Pembrokeshire’s Sunken Heritage

Kimberly Briscoe and Sarahjayne Clements, Community Archaeologists at the Royal Commission visiting the memorial in Moelfre Churchyard, Anglesey to the lives lost on the passenger ship The Royal Charter.

Welcome back from the Community Archaeologists, these last few weeks we’ve really hit the ground running after our Christmas break; in this case this meant finally putting all our hard work, planning and organisation for the Shipwrecks Project into action.

The Shipwrecks Project was based on the story of a violent gale, which swept over Britain in 1859, wrecking hundreds of ships along the coasts of England and Wales, culminating in horrific coastal damage and loss of life. The Royal Charter, one of the largest and most famous transatlantic wrecks of the storm, was lost just off the coast of Anglesey. It was responsible for the largest number of lives lost in the storm, so much so that the gale has often been renamed the ‘Royal Charter Gale’. The documentation of the Royal Charter wreck, and studies of items recovered from the wreck, reveal an interesting snapshot of the lives of those on board.

The memorial to the Royal Charter and the effects Great Gale 1859 at Cwm yr Eglwys, Pembrokeshire.

The Royal Commission and Cadw Shipwrecks Project was inspired by the great story of the Royal Charter. The project was designed to investigate the wider impact of the storm, this time  along the coast of Pembrokeshire, centring on the story of the lesser known transatlantic vessel, The Charles Holmes. The project involved a series of days working with Welsh Baccalaureate students from Pembrokeshire College, to engage them with the story of The Great Gale 1859, their local maritime heritage, and how resources such as archives can be great for researching the impact of past events on your local area.

Aberbach beach, Pembrokeshire. The wreck site of the transatlantic cargo ship ‘The Charles Holmes’, lost on the night of the Great Gale 1859.

The project began on Tuesday 7 January, when Sarahjayne, Deanna and I gave the students of Pembrokeshire College a brief introduction to maritime archaeology and the background of the storm. Asking questions throughout our presentations, the students seemed genuinely engaged with the story of the losses, and local areas that were severely affected by the storm also seemed to resonate strongly with the pupils. Often local shipwrecked vessels are a great starting point for exploring local history within a specific time period. Once you’ve located a wrecked vessel you can understand further the impact of the vessel on the local community, explore the wealth of an area and the variety of occupations and maritime industry in that area.

Deanna Groom, Sarahjayne and Kimberly positioning the archive tasks ready for the Pembrokeshire College Welsh Baccalaureate students.

A great way, and often the only way of exploring local lives and unpublished local shipwrecks, is to visit the first-hand sources at your local archive. Therefore, for the second week of the project, we used this as an opportunity to take students out of the classroom and allow them to conduct their own first-hand research at the local Pembrokeshire County Archives.

The unique Port of Cardigan Shipping Registry for 1850–1855, an example of the fantastic resources available for use at the Pembrokeshire County Archives.

They used the local shipping registers to trace the story of the ships (e.g. their construction, cargo and ownership).They then turned to local church burial records to research details of the crew lost in the wrecks. Finally local census records enabled them to understand the stories of the villagers who recovered the bodies from the wrecks.

Pembrokeshire College Welsh Baccalaureate students engaged in researching their sunken heritage through Pembrokeshire Archive Census and Shipping Registers.

All in all it was a great way of getting the students engaged, they were really keen on answering the questions provided and were amazed to have the opportunity to be able to actually touch some unique original documents.

Gan Kimberly Briscoe


Tanysgrifiwch i Newyddion Treftadaeth Cymru a chofrestrwch ar gyfer yr RSS porthiant llawn: cliciwch y botwm RSS hwn a thanysgrifiwch!

Rydym hefyd ar gael ar:
Twitter Hashtag: #RCAHMWales

News from our Community Archaeologists: The CAER Heritage Project

Kimberly and I have been extremely busy over the past few weeks so we thought it was time to update you on some of our recent activities.

We have been working with the CAER Heritage Project (Caerau and Ely Rediscovering Heritage Project) in West Cardiff.  Archaeologists from Cardiff University are working with Ely and Caerau Communities First, local residents and schools to explore the history and archaeology of the area.  The project runs all kinds of activities, and we were fortunate enough to be involved with a guided walk around the magnificent Caerau Iron Age hillfort, which forms the focus of many of the activities.

Guided walk led by Oliver Davies of Cardiff University showing the community archaeologists and members of the local community around the hill fort.

Kimberly and I also helped with the CAER project exhibition and I helped out on the day with the stand at the Peace75 Festival held at the Temple of Peace in Cardiff to celebrate its 75th anniversary.  This was a great event, I spoke with lots of people about the project, asking them to consider the debate about whether hillforts were places where people came together to show their community identities or whether they were defensive structures, and I had a fun time designing Iron Age tribal symbols with children, and writing ‘postcards to the Iron Age’ asking what life was like back then.

Sarahjayne explaining about the CAER project.

Sarahjayne working with children to create Iron Age tribal symbols and ‘postcards to the past’

As part of our time with the project we also attended the Engage Conference  in Bristol, which was focussed on public engagement and partnerships.  Here we helped facilitate a workshop on the creation of funding bids.  Our placement with the Commission has provided us with many training opportunities and I have recently completed courses on project planning and ‘building effective relationships’.

Engage Conference

There are also lots more activities to report, including a session I set up for the Young Archaeologists Club in Swansea with Swansea Metal Detecting Club, who came to talk about responsible metal detecting and how this works within Archaeology.
 

Sarahjayne with Mike Davies and members of YAC looking at Mike’s collection and asking lots of questions!

The Young Archaeologists learning how to use metal detectors

Finally, we have been organising a workshop event for Pembrokeshire College Welsh Baccalaureate students as part of our joint shipwrecks project with CADW on the Charles Holmes and the Great Gale of 1859. This is due to take place in January, and we will let you know how it goes.

By S. Clements


Tanysgrifiwch i Newyddion Treftadaeth Cymru a chofrestrwch ar gyfer yr RSS porthiant llawn: cliciwch y botwm RSS hwn a thanysgrifiwch!

Rydym hefyd ar gael ar:
Twitter Hashtag: #RCAHMWales

Shipwrecks, Oral Histories and Photography

Two of the three wrecks at Ynyslas.
NPRN 407989   DS2010_352_002

It was another busy week at the Commission last week, as we shadowed a number of the Royal Commission investigators and found out more about the work of the Recording and Investigation Team.  On Monday we went to Ynyslas in Ceredigion for the Welsh Coastal Historic Environment Research Group meeting.  This is attended by representatives of a number of different organisations such as the Welsh Archaeological Trusts and the Malvern Archaeological Diving Unit and provides an opportunity to hear about and discuss work undertaken around the Welsh coast. As part of the meeting, a visit was made to the site of three wrecks, once part of the Derwenlas slate-carrying fleet and which have recently been the focus of recording work by the Commission.  Medwyn Parry of the Commission also gave a talk on the military remains in the area. During the Second World War a missile testing range was sited at Ynyslas and this played a crucially important role in the development of fuel for both missiles and space rockets.

Aerial photo of Brymbo Iron and Steelworks.
NPRN 305753   GTJ28671

On Tuesday we visited Brymbo Iron and Steelworks (NPRNs 34054 and 305753) to speak to The Brymbo Heritage Group, who volunteer to help look after the remains of this once important industry.  The group is made up of people who once worked at the steelworks and others who have an interest in industrial archaeology. They run a small museum on the site and carry out educational talks and tours of the remains for interested groups. The group have recently been awarded funding from the HLF to employ a Heritage Officer to help raise awareness of the site.
 
We were taken on a tour of the site by Ross Cook of the Commission who has done a lot of work planning and interpreting the site. We were encouraged to think about the features of the buildings and the different phases. Iron was first produced at Brymbo by John Wilkinson in 1796, but towards the end of the nineteenth century steel production took precedence until its closure in 1990.

The volunteers in the group had lots of memories about working at the site and spoke to us about what their jobs had involved, their wages and the products they produced. They also provided valuable information on the surviving buildings and the process of work undertaken within them.  This information will be used to enhance and inform the Royal Commission’s recent survey of Brymbo, with the oral histories to be transcribed and archived as part of the project.

At the end of the week we were out on fieldwork with Commission photographer Iain Wright.  During the day we visited and photographed the war memorials in Aberystwyth, Borth and Tywyn, together with a steam engine housed at the Tywyn Railway Museum that is to feature in the Commission’s forthcoming publication on the Welsh slate industry. We learnt all about how to photograph these monuments and then afterwards how to process the photographs.

A really interesting week but watch this space for details of the excavation we are participating in soon!

Tanysgrifiwch i Newyddion Treftadaeth Cymru a chofrestrwch ar gyfer yr RSS porthiant llawn: cliciwch y botwm RSS hwn a thanysgrifiwch!

Rydym hefyd ar gael ar:
Twitter Hashtag: #RCAHMWales

Reconnaissance Team: Aerial Photography, Uplands and Maritime

Recording and monitoring sites at Bryn Y Fan (SN93158870) near Clywedog.
Left to right: Kimberly Briscoe (Trainee Community Archaeologist; RCAHMW), David Leighton (Senior Investigator Uplands; RCAHMW), Sarahjayne Clements (Trainee Community Archaeologist; RCHAMW), Jenny Hall (Archaeologist; Trysor).

We have been very busy over the past few weeks at the Royal Commission and this week has been spent with the Reconnaissance Team. The team is split into three areas, aerial photography, maritime and uplands survey, looking for new sites in many different areas across Wales as well as monitoring known ones.

We started the week by learning how to catalogue aerial photographs onto the Commission’s database, using GIS to help us locate them on the map. It was really interesting trying to locate sites where the National Grid Reference (NGR) was not known to us, and helped me to learn more about the geography and archaeology of Wales.

We then visited sites around Borth and Ynyslas. First of all we looked at the remains of a Mesolithic peat shelf and tree stumps on the foreshore at Borth, which was amazing to think about how the landscape has changed. We also noticed an eclectic mix of houses in Borth due to different phases of development as a holiday resort, which was interesting to see. We then went to Ynyslas to look at the remains of a Second World War missile testing range and camp, which was extremely important in the development of fuel for space rockets. After this we discussed how we could move forward with community projects in Ynyslas and Borth and came up with some ideas that we will begin work on soon.

Midweek we went to Bryn Y Fan (SN93158870) near Clywedog to see what is involved in the Uplands Archaeology Initiative and talked to Paul Sambrook and Jenny Hall of Trysor about the community archaeology they undertake. We walked up and around the hill for most of the day looking for any archaeological sites. We did find some Cairns which was really exciting which we recorded by taking a NGR, measurements and photos.

Towards the end of the week we discussed our learning plans for this year, we then observed a talk on the Britain From Above Project to find out more about the work carried out with the community and aerial photographs.

As part of learning about maritime reconnaissance, we added information about wrecks to the maritime database, we learnt how to map fish traps on GIS using LIDAR, maps and aerial photographs to help. This was very informative and it is surprising how features show up using different techniques.

By Sarahjayne Clements, Community Archaeology Training Placement


Tanysgrifiwch i Newyddion Treftadaeth Cymru a chofrestrwch ar gyfer yr RSS porthiant llawn: cliciwch y botwm RSS hwn a thanysgrifiwch!

Rydym hefyd ar gael ar:
Twitter Hashtag: #RCAHMWales

Shipwrecks and Gravestones

Sarahjayne and Kimberly at Pentre Ifan.

Hello, my name is Kimberly Briscoe, and I am one of two new community archaeologists descending onto the archaeologically rich town of Aberystwyth, to fulfil a year  long CBA funded placement at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. My aim is to get as many of you as enthused about archaeology as I am, and about the rest of the Royal Commission, and if you’re already keen, to help you develop your interest further!

So a little bit about what we are doing here…
The two placements here develop the two major strands of community involvement in archaeology. I hold the youth focused side of the coin, learning ways of enabling 16-25 year olds to develop passions and involvement in the archaeology that surrounds us here. Sarahjayne Clements  my cohort, will be focusing on the non-youth side of community heritage and archaeology, tackling everybody else!

The Starting Blocks

Right, so I’ve come to the end of my first two weeks here with the Royal Commission and, to be honest, I am absolutely shattered, but it has been fantastic fun! Our inductions are arranged so that we spend a week with each team to gain a feel for the way data is recorded, analysed and digitized in each department of the Royal Commission, understanding the processes of research and analysis. This is great as we can feed our experience and the knowledge of the resources back into the work we do with you.  The first week we have been shadowing the Data & Technology team.

Data & Technology Team

Here we were able to see how the Royal Commission presents and makes the archives available and useful to the general public. The Data & Technology team work to enable this process through the construction and maintenance of two fantastic publically accessible web pages. The first is the Peoples Collection Wales, managed by Helen Rowe, and if you haven’t had a play on this website it’s well worth a visit www.peoplescollectionwales.co.uk !

The Peoples Collection works to serve you; it’s basically a website that allows you to publicise any old photographs and memories in video, picture, audio or written form, or just to enable you to access other peoples published memories and images relating to your communities past. This creates a giant archive of research, images and memories. The Royal Commission aids this process by uploading images, audio and documents from its own archives to share with you! For instance Sarahjane and I were involved in transcribing and uploading videos recorded from ‘Garw Valley Garden and History and Heritage Company Oral History Project’, where people were talking about their childhood memories of the River Garw.

The second website is the web browser Coflein where we are currently digitising our archives for public access. This is one of the important parts of the Royal Commission’s work, allowing the public to search our archive. Through this induction we were able to understand and aid the process of uploading the material to the database.

Finally, the latter half of the week was set aside to discuss the exciting new projects on the innovation side of the Royal Commission’s approach to capturing community histories. The first application, ‘Wales 1900 project’, is a digitised historical map of Wales in the 1900s enabling users to mark place names onto the historic map of 1900 Wales located on http://www.cymru1900wales.org . It’s great fun and becomes addictive after a while, so quite a few located place names in Chepstow (near where I grew up r) are marked out by yours truly!

The second project crowdsnapcymru is a clever app designed by Daniel Drave in partnership with the Royal Commission. Basically it involves your favourite buildings and their place in your memories and your community. I like this idea and I am keeping it in mind as a potential way to engage and to showcase work achieved by future community projects.

Archive and Library Team, plus a glimpse of Shipwrecks

Cwm-Yr-Eglwys church swept out to sea in the storm of 1859.

Our second week was primarily dedicated to shadowing the Archive and Library team. This meant viewing the archive and understanding what goes into managing, disseminating and cataloguing the resources here - both digitally and in paper copy - and ensuring the data remains usable, flexible and available for public use.

Throughout this week, however, we were able to develop another important strand of our work, i.e. what we can achieve with the community. We focused on exploring how we can engage primarily with younger people. We were given a chance to view a current project with a local school in Pembrokeshire, run as a partnership between Cadw and Dylan Adams from Cerddora creative education. Dylan, the creative educator, conducted the workshop in and around Carreg Coetan Arthur , a local Neolithic burial chamber,  using sound and interpretive dance with the children to help them gain an understanding  and experience of what it would may been like thousands of years ago. This was fantastic to watch, and so encouraging seeing the children really engaged with their local monument.

Aber-bach Beach Wreck site of the Charles Holmes.

Continuing this theme, we have been given the chance to become involved in an exciting new project ‘The Welsh Shipwrecks Project’.  This joint Royal Commission-Cadw venture is based on the little known tragedy of the shipwrecks caused by the violent Royal Charter Gale of 1859. As part of this we followed the story of one shipwreck - the ‘Charles Holmes’, which ended its life so abruptly on the shores of Aberbach beach. We firstly visited the local graveyard at St. Catherine’s Church, Granston, hunting for the memorial erected by local people to the lives lost in the shipwreck, which in fact was revealed to be a modest single gravestone for the 28 passengers! We then experienced the impact and scale of the storm from a local perspective by viewing the ruined remains of the church at Cwm-Yr-Eglwys , swept mostly out to sea in the storm.

Well, it’s been a busy but interesting two weeks and we’re certainly getting a feel for the work conducted here at the Royal Commission. For now I’ll finish up, but there will be more news soon!

Tanysgrifiwch i Newyddion Treftadaeth Cymru a chofrestrwch ar gyfer yr RSS porthiant llawn: cliciwch y botwm RSS hwn a thanysgrifiwch!

Rydym hefyd ar gael ar:
Twitter Hashtag: #RCAHMWales

Tragic stories of Great Gale among winners of ‘Tell Us Your Story’ competition

Four new films showcasing the work of archives in Wales were launched today at Flintshire Record Office as part of the recent ‘Tell Us Your Story’ competition.

Users of Welsh archives were asked to submit a story about their experiences and discoveries as a result of using the service. Six of the winning stories have been made into films and four of these are stories from North Wales which were shown at the event.

Among the winners, and subject of one of the six films, is Royal Commission Maritime Officer Deanna Groom, who researched shipping losses around the Welsh Coast during a storm in 1859 including a Liverpool-Melbourne passenger vessel called The Royal Charter which was lost on Anglesey.

Deanna adds, “There are many sad stories, but also ones of bravery and courage associated with each wreck. The stories of aid given by local people to shipwreck survivors reaffirm faith in human kindness”. Deanna describes the tale of the EAGLE, a wooden sloop built at Newquay in 1819 which was registered at Aberystwyth – the Royal Commission’s home town. It was driven ashore near Conwy during the Great Charter Gale and a letter from the master, John Richards of Borth, appeared in the Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald, held at Gwynedd Archives, for the 19 November 1859, Pg3 Col 1.

The letter begins: ‘Dear Sir, my vessel, THE EAGLE of Aberystwyth having been totally wrecked during the late gales off Llandrillo, and my poor wife and child drowned on the sad occasion, I shall feel extremely obliged if you will allow me through the medium of your paper to communicate my most sincere and heartfelt gratitude to those humane and hospitable people of Aberegle and Rhyl, on whose hospitable shore I was cast…’

The Great Gale Shipwrecks Project is a joint Royal Commission and Cadw project investigating shipwrecks and its impact on coastal communities around Wales with local schools. Deanna’s prize money has been used to buy copies of books about the Royal Charter shipwreck to donate to schools involved in the project.

The extensive Great Gale collections can be view on People’s Collection Wales at: http://www.peoplescollection.co.uk/Collection/1515-the-great-storm-of-1859

All the films can be viewed on the Welsh Archives YouTube channel or alternatively visit archiveswales.org and click on the link.


Tanysgrifiwch i Newyddion Treftadaeth Cymru a chofrestrwch ar gyfer yr RSS porthiant llawn: cliciwch y botwm RSS hwn a thanysgrifiwch!

Rydym hefyd ar gael ar:
Twitter Hashtag: #RCAHMWales

Then and Now - Slate-trade Hulks at Caernarvon

It began with a public inquiry about imagery for Caernarvon Castle, but it triggered a visual memory with Cheryl Griffiths, the Royal Commission’s longest serving member of staff, of historic photographs she had seen in the Industrial Archaeology Collections.

This wonderful series of images shows the former Slate Quay on the River Seiont. The old landing point for the Castle was developed around 1817. With the coming of the Nantlle Railway in 1825-8, which brought slate from various quarries to the harbour, the mouth of the Seiont was turned into an even busier place.

Slate Quay Caernarfon, DI2013_0093.

Maritime Officer, Deanna Groom, set out to try and recreate the view - ‘I was actually too far south along the bank... and there they were. Two really quite substantial wooden vessels, which I feel certain must have been engaged in the slate trade at sometime. The Harbour Master at Caernarvon, Richard Jones, believes that the vessel on the western bank was called the LILLY, but we’d love to hear from local people who may know more about them’.

What do you know about these vessels?

Tanysgrifiwch i Newyddion Treftadaeth Cymru a chofrestrwch ar gyfer yr RSS porthiant llawn: cliciwch y botwm RSS hwn a thanysgrifiwch!

Rydym hefyd ar gael ar:
Twitter Hashtag: #RCAHMWales