CYMRU_1

Welsh history and its sources

About this free course

This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A182 Small country, big history: themes in the history of Wales: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history/tasters.shtm.

This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised for your device.

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University – www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/heritage/welsh-history-and-its-sources/content-section-0

Welsh history and its sources

www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/heritage/welsh-history-and-its-sources/content-section-0

There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to demonstrate your learning.

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978-1-4730-1727-6 (.kdl)
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Contents

- Introduction

- Learning outcomes

- 1 Overview

- 1.1 How the course works and what it contains

- 2 Welsh history: text resources

- 2.1 Introduction

- 3 Welsh history: audio resources

- 3.1 Introduction

- 3.2 The Normans in Wales

- 3.3 Crown, conquest and communities

- 3.4 Tudor Wales

- 3.5 People and belief

- 3.6 Love and learning

- 3.7 Crisis

- 3.8 From blue books to white gloves

- 3.9 Work and play

- 3.10 Secret sins

- 3.11 Triumph and tragedy

- 3.12 To hell and back

- 3.13 The Great Depression

- 3.14 A new Jerusalem

- 3.15 On a border in history

- 4 Welsh history: video resources

- 4.1 Introduction

- 4.2 Coast video extracts

- 4.3 The celebrated Cyfarthfa band

- 5 Welsh history: case study of David Lloyd George

- 5.1 Overview

- 5.2 Introduction

- 5.3 ‘The Greatest Welshman Yet Born’? David Lloyd George and Wales

- 5.4 Lloyd George, Wales and the world

- 5.5 The individual in history

- 5.6 References and further reading

- 6 Welsh history: map and diagram resources

- 6.1 Introduction

- 6.2 Edward I and Wales

- 6.3 Tudor Wales

- 6.4 The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

- 6.5 People and protest

- 6.6 Wales 1880–1914

- 6.7 Wales between the Wars

- 6.8 Post-War Wales

- 7 Welsh history: image resources

- 7.1 Introduction

- 7.2 Edward I and Wales

- 7.3 Tudor Wales

- 7.4 The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

- 7.5 People and protest

- 7.6 Wales 1880–1914

- 7.7 Wales between the Wars

- 7.8 Post-War Wales

- 8 Welsh history: weblinks

- 8.1 Introduction

- 9 Welsh history: glossary

- 10 Bibliography of Welsh history

- Conclusion

- Acknowledgements

- Solutions

- Descriptions

Introduction

This course is a teaching and learning resource for anyone interested in Welsh history. It contains study materials, links to some of the most important institutions that contribute to our understanding of the history of Wales, and a pool of resources that can help you understand Welsh history and the way it is studied.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A182 Small country, big history: themes in the history of Wales.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course you should be able to:

- understand some of the basic themes and issues that have been the focus for historians of Wales

- become aware of a variety of approaches employed by historians in interpreting and constructing history generally and Welsh history specifically

- understand issues that contribute to the cultural identity of Wales.

1 Overview

1.1 How the course works and what it contains

This unit has been designed to help anyone with an interest in the history of Wales to find key information and to begin understanding the way that historians of Wales do their work. It is aimed both at those who are generally interested in the subject and may have a good knowledge of Welsh history already, and at those who are relatively new to the subject. So, while some of the material (such as the taster material from the OU course Small country, big history: themes in the history of Wales) provides a short programme of study devoted to a very specific topic, much of the material included in the unit as a whole can be used and studied in a variety of ways.

1.1.1 Background

The unit title, Welsh history and its sources, was the generic title for a series of books that was prepared at The Open University in Wales between 1988 and 1995, and edited by Trevor Herbert and Gareth Elwyn Jones. The seven volumes in the series were made possible by a Welsh Office grant and brought together the work of more than forty historians of Wales.

The series was important because it did not just provide a rich array of materials about Welsh history; it also explained the way that historians of Wales work by showing the relationship between their writings about Welsh history and the evidence or sources upon which those writings are based. The variety of material contained in this unit not only continues the legacy of the original Welsh history and its sources project, it also extends it and makes it suitable for an online environment.

1.1.2 Sources and resources

This unit contains a wide range of materials presented in different media formats that are freely available for you to use. It contains a substantial number of essays and source materials from the original Welsh history and its sources series of books, as well as maps, pictures and sound clips. If you wish to use the videos offline, we recommend that you download the higher resolution version.

1.1.3 Weblinks

The weblinks section of this course guides you to some of the best online resources for the study of Welsh history. We have looked at all the sites we give links to, and we are sure that they will be helpful to you. Some, such as the enormously impressive online resources of the National Library of Wales, provide a vast array of online sources.

1.1.4 History tools

This course contains very basic devices that will enable you to make a start in your exploration of Welsh history.

There are three primary tools for you to explore:

- The Welsh history timeline provides a basic overview of the more important events in the history of Wales.

- The glossary of Welsh history is a searchable database of words and phrases that figure prominently in writings about the history of Wales.

- A bibliography of Welsh history.

The glossary of Welsh history is also accessible by selecting the link provided in the text. It will be presented to you as a navigable set of glossary pages in alphabetical order.

The bibliography of Welsh history allows you both to pursue your own interests by discovering further reading and to gain an overview of the scope of Welsh historical scholarship.

2 Welsh history: text resources

2.1 Introduction

Each of the selections in this section is taken from one of the volumes in the Welsh history and its sources series. Each book contained an introductory overview followed by a series of essays. Each one of these essays was linked and cross-referenced to documentary source material that the author had investigated when writing her/his essay.

The introductory essays from each of the seven volumes are included here, along with one essay from each volume and the source materials that are related to it. Each essay can be accessed by selecting the view document option. The essay will then be presented as a PDF document in a separate window.

Throughout the essays, you will see words in italics. Some of the authors use italics for the Welsh language, but italics also indicate entries in the glossary in Section 9. If you look up these words in the glossary, you will find some more information about them.

2.1.1 Edward I and Wales

This is the introductory essay to the volume Edward I and Wales. It was written by Professor R.R. Davies, at that time Professor of History at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Click below to open ‘Edward I and Wales’ (8 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

edwardiandwales.pdf

2.1.2 The Edwardian Conquest and its Military Consolidation

This chapter from Edward I and Wales is by Dr Ifor Rowlands. Dr Rowlands uses a range of thirteenth-century documentary texts, maps and statistical tables to support his essay.

Click below to open ‘The Edwardian Conquest and its Military Consolidation’ (26 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

theedwardianconquestanditsmilitaryconsolidation.pdf

2.1.3 Tudor Wales

This is the introductory essay to the volume Tudor Wales. It was written by Professor Gareth Elwyn Jones, one of the co-editors of the Welsh History and its Sources series.

Click below to open ‘Tudor Wales’ (7 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

tudor_wales_2.pdf

2.1.4 The Lower Orders

This chapter from Tudor Wales is by Brian Howells of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Brian Howells' contribution is impressive because of the range of sources he has marshalled about ordinary people whose activities are usually less well documented than their social superiors.

Click below to open ‘The Lower Orders’ (21 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

thelowerorders.pdf

2.1.5 The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century

This is the introductory essay to the volume The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century. It was written by Peter D.G. Thomas, Professor of History at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Click below to open ‘The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century’ (5 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

theremakingofwalesintheeighteenthcentury.pdf

2.1.6 Beginnings of Radicalism

This chapter from The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century was written by Professor Gwyn Alf Williams of Cardiff University. In his chapter Professor Williams traces the origins of the radicalism that was to surface in its fullest form in Wales in the nineteenth century.

Click below to open ‘Beginnings of Radicalism’ (28 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

beginningsofradicalism.pdf

2.1.7 People and Protest: Wales 1815–1880

This is the introductory essay to the volume People and Protest: Wales 1815–1880. It was written by Professor Ieuan G. Jones of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Click below to open ‘People and Protest Wales 1815–1880’ (5 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

peopleandprotest_wales1815_1880.pdf

2.1.8 Parliament and People in Mid-Nineteenth Century Wales

Like the previous essay, this chapter from People and Protest: Wales 1815–1880 is also by Ieuan G. Jones, who was a pioneering historian of politics and nonconformity in nineteenth-century Wales.

Click below to open ‘Parliament and People in Mid-Nineteenth Century Wales’ (25 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

parliamentandpeopleinmid_nineteenth_centurywales.pdf

2.1.9 Wales 1880–1914

This is the introductory essay to the volume Wales 1880–1914. It is by Professor Gareth Elwyn Jones, one of the co-editors of the Welsh History and its Sources series.

Click below to open ‘Wales 1880–1914’ (7 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

wales1880_1914.pdf

2.1.10 From Riots to Revolt: Tonypandy and The Miners' Next Step

This chapter from Wales 1880–1914 is by Professor David (Dai) Smith. Professor Smith made a famous study of the Tonypandy riots of 1910 and many of his sources are reprinted here.

Click below to open ‘From Riots to Revolt: Tonypandy and The Miners’ Next Step’ (23 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

fromriotstorevolution_tonypandyandtheminersnexstep.pdf

2.1.11 Wales between the Wars

This is the introductory essay to the volume Wales between the Wars. Like the chapter ‘From Riots to Revolt’ from the previous volume, it is by Professor David (Dai) Smith.

Click below to open ‘Wales Between the Wars’ (9 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

walesbetweenthewars.pdf

2.1.12 Social Reactions to Economic Change

This chapter from Wales between the Wars is by Deian Hopkin, then of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Dr Hopkin draws on a wide range of sources from different parts of Wales to support his arguments.

Click below to open ‘Social Reactions to Economic Change’ (41 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

socialreactionstoeconomicchange.pdf

2.1.13 Post-War Wales

This is the introductory essay to the volume Post-War Wales. It was written by Professor Gareth Elwyn Jones, one of the co-editors of the Welsh History and its Sources series.

Click below to open ‘Post-War Wales’ (7 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

post_warwales.pdf

2.1.14 Wales and the Wider World

This chapter from Post-War Wales is by Christopher Harvie of the University of Tübingen, Germany. Unlike the other volumes, the chapters in Post-War Wales did not include ‘Discussion’ or ‘Debating the Evidence’ sections, so the chapter consists of Christopher Harvie's essay and sources.

Click below to open ‘Wales and the Wider World’ (17 pages). Make sure to open the link in a new tab/window so you can easily return here.

walesandthewiderworld.pdf

3 Welsh history: audio resources

3.1 Introduction

The following audio resource files are extracts from a series of seventeen BBC Radio Wales programmes first broadcast in 1999. They include discussion by eminent Welsh historians, many of whom have contributed to the essays presented in the previous text resources section.

It is important to point out that these are extracts from longer and more detailed discourses about the history of Wales, but they each contain important views and information that illustrate the nature of historical investigations into Welsh topics. The Welsh history and its sources site contains additional information about most of the periods and in some cases the topics that are the subjects of discussion. In addition the glossary and timelines will help you to contextualise the material.

To get the most out of this material it is worth listening to each audio clip more than once. In between each listening you should ask yourself what the key issues are about the subject that the speaker is addressing.

3.2 The Normans in Wales

3.2.1 The Welsh experience of the Norman conquest

Huw Pryce discusses the Welsh experience of the Norman Conquest. The contemporary poem Rhigyfarch's Lament describes the conquest of Dyfed.

This extract is from Programme 1, The Normans in Wales, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 1 (duration 3:09)

View description - Audio 1 (duration 3:09)

3.3 Crown, conquest and communities

3.3.1 The ‘warlike Welsh’

Huw Pryce discusses the militarism of the Welsh in the twelfth century.

This extract is from Programme 2, Crown, conquest and communities, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 2 (duration 0:56)

View description - Audio 2 (duration 0:56)

3.3.2 Llywelyn ap Gruffydd

A.D. Carr discusses the career of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, ‘the Last Prince of Wales’, and in particular Llywelyn’s final uprising against Edward I, and the deaths of Llywelyn and his brother Dafydd.

This extract is from Programme 2, Crown, conquest and communities, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 3 (duration 5:45)

View description - Audio 3 (duration 5:45)

3.3.3 The conquest of Wales

A.D. Carr discusses the impact of the ‘conquest’ of Wales, and Edward I's programme of castle-building. Nancy Edwards describes the planning of Edward's new towns.

This extract is from Programme 2, Crown, conquest and communities, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 4 (duration 4:25)

View description - Audio 4 (duration 4:25)

3.4 Tudor Wales

3.4.1 The aftermath of the Glyndwr rebellion

A.D. Carr and Matthew Griffiths describe the aftermath of Owain Glyndwr's rebellion.

This extract is from Programme 3, Tudor Wales, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 5 (duration 1:33)

View description - Audio 5 (duration 1:33)

3.4.2 The Tudors

Gareth Elwyn Jones examines the significance of the Tudors and the Acts of Union, and in particular the language clause of the 1536 Act of Union.

This extract is from Programme 3, Tudor Wales, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 6 (duration 2:19)

View description - Audio 6 (duration 2:19)

3.5 People and belief

3.5.1 The Welsh New Testament

A discussion of the translation of the New Testament into Welsh, and of the state of Welsh spiritual life at the time of the Reformation.

This extract is from Programme 4, People and Belief, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 7 (duration 1:47)

View description - Audio 7 (duration 1:47)

3.5.2 Welsh religious life before the Reformation

Glanmor Williams discusses pre-Reformation piety in Wales.

This extract is from Programme 4, People and Belief, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 8 (duration 2:16)

View description - Audio 8 (duration 2:16)

3.5.3 The Reformation in Wales

Glanmor Williams examines the changes under Henry VIII and Edward VI including the use of the Prayer Book. He describes the removal of images of the saints. Gareth Elwyn Jones discusses the translation of the Prayer Book and Bible into Welsh.

This extract is from Programme 4, People and Belief, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 9 (duration 3:16)

View description - Audio 9 (duration 3:16)

3.6 Love and learning

3.6.1 Eighteenth-century tourism of Wales

Philip Jenkins discusses changes in English attitudes to the landscape of Wales in the 1760s with the development of the Romantic movement.

This extract is from Programme 6, Love and learning, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 10 (duration 1:55)

View description - Audio 10 (duration 1:55)

3.7 Crisis

3.7.1 Welsh nonconformity

Neil Evans discusses Nonconformist religion in nineteenth-century Wales.

This extract is from Programme 8, Crisis, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 11 (duration 0:49)

View description - Audio 11 (duration 0:49)

3.8 From blue books to white gloves

3.8.1 Public houses

Neil Evans describes the function of pubs in Wales in the nineteenth century.

This extract is from Programme 9, From blue books to white gloves, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 12 (duration 1:11)

View description - Audio 12 (duration 1:11)

3.8.2 Social unrest

Neil Evans discusses the response of the state to rebellions in Wales in the nineteenth century.

This extract is from Programme 9, From blue books to white gloves, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 13 (duration 1:08)

View description - Audio 13 (duration 1:08)

3.8.3 Iolo Morganwg

Philip Jenkins examines the influence of Iolo Morganwg in Wales.

This extract is from Programme 9, From blue books to white gloves, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 14 (duration 2:07)

View description - Audio 14 (duration 2:07)

3.9 Work and play

3.9.1 Mealtimes

Elin Jones discusses the impact of industrialisation and shift work on mealtimes in nineteenth-century Wales.

This extract is from Programme 10, Work and play, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 15 (duration 1:28)

View description - Audio 15 (duration 1:28)

3.9.2 The chapel

Russell Davies examines the role of chapels in Wales.

This extract is from Programme 10, Work and play, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 16 (duration 0:53)

View description - Audio 16 (duration 0:53)

3.9.3 The Sunday Closing Act

Russell Davies discusses the impact and consequences of the Sunday closing of public houses in Wales.

This extract is from Programme 10, Work and play, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 17 (duration 1:59)

View description - Audio 17 (duration 1:59)

3.9.4 Welsh rugby

Gareth Williams describes some of the characteristics of Welsh rugby.

This extract is from Programme 10, Work and play, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 18 (duration 3:19)

View description - Audio 18 (duration 3:19)

3.10 Secret sins

3.10.1 Rural Wales

Bill Jones discusses conditions in nineteenth-century rural Wales, and the attractions of urban areas.

This extract is from Programme 11, Secret sins, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 19 (duration 2:26)

View description - Audio 19 (duration 2:26)

3.11 Triumph and tragedy

3.11.1 Colliery disasters

Bill Jones examines the impact of colliery disasters on communities in Wales.

This extract is from Programme 12, Triumph and tragedy, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 20 (duration 0:55)

View description - Audio 20 (duration 0:55)

3.12 To hell and back

3.12.1 The impact of World War I

Keith Strange describes the impact of the Great War on the political, economic and cultural life of Wales.

This extract is from Programme 13, To hell and back, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 21 (duration 1:09)

View description - Audio 21 (duration 1:09)

3.12.2 Welsh women in World War I

Bob Morris, Keith Strange and Deirdre Beddoe focus on the role of Welsh women during the First World War, in particular on their new independence and munitions work.

This extract is from Programme 13, To hell and back, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 22 (duration 3:07)

View description - Audio 22 (duration 3:07)

3.12.3 Coal cutting

Brian Davies describes the process of coal cutting and the conditions in which miners worked.

This extract is from Programme 13, To hell and back, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 23 (duration 1:09)

View description - Audio 23 (duration 1:09)

3.12.4 The coalfield community

Brian Davies talks about life in the community of the South Wales coalfield in the 1920s and 1930s.

This extract is from Programme 13, To hell and back, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 24 (duration 0:47)

View description - Audio 24 (duration 0:47)

3.13 The Great Depression

3.13.1 Women's lives in the Great Depression

Ioan Matthews, Deirdre Beddoe and Sian Rhiannon Williams discuss the experience of women in Wales during the depression of the 1930s.

This extract is from Programme 14, The Great Depression, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 25 (duration 1:47)

View description - Audio 25 (duration 1:47)

3.14 A new Jerusalem

3.14.1 Wales in the 1950s and 1960s

Christine Stephens discusses the effect of increasing affluence and the influence of the USA. Rock’n’roll arrives in Wales.

This extract is from Programme 16, A new Jerusalem, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 26 (duration 2:15)

View description - Audio 26 (duration 2:15)

3.15 On a border in history

3.15.1 The Welsh language movement

Chris Williams discusses the impact of Saunders Lewis's 1962 radio broadcast Tynged yr Iaith (The Fate of the Language).

This extract is from Programme 17, On a border in history, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 27 (duration 1:01)

View description - Audio 27 (duration 1:01)

3.15.2 A golden age of Welsh rugby

Chris Williams discusses Welsh rugby in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and Welsh rugby supporters' shared sense of unity and identity.

This extract is from Programme 17, On a border in history, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 28 (duration 1:26)

View description - Audio 28 (duration 1:26)

3.15.3 Welsh identity

Chris Williams discusses the emergence of a new understanding of Welsh identity in the 1970s and 1980s.

This extract is from Programme 17, On a border in history, of the BBC Radio Wales Millennium History series, The People of Wales (1999).

Audio content is not available in this format.

Audio 29 (duration 1:18)

View description - Audio 29 (duration 1:18)

4 Welsh history: video resources

In this section two video resources, describing different aspects of Welsh history, are presented. These complement the materials presented in the previous text and audio sections. They also offer you a visual context for some important aspects of Welsh history.

4.1 Introduction

The first video resource is a set of short extracts from the first three BBC/Open University television series Coast, originally broadcast between 2005 and 2007. They explore some of the historical stories that make up the unique character of the Welsh coastline.

The second video resource is taken from Open University course AA302 From composition to performance: musicians at work, and shows how the musical and cultural identity of a Welsh Victorian brass band was reconstructed from a range of sources.

4.2 Coast video extracts

- Extract 1

- The development of the port of Cardiff and the community of Tiger Bay (Coast, Series 1, Programme 3, 2005).

Video content is not available in this format.

Video 1 (duration 4:08)

- Extract 2

- Conquering the Menai Straits: Edward I tried to dominate the Menai Straits by building Caernarfon Castle; the engineers Thomas Telford and Robert Stephenson did it by constructing the world's first suspension and box-girder bridges (Coast, Series 1, Programme 4, 2005).

Video content is not available in this format.

Video 2 (duration 11:44)

- Extract 3

- The story of the Anglesey bonesetters and the birth of modern orthopaedics (Coast, Series 2, Programme 2, 2006).

Video content is not available in this format.

Video 3 (duration 6:06)

- Extract 4

- ‘Copperopolis’: Swansea's rise and decline as the centre of the world's copper industry. (Coast, Series 3, Programme 4, 2007).

Video content is not available in this format.

Video 4 (duration 6:59)

4.3 The celebrated Cyfarthfa band

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Merthyr Tydfil was the world's greatest supplier of iron and the largest town in Wales. It was dominated by Cyfarthfa Castle, the huge and ostentatious home of the greatest of the iron barons, Robert Thompson Crawshay.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Crawshay established a band: a brass band that was to become one of the greatest musical ensembles of the Victorian period.

This programme, from the Open University course AA302 From composition to performance: musicians at work, shows how the musical and cultural identity of this band was reconstructed from a range of sources.

Professor Trevor Herbert, who first identified the sources for this story, was interested in addressing three key questions:

- When did this band come into being and how was it run?

- What did the band sound like?

- Why was such a band formed in a place like Merthyr Tydfil?

Video content is not available in this format.

Video 5 The celebrated Cyfarthfa band (duration 23:45)

View transcript - Video 5 The celebrated Cyfarthfa band (duration 23:45)

5 Welsh history: case study of David Lloyd George

5.1 Overview

Capel Mawr

This section contains a short ‘taster’ from The Open University's fifteen-week course A182 Small country, big history: themes in the history of Wales. The sample material presented in this section looks at the life of David Lloyd George.

5.2 Introduction

This extract of material is taken from the opening section of the final case study in A182 Small country, big history: themes in the history of Wales. In it Professor Chris Williams discusses the extent to which the Welshness of David Lloyd George, the only Welshman ever to have become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was seen as important either by Lloyd George himself or by others.

Though it is not evident from this sample, the course focuses on the way that this theme is developed by Kenneth O. Morgan, one of the greatest historians of the period. Students are invited to read Morgan's essay ‘David Lloyd George and Wales’ and many of the sources that were used in writing it, and to answer key questions about the function of historical biography and the way that individual lives are treated by historians.

5.3 ‘The Greatest Welshman Yet Born’? David Lloyd George and Wales

‘Lloyd George Knew My Father, Father Knew Lloyd George’

My first ever acquaintance with the name of David Lloyd George came through hearing my paternal grandmother sing the line ‘Lloyd George Knew My Father, Father Knew Lloyd George’, over and over again, to the tune of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. This music-hall ditty originated as a satirical comment on the controversy that surrounded the ‘honours scandal’ of 1922, when the Lloyd George government was accused of trading honours such as OBEs (Order of the British Empire), knighthoods, baronetcies and peerages in return for financial donations.

A much more profound and educational engagement with the life and times of Lloyd George came in 1981, when the BBC screened an impressive nine-part drama. It is an interesting exercise to reflect on how our historical knowledge of individuals or events is constructed through layers of cultural memory.

Activity

0 hours 10 minutes

What do you know already about the life of Lloyd George? Without referring to any additional materials, jot down as many facts about him as you can think of.

View discussion - Activity

5.4 Lloyd George, Wales and the world

What I hope the activity in Section 5.3 reveals is that a full appreciation of David Lloyd George's political career would take us well beyond the confines of Wales and the Welsh nation. As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1916–22) he presided over the expansion of the British Empire to its maximum extent, while at the same time negotiating the settlement of the ‘Irish Question’ and the recasting of the UK as that of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Along with President Woodrow Wilson of the United States of America and Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, he played a critical role in the peace settlements that followed the First World War, and which not only redrew the map of Europe but also those of the Middle and Far East. Later, while in opposition, Lloyd George was instrumental in introducing the ultimately highly influential economic initiatives of John Maynard Keynes to a wider audience. To study Lloyd George's life in the round, therefore, would be a fascinating and highly worthwhile exercise, and I recommend strongly that if you have time you should read at least one of the shorter biographical studies, such as those by Pugh (1988) or Wrigley (1992) listed in Section 5.6.

Our focus in this section, however, is on Lloyd George's relationship with Wales, and what a study of Lloyd George can tell us about the emergence of a modern sense of Welsh nationality. Contemporaries were very confident that Lloyd George's political ascent held a significance wider than that of the man himself. One of Lloyd George's earliest biographers, J. Hugh Edwards, went so far as to produce a multi-volume work entitled The Life of David Lloyd George, with a Short History of the Welsh People, which started with ‘the origins of the Cymric race’ (Edwards, 1913–24, vol. I, p. 1) and ended with Lloyd George's premiership! The justification for such an arrangement was the claim that Lloyd George was ‘the product of Welsh nationality – the resultant [sic] of those forces which have kept alive the language and tradition of Wales through long centuries of oppression and scorn’ (Edwards 1913–24, vol. I, p. xxiii). It was just such a mood that allowed the liberal-nationalist monthly the Welsh Outlook to proclaim Lloyd George ‘the greatest Welshman yet born’ in 1919 (cited in Morgan, Modern Wales, p. 361).

Modern historians tend to be rather more restrained in their evaluations. I once took part in a radio programme which debated whether Lloyd George was ‘hero or villain’. Each side was represented by a professional historian and a Member of Parliament (one Liberal Democrat, one Labour). The judge was historian and broadcaster Peter Stead, and when the fury of the debate had subsided his decision was that Lloyd George was a villain! Yet in the online poll conducted in 2003–04 by Culturenet Cymru to identify ‘100 Welsh heroes’, Lloyd George came in a very respectable eighth place.

Between 8 September 2003 and 23 February 2004, Culturenet Cymru received over 80,000 nominations for ‘Welsh heroes’.

When the polls closed the top ten places were as follows:

1. Aneurin Bevan (2426 votes)

2. Owain Glyndŵr (2309)

3. Tom Jones (2072)

4. Gwynfor Evans (1928)

5. Richard Burton (1755)

6. Gareth Edwards (1685)

7. Dylan Thomas (1630)

8. David Lloyd George (1627)

9. Robert Owen (1621)

10. Saunders Lewis (1601)

(Culturenet Cymru, 2003–4)

It is interesting that a more recent (but less extensive) poll produced a slightly different set of results. Who would be your top ten Welsh heroes? Would the list include any women?

5.5 The individual in history

Judging any politician as either ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ is inevitably a subjective exercise, conditioned by our own ideological preferences. It is also a highly artificial device, as few individuals are so good or so bad as to fit neatly into either category. As historians, therefore, we need to aim for a more balanced assessment, which takes into account not just the actions or beliefs of the individual in question, but also the contexts and environments in which they operated.

This brings me onto another key theme in this section: the importance of the individual historical actor. The Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle suggested that ‘the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of Great Men who have worked here’ (1907, p. 1). In the nineteenth century every great man had to have at least one biography, usually a multi-volumed work written by an admirer, associate or relative, replete with extensive quotations from letters and speeches. Such works tended to be largely uncritical and enthusiastic endorsements of the importance of their subject, verging on hagiography. Today such volumes appear quaint: dusty tomes with thick, often uneven pages, overwhelmingly interested in the public life of the individual, occasionally concerned to whitewash dubious or controversial dimensions of their stories. They sat uneasily alongside the increasing professionalisation of history with a capital ‘H’, history as a discipline, ostensibly objective, evidence-based, and concerned with wider trends and grander themes than individual lives.

Karl Marx, a very different kind of Victorian, famously wrote that ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.’ (1954, p. 10). The role of individual action was thus tightly circumscribed: the Napoleons of history were understood as part of broader trends, as representative of particular moments. Individuals played key roles in history, but their specific identity was almost irrelevant – if it had not been a Napoleon it would have been another French general, so the argument ran.

Yet can such a perspective ever be fully satisfactory? As Richard Evans has pointed out, ‘To reduce every human being to a statistic, a social type, or the mouthpiece of a collective discourse is to do violence to the complexity of human nature, social circumstance and cultural life’ (1997, p. 189).

Historical biography is vital because it places people at the centre of the processes by which we understand the past. Of course biography cannot be severed from its broader historical moorings. No life can be understood apart from the society in which it was lived. Yet we can also agree that the individual life may reveal much about the moment in which it was lived. One of Marx's more rarely quoted aphorisms appears relevant here: ‘Every social epoch needs its great men and if it does not find them it invents them’ (1979, p. 92).

Figure 1: David Lloyd George

View alternative description - Figure 1: David Lloyd George

View description - Figure 1: David Lloyd George

5.6 References and further reading

Carlyle, T. ([1841] 1907) On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, London, Chapman and Hall.

Edwards, J.H. (1913–24) The Life of David Lloyd George, with a Short History of the Welsh People, London, Waverley Book Company.

Evans, R.J. (1997) In Defence of History, London, Granta.

Marx, K. ([1850] 1979) The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850, Moscow, Progress.

Marx, K. ([1852] 1954) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Moscow, Progress.

Morgan, K.O. (1995) Modern Wales: Politics, Places and People, Cardiff, University of Wales Press.

Pugh, M.D. (1988) Lloyd George, London, Longman.

Wrigley, C.J. (1992) Lloyd George, Oxford, Blackwell.

6 Welsh history: map and diagram resources

6.1 Introduction

The following map and diagram resources are taken from the seven Welsh History and its Sources books mentioned in Section 1.1. They were specially drawn for the Welsh History and its Sources volumes. Some appear in the essays presented in Section 2. They cover many aspects of Welsh history, as well as presenting a geographical and statistical context for the various historical events.

6.2 Edward I and Wales

edward_resource1.pdf

Resource 1: Principal physical features of Wales

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource2.pdf

Resource 2: Wales in 1267

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource3.pdf

Resource 3: Wales in 1277

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource4.pdf

Resource 4: Wales in 1284

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource5.pdf

Resource 5: Edward I's Campaign 1276–77

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource6.pdf

Resource 6: Edward I's Campaign 1282–83

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource7.pdf

Resource 7: Edwardian castles in Wales

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource8.pdf

Resource 8: Plan of Conwy Castle

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource9.pdf

Resource 9: Caernarfon Castle and town

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource10.pdf

Resource 10: The impressment of men for the King's works in Wales, 1282–3 (see also Resource 11)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_resource11.pdf

Resource 11: The impressment of men for the King's works in Wales, 1282–3 (see also Resource 10)

From: Edward I and Wales

Use the link below to download all the maps and diagrams from Edward I and Wales as a collection.

From: Edward I and Wales

Resource collection

6.3 Tudor Wales

tudor_resource1.pdf

Resource 1: Main physical features of Wales

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource2.pdf

Resource 2: Humphrey Lhuyd’s map of Wales 1573. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource3.pdf

Resource 3: Map of Pembrokeshire by George Owen of Henllys. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource4.pdf

Resource 4: Purchasing power of wages 1450–1499

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource5.pdf

Resource 5: John Speed’s map of Caernarfon, 1611. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource6.pdf

Resource 6: Index of Prices of Basket of Consumables 1400–1700

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource7.pdf

Resource 7: Baptisms and Burials in Conway, 1541–1640

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource8.pdf

Resource 8: Density of population in Wales c.1550

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource9.pdf

Resource 9: Map of Barry Manor in 1622 by Evans Mouse, based on original in Glamorgan Record Office. (Source: H.J. Evans.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource10.pdf

Resource 10: New Radnor in the early seventeenth century; map published in John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, 1611

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource11.pdf

Resource 11: Main Welsh towns, c.1550

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource12.pdf

Resource 12: Welsh Monastic houses

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource13.pdf

Resource 13: Independent Wales in the early thirteenth century

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource14.pdf

Resource 14: Wales in the reign of Henry VII

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_resource15.pdf

Resource 15: The Shires of Wales after the Acts of Union

From: Tudor Wales

Use the link below to download all the maps and diagrams from Tudor Wales as a collection.

From: Tudor Wales

Resource collection

6.4 The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_resource1.pdf

Resource 1: Place-name map of Wales

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_resource2.pdf

Resource 2: Food riots in Wales, 1793–1801

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_resource3.pdf

Resource 3: Resistance to enclosures

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_resource4.pdf

Resource 4: Disaffection during the Napoleonic Wars

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

Use the link below to download all the maps and diagrams from The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century as a collection.

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

Resource collection

6.5 People and protest

protest_resource1.pdf

Resource 1: Country populations in Wales as shown by census returns

From: People and protest

protest_resource2.pdf

Resource 2: Wales, showing the pre-1974 county boundaries

From: People and protest

protest_resource3.pdf

Resource 3: Chapel building of Protestant denominations 1801–1850 (Public Record Office, Census of Religious Worship 1851. Enumerators’ Returns for Wales, HO 129/29/576–623.)

From: People and protest

protest_resource4.pdf

Resource 4: Growth Rates in Wales — (4 Main Denominations)

From: People and protest

protest_resource5.pdf

Resource 5: The North Wales slate mining district

From: People and protest

Use the link below to download all the maps and diagrams from People and protest as a collection.

From: People and protest

Resource collection

6.6 Wales 1880–1914

wales_resource1.pdf

Resource 1: Place-name map of Wales

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_resource2.pdf

Resource 2: Total population 1881

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_resource3.pdf

Resource 3: Total population 1911

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_resource4.pdf

Resource 4: Welsh speaking population, 1911

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_resource5.pdf

Resource 5: Linguistic areas in the central borderland counties of Wales during the mid-nineteenth century according to the language used at Sunday Schools. (Source: G. J. Lewis and National Library of Wales. Reproduced from NLW Journal XXI.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_resource6.pdf

Resource 6: General Election Result, 1910 (based on Madgwick and Balsom, National Atlas of Wales.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

Use the link below to download all the maps and diagrams from Wales 1880–1914 as a collection.

From: Wales 1880–1914

Resource collection

6.7 Wales between the Wars

between_wars_resource1.pdf

Resource 1: Map of Welsh counties

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_resource2.pdf

Resource 2: South Wales: the shaded area shows the coalfield

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_resource3.pdf

Resource 3: Output of coal from the south Wales coalfield, 1923–1948, showing (above) levels of unemployment during the same period

From: Wales between the Wars,

between_wars_resource4.pdf

Resource 4: County populations, Wales 1911–51

From: Wales between the Wars,

Use the link below to download all the maps and diagrams from Wales between the Wars as a collection.

From: Wales between the Wars

Resource collection

6.8 Post-War Wales

post_war_resource1.pdf

Resource 1: The main administrative units of Wales, showing the ‘old’ (pre-1974) and ‘new’ (1974–1996) county boundaries. (Source: D. Huw Owen (ed.), Settlement and Society in Wales, Cardiff, 1989.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_resource2.pdf

Resource 2: Number of Welsh speakers, 1991. (Source: Aitchison and H. Carter, A Geography of the Welsh Language 1969–1991, 1994.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_resource3.pdf

Resource 3: Percentage of the population able to speak Welsh, 1991. (Source: Aitchison and H. Carter, A Geography of the Welsh Language 1969–1991, 1994.)

From: Post-War Wales

Use the link below to download all the maps from Post-War Wales as a collection.

From: Post-War Wales

Resource collection

7 Welsh history: image resources

7.1 Introduction

The following image resources are taken from the seven Welsh History and its sources books mentioned in Section 1.1. Some appear in the essays presented in Section 2. They cover many aspects of Welsh history, as well as presenting a visual context for various people, places and events of Wales through time.

7.2 Edward I and Wales

edward_1.pdf

Image 1: Idealized sculpture of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in Cardiff City Hall. (Source: Cardiff City Council.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_2.pdf

Image 2: Littere Wallie. (Source: Public Record Office.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_3.pdf

Image 3: Caernarfon Castle. (Source: Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments. Crown Copyright.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_4.pdf

Image 4: The Theodosian Wall of Constantinople. (Source Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments. Crown Copyright.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_5.pdf

Image 5: Payments to building workers at Caernarfon Castle, 1316–17. (Source: Public Record Office.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_6.pdf

Image 6: Thirteenth-century sculpture believed to be the head of the youthful Edward I. (Source: Dean and Chapter of Westminster.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_7.pdf

Image 7: Rhuddlan Castle. (Source: Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments. Crown Copyright.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_8.pdf

Image 8: An early twentieth-century representation of Gerald of Wales. (Source: Cardiff City Council.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_9.pdf

Image 9: Bangor Cathedral. (Source: National Monuments Record for Wales.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_10.pdf

Image 10: Valle Crucis. (Source: National Monuments Record for Wales.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_11.pdf

Image 11: Brut y Tywysogyon or The Chronicle of the Princes. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_12.pdf

Image 12: Illustration from the Anian Pontifical, Bangor. (Source: Dean and Chapter of Bangor Cathedral.)

From: Edward I and Wales

edward_13.pdf

Image 13: Harlech Castle. (Source: Welsh Historic Monuments Crown Copyright.)

From: Edward I and Wales

Use the link below to download all the images from Edward I and Wales as a collection.

From: Edward I and Wales

Image collection

7.3 Tudor Wales

tudor_1.pdf

Image 1: Katheryn of Berain – the Llewesog Portrait. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_2.pdf

Image 2: Tombs of the gentry family of the Mansels of Margam, in Margam Abbey Church. (Source: Glamorgan Archive Serviced)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_3.pdf

Image 3: Sir John Wynn of Gwydir. (Engraving by Robert Vaughan.) (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_4.pdf

Image 4: Beaupré Castle, home of the Basset family of Beaupré (or Bewper). (Source: National Monuments Record for Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_5.pdf

Image 5: The type of house favoured by south Wales yeomen during the ‘great rebuilding’. (Source: Cambridge University Press.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_6.pdf

Image 6: The type of house commonly favoured in the Severn valley during the ‘great rebuilding’. (Source: Cambridge University Press.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_7.pdf

Image 7: Reaping scene from Holinshed’s Chronicles, 1577. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_8.pdf

Image 8: Aerial photograph New Radnor, 1967. (Source: University of Cambridge, Committee for Aerial Photography.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_9.pdf

Image 9: The title page of Yny Lhyvyr Hwnn (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_10.pdf

Image 10: Bishop William Morgan. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_11.pdf

Image 11: The title page of the Bible, 1588. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_12.pdf

Image 12: Sir Henry Sidney in 1573. (Artist unknown.) (Source: National Portrait Gallery.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_13.pdf

Image 13: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, c.1575. (Artist unknown). (Source: National Portrait Gallery.)

From: Tudor Wales

tudor_14.pdf

Image 14: Henry Herbert, second Earl of Pembroke (c. 1534–1601). (Artist unknown). (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: Tudor Wales

Use the link below to download all the images from Tudor Wales as a collection.

From: Tudor Wales

Image collection

7.4 The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_1.pdf

Image 1: Sir Watkin Williams Wynn: a portrait by Thomas Hudson, 1740. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_2.pdf

Image 2: Pembroke town and castle, painted by Richard Wilson. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_3.pdf

Image 3: Mid-eighteenth-century wine glasses engraved with Jacobite insignia and mottoes. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_4.pdf

Image 4: Richard Jones Gwynne of Taliaris, Sea Serjeant. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_5.pdf

Image 5: The Calvinistic Methodist Fathers. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_6.pdf

Image 6: The Welch Curate. (Source: British Museum.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_7.pdf

Image 7: The Welch Parson. (Source: British Museum.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_8.pdf

Image 8: Lewis Morris. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_9.pdf

Image 9: Howel Harris’s map of his travels. (Source: National Library of Wales and the Historical Society of the Presbyterian Church of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_10.pdf

Image 10: Title page of John Evans’s Some Account of the Welch Charity Schools. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_11.pdf

Image 11: Griffith Jones’s tables of schools and scholars in Welch Piety, 1759. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_12.pdf

Image 12: A cartoon of 1763 portraying preachers as greedy men and their congregations as lewd and disorderly. (Source: British Museum.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_13.pdf

Image 13: The First Methodist Association (Sasiwn) in 1743. (Source: National library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_14.pdf

Image 14: Engraving showing an iron forge between Dolgellau and Barmouth, 1776. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_15.pdf

Image 15: Coal staithe and a copper works at Landore, near Swansea, 1792, a watercolour by J.C. Ibbetson. (Source: The Wernber Collection, Luton.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_16.pdf

Image 16: Token coin of the ironworks of Carmarthen and Cwmdwyfran in the late eighteenth century, showing the tapping of the furnace and the forging into bar iron. (Source: Carmarthen Museum.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_17.pdf

Image 17: The Parys Copper Mine, Anglesey, c. 1785, a watercolour by J.C. Ibbetson. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_18.pdf

Image 18: Penrhyn Slate Quarry in 1808. (Source: Gwynedd Archives Service.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_19.pdf

Image 19: The Darren Lead Mine, Cardiganshire, c.1670. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_20.pdf

Image 20: Copper works in the Greenfield Valley, near Holywell, Flintshire, 1792. (Source: Clwyd Record Office.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_21.pdf

Image 21: The White Rock Copper and Brass Works, near Swansea, in 1744

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_22.pdf

Image 22: Title page of Cylchgrawn Cymraeg (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_23.pdf

Image 23: Title page of Seren tan Gwmmwl (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_24.pdf

Image 24: Title page of Toriad y Dydd (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_25.pdf

Image 25: A memento of Fishguard in 1797

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_26.pdf

Image 26: Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg). (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_27.pdf

Image 27: Portrait of Lady Llanover (1802–96) painted by Mornewicke in 1862. (Source: National Museum of Wales.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_28.pdf

Image 28: An Arch Druid in His judicial Habit, a coloured aquatint from S.R. Meyrick and C.H. Smith, The Costume of the Original Inhabitants of the British Islands, 1815. (Source: BBC Button Picture Library.)

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_29.pdf

Image 29: The druidic priest as portrayed by the Revd Henry Rowlands in his Mona Antiqua Restaurata, 1723

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_30.pdf

Image 30: The Bard by Philippe J. de Loutherbourg, published in 1784 as the frontispiece to Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards by Edward Jones.

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

remaking_31.pdf

Image 31: Druidical Remains in Anglesey, an engraving by J.Smith in William Sotheby’s A Tour Through Parts of Wales, 1794

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

Use the link below to download all the images from The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century as a collection.

From: The remaking of Wales in the eighteenth century

Image collection

7.5 People and protest

protest_1.pdf

Image 1: Newtown, Montgomeryshire, c. 1900. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: People and protest

protest_2.pdf

Image 2: Swansea in the 1850s

From: People and protest

protest_3.pdf

Image 3: Thomas Gee. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: People and protest

protest_4.pdf

Image 4: Henry Richard. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: People and protest

protest_5.pdf

Image 5: Henry Austin Bruce. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: People and protest

protest_6.pdf

Image 6: Capel Newydd Nanhoron, Llŷn. Built in 1770. (Source: National Monuments Record for Wales.)

From: People and protest

protest_7.pdf

Image 7: Kindred spirits? Aberdare. (Source: Cynon Valley Libraries.)

From: People and protest

protest_8.pdf

Image 8: Temperance quiver

From: People and protest

protest_9.pdf

Image 9: Revd Christmas Evans, aged 59, in 1835. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: People and protest

protest_10.pdf

Image 10: Capel Pembroke Terrace, Calvinistic Methodist church, Cardiff. Built in 1877

From: People and protest

protest_11.pdf

Image 11: 1843 drawing of the Rebecca riots as depicted in the Paris magazine L’Illustration. (Source: Mary Evans Picture Library.)

From: People and protest

protest_12.pdf

Image 12: Appeal of the gentry to the followers of Rebecca. (Source: Dyfed Archives, Carmarthen Record Office, Bryn Myrddin Collection.)

From: People and protest

protest_13.pdf

Image 13: Contemporary drawing of a Chartist meeting. (Source: The Mansell Collection.)

From: People and protest

protest_14.pdf

Image 14: John Frost’s broadsheet supporting the People’s Charter. (Source: Newport Central Library.)

From: People and protest

protest_15.pdf

Image 15: North Wales Quarrymen’s Union banner

From: People and protest

protest_16.pdf

Image 16: The (Tithe) Martyrs. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: People and protest

protest_17.pdf

Image 17: Threshing at Star, Gaerwen. (Source: Gwynedd Archives Service.)

From: People and protest

Use the link below to download all the images from People and protest as a collection.

From: People and protest

Image collection

7.6 Wales 1880–1914

wales_1.pdf

Image 1: Binding corn into sheaves, Brechfa, Dyfed, c. 1898. (Source: Welsh Folk Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_2.pdf

Image 2: Title page of the Preliminary Report of the 1881 Census. (Source: Glamorgan Archive Service.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_3.pdf

Image 3: A page from the Preliminary Report of the 1881 Census. (Source: Glamorgan Archive Service.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_4.pdf

Image 4: Dockers unloading pit wood, Barry, c. 1911. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_5.pdf

Image 5: Women hauliers at Abergorki Colliery, Treorchy, c.1880. (Source: Cyril Batstone.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_6.pdf

Image 6: Haulier driving a tram at a south Wales colliery, c.1905. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_7.pdf

Image 7: A Doubler at work at the Clayton Tinplate Works, Glamorgan, c.1920. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_8.pdf

Image 8: The Puddling Furnace, Cwmbran Ironworks, from the original oil painting in the Department of Industry, National Museum of Wales. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_9.pdf

Image 9: Slate splitting, Dinorwig Quarries, c. 1910. (Source: Gwynedd Archive Service)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_10.pdf

Image 10: Hand milking at Felin Newydd, Cardigan, c.1900. (Source: Welsh Folk Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_11.pdf

Image 11: The wagon shop, Rhymney Railway Locomotive Works, Caerphilly, c.1906. (Source: E. R. Mountford.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_12.pdf

Image 12: Examples of the ‘Welsh Not’. (Source: Welsh Folk Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_13.pdf

Image 13: Evan Roberts and colleague revivalists from Loughor. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_14.pdf

Image 14: Crumlin Football Team, 1900

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_15.pdf

Image 15: O. M. Edwards. (Source: Urdd Gobaith Cymru.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_16.pdf

Image 16: Souvenir programme, printed on silk, for the first performance at the Empire Theatre of Varieties, Tonypandy, 15 November 1909. (Source: Cyril Batstone.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_17.pdf

Image 17: Title page of The Miners’ Next Step. (Source: South Wales Miners’ Library.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_18.pdf

Image 18: Tonypandy, early twentieth century. (Sources: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum and Cyril Batstone.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_19.pdf

Image 19: Tonypandy, early twentieth century. (Sources: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum and Cyril Batstone.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_20.pdf

Image 20: Tonypandy after the riots. (Sources: Cyril Batstone and Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_21.pdf

Image 21: Tonypandy after the riots. (Sources: Cyril Batstone; and Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_22.pdf

Image 22: Tonypandy after the riots. (Sources: Cyril Batstone and Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_23.pdf

Image 23: Tonypandy after the riots. (Sources: Cyril Batstone and Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_24.pdf

Image 24: Troops assembled in Pontypridd in 1910. (Source: Cyril Batstone.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_25.pdf

Image 25: Report in the Western Mail, 9 November 1910. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_26.pdf

Image 26: David Lloyd George, 1903. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_27.pdf

Image 27: Tom Ellis, Liberal MP for Merioneth. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_28.pdf

Image 28: Lloyd George’s funeral, Llanystumdwy, 1945. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Wales 1880–1914

wales_29.pdf

Image 29: Lloyd George speaking at Killerton Park, Devon, in 1925. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library)

From: Wales 1880–1914

Use the link below to download all the images from Wales 1880–1914 as a collection.

From: Wales 1880–1914

Image collection

7.7 Wales between the Wars

between_wars_1.pdf

Image 1: Cardiff Docks, 1923. (Source: County of South Glamorgan Libraries.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_2.pdf

Image 2: Dowlais iron and steel works in 1912, on the occasion of a visit by King George V and Queen Mary. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_3.pdf

Image 3: Unemployed men clearing dumps in south Wales

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_4.pdf

Image 4: Queen Street, Cardiff, c. 1939. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_5.pdf

Image 5: Coleg Harlech, 1939

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_6.pdf

Image 6: Emrys Davies and Arnold Dyson, inter-war Glamorgan batsmen

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_7.pdf

Image 7: Tommy Farr. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_8.pdf

Image 8: Aneurin Bevan and Jenny Lee on their wedding day. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_9.pdf

Image 9: Lewis Valentine, Saunders Lewis (centre), and D.J. Williams. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Wales between the Wars, page 83

between_wars_10.pdf

Image 10: James Griffiths. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture library.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_11.pdf

Image 11: Rachel Thomas as ‘the Welsh Mam’ in Blue Scar, 1948. (Source: MacQuitty Collection.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_12.pdf

Image 12: Late evening in the kitchen. Bill Brandt, 1936. (Source: Copyright estate of Bill Brandt — courtesy of Noya Brandt.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_13.pdf

Image 13: Pencil-making in Port Penrhyn, c. 1940. (Source: Gwynedd Archives Service.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_14.pdf

Image 14: Cookery book cover, c. 1930

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_15.pdf

Image 15: 1934, Welsh hunger marchers resting. (Source: Dora Cox.)

From: Wales between the Wars, page 108

between_wars_16.pdf

Image 16: Paul Nash illustration for a cover of The Labour Woman

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_17.pdf

Image 17: 1934, Welsh hunger marchers. (Source: Dora Cox.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_18.pdf

Image 18: A poignant image from the 1930s – empty coal trucks from Ralph Bond’s 1937 film Today We Live

From: Wales between the Wars,

between_wars_19.pdf

Image 19: An audience in a cinema in the 1930s. (Source: BBC Hulton Picture Library.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_20.pdf

Image 20: Poster for The Proud Valley (Source: Weintraub Entertainment (Administration) Limited.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_21.pdf

Image 21: Haggar’s Cinema, Aberdare. (Source: Aberdare Central Library.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_22.pdf

Image 22: Lewis Jones (centre) greets Arthur Griffiths on his release from prison in 1936. (Source: South Wales Miners’ Library.)

From: Wales between the Wars, page 145

between_wars_23.pdf

Image 23: Kate Roberts. (Source: Welsh Arts Council.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_24.pdf

Image 24: Gwyn Jones. (Source: Welsh Arts Council.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_25.pdf

Image 25: Idris Davies

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_26.pdf

Image 26: D. Gwenallt Jones (Gwenallt). (Source: Welsh Arts Council.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_27.pdf

Image 27: Gwyn Thomas. (Source: Welsh Arts Council.)

From: Wales between the Wars

between_wars_28.pdf

Image 28: Raymond Williams. (Source: Welsh Arts Council.)

From: Wales between the Wars

Use the link below to download all the images from Wales between the Wars as a collection.

From: Wales between the Wars

Image collection

7.8 Post-War Wales

post_war_1.pdf

Image 1: Leaflet advertising events to celebrate the nationalization of the coal industry in 1947. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_2.pdf

Image 2: Gwynfor Evans arriving at Westminster following his victory in the Carmarthen by-election, 1966. (Source: Plaid Cymru/National Library of Wales.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_3.pdf

Image 3: Leaflet published by the National Union of Mineworkers (South Wales Area) during the 1984–5 strike. (Source: NUM South Wales Area)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_4.pdf

Image 4: George Thomas, Labour candidate for Cardiff West, talking to voters outside the Grand Avenue Polling Station in Ely during the 1964 General Election campaign. (Source: Western Mail & Echo Ltd.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_5.pdf

Image 5: Front page of the South Wales Echo, 2 March 1979. (Source: Western Mail & Echo Ltd.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_6.pdf

Image 6: A march from St Asaph to Bangor calling for a Welsh-language television channel, 1971. (Source: National Library of Wales.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_7.pdf

Image 7: Filming the Welsh-language soap opera, Pobol y Cwm, 1993. (Source: BBC Wales.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_8.pdf

Image 8: Shopping in Canton, Cardiff. (Source: Mary Giles)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_9.pdf

Image 9: At work in the Sony Plant at Bridgend, 1975. (Source: Sony Manufacturing UK.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_10.pdf

Image 10: Miners’ wives protesting against pit closures, c.1984. (Source: Hazel Gillings/Tondu Photo Workshop.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_11.pdf

Image 11: A Women’s Aid refuge. (Source: Mary Giles.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_12.pdf

Image 12: Salem Chapel, Winchestown, Nantyglo, on a visit to Aberystwyth on August Bank Holiday, 1952. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_13.pdf

Image 13: Gareth Edwards, who played at half-back for Wales 1967–78. (Source: Western Mail & Echo Ltd.)

From: Post-War Wales, page 80

post_war_14.pdf

Image 14: Chairing the Bard at the 1991 National Eisteddfod at Mold. (Source: Wales Tourist Board.)

From: Post-War Wales, page 84

post_war_15.pdf

Image 15: A male-voice choir competing at the National Eisteddfod in the 1970s. (Source: Wales Tourist Board.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_16.pdf

Image 16: The Capitol Theatre and Cinema, Cardiff, 1956. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_17.pdf

Image 17: ‘Greetings from Wales’. (Source: J. Arthur Dixon.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_18.pdf

Image 18: The Abbey Works at Margam, Port Talbot, 1961. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_19.pdf

Image 19: Wales, the ‘Land of a Thousand Castles’. (Source: Arthur Dixon.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_20.pdf

Image 20: Above Carneddi 2 by Kyffin Williams. (Source: Kyffin Williams/National Library of Wales.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_21.pdf

Image 21: Constructing the Severn Bridge, c.1965. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_22.pdf

Image 22: Aerial view of Cathays Park, Cardiff, showing the Welsh Office and the Temple of Peace, c. 1960. (Source: Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_23.pdf

Image 23: Llangollen International Eisteddfod. (Source: Wales Tourist Board.)

From: Post-War Wales

post_war_24.pdf

Image 24: Leaflets issued during the 1975 referendum about EEC membership. (Source: a private collection.)

From: Post-War Wales

Use the link below to download all the images from Post-War Wales as a collection.

From: Post-War Wales

Image collection

8 Welsh history: weblinks

8.1 Introduction

The following links represent a series of online resources for the study of Welsh history. Each of the sites has been examined by the unit team and selected as helpful to further your study of Welsh history. There is a vast array of impressive resources for you to explore.

8.1.1 Libraries, archives and museums

National Library of Wales: www.llgc.org.uk

Access in both Welsh and English. As well as its own library catalogues, it has a useful and wide variety of online resources, including, on its ‘Digital Mirror’ link:

- Page-by-page photographic access to a range of original documents (several dating back to the Middle Ages), including the Laws of Hywel Dda, Iolo Morganwg's notes for a ‘History of the British Bards’, the travel writings of some eighteenth-century tourists to Wales, and letters written by Welsh emigrants to America and Australia.

- ‘Welsh Biography Online’, an electronic version of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, covering the lives of eminent Welsh people up to 1971.

- Collections of photographs, including the Senghennydd mining disaster, 1913.

- Some archive collections, including the Diary of David Lloyd George for 1886 and a collection of his letters to his brother William.

- Exhibitions on a variety of subjects, including Welsh architecture and the life of David Lloyd George.

On its ‘Family History’ link, there are some useful online archival databases, including:

- A searchable database of Gaol Files, 1730–1830.

- Searchable access to the Manorial Documents Register.

Archives Network Wales: www.archivesnetworkwales.info

The Archives Network Wales website contains standardised descriptions of the extent, type and scope of collections of historical documents held by Record Offices, universities and other bodies in Wales. It also provides links to further information and access details for the repositories. It is an index to sources rather than a source itself.

Gathering the Jewels: the website for Welsh cultural history: www.gtj.org.uk/

Accessible, well-presented site hosted by the National Library of Wales. Contains a huge number of images (both pictures and documents) on a vast range of subjects, from pre-Christian worship to the coal industry. Organised under topics. There is a brief description of each image, but no linking commentary. Useful if you're seeking pictorial material.

The National Archives: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

The National Archives at Kew, Surrey, are the official archive for England, Wales and the UK government, covering 900 years of history. The site provides online access to searchable catalogues of its vast range of records, but also a great deal more. In particular, under ‘Research, education and online exhibitions’ there is a wealth of helpful advice on how to get started and how to extend your skills in archival research, including family history, local history, military history and house history. Some manuscripts and documents are available online, including some highlights of the NA collection. There are excellent links to the UK archives network.

National Museum Wales: www.museumwales.ac.uk

Access in both Welsh and English. The museum's ‘Rhagor’ website is an on-going project to make the various national collections more accessible online. It contains a number of subject-based homepages, including one for History, where you can access images, articles and interactive features.

8.1.2 Histories

BBC Wales/Eclips: www.bbc.co.uk/wales/eclips/

Eclips is an audio-visual resource provided by BBC Wales. It makes available numerous clips from the BBC Wales audio and video archive. The idea is that teachers can use them to illustrate lessons, but they have an obvious interest for a much wider audience. They can be sorted in various ways, including by keyword, subject and/or age of the audience. The history resources are well worth exploring.

BBC/Wales History: www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/

Accessible general-interest site with short sections from Roman Wales to the present day and numerous thematic sections, for example: castles; the Welsh language; family history; and myths and legends. All sections are short but useful reference tools, presentation is very user-friendly, and there are some good pictorial illustrations. The material has been collected by the well-known Welsh historian Dr John Davies and offers a generalist context for periods and topics in Welsh history.

A Brief History of Wales: www.britannia.com/wales/whist.html

Accessible general-interest site with bite-sized section on Wales from prehistoric times to the present. Has sections on themes, for example, Welsh literature, the Welsh Bible, industry and Methodism in Wales. Has some pictorial illustrations, but these tend to be small and are not described. Worth a visit if you are seeking generalised information.

Imaging the Bible in Wales: www.imagingthebible.org/wales

Project based at the University of Wales, Lampeter, analysing the social, political and theological questions raised by Welsh biblical visual culture, and aiming to preserve its contribution to the intellectual, artistic and cultural heritage of Wales, 1825–1975. Collection of Biblical images from churches and chapels in Wales, with academic commentaries. In English only.

Llafur: the Welsh People's History Society: www.llafur.org/indexe.htm

Llafur publishes an important journal, Llafur: the Journal of Welsh People's History, and its contents pages can be searched on the site.

The Rhondda: www.therhondda.co.uk

Aims to provide a socio-economic history of the Rhondda Valleys during the period 1800 to 1950, but is in the nature of a tribute to the Rhondda by an interested individual. Well-illustrated and clearly presented, it provides snippets of information – which would need to be checked against other sources – about many topics, from living conditions to the Tonypandy Riots. Worth a look. In English only.

The Welsh History Review: www.uwp.co.uk/book_desc/whr.html

Tables of contents of volumes of the Welsh History Review, 1996–2004.

8.1.3 Sites, buildings and landscapes

Castles of Wales: www.castlewales.com/home.html

Lots of interesting material here, some detailed, some generalised. There is a good index of castles in Wales, and plenty of maps. There are also sections on castle architecture, life in castles and castles in art, and numerous other essays, plus some good photographs. There are several contributors, some academic, but the site has an enthusiastic rather than scholarly feel. Still, if you're looking for an extra resource on Welsh castles, you will find things of interest in this site.

The Historic Churches Survey Database: www.cpat.demon.co.uk/projects/longer/churches/idxall.htm

Database of medieval churches in Wales. Searchable by region and map, with sound academic descriptions of the history and architecture of the churches. Highly recommendable site, backed by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh Assembly Government.

Historic landscapes in Wales: www.cpat.org.uk./projects/longer/histland/histland.htm

Hosted by Cadw (the historic environment service of the Welsh Assembly Government) and the Countryside Council for Wales, a very attractive and easy-to-use bilingual site examining the historical landscape by regions of Wales. Easy to search regions. Very useful.

Mapping the medieval urban landscape: Edward I's new towns in England and Wales: www.qub.ac.uk/urban_mapping

Hosted by Queen's University, Belfast, this site looks at the new towns emerging after Edward I's conquest of north Wales. Some good town maps and focus on urban development, with academic commentary.

Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales: www.coflein.gov.uk/

Access in both Welsh and English. Online database for the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Visitors can search for archaeological sites, monuments, buildings and maritime sites using a map or by searching by name or site type. The Coflein system enables direct online public access to many images from the holdings of the National Monuments Record of Wales Archive, including photographs, scanned hard-copy drawings and PDF versions of survey reports and other text documents. Very useful resource.

9 Welsh history: glossary

The Welsh history glossary is a searchable database of words and phrases that figure prominently in writings about the history of Wales. Initially entries will be presented to you in alphabetical order, and there is also a search facility allowing you to seek particular entries within the glossary.

Open glossary now.

10 Bibliography of Welsh history

This bibliography, linked below, incorporates the bibliographies of the Welsh History and its Sources books edited by Trevor Herbert and Gareth Elwyn Jones, and published by the University of Wales Press in the 1980s and 1990s, together with some additional key works of Welsh historical scholarship that have been published since that series was completed.

Click 'view document' to open the bibliography of Welsh history.

bibliography.pdf

A number of periodical publications are important for the study of Welsh history – the following are published in English or bilingually:

- The Welsh History Review is published twice a year by the University of Wales Board of Celtic Studies. Its contents pages can be searched online at the Welsh History Review website.

- Llafur, the Welsh People's History Society, publishes an annual journal, Llafur: the Journal of Welsh People's History. Its contents pages can be searched online at the Llafur website.

- The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion was founded in 1751 to promote literature, the arts and sciences as connected with Wales, and it publishes the Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, an annual volume containing the lectures given at its meetings, as well as other scholarly contributions. The contents pages of recent editions and those from a sample of earlier editions can be searched online at the Society's website.

Two important works of reference should also be mentioned:

- The Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940, edited by Sir John Edward Lloyd and R. T. Jenkins (London, The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1959), with its supplementary volume The Dictionary of Welsh Biography 1941–1970 (2001), both accessible as Welsh Biography Online through the National Library of Wales ‘Digital Mirror’ website.

- The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales, edited by John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur I. Lynch (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2008).

Conclusion

This free course provided an introduction to studying history and the arts. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner. After completing this course, you may like to see more courses about History & The Arts.

Acknowledgements

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this course:

The material acknowledged within the texts of Welsh history and its sources (Cymru_1) is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licensing). See Terms and Conditions. Images may only be used in relation to this course Welsh history and its sources and no use in isolation of the course permitted.

These extracts are taken from the BBC Radio Wales programme The People of Wales produced by the BBC © 1999.

Extracts from Coast, series 1, 2 and 3 broadcast by BBC from 2005 and 2007. The Coast series was co-produced with The Open University.

Celebrated Cyfartha Band extracts from Open University course AA302.

Section 3 Courtesy of David Goehring http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/1359721335/ [Details correct as of 27th February 2009];

Section 4 Courtesy of John Birdsall;

Section 5 Capel Mawr, 2003, acrylic by Chris Griffin. Private Collection;

Section 6 Courtesy of Howard Riches http://www.flickr.com/photos/9186045@N02/3313258483/ [Details correct as of 27th February 2009].

Adaptation of works by Trevor Herbert

Don't miss out:

If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University - www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses

Solutions

Activity

Discussion

There is no ‘right’ answer for this activity: everyone is likely to have a different range of ideas and knowledge about Lloyd George's life. Of course, some of those ideas might be ‘wrong’, but let's not worry about that at the moment. I tried to come up with facts about Lloyd George that might fit the bill of ‘strange, but true’; here are three.

- Although we see Lloyd George quite clearly as a Welshman and a fluent speaker of the Welsh language, he was actually born in 1863 at 5 New York Place, Chorlton upon Medlock, Manchester.

- Lloyd George is one of relatively few Welsh politicians to have a mountain named after him: Mount Lloyd George, 2,938 metres high, in northern British Columbia, Canada.

- Who do you think Lloyd George termed ‘the George Washington of Germany’ after taking tea with him in 1936? I'm afraid that it was Adolf Hitler. It is only fair to note that Lloyd George revised his opinion by the end of the decade.

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Figure 1: David Lloyd George
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Video 5 The celebrated Cyfarthfa band (duration 23:45)

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CONDUCTOR:

Number one, with lots of silence at the end.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR:

This is a sound which was lost for a hundred years, dance music written for the first and greatest Victorian private band.

These leading professional players are recording it for a CD on instruments of the period. The reconstruction of the band and its repertoire is the culmination of 10 years of musical and historical research.

The Cyfarthfa Band was formed in Merthyr Tydfil in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. Merthyr was the largest town in Wales and one of the world's most important centres of iron production. The biggest iron works in the town was the great Cyfarthfa Works, owned by the Crawshay family.

[IRONWORKS SOUNDS]

By the 1820s, when these watercolours were painted, the Crawshays were massively wealthy. They built a castle on the hill overlooking the Works, at a cost of 30,000 pounds. Here, they lived a life of luxury and entertained the rich and influential. With its spacious grounds and opulent fittings, Cyfarthfa Castle was a cultural oasis from the desolate town below.

WILLIAM KAY (VOICEOVER):

Street after street of low, confined tenements with roads unformed, without footpaths, undrained, presenting a mass of mud and filth, and destitute of the slightest provision for carrying off the refuse of a teeming population.

NARRATOR:

It was in these circumstances that a brass band was formed by Robert Thompson Crawshay, who took over as Iron Master of Cyfarthfa in the 1830s. A portrait of his band master, George Livsey still hangs in the castle, which is now a museum.

Little was known about Crawshay's band. History books always described it as being formed in 1844, about the time when amateur working class bands were being set up all over Britain. The assumption was that this was just another works band, like any other.

But then, in 1986, the curator of the castle phoned Trevor Herbert at the Open University and asked him to come and look at some musical items he'd found in an attic. They included a most unusual collection of brass instruments. On the rim of the bells was engraved the name of the owner of the Cyfarthfa Ironworks. These were some of the lost instruments of the Cyfarthfa Band. And as Trevor Herbert examined them, he realised that the widely held assumptions about the band must be wrong.

TREVOR HERBERT:

Until well into the 19th century, the players in this band were playing on keyed instruments, like this one. Even when they changed to more modern instruments, they bought foreign imports, mainly from Vienna, with rotary valves. Now, this runs directly contrary to the pattern that was occurring throughout the rest of the country.

Brass bands were being set up. And they tended to play, exclusively, instruments with piston valves, just like this. This, I think, is very interesting, because it suggests that the Cyfarthfa Band was different. It was not just any brass band. It was not a part of the great amateur working class brass band movement.

NARRATOR:

Piston valves were widely available in Britain from the mid 1840s. The instruments were cheap and easy to play. So they encouraged the spread of brass bands in working class communities. Trevor Herbert's suspicion that the Cyfarthfa Band was different was supported by receipt which he found in the Crawshay Archives. It lists older instruments, such as ophicliedes and keyed bugles.

Robert Crawshay bought three 8-keyed bugles with tuning slides in 1840. This means that he had an established band before the spread of piston valves. This is confirmed by Crawshay's obituary in a Merthyr newspaper. It gives a date for the founding of the band, 1838.

[MUSIC - ARTHUR SULLIVAN, "THE LOST CHORD"]

Robert Crawshay's personal taste was a crucial element in the makeup of his band. As late as the 1860s, he was still using the old keyed instruments, together with the newer valve instruments, as they came in. Trevor Herbert had already worked on several projects with the virtuoso trumpeter John Wallace. And they decided to reconstruct the sound of the band around 1860, because of its unique mix of sonorities.

JOHN WALLACE (VOICEOVER):

I think it's the most interesting period of the band's history. But with all most interesting periods, you have the most problems. Although some of the instruments were in the museum, finding 20 mid-19th century instruments in working order, I thought, would be beyond us. But in the end, the [INAUDIBLE] process took between three and four years.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR:

One of the problems was to choose a pitch which would suit all the instruments.

JOHN WALLACE (VOICEOVER):

All of the keyed instruments, at the time, were built much closer to modern pitch, whereas as the new valve instruments coming in were built at a sort of military band pitch, much, much higher. And so they must have come to some compromise.

The valved instruments played with lots of crooks, had long tuning slides, and they had the capacity to pull out, to flatten them. So it was a compromise in the end. But I feel fairly sure it's a historically accurate compromise, because the state of pitch was in flux at that point in the 1850s, in the brass world.

CONDUCTOR:

D flats and F naturals and [SINGING], yeah. That. It's just through the first, so we can try and get the F's together. Just that fourth bar, please.

[BRASS PLAYING]

Can we get the D natural higher? Yeah. Yeah. Again. Yeah. That's it. Bar five again, please.

Yeah. That's better.

NARRATOR:

Just how good were Crawshay's players? A variety of documentary sources helped to build up a picture of the band in the mid-19th century.

TREVOR HERBERT:

For most of the 19th century, Merthyr was the largest Welsh town. So it was well-served by newspapers. And many of these newspapers contained references to the band. This copy of the Merthyr Express contains a letter from Dan Godfrey, the famous conductor of the Grenadier Guards Band.

DAN GODFREY (VOICEOVER):

"I can say that their performance on that occasion was in every respect excellent and quite equal to that of former years."

NARRATOR:

Crawshay's obituary refers to the introduction of foreigners into the band.

DAN GODFREY (VOICEOVER):

"Mr. Crawshay picked up first class men, wherever he found them, and, in this way, perfected his corp."

NARRATOR:

All this points to something much more than an amateur works band. But the most conclusive evidence was the band parts, which were rediscovered at Cyfarthfa Castle at the same time as the instruments. They contain a large and sophisticated repertoire, more than 350 pieces of handwritten music. One of Trevor Herbert's biggest tasks was to catalogue them all.

TREVOR HERBERT:

Now, band books, particularly when they're [INAUDIBLE] parts, are very, very important, because they give us a very clear indication of how well the players could play. This music was written especially for individual players. They were bespoke arrangements. Therefore, they give us an idea of the outer limitations of the player's ability. It is clear from these books that the players were virtuoso.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CHARLES DICKENS (VOICEOVER):

"I had the pleasure of hearing them play and was astonished at their proficiency. The band master had them under excellent control. He everywhere took the time well. And the instruments preserved it, each taking up his lead with spirit and accuracy. In short, I have seldom heard a regimental band more perfect than this handful of workmen located in the mountains of Wales."

NARRATOR:

Clearly, the Cyfarthfa Band was far more than a handful of workmen. As Robert Crawshay brought in professional players, it became, in effect, the first private virtuoso brass band in Britain.

JOHN WALLACE:

Like the original band, we used fully professional players in our modern reconstruction of the band. Now, the thing about contemporary British players is that they have an extremely steep learning curve. They learn phenomenally quickly.

So before the filmed rehearsal, we only had one rehearsal before that, when they'd already had the instruments for private practise for some time. But rehearsal, a few days before the filmed rehearsal, was the moment of truth for a lot of players, when they realised how much work they had to do.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR:

There were no conductor scores. And the individual parts often needed correcting.

JOHN WALLACE (VOICEOVER):

There were still a lot of mistakes in the parts and bars missing, quite an amazing amount, really, when you think from the evidence of the parts how dog-eared a lot of them are how often they were played.

[MUSIC - GC BAWDEN, "CYFARTHFA QUADRILLES"]

CONDUCTOR:

[SINGING] B flat. A natural.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[SINGING].

NARRATOR:

This is the first opportunity for the players to hear how this unique combination of instruments is sounding. So it's an anxious moment.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

CONDUCTOR:

We think we can hear everything.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

ADRIAN FARMER:

Thing is I got replies from baritones were missing were in long sustained notes. I can hear it when they're together with the cornets and bugles again. [SINGING], or whatever. But there is some marvellous caudal writing in the middle.

CONDUCTOR:

Yeah, probably my fault. Cause where I am, I hear an awful lot of them.

ADRIAN FARMER:

Really?

CONDUCTOR:

I mean, I don't get a balance like you're getting in here, cause I'm so close to them. So I'm saying shush, shush, shush. And in fact, I don't need to.

JOHN WALLACE:

We're just worried a little bit about the definition on the bass end, on the tubas. They say it sounds gloopy.

ADRIAN FARMER:

Gloopy?

JOHN WALLACE:

Gloopy.

ADRIAN FARMER:

That will be a technical term.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR:

There's a large collection of dance music in the band books. They played for grand balls, which the Crawshays held in the waggon shed of the works.

This photograph is taken in 1871, at the marriage of Robert Crawshay's daughter. The importance of the band in the household is shown by their inclusion in the photograph. At this picnic at Tenby, you can just make out the band standing in their customary square Formation.

On the band masters' music stand is a page of Beethoven's "First Symphony." The band books contain a very wide repertoire of 19th century art music, including several complete symphonies and excerpts from the latest Italian operas.

The "Tydfil Overture" was composed especially for the band. Joseph Perry was born in Merthyr and became the first professor of music at the University of Wales. This is probably the earliest work written for brass band by a composer of this stature.

By the 1870s, when this music was written, the fortunes of the Crawshay family, and their ironworks, were in decline. Robert Crawshay had been deaf since a stroke in 1859. But he continued to support the band and to run the ironworks. In 1866, his father wrote to him about his management of the works.

WILLIAM CRAWSHAY (VOICEOVER):

"You have made the damnedest mess of them that ever man made of a good consour. Not one farthing profit did you make last year. Your deafness unfits you for anything but fishing. But you will not see this or your utter want of success. Your affectionate father, William Crawshay."

NARRATOR:

In fact, the odds had been stacked against the Cyfarthfa Ironworks for some years. There was strong competition from the other works in the area and from abroad. And the demand for iron was in decline. In 1874, prices slumped. There was a strike over wage cuts. And the works were closed. In 1877, the workers gathered outside the Castle, hoping to persuade Robert Crawshay to change his mind, but in vain. He told him that the Cyfarthfa Works would never open again in his lifetime. His beloved band was there in the crowd.

Two years later, Robert Thompson Crawshay, known as the last of the Iron Kings, died. He was taken from the Castle to a church in the hills, which Crawshay himself had built.

MAN (VOICEOVER):

Every window had its blind down and all the shops were closed. The schoolchildren, drawn up in rows on each side, awaited the cortege, having had the permission of the family to do so, and through bunches of flowers, under the break.

The burial ground was kept pretty well clear, but there was a deep belt of people crowding the boundary walls all around. The sun shone brilliantly and tempered by his genial rays, the inclement north wind, which blew with quite wintery severity.

TREVOR HERBERT:

Crawshay was buried in a coffin made from wood that he had supervised the cutting of. He was buried in a grave exactly 14 feet deep. He left instructions that no one should ever share his grave and that it be covered by a single stone of no less than five tonnes in weight.

NARRATOR:

The significance of the inscription is obscure. Some said that Crawshay was a tyrannical employer. Perhaps he carried guilt for the failure of the Ironworks. What is now established is that he created a unique musical institution, which he developed according to his own taste and sustained with passion to the very end of his life, despite his deafness. In accordance with his instructions, the waggon which took him to his grave carried only one passenger, George Livsey, conductor of the celebrated Cyfarthfa Band.

[SOLEMN MUSIC]

CONDUCTOR:

Thank you very much indeed. Back at 2:30. 2:30. Back at 2:30. Thank you very much indeed. 2:30. 2:30.

Back to - Video 5 The celebrated Cyfarthfa band (duration 23:45)