ABERTILLERY & DISTRICT MUSEUM SOCIETY

NEWSLETTER August 2007

Museum News

What a day!

After all the hard work of the last eleven years the museum is finally open.  I’m sure everyone who came to the opening will agree it was a very exciting and emotional morning.  Over one hundred members and guests came despite the weather.  The newly refurbished museum with its new cases and displays were a hit with everyone. 

The only disappointment of the morning was that Jennifer Price was unable to be with us because of work commitments, but as I said when I gave her apologies nobody was more disappointed than Jennifer herself.  Jennifer played a large part in the success of our HLF grant, along with committee members and outside professional bodies.  A real team effort.   Peggy Bearcroft

The speeches given by our Chairwoman Peggy Bearcroft and Curator Don Bearcroft, the two leading lights in the Museum Society, are reproduced on page 2.

100 Club June winners

1^st         No.59     Ray Jones              £25
2^nd        No.7       Hazel Robinson      £10
3^rd        No.         Arthrina White        £5

100 Club July winners

1^st         No.23     Marion Leyton         £25
2^nd        No.91     Alf Stone                 £10
3^rd        No.57     Thelma Griffiths        £5

100 Club August winners

1^st         No.37     Alan Hunt               £25
2^nd        No.109   Lyn Gladwin            £10
3^rd        No.35     Jean Cummins         £5

Fund raising July - £195

Many thanks to the generous sums donated by Dai Davies MP, Councillor Steve Bard, and our American Vice President Jeanette Fulton.

Museum opening times
The Museum is open to the public, free of charge:
Tuesday - Thursday  10am - 1pm     2pm - 4pm
Friday & Saturday     10am - 1pm
Museum phone number 01495 211140. Visitors and volunteers are always welcome so please call in as often as you like.
The Museum now has an email address:
abertillerymuseum@tiscali.co.uk 

Diary Dates 

Saturday 1^st September – Coffee morning (donations of cakes would be appreciated)
Wednesday 5^th September – Solemn Sabbaths and Faraway Sundays by Pete Strong
Wednesday 3^rd October – A Journey up the Nile from Thebes to Abu Simbel by Don Bearcroft
Wednesday 7^th November –From Camera to Canvas by Nora Lewis
Wednesday 5^th December – 1804 Ship’s Surgeon by Roger Morgan
Lectures start at 7.00pm in the Metropole Theatre, with teas and a chat downstairs in the Museum afterwards. Entry is £2 and the public are most welcome. Details of coffee mornings etc are posted on the notice board at the Museum or at the following websites:

www.cwmtillery.com     www.abertillery.net
 

Vice Presidents

Mr Keith Dykes                  Mr Alan Hunt
Mrs Esme Heal                   Mr Glyn Saunders
Mrs Kathleen Davies           Rev. R Watson
Mrs Margaret Herbert         Prof. Gerwyn Griffiths
Mrs Carole Brooks             Mr Edward Meredith (dec’d)
Mrs Jeanette Fulton             Mr Arthur Lewis OBE
                                           (Annual Subscription £25)

Christmas Bazaar – no date yet but can you please get busy with your arts and crafts!

 Page 1

ABERTILLERY & DISTRICT MUSEUM SOCIETY

Opening Speeches
Peggy Bearcroft, Chairwoman - On behalf of the Museum Society I would like to welcome you and thank you all for coming to the reopening of the Museum.  It is a very exciting and emotional day for the Society.  It is the culmination of 11 years hard work.  We have had many setbacks and disappointments along the way, but we were determined never to give up.  Looking at the Museum now I am sure everyone who has been involved will feel it has all been worthwhile.
I’d like to give a special welcome to the Mayor of Blaenau Gwent CBC Ainsley Morgan, Leader of Blaenau Gwent CBC Cllr John Hopkins, Deputy Leader Cllr Nigel Daniels, Cllr Cheryl Morris, Representatives from the Community Council Chairperson Barbara Baldwin and Mrs Marion Roberts.  I’d also like to give a special welcome to Sir Richard Hanbury Tension.  Sir Richard has been the Society’s President and loyal supporter from the outset, and will officially open the Museum later this morning.
When it came to thanks I didn’t know where to start because we have had so much help from so many people, but I feel as a Society we should say a big thank you to the Heritage Lottery Fund for making all this possible.  We are particularly pleased to see Martin Buckeridge and Ruth Waycott from HLF with us today.  Martin was the first person we went to for advice back in 1996 when he was Curator of Pontypool Museum, so I feel it is fitting for you to be with us today.
Next I would like to thank Deputy Leader of Blaenau Gwent Councillor Nigel Daniels whose help and support has been invaluable to the Museum, since we started this project back in 1996.  Can I also thank Council officers David Watkins, Richard Hughes, Walter Syrett and Frank Olding who represent many other officers and workers from many departments in the Borough.  Frank Olding as you all know has been the Museum’s Curatorial Advisor for most of the last eleven years and we would not be where we are today without Frank’s help.
We are pleased to see Jane Henderson here.  Jane was conservation officer at the Council of Museums in Wales and along with colleagues started us on the road to success.  We are pleased to see Carol Whittaker, Development Officer representing CyMAL.  CyMAL is the new governing body for museums, archives and libraries in Wales and is a division of the Welsh Assembly Government.  We thank everybody at CyMAL for their help and support.
Can I also thank Communities First for all their help with the opening including the buffet.
I could go on thanking people but if I say everyone here has helped in one way or another to make the Museum the success it is today and on behalf of the Society I would like to thank you all.
 

Don Bearcroft, Curator – As Curator and Project Administrator I have been asked to say a few words about the Museum and the new design.  The Museum Society was founded in 1964; the first museum was opened in the Abertillery Library in 1972.  I was elected Curator in 1991, (it went downhill from there on).  If you want to learn more about our early history you can buy a booklet in our shop for the modest price of £1.
We are here today to celebrate the opening of the refurbishment by the Heritage Lottery Grant.  This project started 11 years ago in 1996 when due to local government reorganisation we had to vacate our home in the library as it was required for other purposes.  We were not very happy about the move although Councillor Nigel Daniels told us they would help us in any way they could.  Most of us including myself thought of it as an eviction, but without that move we would not have had the incentive to strive for this museum that we have today.  Nigel proved to be a man of his word and the Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council has provided us with help and advice from their officers and practical help from the Department whenever we have asked.
However it has been a long road, it has been said of me that “If I didn’t have any bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all”.  And this seems to have followed me into the Society as looking back over this period anything that could go wrong did go wrong!  A few weeks after the notification to move out of the library our Chairman Mr Ralph Robinson was tragically killed in a car accident.  Fortunately for us Peggy stepped into the breach.  It is a tribute to our committee and  members at that time that we were more determined to have a new museum, despite all the setbacks our motto became – Keep your head down and keep going.  It was the support we had from far and wide that helped us during these times, or is it as Frank Olding has said, “You’re just too stubborn”.
Our fundraising for the matching funding for our HLF grant which was successful has been an inspiration to others with similar projects in mind.  The new design chosen by the committee was an interpretive design, a museum with cases integrated into settings which tell the story of the the artefacts in them.  The priority is for young people with the older generation still in mind, and text being part of the displays with more available for the serious academic student.  All this has been achieved by the designer Alan Morgan of Riveting Designs who was awarded the contract and was chosen by the committee because of his innovative modern design while still keeping the ethos of our old museum.  Alan is a very talented man but he is also a shy modest person who never does openings, but he has promised to pop in some time this morning
There are other features in the museum that were not in the design but were ideas done by the Council for me.  Walter Syrett asked me if there was anything they could do for us.  I don’t like to ask I replied, No he said but you’re going to

anyway.  So I gave him a list.  Walter not only looks like Clark Kent but he also carries out impossible tasks.  I have to mention two of his workers Rob and Pete; most of their work is unseen except for the theatre box which they set up over the entrance porch using the original wrought ironwork from the theatre.  We have all heard the music hall jokes about council workmen but this is definitely not true of those who have worked in this museum.  They work with an enthusiasm matching our own.  Perhaps it’s catching.

We have had a number of talented people working on the museum design, Alan Morgan of course but also the artist Geraint Derbyshire who painted the murals, and Panico Theodosius who sculpted the quoin stone and also did restoration work on the marble counter for the Express café

We must not forget our own volunteers who worked on moving the artefacts, opened and closed the museum for the contractors plus a million and one other jobs that were required before, during and after the refit, Roy Pickford, Bob Pitt and Bernard Hill.  These last two are also avoiding the limelight.

As regards to the future the new museum has already had requests for school visits not only by local schools but from schools further afield as well as from visitors from away.  We look forward to working on projects with Susan upstairs as well as Rachel from Communities First.

Now that this project is completed other projects are in the pipeline, one the marble counter from the Italian Express café has been restored via a grant from CyMAL.  This could be expanded with original round tables in an appropriate setting.  There are two other areas which I have discussed with Alan Morgan.  That’s one thing we are never short of – ideas.

Abertillery & District museum is a voluntary and independent museum run and supported by the people of our valleys, a ‘Community Museum’ with the emphasis on having local people at hand as guides to enrich the museum experience with their own knowledge and experience of life in the locality.  We are truly a people’s museum and thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund we now have a unique museum that we can all be proud of.

Contact Names

 The W.G. Vowles Organ at St Michael’s Church in Abertillery was dedicated on 21^st December 1910, and was a gift of J. Edgar Webb, the brewery owner of Aberbeeg, in memory of his parents.  The fact is that Edgar Webb had wanted to donate an organ to Christchurch, Aberbeeg (largely built with Webb money) but the then incumbent had disapproved of the way the money had been made!  The great Hiram Smythe Rees, Vicar of Abertillery, had no such issues (sensible man!) and it has been known as the ‘beer organ’ ever since.

Vowles are known for the robustness of their instruments, but not for the quality of their action (the means by which the playing on the console opens and closes pipes in the organ), and by the 1950s the organ was in a poor state.  With much volunteer labour, including a younger version of our present organist Lyndon Stephens, the many yards of small-bore lead piping were replaced with electric wiring by Michael Davies of the then Gavenny Organ Company, and when the console itself expired in the 1990s, a second-hand one was acquired.

Apart from the initial installation 97 years ago, all work since has been done ‘on the cheap’, and with the generosity and hard work of people working for love rather than money.  It is a tribute to the original workmanship that the organ pipes, along with the wooden and leather parts, are largely original, but they are now showing their age.  Though ‘Bertha’ probably sounds better today than for very many years, she has become a fragile old lady, in need of a rebuild.

Thanks to Glenys Lee for this article by Patrick Coleman.

Local Voices

The Express Café Abertillery

As told to me by a Ty’r Graig School pal from Brynithel, who became one of the highest-ranking police officers in Wales and later Chief of Security at Cardiff Airport.

‘Whilst a policeman at Abertillery, it was customary as a pair to be welcomed at the Express Café for a cup of tea.  One night duty the pair of us were in the café for such a break and were amazed when we came out by the number of fire engines at the top of Church Street.  The Working Men’s Institute with its famous swimming pool had been severely damaged by fire whilst we were enjoying our cup of tea, without our knowledge.’

Arthur Lewis

Page 3

The Grand Re-opening of our refurbished museum

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There were of course people who were unable to attend due to work commitments and personal reasons; some came for the open day.As I started my speech I could see in my minds eye other faces, faces of people who helped and supported us over the past eleven years and sadly did not live to see the fruits of their labours.It was an emotional day and I new if I were to mention even one of them I would not have been able to continue.Now I can mention a few out of the many, if I mentioned them all it would take a whole newsletter. The first person who comes to everyone's mind and who is badly missed even now when there is a museum function is Barbara Bevan. There are many others such as Arthur Smith, Colin Morgan, the list seams endless. We owe them a debt of gratitude for all their labours, it is my own belief that they are aware of our success and how we feel about them. The open day was another successful day; all agreed that our museum is unique. It was the faces of the children lighting up when they used the interactive exhibits that told everything. The first children to see the museum were the four that together with their mother Gwen made the sound recording for the air-raid shelter.

Unfortunately when Alan was adjusting the sound he inadvertently wiped the tape, so they had to come a few days later to record again. They loved doing it! Children up to the age of 80 have enjoyed trying on the different period hats in the, "who am I" section and excavating in the archaeological dig.

 As for the serious text great interest is shown in the Cruciform and Circular keeps excavated by Trevor Lewis in the 1920s.

The text in the information points is being read. A friend who worked with me at Six Bells Colliery was seen on his hands and knees in the mining gallery reading the text. He was mistaken for one of the figures which is not surprising as they are so lifelike.

The visitors of all ages during the first week have been more than we expected. We are now looking forward to the new school term and school visits, also we will be working on projects with Susanne in the Metropole and Rachael with Communities First. Has the struggle over the last eleven years been worth it? What do you think?

Don Bearcroft curator.