselves. It was touching to see one of the ways they would have injected moments of humour into their lives as soldiers, and also their own perspectives on their experiences. All in all, I’m really looking forward to seeing how this exhibition comes together, and learning more about Mametz, a part of the war I hadn’t even heard of until a couple of weeks ago. 

Holly Morgan Davies, 

National Museum Cardiff Youth Forum

Here at St Fagans, many of our curators have been travelling the length and breadth of Wales co- producing audio-visual content for the new galleries.

Last week, my colleague Dafydd Wiliam and I began work on a new and exciting task, this time a little closer to home, a stone throw away in Tremorfa.

Over the next few months, our focus will be the Vulcan pub. We’ll be conducting oral histories with former customers and landlords of the former Adamsdown pub, recording and filming their experiences and memories. The completed interviews will be edited into a short film which will be displayed in one of the redeveloped galleries. But also we hope these memories will give us as curators, a clearer picture of life at the Vulcan, its culture and its community.

Our first interviewees were Rhona and Mel Rees, landlords of the Vulcan pub between 1983 and 1985. From the very beginning, it was clear that they were extremely fond of the pub and its customers, and that they thoroughly enjoyed their time there. They described the pub as their living room, and the words cosy, friendly, and fun, were said regularly. They had plenty of amusing and comic tales from the pub to tell, but they also touched on deeper themes, such as raising a family in a pub and also the economic side of things and the decline of the trade. All in all it was an eye-opening interview, and we learnt so much about their daily lives as landlords of the Vulcan in the 80’s.

My personal highlight of the interview was a story about a prank played on Mel’s 50^th birthday involving a kissogram visiting the Vulcan, but I won’t give too much away now!

Mel and Rhona truly captured the atmosphere and character of the pub and its people, and I can’t wait to go out again to meet and interview the people who knew this very special pub.

If you or somebody you know have stories or objects related to the Vulcan, we’d love to hear from you – please leave a message in the comments box below.

#MakingHistory #CreuHanes

Next month Whitchurch Hospital in Cardiff will close after almost 108 years of providing mental health services in the capital.

To mark this end of an era, members of the Whitchurch Hospital Historical Society have turned a disused ward into a pop-up museum. For one week only, members of the public, former patients and staff are invited beyond the Hospital’s imposing – some would say forbidding – red brick façade to explore its history from 1908 to the present-day.

An autograph book in cloth

Here at St Fagans, we have a tablecloth in the collection which was made at the Hospital in 1917. It was donated to the Museum in 2014 by the costume designer, Ray Holman, who had bought it at a Cardiff antiques shop in the early 1980s. At first glance, this white cotton tablecloth with a crocheted border looks, quite frankly, a little dull. But this rather unassuming textile hides a multitude of secrets. Look closely and you’ll see faint signatures embroidered in white thread across the entire surface of the cloth – the names of British and American soldiers who were receiving treatment at Whitchurch in 1917.

Military hospital

During the First World War, the Cardiff City Mental Hospital (as Whitchurch was then called) was ceded to the military and became known as the Welsh Metropolitan War Hospital (1915 - 1919). Civilian psychiatric patients were moved to other institutions, while injured soldiers requiring orthopaedic treatment occupied their beds. In 1917, 450 beds were allocated for soldiers with mental health conditions.   

The signatures embroidered on the tablecloth include two important figures in the history of psychiatric care in Wales – Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Goodall and Matron Florence Raynes. Goodall, an eminent psychiatrist who trained at Guy’s Hospital in London, was appointed the first Medical Superintendent of Whitchurch in 1906, two years before the Hospital opened. He was awarded a CBE in 1919 for his pioneering treatment of shell shock. Florence Raynes was also a trailblazer in her own right. She was the first sister to have overall responsibility for the entire, male and female, nursing staff.

If you get a chance to visit Whitchurch Hospital this week, please do go. It’s a fascinating exhibition in the most powerful of settings.

With thanks to Gwawr Faulconbridge, Whitchurch Hospital Historical Society, Dr Ian Beech, and to Ray Holman for his generous donation.

End of an Era, Whitchurch Hosptial, 7 - 11 March 2016

The tablecloth will be on display at the Hospital on 11 March, 10am - 1pm

Helo Gyfeillion y Gwanwyn,

Llongyfarchiadau i'r ysgolion sydd wedi rhannu eu cofnodion blodau ar wefan Amgueddfa Cymru:

Cennin Pedr: 

Crocws: 

Cadwch lygad ar eich planhigion, bydd y blodau’n ymddangos unrhyw bryd! Cofiwch rannu eich cofnodion blodau ar wefan Amgueddfa Cymru. Mae fy mlog diwethaf a’r adnodd cadw cofnodion blodau ar y wefan yn rhoi cyngor ar sut i wneud hyn. Pan fydd yr holl blanhigion wedi blodeuo a phawb wedi rhannu eu cofnodion, byddwn ni’n gallu cyfrifo dyddiad blodeuo cyfartalog y Crocws a'r Cennin Pedr. Gallwn ni wedyn gymharu ein canfyddiadau gyda blynyddoedd blaenorol.

Roeddwn i wedi rhagweld y byddai’r planhigion yn blodeuo yn gynharach eleni oherwydd tywydd cynnes Rhagfyr. Ond efallai bod yr oerfel rhwng Ionawr a Mawrth a llai o oriau golau dydd wedi effeithio ar ein bylbiau. Yn y blog nesaf, bydda i’n edrych ar gyfartaleddau a chymharu tywydd eleni â blynyddoedd blaenorol.

Cafwyd rhai sylwadau hyfryd dros yr wythnosau diwethaf sy’n dangos cymaint ydych chi’n gofalu am eich planhigion. Diolch i bob un ohonoch am ofalu mor dda am eich planhigion.

 Daliwch ati gyda'r gwaith da Gyfeillion y Gwanwyn.

Athro’r Ardd

Hello. Here is what has been happening play area wise in St Fagans!

Our artists have been talking to curators and visiting our stores. They now know all about the themes covered in the new galleries and are thinking of ways in which they can incorporate them into the play area design. Some of the themes are food, work, fun - which also covers toys and games (that one might work), customs and folklore, childhood, as well as the perhaps not so appropriate - sleep and death.

We have also been talking about language - having text in the play area, maybe incorporating lullabies and sound into it (or is that too horror film?), sound, music, pigsties, beds and enclosed spaces, gates! (we have a collection of photographs of lots of different gates in the collection, all with different names) roofs! washing.... so much we could do, so many things...

Fern Thomas (supporting artist) has been managing to do research into folk remedies for her own art work - she has been looking at remedies for physical ailments from all around Wales which all seem to say 'wrap a piece of bacon round it' whatever the problem is.

Imogen Higgins (supporting artist) has started documenting all the different play areas in Cardiff and has also started blogging about it. If you know of any interesting ones, perhaps you could let us know?

I went to talk to Woodlands Special Secondary School a couple of weeks ago and some of the students there are going to help us with the design. We have our first meeting this week, so I will let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, please share, comment, and let me know stuff you've come across. Will be updating again soon.