June 29, 2004
st fagans: welsh life museum
i went to st fagans (pronounced "saint faggans") yesterday, and it was mighty fine. and mighty big. it's a lot like port arthur in tasmania: the grounds are basically historically accurate recreations of houses and their contents. but st fagans pisses all over port arthur as it covers about 90 million more years than port arthur. the central feature is st fagans castle. or rather, the big house built on the site of the former castle. dotted around the landscape are a range of houses from different historical periods.
there was a fair bit of walking involved, but it was nice walking... this pic is of a couple of buildings (whose names i can't remember or figure out). note the green expanses.
not all the buildings were actually on the site to begin with. seems they've raided the welsh countryside forlikely buildings, undone them and then rebuilt them on the grounds.
this church, llandeilo tal-y-bont, was a work in progress.
this bit facinated me. they had all these crates full of stone tiles around the place (and requests for further tiles, if anyone could help... which is a concerning thought. welshies raiding historical buildings for tiles?). there was a work room where the builders were building things, and a little demountable explaining the process. they were using historically accurate construction techniques, and had lots of useful pictures. and dual-language explanations.
there were all sorts of buildings, ranging from a working woollen mill (wool's a bit important to welshies, so i gather), through an old tannery, to a bronze age wood circle, and on to various farm and towns buildings. there were also livestock.
sheep are something of a national icon. and these were nice sheep. there were also pigs (in two different types of stys), cows and giant chooks.
the little village not only had a working bakery (where i sampled the disturbing scones, and one very heavy, but still warm 'cheesy' bun. in the name of research, of course), but also a WWII period series of shops, including this tailor:
it really was a top day out. i saw a lot of tourists, i took some nice photos, i poked about in some old buildings. i might have learnt a lot if i'd been paying attention. but i was really just wondering about enjoying the lovely weather and getting some exercise. oh, and oggling old stuffs.
