Casgliadau ac Ymchwil

With Christmas almost upon us I thought I'd start this month's blog with a few wintery scene from our photographic collections. The first photograph is attributed to Mary Dillwyn (1816-1906), sister to John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810-1882), and was taken in the Winter of 1853/54 probably on John's estate at Penllergare near Swansea. It is very likely to be the first photograph of a Welsh snowman! The second shows Big Pit colliery, Blaenafon (now Big Pit: National Mining Museum) in the snow in 1978.

This month has seen quite a number of new additions to the industry collections. One of the most interesting are these two oil on canvas portraits of Thomas Jenkins and his wife Susannah. Thomas Jenkins was owner of the Avon Vale Tinplate Works (which opened in 1866) and Aberavon Tinplate Works (which opened in 1875), both located at Aberavon, Port Talbot. After his death in 1891, his shareholding was inherited by his two daughters, one of whom had married Colonel David Roderick David, one of Thomas Jenkins' co-partners in the Avon Vale Tinplate Works. The other married William M. Jones, a local ship owner whose vessel 'Sisters' is recalled by the family as having carried the works' product for export.

Neither works are signed nor dated, but both are inscribed on the reverse by the sitters. The inscription states that they sat on their respective 71st and 66th birthdays in February 1879.

This piece of coal was removed by open cast methods from a coal pillar left in the 9' seam at Abercraf Colliery workings in the late 1990s. We have a number of samples in our collection of coal from various Welsh pits including, some mounted like this one, but also many samples collected on the last working day of various collieries.

Many of you will have seen the recent film 'Pride'. If so you'll know the amazing true story of how a group of gay men and women raised funds to help families affected by the miners' strike. This badge was purchased by the donor "at an all night fundraiser for mining families held at the Scala cinema in Kings' Cross in early 1985. At the time they were sold for £2.50 each (which was quite a lot in 1985) with all proceeds going to straight to the Lesbians & Gaymen Support the Miners fund."

We have also had a number of other donations this month relating to the 1984-85 miners' strike. This badge was produced during the 1984-85 miners' strike, and was apparently designed by Tyrone Jenkins, a South Wales cartoonist. We would love to know more if anyone has any information.

2014 was the 30th anniversary of the start of the strike, and this limited edition medallion commemorates this.

We have added a further two share certificates this month to our collection. The first is for The Wemyss Mine Limited, and is dated 1885. The first Wemyss Mine Ltd. Company was floated in 1880 to acquire the Wemyss lead mine adjacent to the Frongoch lead mine near Pontrhydygroes in mid-Wales. After its collapse in 1884 it was replaced by a second company of the same name registered in 1884, to which this certificate relates. In the years 1885-1889 when worked by this company, the mine employed only a dozen men and produced very modest tonnages of lead and zinc ores. The company ceased work in 1889 and was struck off in 1894.

The second certificate very surprisingly relates to the Cardiff Castle Gold Mine!! No, there isn't gold under the castle! This was actually an Australian enterprise run by Welsh emigrants located in the internationally famous Coolgardie goldfields in Western Australia. The company was London-registered in 1895 and so the name probably served as both a sentimental attachment for the emigrants as well as a marketing tool to attract British investors.

This photograph shows the sinking of Wyllie Colliery in the Sirhowy Valley in 1925/26. Wyllie Colliery was sunk by the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, and named after a director of the company, Alexander Keith Wyllie. It was the last deep mine to be sunk in Monmouthshire, and one of the last in south Wales. The colliery was closed by the National Coal Board in March 1968.

Finally, this 2nd class single ticket is said to have been used on the last train to run from Gorseinon to Swansea (Victoria). It is dated 13 June 1964.

Mark Etheridge
Curator: Industry & Transport
Follow me on Twitter - @CuratorMark

For the last two years we have put together an advent calendar celebrating some of the beautiful specimens in our natural history collections at National Museum Cardiff. We have been tweeting these from the @CardiffCurator Twitter account each day and will continue throughout December. The specimens behind the first twelve doors have been inspired by the song ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’.

We have compiled a Storify story on our advent calendar, which can be viewed here.

Insects love eating dead things. In nature, they are important decomposers. But in museums (and in your house) they can be a right old nuisance. Museums - who look after and preserve your heritage - need to keep a constant watchful eye on their collections; sometimes, this work hits the news, such as last week at Bakewell Old House Museum in Derbyshire.

Museum collections contain a lot of dead things. Wood is eaten by the larvae of furniture beetles (woodworm) who create very attractive tunnels; that is nice if you like tunnels, but not so good if you like that historic picture frame more than the tunnels inside it. Mould in archives and libraries provides a nice little food source for booklice. Carpet beetle larvae and clothes moth caterpillars aren’t fussy – they will eat wool, fur and feathers.

There is hardly a museum that does not have pest insects in its stores from time to time. These are the same insects you will find in your home. Your wardrobe at home is irresistible to moths. And did you ever have to throw away a bag of flower or cereal because it contained a healthy population of weevils or flour beetles? This is annoying, but you can easily buy a new pair of socks, or a new packet of flower. But can you imagine a WWI flag or a specimen of the extinct quagga being destroyed by moths? These are irreplaceable objects.

So insects like organic things. Parts of museum collections that are susceptible to insect infestations include entomology (yes, insects even love to eat insects!), taxidermy, botany, furniture, costume, shoe and library collections, and anything containing wood. It is often the larvae of insects that feed on organic objects. Insects also like not being disturbed. At home, you are more likely to find weevils in flour that is several months old than in a bag you bought last week.

To deal with an insect infestation does not mean fumigating the place with chemical insecticides; instead, it means not letting a problem get out of hand. It means regular checks and audits of the collections to spot any problems early. It means setting up pest traps around the entire building and checking them regularly. It means collecting data on insect activity across the site to spot patterns and relating them to particular problems, for example high humidity. It means setting up pest control zones with different restrictions in various parts of the building and a quarantine facility, which is something more and more museums are doing. It means good housekeeping: regular cleaning of stores, avoiding rubbish accumulating, putting specimens and objects safely away immediately after using them. And should any infestations be spotted we kill insects usually by freezing the object rather than using chemicals.

We are not quite "waging war on hungry bugs"; our approach to dealing with insect pests is called “Integrated Pest Management” (IPM). A couple of years ago the BBC made a helpful programme on this: What's eating the museum?, featuring museum pest management specialist David Pinniger. Work on this at National Museum Cardiff has only just started but IPM will receive a lot of attention in the next couple of years. Because of its general interest, pest management at the museum is also an area where we will involve the public through workshops, exhibitions and volunteer programmes. It will help us keep safe the collections we care for on behalf of the people of Wales while giving everyone an opportunity to learn about the fascinating world of insects.

The 14th October 2014 was the 101st anniversary of the Universal Colliery disaster at Senghenydd. 440 people were killed in this disaster on the 14th October 1913. It is still the worst mining disaster in the U.K. Last year on the centennial of the disaster a Welsh National Memorial to all mine disasters was unveiled on the site of the pit head. The memorial can be seen on the front of this memorial service programme acquired recently.

You can read an article on this disaster on our website. It is also possible to view all the objects from our collections that relate to this disaster on our ‘Images of Industry’ online database. Check it all out here

This interesting autograph book was donated this month. The book contains autographs, inscriptions and drawings connected with the South Wales Miners Federation, and most date to 1926. There are also some inscriptions relating to the Spanish Civil War. The photograph here shows the main inscription on the inside of the front cover.

This month also saw the launch of our First World War online database. It currently contains all objects and documents from the social & cultural history collections. It will soon include all our WW1 related objects from the industry collections as well. The site can be viewed here

To complement the launch of this database, staff from across Amgueddfa Cymru were involved in an ‘Explore Your Archives’ event held at the Oakdale Institute at St. Fagans: National History Museum. This event was an opportunity to show some original documents and photographs to members of the public, and promote the work we do in looking after these important collections.

Mark Etheridge

Curator: Industry & Transport

Follow us on Twitter - @IndustryACNMW

Two weeks ago, Botany Curators at Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Cardiff welcomed scientists from across Europe, including Romania, Bulgaria, Germany and Spain. The visitors, who are all experts in the study of plant fossils and pollen analysis, spent two days discussing how best to study the changes that have occurred in plant diversity over the last 400 million years. These changes are important as they help scientists understand how vegetation has influenced climate and environmental change in the past.  The meeting included 17 presentations discussing the vegetation from different geological time periods. The visitors also had the opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at National Museum Cardiff to see a selection of rare plant fossils from the David Davies Collection and pollen specimens from the Hyde Collection.  This meeting was fully funded by an exclusive grant from the European Science Foundation. It is intended that the workshop will inspire a series of international collaborative projects that will maintain the Museum’s reputation as a centre of excellence in this field.

We produced a Storify Story based on Tweets made throughout the conference.