Ymgysylltu â'r Gymuned

Wythnos diwethaf, fel rhan o Ddiwrnod Budd a Roi 2014, daeth 50 o wirfoddolwyr o Lloyds Banking Group i Sain Ffagan i helpu gyda nifer o brosiectau. Wnaeth rai helpu’r Adran Garddio, wnaeth rai ymuno a’r Adran Adeiladau Hanesyddol tra gwnaeth rai gweithio ynghyd a’r Gymdeithas Alzheimer. Wnaeth 11 o’r gwirfoddolwyr gweithio gyda fi a Bernice i adeiladu gwrych newydd yn y goedwig wrth ymyl y guddfan adar.

Da ni di bod yn bwriadu adeiladu gwrych wrth ymyl y guddfan adar am sbel, am nifer o resymau. Yn gyntaf, bysai’r gwrych yn actio fel sgrin wrth nesai’r guddfan, gyda’r gobaith bysai’r adar ddim yn cael ei ofni gan ymwelwyr yn cerdded ar hyd y llwybr. Ma’ wrych hefyd yn gallu gweithio fel coridor wrth i fywyd gwyllt symud drwy’r goedwig. Hefyd, mae nifer o ymwelwyr wedi bod yn creu llwybr wrth dorri drwy’r goedwig, ac felly, wrth adeiladu gwrych, da ni’n gobeithio nawr bydd llai o ymwelwyr yn gwneud hyn.

Tasg cyna’r dydd oedd minio’r pyst. Mae’r pyst yn bwysig er mhoen neud yn siŵr bod y gwrych yn cael ei adeiladu ar sylfaen solet. Mae creu min yn neud e’n haws i yrru’r pyst mewn i’r ddaear. Ar ôl creu tyllau arwain, defnyddiwyd morthwyl  mawr i yrru’r pyst i lawr. Unwaith roedd y pyst yn ei le, roedd hi’n bosib i ni ddechrau adeiladu’r gwrych.

Ma’ na nifer o wahanol fathau o wrych, a phenderfynon ni ddefnyddio pren a choed wedi marw. Dros yr wythnosau diwethaf, dwi di fod yn gofyn i’r adrannau garddio ag amaethyddiaeth i gasglu unrhyw bren ac yn y blaen a’i anfon draw i’r guddfan adar. Am fod angen cymaint o bren, es i a rai o’r gwirfoddolwyr mewn i’r goedwig i gasglu hyd yn oed mwy.

Ar ôl cinio, fel grŵp, aethon ni i fyny i Fryn Eryr, safle’r ffarm Oes Haearn newydd sy’n cael ei adeiladu. Mae’r goedwig yma wedi cael ei chlirio yn ddiweddar, felly llanwyd trailer yn barod i’w cludo i’r guddfan. Erbyn diwedd y prynhawn, llwyddon ni i orffen y gwrychoedd. Gorffennwyd y gwrychoedd efo toriadau palalwyf er mwyn ychwanegu bach o je ne sais quois.

Fel mae’r lluniau yma’n dangos, mi oedd y diwrnod yn llwyddiant enfawr! Gallwn ni ddim di gofyn am dywydd gwell a dwi’n meddwl gwnaeth pawb mwynhau’r profiad. Gorffennwyd y 2 darn o wrych oeddem ni am adeiladu, a dwi eisoes wedi meddwl am brosiectau am y dyfodol! Cyflawnwyd llwyth o waith mewn un diwrnod, bysai’r gwaith di cymryd amser maeth i mi a Bernice i orffen heb help y gwirfoddolwyr. Diolch yn fawr iawn i bawb wnaeth helpu ni a’r prosiectau arall hefyd!

Yesterday, Natural Sciences Staff took part in the 'Meet the Pollinators' Event run by First Campus, a partnership between higher education institutions, further education colleges and schools in South East Wales. The event was part of National Science and Engineering Week and was attended by approximately 100 Year 9 pupils from six schools. The pupils had the opportunity to speak to the curators and find out about 'a day in the life of museum scientists'. 

Y Fforwm Addysg Anffurfiol

Yn y cyd-destun hwn, mae Addysg Anffurfiol yn cyfeirio at addysg y tu hwnt i gwricwlwm yr ysgol. Mae’r grŵp yn cynnwys cynrychiolwyr o sefydliadau ar draws Cymru sy’n hwyluso addysg i oedolion a theuluoedd. Roedd y rhan fwyaf o’r aelodau eisoes yn gyfarwydd â’r project gan eu bod wedi cymryd rhan mewn gweithdai yn ystod y cam cynllunio. Penderfynwyd y bydd y grŵp yn helpu i ddatblygu rhaglen o weithgareddau sy’n apelio at bobl o bob math o gefndiroedd a lefelau gallu ac yn adolygu cynnwys yr orielau er mwyn sicrhau ein bod yn darparu dulliau dehongli priodol ar gyfer y cynulleidfaoedd hyn.

O ganlyniad i’r Fforwm, cymerodd grŵp o oedolion sy’n ddysgwyr o Gymdeithas Addysg y Gweithwyr ran mewn gweithdai dehongli ym mis Gorffennaf. Roedd y gweithdai’n gyfle i aelodau’r grwp ddweud eu dweud am yr eitemau y bwriedir eu harddangos yn oriel Dyma yw Cymru. Roedd y gwrthrychau gafodd eu hastudio’n agos yn cynnwys cwilt teiliwr a gwrthrychau o’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf. Cafodd y sesiynau eu hwyluso gan guraduron sy’n gweithio’n uniongyrchol â’r gwrthrychau gan sicrhau y bydd yr adborth yn cael effaith uniongyrchol er eu gwaith

As Steve said in his last blog posted in December, we’ve started work on growing the thatch for our new Iron Age farm. Alongside this work we’ve also been giving a lot of thought to the objects that will go inside the houses.  Far from being primitive, these replica objects will reflect the high level of knowledge and skill possessed by people who lived in Bryn Eryr over 2000 years ago. One of the first tasks is to furnish the round houses with all those essential objects that no self-respecting Iron Age household could do without, such as plates, bowls, utensils, buckets , storage containers, shelves, barrels, weaving looms, beds, just to name a few.

In this period all these items were made from wood, but we have a problem, wood deteriorates quickly in the ground so objects made from this material rarely survive.  However, we think we can find out more about the wooden objects they would have had by studying the carpentry tools available at this time. These were made from iron and because of this have survived in greater abundance. Ancient iron-work is often much underrated as it doesn’t look very attractive, but when trying to recreate everyday life the information domestic ironwork objects can provide is invaluable.

The first stage of making the replicas was to search the archaeological collections for any original Iron Age carpentry tools.  Much to my delight we had quite a lot of material and could virtually recreate a whole tool kit from examples found throughout Wales. Our Bryn Eryr tool kit will therefore consist of an axe, adze-hammer, gouge, chisels, files, drill bits and numerous wedges from small to large.  Timber in the Iron Age was divided up by splitting with wedges rather than cutting with a saw.  Saws did exist, but were small, similar to modern pruning saws today.

An Iron Age household would be equipped with a wide range of tools for a variety of purposes. Some of these objects appear strange to us today, but others are quite familiar. A 2,000 year old chisel found in the Roman fort of Brecon Gaer and a gouge from the Hill Fort at Castell Henllys wouldn’t look out of place in a carpenter’s tool kit today.

Once our tool kit had been compiled from the examples in the collection, the next step was to make working replicas that could be used by our craftspeople to recreate the objects for Bryn Eryr.

Careful conservation of the original tools had preserved some of the original surfaces. Marks on these surfaces enabled our blacksmith 2000 years later to work out how they were made and reproduce the replicas as accurately as possible.  The replicas are recreated in wrought iron like the originals, which is much softer than the steel used today, so it will be interesting to see how these tools perform? Will we be able to produce a decent cutting edge, how quickly will this edge dull and how often will it need to be sharpened?

Making the tool heads is only half the story, these tools can’t be used without handles!  None of the originals survive and from the shape of some tools we just can’t pop modern handles on them.  We know our tools once had wooden handles, because in some cases the deteriorating iron around the socket  had made a cast of the wood surface before the handle disappeared.  Using a combination of this information and some surviving material from elsewhere, plus the expertise of our own carpenters and estate workers, we managed to reproduce handles to complete the tools.

Now all we have to do is see if they work! More importantly have we still got the expertise to use these tools properly? Hopefully by using them we’ll gain an insight into the skill of our Iron Age carpenters.  I’m sure they would be laughing themselves silly if they could see our efforts today, but we have to start somewhere!

So, how did our tools perform? Its early days, but everyone including our craftspeople are impressed. They appear to be performing well, we even managed to split a large piece of timber with our wedges.  It probably explains why so many of these wedges end up in our collection, they tend to get lost inside the timber during splitting and fall to the ground where they are difficult to spot!

We hope to undertake more experimental work to assess the performance of these tools, so keep watching this space, but in the mean time we have to crack on, there’s the contents of a roundhouse to make!

As many regular visitors to St Fagans will know, our much-loved Celtic Village was closed earlier in the year. Twenty years seems to be about the normal life-span for reconstructed Iron Age roundhouses – the timbers decay and they begin to get a bit wobbly after that. To replace it we're going to be building a new reconstruction based on a 2,000 year old Iron Age farmstead on Anglesey called Bryn Eryr, and just recently we reached a really exciting milestone along the way.

The Bryn Eryr roundhouses consisted of two buildings built side-by-side. Their walls were made of packed clay (probably mixed with grit and straw, like Wales's traditional clom-built houses) and the roofs were thatched. We've had a lot of discussions about what we should use to thatch them. Naturally the roofs of the original buildings haven't survived, but we do know that its Iron Age owners had access to spelt – an early form of wheat – because charred grains were found at the site. From there the argument goes, if they were harvesting spelt grains to make their bread they also had their hands-on a useful thatching material, spelt straw.

So, we thought, St Fagans is surrounded by farm land, we've got an excellent farming team, and lots of enthusiasm, why not try to grow a crop of spelt ourselves and see whether we can thatch our next Iron Age farmstead with it?

There are a lot of uncertainties involved in this, many things can go wrong between the idea and the harvesting but St Fagans is part of an EU collaboration which encourages just this kind of experimental research. So thanks to the OpenArch project, with its Culture programme funding, and a lot of advice from experts in the field (apologies for the pun), we've decided to give it a go.

A few months ago we ploughed 3.4 hectares (8.4 acres) just outside the main museum site. This looks like an enormous area when you're stood beside it, but we're told this is what we need in order to produce enough straw to thatch two large roundhouses.

With the ploughing done, our Learning Team organised an opportunity for school groups to come out and see what we were up to. This was followed by the museum's archaeologists bringing together a team of volunteers who walked the area in search of any artefacts that may have been turned up by the plough. The finds from this have yet to be analysed but already we can see that the area had been visited by prehistoric hunter-gatherers, a 13th-century traveller who lost some loose change, and many other more recent people.

And then it rained, and rained and rained. Our spelt seed arrived and was placed in a barn, and still it rained. I was beginning to get very worried. It's all very well having a plan to grow a crop of Iron Age wheat, but that's not going to happen if the seed stays in sacks. Then a few weeks the weather cleared up, the ground dried sufficiently and we finally got a chance to plant.

Then we waited… Would anything happen? Had we left it too late? Would frosts / rain / snow put a stop to our plans? Happily not! Last week we found the first seeds had germinated. I’m going out to the field again today to check on its progress. Will the shoots be showing? Have we got the spacing of the seed right? Will the rabbits leave it alone? Will it grow tall? I feel like an expectant father all over again.