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Art & Culture

various essays on, well, art and culture

Bookbinding & Conservation

lessons learned from this profession

Humor

ok, I'm not the guy from SNL,
but I still have a sense of humor

'Jim Downey' Stories

mostly true stories from my
adolescence

Personal Essays

more "it's all about me"

Politics

I’m at -7.13/-7.33 on The Political Compass.  Where
are you?

Society

observations on the human condition

Travel

Europe 1994

Wales 1998
      London
      Saturday
      Sunday
      Monday
      Tuesday
      Wednesday
      Thursday
      Final Friday

Wales 2003
Wales 2006
CCGA Vignettes

Thursday:  Too Much History


After breakfast, we headed southeast towards Cardiff, to the Museum of Welsh Life at St. Fagan's.  The oldest such open-air museum in Europe, the place also has to be one of the largest.  It is simply huge.  We arrived mid-morning, and at the gate Jan suggested that we meet again about three hours later, having lunch at one of the cafes on premises.

I said it was an open-air museum.  Let me explain.  There are dozens and dozens of buildings that have been brought to this location from all over Wales, each building an excellent example of a particular slice of Welsh history and life.  Most are at least partly original, having been painstakingly disassembled, transported, and then reassembled.  A few are entirely re-creations based on historical information.  All are carefully put into the correct context for the type of building they are, with the appropriate furnishings and the necessities of life.

We came onto the museum grounds at one end, near the Manor house of St. Fagan's castle.  Built on the site of Norman ruins, this manor dates originally to the late 16th century, but now is furnished in the style of the late Victorian era, the last time the owners were resident.  While this time period holds little interest for me, the place was impressive with the lavishness of the decoration, rich carpets and full-wall tapestries, black lacquered oriental-style cabinets, and plush overstuffed chairs and couches.

Alix and I teamed up with Martha, and the three of us set off to explore more of the museum.  We went out into the formal gardens, nicely laid out within the confines of the ancient Norman wall.  Passing from this area, through an archway, we came out overlooking a small valley, the bottom of which held a series of long, placid fish ponds.  Following the gravel pathway, we walked up first to the Cider Barn, where hard cider had been made, using a large mule-drawn stone to crush the apples, the juice running out channels in the stone and into fermenting vats.  Such hard cider was the primary drink for most field workers and laborers for centuries, and still remains a popular drink served in pubs all over Britain today.  The barn itself was open on one side, had a freshly thatched roof, and was of solid stone and timber construction.

Staying with the path, we made our way down to a couple of fishing huts/boathouses.  One of these contained nets and largish boats, arranged as they would have been for everyday use.  The other held a display of seafaring life, and how the Welsh along the coast had fished using their small coracles (one-person woven boats covered in skin, in the shape of a fore-shortened shoe) with nets and lines.

Going a little upstream, we came to the Woolen Mill, a 17th century building designed for the processing of raw wool into woven goods, using water power to drive the machinery.  One man operated a simple, yet large spinning wheel, turning wool fiber into yarn.  Another worked on an early mechanized loom, cleaning out built-up fiber, replacing spools of thread as the machine worked.  In a small room off to the side were fair-sized hand looms, typical of what were in wide use before the Industrial Age killed off that cottage industry.  While they had large skeins of spun wool on display, they would not sell any of it, offering only the finished mill goods for sale.

Working our way up the other side of the valley, we then came to a striking 15th century barn.  It was thatched, of timber construction, with low stone walls coming up about two feet from the ground.  The rest of the walls to the roof were wattle:  split sticks woven in such a fashion to make a screen that would keep out rain, but allow air to flow through.  Ideal for a mild climate where you want to keep the water out but not the stink of animals in.

From here the path wound through a grove of huge evergreen trees, large and tall, with branches cut off at the trunk to about 50 foot up, creating a huge outdoor cathedral.  The ground was soft and free of undergrowth, just a thick carpet of ground cover.  It was quiet, and cool, the trees providing shade, their branches so far above us that the slight breeze was silent.

Then on past the main gate of the place, where there was also an indoor museum area, a gift shop, and a full cafeteria-style restaurant.  We examined the map of the grounds, and wound around toward to the left, deciding that our first priorities were the early-period structures.  We'd make it over to the 18th & 19th century streets if we had the time.  But realistically, we didn't think that would happen; there was just too much history to see in one day.

Before we got to the late-Renaissance farmstead, we could smell the hog.  Yup, some small distance from the house, there was a pigsty.  A mound of stone, good Welsh slate, stacked in tightening rows in such a fashion that it formed a rounded cone at the top.  And a wall of slate around the sty, to keep the quite substantial hog inside.  Further along was the farmstead itself, one typical of a well-to-do farmer and his family, who probably had a few servants or farmhands working for them.  Two-story stone construction, plastered over and painted a garish red (something about keeping spirits away), with a cobblestone walkway and small courtyard.  There was an attractive rowan tree in the courtyard for good luck.  The roof was thatch.  Inside, central stairs went up to two loft-style bedrooms, each of which contained a bed with a wooden canopy (to keep bugs falling from the exposed underside of the thatch and landing on you), a couple of simple trunks, a wardrobe cabinet, et cetera.  Downstairs there was a kitchen/eating area with a small table and lamps, and a largish cabinet to hold the family eating utensils.  The other room on the ground floor was a sort of family or sitting room, with some chairs and a small table-desk next to the light of the small window.

Down the road a bit was the Mill where grain was ground.  Powered by an overshoot water wheel, it had all the working set-up to not only grind grain, but also to separate the flour into various grades by means of a rotating drum that sifted the flour into different bins.  These had chutes which fed down into cloth nozzles one floor below, so that sacks could be filled with each of the different qualities of flour.

At this point we decided to back-track to the main gate, and get some lunch.  The cafeteria looked much like any typical American cafeteria, and most of the food was certainly familiar British fare (cod & chips, various sandwiches, deserts, fruit cups, puddings), but a couple of things caught our eye.  One was the nice selection of bottled beers, wines, hard cider, and liqueurs.  The other was the selection of different flavored potato chips (or 'crisps' as they're called in England).  They had 'regular,' and even 'barbeque.' But they also had 'vinegar,' which wasn't too surprising since the Brits like vinegar on their french-fries.  And then they had meat-flavored chips.  Beef.  Chicken.  Fish.  Very odd.  We grabbed sandwiches and some fruit, I got a bag of vinegar chips (not bad), and a hard cider.

After lunch, Martha decided that she wanted to explore the building there a bit, and Alix and I ran off to see the early-period area of the museum.  First was a typical early-medieval longhouse, complete with geese running around in the yard.  It was of low construction, lime-plaster white stone walls, the thatch of the roof coming down to about my shoulder height, though there was more headroom inside.  One end of the building was the barn for the animals, the other the family quarters.  A simple firepit in the middle of the family area provided heat and light, and the smoke of the fire kept vermin out of the thatch.  There were some rudimentary beds with straw mattresses, a couple of tables and benches, simple wooden farm tools, not much else.

Further along, we came to fields of period crops, such as pease, swedes, linen flax.  Past this we came to the late-medieval farmstead, which was a lot more elaborate.  A little stone & thatch pigsty, with a couple of pigs behind wooden fences.  Chickens in the yard.  Another longhouse, of similar construction to the last, but this one purely for people, and tall enough inside that there was a loft area for storage and the children to sleep in.  A separate bedroom area, complete with a wood-frame and covered bed.  More substantial table and chairs, and lots of farm tools, a spinning wheel, hanging herbs and hams, dried fishes, and a fireplace for cooking.  Wouldn’t be a bad life.

We left, went over to the nearby Potter's.  Outside, it looked much like it would fit in with the late-medieval farmstead, complete with a largish conical tower kiln.  There were two levels to it: down below was where the fire would be built, in a chamber large enough to hold a couple dozen people.  Above this was a walk-in chamber somewhat smaller and sealed off from the flames, though of course subject to heating by them.  A large stack of wood cured nearby, but it didn’t appear that the kiln had been used recently.  Inside the Potter's we found a modern little shop, offering period-inspired pottery of several types, from simple bowls and mugs to candle-lanterns, full place settings, and more modern lamps and ceramic goods.  Everything was made on-site, using (by-and-large) period tools and techniques, except for their modern kiln, which produced far less pollution.  We bought a number of items to bring home as gifts, and a great pair of bowls that are perfect for ice cream . . .

Then a quick trip out to the timber circle that they had just built, an echo of the early Druidic structures that predated Stonehenge.  We briefly stopped by the early Celtic settlement, three stone-circle huts and some lean-to structures.  The huts were pretty good-sized, perhaps twenty feet across, the stone wall rising only about two feet.  Then long, heavy timbers angled steeply up to the center, these covered in thatch.  There was a center hole to allow smoke from the firepit to escape, low beds of straw, some Celtic-style weapons and round shields, simple tools and pottery, gourds and skins for eating utensils and storage.

We made a quick hike back to the main gate, since it was time to leave.  Found that we weren't the last there, took a few moments to get a selection of postcards and stamps, and then dashed out to the bus.

Down past Cardiff, in the marshes of Lavernock Point on the Bristol Channel, we came to Cosmeston.  From the first I had heard of this on our itinerary, I had had my doubts.  "Cosmeston Medieval Village," the flyers in our hotel said "set in 1320.  Costumed characters allow you to view life as it was over 650 years ago."  Yeah, right.  I pictured "Medievaland" on the theme-park plan, or maybe something like those silly banquet places here in the States where you eat great slabs of meat with your fingers while ogling 'serving wenches' and watching studly-type guys 'joust.'

We got to the entrance of the place, and the sign outside the door was no more encouraging.  Inside the gift shop, which was part of an overall "Cosmeston Lakes Country Park" nature area, there was a little more hope:  a series of photos documented the excavations that had led to the discovery of the village, and the attempts at re-creating it.  Hmmm.

At the appointed half-hour, we took a nice, leisurely walk on a boardwalk that passes through part of the nature area over to where the village was.  No guardrails or anything to prevent you from either tearing off into the wildflowers or tripping off the uneven boards.  Just a pleasant little hike through a calm, mostly natural environment, leaving the 20th century behind.

We came to a simple stockade, with a thatched roof gate.  There our guide met us.  Nothing pretentious, just a young woman in simple peasant garb, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, who greeted us, and invited us to come inside.  She wasn't 'in-persona,' and made no grand speeches or historical claims such as pumped-up the brochures that I had seen.  Rather, she said that in the '80's archeological work had started to uncover the remains of this 14th century village, and as the work progressed additional historical research was not only able to identify the kind of life that the villagers had lead, but had been actually able to identify individual people in the village.

Turns out that Church records of the time had managed to survive.  Complete with tithing records, births & marriages, and even taxes levied.  An almost complete chronicle of the village existed.  And what we were about to see was the result not only of those researches, but also of archeological discoveries that allowed recreation of a number of structures on the original foundations, sometime with intact original walls and artifacts.  The recreation is set in 1320, prior to the plague years a generation later which pretty much put an end to the village.  About half the village has been reconstructed, the rest they have a pretty good idea about but have not begun excavations on until they have the resources to build each structure in completely period style as it is uncovered.  No sense digging this stuff up and exposing it to possible damage until they can do it right.  With that, we went into the village.

This is a place that anyone who has even a casual interest in the Middle Ages simply has to see.  We came around the corner of the little visitor's center to see an honest-to-god Medieval village.  The individual houses perfect reconstructions, and enough of them, and varied enough, to feel like you have just walked back in time.  Chickens scampering in the yards, fenced in by rough wattle fences about three feet high. A friendly, curious goat ('Wilbur') who wanted our attention and better yet, something to nibble on.  The sound and aroma of a pigsty halfway in, the domed stone top showing above the stone fence.  Fat cats lazing in the afternoon sun, watching us, butterflies from the nearby wildlife area occasionally catching their attention.

Into the Reeve's house, a (relatively) wealthy peasant who had a nice longhouse of stone, the roof neatly thatched, the interior roomy enough for him and his family, a small cooking fire going off to one side.  Our guide showed us the typical possessions of such a family, from their fancy ceramic water vessel used to hold water for washing the hands, to the stoneware plates and goblets they used, to the nice beeswax candles used to light the table when company called.  There were shelves for the possessions, herbs hanging close at hand for cooking and medicine, a bed with a mattress of fresh, sweet straw.

Down the village into the home of the herbal healer, a welsh woman who knew the traditional remedies for many ills, her rich and varied herb garden growing luxuriantly nearby.  Another door down was the home of the baker, which also doubled as the village Inn, since he had the ovens for roasting grain, and his wife knew how to make ales strong and hearty.  His name was Hugo, and a dozen paces outside his door were his ovens, reclaimed from the mound of dirt and rubble that had kept them for centuries.  It was known that while he did well in life, he was also in trouble upon occasion for selling loaves (even at that time mandated as to size and weight) with too much dirt, straw or grass 'filler,' and served time in the village stocks now and again.  One of the ovens was used for the making of breads, the other for roasting grains and drying meats and fish.  The re-creators have been using these same ovens for just these purposes for the last dozen years.

Our guide explained that during the summer season, there are often a number of re-creators such as herself who live in the village, using it, getting to know it and its former inhabitants as well as they can.  They care for the animals, show the tourists around, and seem to have a hell of a good time.

We went over to the pigsty, where Henry Hogg lived, in the nice cottage adjacent to the walled yard where two very substantial hogs looked up, grunting at our guide.  From a pouch she produced a bit of apple, sliced it into parts, and tossed it in to the boar and sow.  Clearly, these were not your usual Iowa pigs . . . they were closer to their wild cousins, complete with tusks and dark, stiff-bristled hair.  Henry's cottage also contained a number of woven-reed fishing traps, used to catch eel and gillfish, and long-tined wooden rakes to dig up whatever variety of shellfish were in the area.

Then to the Tithe Barn, the nicest, largest, and best well-lit building yet reconstructed in the village (they're pretty sure they know where the church is, but haven’t gotten to it yet).  Made to be the site for collecting and storing the tithe each of the villagers had to provide the church, it was probably also used for some special events, such as wedding celebrations, and to house traveling monks and other pilgrims.  The ceilings were quite high here, perhaps as much as twenty feet at the peak, with lots of loft space for storage of the goods tithed.

We made our way back to the visitor's center, where we looked through more of the artifacts found during the excavations, and read more of the translations of the Church records that documented the rise and fall of the village.  Then we thanked our guide, wished her well, and took the stroll back across the boardwalk to where Eddie waited with the bus.

It didn't take long to get back to our hotel in Pontypridd, even with a bit of a drive through Cardiff to see some of that seaport city.  We met a little later in the lounge, while we waited for our table to be ready, and enjoyed a pint.  Once everyone was there, Alix got out her camera and Jan persuaded some stranger to take our group picture.  This would be our last evening all together, since two of "the ladies" would be making connections the next day to another tour, extending their stay in Britain for about a week.  And once Eddie got us safely back to London, he would return to his own life, I think to take a group over to Germany after a rest of a few days.  Things were winding down.
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